Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

I really hope Chia Pet L'Goof ISN'T in DIAL OF DESTINY.

https://variety.com/2023/film/news/indiana-jones-5-james-mangold-harrison-ford-1235650894/

https://deadline.com/2023/07/indian...a-global-international-box-office-1235427838/

$70m internationally for a total of $130m thus far.

If it drops off hard, this could be a massive loss for Disney. Maybe the 4th will pick it up.

If anything, I think the 4th will work against it.

I saw Dial of Destiny this past Saturday afternoon & liked it. I enjoyed it but the Original Trilogy is way better. Like the Original Trilogy , Dial's one of those flicks that's great to see on a big movie screen in a movie theater.

I definitely recommend others see it while it's still on the Big Screen.

This movie , opinion wise , is very polarized , after looking at & reading threads about Dial on other message boards.

One thing about Dial that I'm not sure yet how to digest is

So the Red Letter Media guys say that the first half of Crystal Skull is better than this movie, but the second half of this is better than the second half of Crystal Skull. They also there’s nothing to hate, but it’s very mediocre. Not worth seeing in theaters. I’ve got nothing better to tomorrow so I’ll check it out.

I didn't mind the Nuking the Fridge scene in Crystal Skull. It's no less plausible than say a mine car chase or escaping from the Hindenberg sequence from Crusade. And I liked the Mutt and what's her name sword fighting on the back of trucks. And I did like the wedding and Mutt going for the hat and Indy's "not yet" line. But the rest of the Crystal Skull ranges from utterly forgettable to just plain bad. As far as I'm concerned, the last time we see Indy was him, Sr, Sallah, and Brody literally riding off into the sunset after their encounter with the Holy Grail.

Given Ford's age and Disney's track record when it comes to Lucasfilm stuff, I'm just going to save myself the heartache and ski this one.

Red Letter Media are a bunch of assholes and I wouldn't trust them if they said the earth was round.

Just saw the film this weekend. I have no words.

The first two hours of Dial of Destiny are actually decent. Better than Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and in some cases even better than Temple of Doom. It's not great by any stretch, but I was sitting in the theatre wondering why critics and audiences seemed to be so down on the film.

Then the last 30 minutes. I don't know what to say. I've never seen a film go so sideways in my life. I really want to understand what the screenwriters were thinking, and who in their right mind greenlit this absolute rubbish of a script. Indiana Jones and moviegoers deserved so much better than the last 30 minutes. You'll just have to see it to believe it.

SPOILER AHEAD

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The one major positive of this film is that Indiana's son is fucking dead. They try to make it into some sort of tragic backstory for Indy, but I was just so happy they killed that annoying motherfucker that I couldn't feel his grief.

Word around the internet from insiders is the original ending had Indy sacrificing himself in the past, being actually erased from history, and the Kathleen Kennedy stand-in she puts in all the Disney Lucasfilm stuff does all the things Indy did (find the Ark and beat the Nazis, get the Shiva Stones and beat the Thuggees, find the Holy Grail and beat the Nazis again, find the skull and beat the Russians). The test audiences hated it and so a new ending was hastily thrown together and shot, which is what the audience sees now.

I don't know how true that is, but it would explain how disjointed the ending of this movie feels according to a lot of the audience reviews.

James Mangold denies it.

“This is the ending we wrote two years ago… When you start writing anything, you don’t know exactly how you’re going to land it. You just keep working. And there were moments where I thought about, I thought maybe they’re going to end up going back to Germany and he’ll stop Mads from doing what he’s doing, but I felt like we already did that with the opening.”

That's even more damning than re-jigging the ending at the last minute.

Stolen from YT comments
1989
Batman and Indiana Jones were in theaters
2008
Batman and Indiana Jones were in theaters
2023
Batman and Indiana Jones are in theaters

We know.

Saw it. It wasn't terrible, but certainly not great either. The humor was lacking, it ran too long and the ending was cringe worthy. There were a couple of good moments here and there and Indy wasn't entirely upstaged, but there are at least three moments where he clearly is. This felt like exactly what it is, a talented actor playing a role he loves directed by a competent director, but lacks the creativity and imagination the creators brought to the first three films and an attempted cash grab from the corporate overlords hoping to expand the franchise with a fresh young female lead. It also felt like a conglomerate of the first four movies, Nazis chasing a thing, Indy being recruited to help find the thing, his female companion betrays him, a little kid side kick who helps Indy out (with a similar background), a WTF science fiction ending, weird archeology, a classroom scene, a nice character growth moment and a Last Crusade moment where the knight waves at Indy, then of course Marion. If I had to grade it, I guess I'd say C+. I'd wait for it to come out on D+ if I were you. This franchise had the perfect ending with The Last Crusade, they should have just left it there.

I thought that moment landed for me only because Ford sold it really well and John Williams used Marion's theme which also sold it for me. That and the very end with the reverse scene from Raiders. Those were the two really good moments that made it feel like an Indiana Jones movie.

What was missing: Paramount dissolve into a mountain, Dara as in the years.

Another couple of things, Indy isn’t afraid of bugs yet in this movie he is. They mention snakes yet no scene with snakes.

Also, no swinging by using his whip.

Did we really need five posts for all that bullshit? Jeez.

And there it is.

Yeah , me too @We Are Borg regarding those last 30 minutes of Dial. My reaction was WTF?!?! in those last 30 minutes. People will have to see that last half hour of IJ5 to believe is exactly right. For some reason to me what they did in the last half hour of Dial seemed totally inappropriate for an Indiana Jones movie.

Exactly my reaction to the ending too @Bill Carson . A very in my opinion inappropriate conclusion.

There what is? Disney (Lucasfilm in particular) has a record of the male heroes being overshadowed by women. It’s Kathleen Kennedy who keeps doing this.

Yeah sure and John Harrison isn’t Khan. When are people going to learn that film makers lie, even the one’s people like.

Can we just get a shrink to put him on Ritalin already?
Can we have that done?

Indy is not overshadowed by Wombat any more than he was overshadowed by Marion or Willie or Elsa in the original trilogy.

Nor does Disney have "a record of the male heroes being overshadowed by women."

The last act she practically takes over for him then knocks him out to prevent him from essentially committing suicide. Never mind the fact that he’s preventing them from escaping. Don’t come back with the Last Crusade ending where he’s reaching for the grail, that was a touching moment between him and his dad after some character development. Indy should know at this point to let it go. He’s already learned that lesson, no need to retread on it in a lesser movie no doubt.

I'm not really a fan of the last act, but I don't understand the hatred it seems to spur. As someone who reveres history and who presumably thinks he has little to live for in 1969 -- no job, no future adventures, no Marion and no son -- it seems reasonable to me that he would be tempted to spend time in history with one of its greatest minds in the remaining 10-20 years he might have left. That Wombat needs to physically knock him out isn't "overshadowing" him, or at least, it's no more overshadowing him than other characters do in the previous movies.

The temptation to hold onto the grail is a very different one than to retire in a historical place. There's the metaphysical warning from the Knight of the Grail that it can't go outside the boundaries or bad things will happen. There's no real reason why Indy couldn't remain in the past if he kept his mouth shut and just lived a quiet life as one of Archimedes' followers.

Giving up on the supposed record of women overshadowing men in Disney?

Can we criticize something you like without you taking it as a personal attack?