Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny Already On Track To Fail?
Hollywood insider Matthew Belloni is predicting Indiana Jones 5 is going to flop.
Back in the 1980s, it would have been blasphemy to say that an Indiana Jones movie could be a flop at the box office. Here in 2023, though, that is exactly what Matthew Belloni is predicting, according to his Puck article, “23 Semi-Surefire Hollywood Predictions, Predicaments and Preoccupations for 2023.” While he says that most other prediction-makers are saying that Dial of Destiny may end up being one of the top-grossing films of the new year, he doesn’t see this happening himself.
In his opinion, the new Indiana Jones flick won’t be worth a watch because it was not directed by Steven Spielberg, but by James Mangold, who has been rather surly with fans when asked about the upcoming film during its promotional phase.
He also notes that Harrison Ford, who plays and has always played Indiana Jones, is now 80 years old, making him an unlikely choice for an action hero. He is much older than he was in the original three movies and the more recent fourth film (released in 2008) and, in Belloni’s words, “if we’re being honest [he] looks it.”
However, this point is debatable, as Ford is a mainstay in the series and most of its fans would never consider seeing an Indiana Jones film without him, with some even boycotting this upcoming fifth film just because it is rumored that someone else may take up the mantle of Indiana Jones at the end.
Belloni does make a few points that are a bit harder to argue, however. One of them is that Indiana Jones 5 is trailing far behind other films whose trailers were released at the same time at Brazil Comic Con in early December. The trailer for Paramount’s Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, the seventh film in the Transformers franchise, has seen 506 million views since its release, while Disney’s Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3 has seen 187 million views. Lucasfilm’s Indiana Jones 5 has only gotten 79 million views.
As Belloni admits, this could be due to the fact that a lot of Indiana Jones fans are in an older age group, so they may not spend as much time on YouTube watching movie trailers. However, it could still be worrisome, as could the attitudes of a portion of the film’s potential fan base toward Lucasfilm.
Recently, some fans have complained that Lucasfilm has begun diminishing the importance and heroism of the male leads in their franchises in order to focus more on female characters. They use Ford’s own character of Han Solo in Star Wars: The Force Awakens as a prime example of this, as this film sees Han Solo reduced from a cool, heroic adventurer to a neglectful parent who is then killed by his own son.
In The Last Jedi, Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker, once the most vital character in the entire franchise, has abandoned all of his ideals and even goes so far as to just toss his lightsaber out like trash.
Some fans even feel like Lucasfilm’s successful Mandalorian series was a discredit to the titular character because he began as a tough, unforgiving, loner bounty hunter and turned into what some critics refer to as “a glorified babysitter” for Grogu a.k.a. the precious and adorable “Baby Yoda.”
Whether or not Belloni’s prediction for the fifth Indiana Jones film will come true is yet to be seen – the film premieres in June 2023 – but it is certainly something the Lucasfilm PR department will need to consider in the meantime.
