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Anyone remembers (or even heard of) the Insidious? The supernatural series that hasn't made one good movie since the original, like most horror/slasher flicks since the 80s? Well, they just released another movie, one that I didn't even know existed until I went to watch Across the Spiderverse with a friend last night. And guess what, despite the teetering reputation and C+ reviews on Cinema Score, it managed to become a commercial success and knocked the Indy Jones finale with a much bigger domestic box office opening.
This fad has been going on for years but (to me, at least) it never stops being remarkable how big tentpole entries that raked hundreds of millions in the past just manage to fall flat. These franchises tend to be somewhat bulletproof, there's more room for failure and these brands usually wouldn't take a hit due to a few bad entries. Yet, here we are. It seems like Indiana Jones Dial of Destiny might not make back its PRODUCTION budget, let alone break even, that's just out the window. How do you get handed the keys to the most beloved IP's there are, with passionate fandoms falling over themselves to rain cash on you for merch, something that's effectively been a cultural icon for decades, and turn it into a hot pile of steaming crap that no one wants to get 10 yards within? They could make the Crystal Skull (which still raked good money btw) and get away with it. Now, all of a sudden, DoD is the final nail in the coffin.
Every time we pointed out the warning signals, the /r/IndianaJones circlejerk simply kept dismissing us as bigots still continue to defend it like it's some misunderstood masterpiece and the only ones who hate it are incels that can't handle strong women. It's the same theme every single time. We knew Disney was BS'ing nostalgia when it brought back Palpatine, not coming up with something "daring and creative". It hasn't been a full year since RoP, the excuses went from "they've only revealed the casting, we haven't even gotten a first look yet" --> "it's not even out yet, you've just seen the trailer" --> "you've seen one episode, how can you gauge anything from it" --> "most shows don't get good until the 2nd or 3rd season, give it a chance!" You just can't win here. It turns out exactly as terrible or even worse than what we'd expected, to the point where the brand name gets reduced to the same tier as any other obscure brand like Insidious. Yet, we always have the very same passionate circlejerk defending these movies on every fandom on social media. Nor will we ever see Kathleen Kennedy lose her job. I used to think it was plausible it was a grand conspiracy to fuck over the middle class by subverting our culture and values, then I thought it was just Hanlon's Razor, now I'm not even sure.
I think the Indiana Jones thing is part of the wider problem Disney is having right now (after all, they dumped Chapek and brought Iger back to fix things). And as you say, any quoting other people about the problems was dismissed with "this guy has no idea what he's talking about; this guy has been saying it'll flop for years and it never has; ignore them they don't know anything".
But I think even the mainstream critics accepted that the movie did poorly at Cannes, so all the rumours that leaked out about multiple versions because test audiences hated it seem to be correct. And that, in conjunction with things like the Star Wars hotel failing completely after only a year, does make me inclined to think the rumours are nearer the truth, even if not the whole truth.
Will Kathleen Kennedy get pushed out? Before it seemed likely, now it's looking like she's canny enough and an old enough Hollywood hand to be able to fight and throw the responsibiilty back on Iger (who is having his own troubles with the shareholders).
So yeah - for now, I'm sticking with the "ignore that crowd, they have an agenda" gossip-mongers because the way things are going, looks like they are more close to what is going on than the "beautiful DEI casting will always win the day, the Little Mermaid remake was a triumph! (if you ignore everything but the domestic market)" set.
EDIT: I haven't watched an Indiana Jones movie since the first sequel, but I do think there was a good way of having Indy hang up his hat and hand over to his god-daughter, but the makers or producers or writers or whoever was pulling the strings didn't do it that way. Nobody wants to see a beloved hero reduced to irrelevance in his old age, even if that is a more 'realistic' view of life (and for pete's sake, they started off with the Ark of the Covenant, we are not talking about realism in these movies). Snarky quips about capitalism, Indy needing to be rescued, having his family broken up - that's not how to do a swansong. Let him go out with a bang on one last adventure and then retire to happy, honoured life and transfer the running around adventuring to the next generation who respect him, not shove him out of the way as a dusty old relic who's long past his sell-by date.
I will say, though, that the CGI used to de-age Ford for the scenes set in his past were (on the few clips I saw) remarkably good, and maybe the actors as well as the screenwriters should now be worried about AI coming for their jobs. Why pay out millions to Harry-Bruce Affleck-Cruise for the next movie in the series when you can just have the AI act the part? For decades, if need be?
Yeah. Part of it would be Indy not being able to do things he used to (ie trying and failing) while his protégée can while at the same time the protégée failing at tasks that Indy learned from and can pass it along.
Also, heroism was never solely about ability but desire. Indy could also show that.
IMO Top Gun: Maverick did a good job of scriptwriting without throwing its title character under the bus. But that may be the only modern sequel/remake I can think of that does a passable job. Disney (really, Lucasfilm in particular) seems to like bringing up old characters and showing that despite when we last saw them victorious at the end of the movie, they've gotten old and have their lives falling apart.
On the other hand, Maverick is probably the only good example I've seen in the last few years. I've long wondered why filmmakers can't spend, I don't know, twice as much on hiring a good writer up front and making a good story, presumably saving tons of money in re-shoots and major CGI edits-on-edits. At least from the outside, it seems obvious that many of these movies are going to be trainwrecks long before release.
The people making these popular films have ideological blinders that prevent them from actually making quality work. They aren't even trying to make good stories, because they assume that people will come see them anyway due to the prestige attached to those big names - they are trying to create good culture war material, not compelling art. I could have written a better sequel trilogy than Disney's highly paid team in a day if we're being generous. Not because I'm an especially talented writer - but because I wouldn't be forced to tell the story that Disney management wanted told.
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There's actually an example of a Harrison Ford character getting handled well in a sequel!
Blade Runner 2049 let him reprise his role as an old, embittered version of Deckard who manages one last ride and then fades with his dignity intact.
They still screwed up that movie, because they had to go with the nihilistic message of "You, the main character, are nobody. The only one who is somebody is badly broken and probably shouldn't have been. Everything is lost like tears in the rain, only without the quotable line and anyway that's how it should be". Similar to SW8 in that respect.
I'd say you and I took subtly different messages from the ending of that film, and that's okay.
Deckard at least didn't pass his mantle on to some hot new female Blade Runner!
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Maverick wasn’t all that good to me simply because they seemed to spend too much time going beat for beat on Rooster being Goose’s kid. It ended up being almost a remake of the original movie pretending that it’s a sequel and as a result, Rooster and most of the younger cast existed more as callbacks to the original cast than as characters in their own right. It just seemed like nothing original happened beyond the opening test pilot scenes, it was mostly like they had the original script in front of them and were trying to hit the same marks almost in a checklist fashion. Rooster sings karaoke, check. Sand sports on the beach, check. Hotshot pilot smirking and making wisecracks, check.
Not having seen the original Top Gun I can't comment on the accuracy of your comparison. But many of the sequels widely believed to have broken the "sequels always suck" rule were functionally remakes. From what I'm told, Terminator 2 hits all the same narrative beats as The Terminator, just with a massively expanded budget.
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There's been something weird about writing in media (and gaming) for a while now, and i wonder how much of it has to do with graphics and effects. As they become more and more of a budget, and the writer therefore becomes a smaller percentage, people start thinking that the writing doesn't matter (rather than seeing it as a high return place to spend your money, since doubling the salary and getting a better writer would be a small percentage of the overall cost).
At least part of it has to be that the average audience doesn't care too much about writing as long as there are other factors to dazzle them in the production.
Hence why Reality TV remains popular.
Is reality tv popular or just profitable? If I can make TV show X for 1m and it generates 1.2m or Show Y for 0.5m and make 0.8m Y is the right choice even if X is more popular. Hell it is the right choice even if it makes 0.6m provided I could invest 0.7m somewhere else and make at least 0.1m
Shows like The Bachelor and The Masked Singer get millions of viewers.
I think the appeal is that you can afford to produce many of such shows at once and it only takes one of them getting popular to pay off handsomely.
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