The problem is that it's impossible to go back to 1989 and make another proper sequel with Harrison Ford, Spielberg, Lucas, and Williams at their prime. That's it. They should have never gone back to that dried-up well.
Ford is too old, Spielberg is too comfortable, Lucas is too egotistical about his bad ideas and Williams can't save a movie with leitmotifs.
We're nitpicking script details when the reality is that it's over, they should have never bothered making more Indiana Jones movies after Crusade. Spielberg had him riding off into the sunset in that movie for a reason.
This is all that needs to be said. Don't know why people get into these big dissertations on this. Time and time again across all creative media we see a drop off after a few entries. Be it a band, author, movies, it doesn't matter. There is a certain level of desperation in all great creative content. I'm not saying it is mandatory, but that rawness of when people have nothing to lose and the fire in their belly brings great work.
How many movie franchises maintain that high of a level after three entries? Very very very few.
Everyone got comfortable, everyone lost interest, the fire was down to the embers, and a lot of egos and yes men in the room. The creative process was gone.
Not just that but the material itself wouldn’t be allowed now. People take issue with every one of those movies now for stereotypes. Temple of doom especially from the over the top cuisine to the white savior themes.
That’s why they went sci fi and you’ll notice they barely touch on cultural environments. There’s no interaction with anyone in Peru really and the last film was in America with no real environmental interaction with people or crowds somewhere else.
My opinion the first 3 were literally pulp comic based and it’s perfectly fine as it’s a sort of period fantasy.
Thugee actually existed in India. They don’t eat monkey brains really but who cares…yet people complain and write articles
I think the studio was very keen to just stay away from any “exotic culture” tropes
I don't think the Macguffin was the problem. I felt the major change in the overall feel of the last two movies was that Indy himself didn't seem to be having much fun. He kind of just moped through Kingdom. In Dial, he had all sorts of personal issues.
And if Indy isn't having fun, neither is the audience.
PWB ruined DoD for me. It was just a de-aged Ford with Toby Jones movie, that would have been great but difficult and costly to fill out for an entire movie.
Science fiction and adventure are not mutually exclusive genres. And 90% of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Dial of Destiny are still globe-trotting, tomb raiding adventure films with the science fiction elements coming into play in the last 15 to 20 minutes.
Personally, I don’t hate Crystal Skull or Dial of Destiny. I just don’t get the same kind of excitement over them, partially because Indy is old and partially because of the high amount of CGI in the action scenes. I appreciate that Dial was aware of Indy’s age and did some interesting stuff with his character but even there I left thinking “good story but I feel empty.” Like it would have been better as a book or something.
I guess Indy was great as an elevated revival of 30 and 40s adventure serials for the 1980s, but it’s kind of old hat now. Trying to take the character too seriously or show what happens when he gets old or expand the “scope” of his universe like it’s Star Wars just isn’t that interesting. And young people like adventure games like Uncharted and Tomb Raider, franchises that Indy inspired, which take the genre to new heights. Action movies have evolved too.
It's probably simpler than that. After a certain amount of time passes it's almost impossible to recreate a bygone magic formula. Even if you bring everybody responsible back for it. Because they're not the same people anymore, and the world isn't the same anymore. You can point to any number of concrete issues with those movies (the CGI, the Sci-Fi stuff, old Indy), but I wager it more has to do with the other thing.
See also: Ghostbusters, Terminator, Independence Day, Jurassic Park, Arrested Development, Dumb and Dumber, Anchorman, Zoolander, Hocus Pocus, and soon Beetlejuice.
i think this is probably correct, i think the world had moved on and they tried to force it in there anyway. but instead of sticking to what worked well before, they tried to "update it" with new technology and all that jazz and it just didnt work.
don't even get me started on Terminator. I have a whole rant about that one too haha!
I haven’t seen Dial of Destiny but Crystal Skull is just a bad movie by any metric. There’s really nothing more to it. I still have no idea how some of the concepts like Shia swinging from tree to tree or when they land the car on top of the tree and it bends over to drop them gently on the ground got greenlit. Those aren’t even good ideas on paper. It’s almost like someone went “haha wouldn’t it be hilarious if we just did this and this” as a joke and somehow it ended up in the script. And then when it came time to film said scenes, the editor and director just looked at each other and said “We’re getting paid no matter what, right? Fuck it.”
Crystal Skull WAS terrible and Indy/Ford lacked energy throughout the entire film. On top of some terrible CGI, uninspired action, and plot points that broke the suspension of disbelief, it was a dumpster fire that would have been better off never watching.
The 2nd film was non-stop action with a protagonist that wasn't a good enough person to be able to root for. It also felt like a local cover band playing a mediocre version of your favorite song. I think it was much better than Skull, but didn't capture any of the magic the first three gave us. Ford's age didn't help and the CGI was better than Skull, but still a little distracting.
In my opinion, everyone involved had moved on and so they weren't invested in the 4th and 5th films. Hell, the only major name that returned for the 5th was Harrison (cameos excluded). But even Harrison didn't seem to be trying too hard for much of the late sequels. To his credit, he did much of the action himself, which was remarkable for his age, but he didn't seem to be putting in much effort into the rest of the performance. But Spielberg had grown up from making pop culture adventure movies, and was looking to make movies with more substance. George had basically retired from Hollywood after the prequels, and
Additionally, film was just different in the 80s, both in style and tone, but also technique. They shot on film. Visual effects were created optically and every element on screen was either real or painted. They also shot on location. But you can tell Kingdom was shot on a backlot, often with lots of greenscreen replaced with digital compositing, and it just creates a vastly different feel that doesn't match the original trilogy. Destiny doubled down, with lots of totally CG environments and shooting digitally (with no attempt to recreate the film aesthetic, even in the de-aged sequences). The stunts don't feel as real or visceral. Where's the equivalent stunt of a real person getting dragged under a truck, or a man jumping from a galloping horse onto a tank in a single wide shot? There' no memorably dangerous stunts in Kingdom or Destiny.
I think the best parts of Kingdom and Destiny that at least had some notion of feeling like an Indy movie were the warehouse opening sequence and the rickshaw chase. The warehouse gives Indy a puzzle to solve, the fact that it's indoors hides the 'backlot' issue, and it's a traditional case of Indy having to outwit multiple bad guys to get the upperhand, and it works well. You also get a decent introduction to the big henchman, a staple of Indy. It also seems to be when Harrison was most enjoying the shoot. And it does have some great stunts. Once it goes newcular (sorry Harrison, it's just not right), then the movie kinda derails and all the aforementioned problems come to the forefront).
The rickshaw chase in Destiny doesn't feel anywhere near as kinetic, clear or well choreographed as a Spielberg chase, but it does at least have some feeling of relentlessness to it. Indy is scraping through by the skin of his teeth. Although it also often felt disjointed because characters would separate and find each other again, but the geography didn't seem to support how that would happen, nor did the speeds make much sense.
>Where's the equivalent stunt of a real person getting dragged under a truck, or a man jumping from a galloping horse onto a tank in a single wide shot? There' no memorably dangerous stunts in Kingdom or Destiny.
And where are the dangerous animals? Snakes, Spiders, Bugs and rats were all real in the original trilogy, but in the later movies, CGI Ants and Eels looked at they are, fake fake fake.
I remember that the snakes in Raiders were praised by everybody.. you don't get a popular movie without epic scenes.
I think the problem is that after 1945 the world stops believing in magic and jet travel makes the world a lot smaller.
The fun of the first three movies is that Indy hears a rumor of some magic item in a far off mystical land and then goes searching for it. After the atomic bomb is dropped (and the eradication of diseases through out the early 20th century through scientific medicine) there is this belief that science is the answer to all the world’s problems.
Plus air travel becomes more accessible and now anyone can go to Peru or Jordon, or India and that it’s just people living their lives. It’s much harder to believe ‘secrets of the orient’ if you’ve been to the ‘orient’ or have a neighbor who is from there
A lot of people have made some very good, salient points that I agree with with regards to the quality of the latter two films, but I think the bigger piece of the puzzle is that historical swashbuckling adventure movies writ large went out of fashion.
Like, they used to be everywhere! Indiana Jones, The Mummy, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Mask of Zorro - it feels like we got movies in that genre pretty often. The niche that those movies occupied in the box office was taken over by superhero films. I can't for the life of me think of an adventure film that broke through in the same way that those did that has come out in the last fifteen-ish years.
So combine that trend with some subpar stories and well, there you go
I feel like if they wanted to make more Indiana Jones movies 20 years after the trilogy had ended, they should've just cast a new person as Indy and fully rebooted the franchise. Script details aside, the thing that really hurt #4 and #5 is that Harrison Ford's Indy is just too old to be pulling the stunts he needs for a proper Indiana Jones movie.
I think Hollywood has grown somewhat phobic of rebooting things. Perhaps because of past complaints about reboot fever. I mean, there were plenty of terrible reboots to complain about in the past, but keeping the same continuity and shoehorning in new stories when the actor(s) are 20+ years older is not the solution either.
(The real solution is just to take a chance on something new, but I suppose fat cat execs will never accept that idea.)
>The real solution is just to take a chance on something new, but I suppose fat cat execs will never accept that idea.
The thing is... they milk this old movies because they know they will have profit, even if it's a terrible movie, like both the later ones, profit is not guaranteed in a new movie.
I haven’t seen Dials of Destiny, but I think you’re missing a few things in your analysis of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. There were definitely a lot of people who complained about the presence of aliens, but it’s a pretty subtle presence that only becomes super apparent at the end and I didn’t feel like it really changed that much. It was still about forgotten tombs and temples, ancient treasures, and punching ~~Nazis~~ Soviets, and even the sci elements still felt like magic for most of the movie, even if it turned out to be “ancient aliens” magic instead of “mystic religion” magic.
I think the other problems had a much bigger impact on the quality of Crystal Skull. Even then, Harrison Ford was getting pretty old to keep doing those kind of movies and by that point every movie that trotted him out felt like the only reason he was there was as nostalgia bait. Karen Allen was also pretty old and Marion’s presence also felt a lot like she was only in the story for nostalgia purposes. Shia Lebeouf was… look, I didn’t hate him, but it was painfully obvious that they wanted to make him the new star of the franchise and he just really, really didn’t serve as a replacement for Harrison Ford. The action was pretty pulpy, but there’s a fine line between pulpy and goofy and Crystal Skull veered over that line a bunch of times (nuking the fridge, the swinging monkey gang, etc.). The CGI often looked really terrible in a way that has not aged well. And the writing got really overcomplicated sometimes and some pretty lazy tricks got used to address that (“I’m not a triple agent. I was just lying about being a double agent”).
Overall, I really don’t think Crystal Skull was bad because of the slight shift in genre, despite what people said at the time. I think it was bad because it was badly constructed. It cut corners, it bet big on decisions that just didn’t work, and it overall felt like it was only there because Paramount or whoever remembered that they still owned the rights to Indiana Jones and they wanted to make a movie that played off people’s nostalgia and allowed them to pass the torch onto someone else so they could keep making money once Harrison Ford got too old to carry the franchise.
The scripts and (some) casting plain and simple. Who honestly thought an Indy film about aliens and time travel would be good, sounds like an ideas by committee situation. 0ver the top cgi sequences when it should be practical and cgi to aid the story.
Science fiction was not the problem at all. The video game *Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine* was both science fiction (it dealt with alternative dimensions) and had the Soviets as the main bad guys, and had a much better story than the second movie.
Two main reasons for the franchise losing it were: People weren't interested in globe throating adventures anymore, action films with amazing effects were becoming more popular. When they tried to up the antics, the movies started to look like a parody of themselves.
Second, they couldn't let go of their star. I love Ford as much as the next guy, but he clearly was too old in the fourth movie, and ridiculous in the fifth. It's not the end of the world to recast an actor, but movie companies surely act like it is.
I enjoyed Dial of Destiny way more than Crystal Skull. However, after Last Crusade they should have recast Indy. I always thought early Justified era Timothy Olyphant would have made a great Indiana Jones.
>but what happened?
They spent more making #5 than they spent making 1-3 together.
A $100 million movie would have been a modest hit.
A $150 million movie would have broken even.
$200 million+ movies shouldn't exist.
It's no great mystery. Regardless of how you felt, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was a box office success. If it wasn't, there would never have been an Indy 5. So what's the difference? How is this new thing not like the others, even if you can't handle aliens? It's Spielberg and Lucas. Unlike the first four movies, the fifth wasn't done by the folks who made Indiana Jones a success in the first place and it's pretty obvious if you compare scripts, direction and action sequences. Even John Williams phoned it in for Dial of Destiny. The ball was dropped.
>They kept you locked into your seat and you couldn't wait to see more and after it was all said and done, you were satisfied and had a big smile on your face. and at the end of Last Crusade,, they literally rode off into the sunset. All would have been fine there, a fitting end to a solid trilogy.
Not exactly a trilogy in the normal sense of the word...more of a triptych, but your point is well-taken. And yes, I do think the turn to science-fiction-y mcguffins was a bit odd, but I think that's a very tertiary reason for why these latter day films didn't do well: Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, critically and Dial of Destiny, commercially.
The fact that The Last Crusade was...well, certainly not a *conclusion* in the Return of the Jedi sense but definitely a *farewell to the character*...was always going to make future films feel anti-climactic. That, BECAUSE The Last Crusade was concieved of as an ending, they waited almost twenty years to make another one, and then another decade to make one more still....made it fizzle out. It sure doesn't help that Harrison Ford was already much too long in the tooth in 2008, and almost a farce of himself in 2023.
There are two other issues: this series is very strongly associated with Spielberg behind the camera and Ford in front. They can't Bond this, and as Dial of Destiny showed they can't have another director bring his "spin" to it. So that's another huge limitation.
But really, and this is where I'm sure to step on toes of fans...Indiana Jones is this kind of pulpier, more quixotic cousin to Star Wars. How many of these "adventure of the week" film series have a terribly great longevity? Star Trek fizzled out on the big-screen just the same. Mission Impossible is also starting to show the strain and its fifteen years sprightlier than Indy. People want "sagas" (Goodness, do I hate that term!).
Frankly, the only Indy film I really love in a very deep way in The Last Crusade. I'm increasingly coming into people who left Raiders of the Lost Ark nonplussed. Temple of Doom was criticially divisive since the day it premiered, and then (notwithstanding a tellingly-short-lived Young Indy TV series) we're into Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Dial of Destiny.
This take that many people were dissatisfied with Indy4 always surprises me. It made $317m/$786m (domestic/WW), so it was not a failure in terms of box office at all. Some fans were disappointed with the movie for various reasons and have tried to paint the movie as being a big failure, but the numbers don't prove that opinion out at all.
Mmmm, no. Movie history is rife with "successful" (box office-wise) movies that now have a consensus of being bad. The Phantom Menace is the highest grossing movie of 1999, to name one of hundreds of examples.
I fail to see the logic in this statement. I went to the movie, contributed to that 317m and I was dissatisfied. People don’t like a movie just because they went to see it. A movie isn’t good just because it makes money.
The logic is that the movie didn't make all of its money in the opening weekend. If people really didn't like the movie, it would have not done this well because of bad word of mouth...as was the case with Indy 5.
Batman and mad max and Bond really proved that you can attach an actor to a character but it is ok to pass the torch.
They rolled the dice with shia Labeouf and came up craps... He did not want that kind of paycheck.
Sadly, Ford did not either but took the check. I felt it was a mistake to half ass it. The honorable thing would be too pass the torch... Although most of the appeal of Indy is Harrison Ford ruggedness and attitude that you can not replicate. Mad max was easier and so was bond and batman. Indy is kind of Harrison Ford insouciance. Nobody can be him and they don't really have a good story to tell for 20 years
Apparently Lucas had always wanted Indiana Jones with aliens and had been rebuffed multiple times. When he finally got his chance it was an absolute shit show.
Dial of Destiny wasn't too bad, except Waller-Bridges was awful and there was a ten hour CGI moped chase in the middle. Aside from that i liked the MacGuffin, i liked that the MacGuffin was not what they expected in that it was made to always send people back to that point in time. The de-aging was alright, but i think it generally lacked that sense of adventure and wonder that the first three had.
u/nopester24, George Lucas said it best, that movie studios (since foreever) are used to streeeeeeeach a movie thin with senseless sequels, instead on actually investing in story development.
Eh, unpopular opinion but I really liked the latest entry despite it being heavily maligned online. Crystal Skull was a dud and while Temple of Doom is ingrained in my childhood, it isn't a great movie.
To be fair, yes, it was terrible movie. Crystal Skull was a crystal turd. I felt embarrassed for everyone in it and behind it. Spielberg was very clear and intelligent in conveying his unwillingness to do another film, but Lucas badgered him into it, and the lack of creative investment and spark is sadly omnipresent.
DoD wasn't as bad as TKoCS, but it wasn't much better. It was certainly a better looking film with less cheesy production values, but it still felt pointless to me. I think I fell asleep after the first two hours. It just went on and on I didn't care one damn bit about anything.
Yes, those movies are definitely better than the last two. The fifth movie almost gets there but it’s more focused on making him broken and depressing than making the story better.
IMO Dial of Destiny is in the top 3. It has everything I want in an Indy movie and brought it back to what works in the franchise:
* fun McGuffin for them to chase
* globetrotting to multiple locations
* cool evil Nazi baddie
* plenty of exciting setpieces
* totally off the wall final third.
Sure, it lacks the gorgeous cinematography of Raiders and the unmatched character dynamics of father/son from Crusade, but it's good solid fun.
Having rewatched Crystal Skull recently i think it's overhated. The sci-fi stuff only kicks in for the last 15 minutes or so, and the rest of it is decent enough. It's a pale imitation of Raiders/Crusade, but still has plenty of fun moments.
Temple of Doom is awful. Williejust spending the whole film shrieking. Half the movie is just hanging about in a big cave, and it has dated just horribly by modern standards, with an uncomfortable 'White Saviour' trope.
I think it's a franchise that does well with it's legacy and stories. 2 Five-star all-timer and 2 schlocky popcorn flicks (and then ToD too, if you really need it). That's better than most franchises manage.
I will forgive the worst effects if I have a good story. Crystal skull had none of that.
Dial, while not perfect, also had about the best bookending scene at the end that I could have hoped for. Still not as good as Raiders or last crusade, but I enjoyed it for what it was.
It's not the concept, it's that the series drifted away from being about the adventure and got way too hung up on Indy's family. It was fun to see him reconnect with his dad, especially with Connery in the role, but that really should have been it, Spielberg's one daddy issues Indy movie. Then in Crystal Skull is Indy having to deal with his son and Marian, and then the last one we find out that all went to crap and he's full of misery. I want to see Indiana Jones given a job, some kind of quest, and then see him relentlessly pursue that goal, not get dragged out on something he's not really into because he's got drama in his life. There are other problems, like lousy comedy, but that's the primary one to me.
I think you have a good point. the first 3 movies were adventures Indy was directly involved in. 1 & 3 were "jobs" he was offered and wanted to take. 2 was just bad luck really but he stuck there and was motivated to find a way out.
4 & 5 were reluctant file drama
What I have not read here, among the also plausible explanations.. what changed was not so much the theme, but you! You also have gotten 30-35 years older. And while the movies from your youth can count on a lot of nostalgia making up the unplausible, new movies can't. You won't process them the same. Supernatural things are much harder to accept on a fundamental level when you are older. Obvious plot holes become more obvious from the start. The fact that all the actions of indiana jones in raiders of the lost ark amount to no difference in the outcome is something you have probably only picked up later and has been auto-forgiven. Ghost stories, people taking beating hearts out of a human being, jumping out of a plane on a rubber boat have all been accepted long ago. A fridge surviving a nuclear blast however... not saying kingdom was great , but it wasn't much different from temple of doom. Just 30 years older, just like you
I'm sure it wasn't supposed to be a franchise, that it would remain a trology forever, but then someone twisted Spielbergs arm and he obliged.
That was entirely out of character for him to slap together and shit out that 4th installment, if he knew it was going to be garbage then he wouldn't have done it. So, he was forced is what I say, whether he liked it or not.
#5 is like the makeup installment to apologize for #4.
The problem is that it's impossible to go back to 1989 and make another proper sequel with Harrison Ford, Spielberg, Lucas, and Williams at their prime. That's it. They should have never gone back to that dried-up well. Ford is too old, Spielberg is too comfortable, Lucas is too egotistical about his bad ideas and Williams can't save a movie with leitmotifs. We're nitpicking script details when the reality is that it's over, they should have never bothered making more Indiana Jones movies after Crusade. Spielberg had him riding off into the sunset in that movie for a reason.
This is all that needs to be said. Don't know why people get into these big dissertations on this. Time and time again across all creative media we see a drop off after a few entries. Be it a band, author, movies, it doesn't matter. There is a certain level of desperation in all great creative content. I'm not saying it is mandatory, but that rawness of when people have nothing to lose and the fire in their belly brings great work. How many movie franchises maintain that high of a level after three entries? Very very very few. Everyone got comfortable, everyone lost interest, the fire was down to the embers, and a lot of egos and yes men in the room. The creative process was gone.
Not just that but the material itself wouldn’t be allowed now. People take issue with every one of those movies now for stereotypes. Temple of doom especially from the over the top cuisine to the white savior themes. That’s why they went sci fi and you’ll notice they barely touch on cultural environments. There’s no interaction with anyone in Peru really and the last film was in America with no real environmental interaction with people or crowds somewhere else. My opinion the first 3 were literally pulp comic based and it’s perfectly fine as it’s a sort of period fantasy. Thugee actually existed in India. They don’t eat monkey brains really but who cares…yet people complain and write articles I think the studio was very keen to just stay away from any “exotic culture” tropes
EXACTLY.
>Ford is too old, Spielberg is too comfortable, Lucas is too egotistical about his bad ideas This.
I don't think the Macguffin was the problem. I felt the major change in the overall feel of the last two movies was that Indy himself didn't seem to be having much fun. He kind of just moped through Kingdom. In Dial, he had all sorts of personal issues. And if Indy isn't having fun, neither is the audience.
Harrison Ford rarely looks like he is having fun
True! But I think he got some of the Han Solo spark back for Star Wars.
PWB ruined DoD for me. It was just a de-aged Ford with Toby Jones movie, that would have been great but difficult and costly to fill out for an entire movie.
Probably because Harrison Ford is the soul of the franchise and he's really old.
Science fiction and adventure are not mutually exclusive genres. And 90% of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Dial of Destiny are still globe-trotting, tomb raiding adventure films with the science fiction elements coming into play in the last 15 to 20 minutes. Personally, I don’t hate Crystal Skull or Dial of Destiny. I just don’t get the same kind of excitement over them, partially because Indy is old and partially because of the high amount of CGI in the action scenes. I appreciate that Dial was aware of Indy’s age and did some interesting stuff with his character but even there I left thinking “good story but I feel empty.” Like it would have been better as a book or something. I guess Indy was great as an elevated revival of 30 and 40s adventure serials for the 1980s, but it’s kind of old hat now. Trying to take the character too seriously or show what happens when he gets old or expand the “scope” of his universe like it’s Star Wars just isn’t that interesting. And young people like adventure games like Uncharted and Tomb Raider, franchises that Indy inspired, which take the genre to new heights. Action movies have evolved too.
It's probably simpler than that. After a certain amount of time passes it's almost impossible to recreate a bygone magic formula. Even if you bring everybody responsible back for it. Because they're not the same people anymore, and the world isn't the same anymore. You can point to any number of concrete issues with those movies (the CGI, the Sci-Fi stuff, old Indy), but I wager it more has to do with the other thing. See also: Ghostbusters, Terminator, Independence Day, Jurassic Park, Arrested Development, Dumb and Dumber, Anchorman, Zoolander, Hocus Pocus, and soon Beetlejuice.
i think this is probably correct, i think the world had moved on and they tried to force it in there anyway. but instead of sticking to what worked well before, they tried to "update it" with new technology and all that jazz and it just didnt work. don't even get me started on Terminator. I have a whole rant about that one too haha!
nah dude is just old as fuck
I haven’t seen Dial of Destiny but Crystal Skull is just a bad movie by any metric. There’s really nothing more to it. I still have no idea how some of the concepts like Shia swinging from tree to tree or when they land the car on top of the tree and it bends over to drop them gently on the ground got greenlit. Those aren’t even good ideas on paper. It’s almost like someone went “haha wouldn’t it be hilarious if we just did this and this” as a joke and somehow it ended up in the script. And then when it came time to film said scenes, the editor and director just looked at each other and said “We’re getting paid no matter what, right? Fuck it.”
It feels like a vehicle to setup Shia as a franchise like the transformers movies.
Crystal Skull WAS terrible and Indy/Ford lacked energy throughout the entire film. On top of some terrible CGI, uninspired action, and plot points that broke the suspension of disbelief, it was a dumpster fire that would have been better off never watching. The 2nd film was non-stop action with a protagonist that wasn't a good enough person to be able to root for. It also felt like a local cover band playing a mediocre version of your favorite song. I think it was much better than Skull, but didn't capture any of the magic the first three gave us. Ford's age didn't help and the CGI was better than Skull, but still a little distracting.
Time passed. People involved got old(er). /thread
In my opinion, everyone involved had moved on and so they weren't invested in the 4th and 5th films. Hell, the only major name that returned for the 5th was Harrison (cameos excluded). But even Harrison didn't seem to be trying too hard for much of the late sequels. To his credit, he did much of the action himself, which was remarkable for his age, but he didn't seem to be putting in much effort into the rest of the performance. But Spielberg had grown up from making pop culture adventure movies, and was looking to make movies with more substance. George had basically retired from Hollywood after the prequels, and Additionally, film was just different in the 80s, both in style and tone, but also technique. They shot on film. Visual effects were created optically and every element on screen was either real or painted. They also shot on location. But you can tell Kingdom was shot on a backlot, often with lots of greenscreen replaced with digital compositing, and it just creates a vastly different feel that doesn't match the original trilogy. Destiny doubled down, with lots of totally CG environments and shooting digitally (with no attempt to recreate the film aesthetic, even in the de-aged sequences). The stunts don't feel as real or visceral. Where's the equivalent stunt of a real person getting dragged under a truck, or a man jumping from a galloping horse onto a tank in a single wide shot? There' no memorably dangerous stunts in Kingdom or Destiny. I think the best parts of Kingdom and Destiny that at least had some notion of feeling like an Indy movie were the warehouse opening sequence and the rickshaw chase. The warehouse gives Indy a puzzle to solve, the fact that it's indoors hides the 'backlot' issue, and it's a traditional case of Indy having to outwit multiple bad guys to get the upperhand, and it works well. You also get a decent introduction to the big henchman, a staple of Indy. It also seems to be when Harrison was most enjoying the shoot. And it does have some great stunts. Once it goes newcular (sorry Harrison, it's just not right), then the movie kinda derails and all the aforementioned problems come to the forefront). The rickshaw chase in Destiny doesn't feel anywhere near as kinetic, clear or well choreographed as a Spielberg chase, but it does at least have some feeling of relentlessness to it. Indy is scraping through by the skin of his teeth. Although it also often felt disjointed because characters would separate and find each other again, but the geography didn't seem to support how that would happen, nor did the speeds make much sense.
>Where's the equivalent stunt of a real person getting dragged under a truck, or a man jumping from a galloping horse onto a tank in a single wide shot? There' no memorably dangerous stunts in Kingdom or Destiny. And where are the dangerous animals? Snakes, Spiders, Bugs and rats were all real in the original trilogy, but in the later movies, CGI Ants and Eels looked at they are, fake fake fake. I remember that the snakes in Raiders were praised by everybody.. you don't get a popular movie without epic scenes.
I think the problem is that after 1945 the world stops believing in magic and jet travel makes the world a lot smaller. The fun of the first three movies is that Indy hears a rumor of some magic item in a far off mystical land and then goes searching for it. After the atomic bomb is dropped (and the eradication of diseases through out the early 20th century through scientific medicine) there is this belief that science is the answer to all the world’s problems. Plus air travel becomes more accessible and now anyone can go to Peru or Jordon, or India and that it’s just people living their lives. It’s much harder to believe ‘secrets of the orient’ if you’ve been to the ‘orient’ or have a neighbor who is from there
A lot of people have made some very good, salient points that I agree with with regards to the quality of the latter two films, but I think the bigger piece of the puzzle is that historical swashbuckling adventure movies writ large went out of fashion. Like, they used to be everywhere! Indiana Jones, The Mummy, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Mask of Zorro - it feels like we got movies in that genre pretty often. The niche that those movies occupied in the box office was taken over by superhero films. I can't for the life of me think of an adventure film that broke through in the same way that those did that has come out in the last fifteen-ish years. So combine that trend with some subpar stories and well, there you go
I feel like if they wanted to make more Indiana Jones movies 20 years after the trilogy had ended, they should've just cast a new person as Indy and fully rebooted the franchise. Script details aside, the thing that really hurt #4 and #5 is that Harrison Ford's Indy is just too old to be pulling the stunts he needs for a proper Indiana Jones movie. I think Hollywood has grown somewhat phobic of rebooting things. Perhaps because of past complaints about reboot fever. I mean, there were plenty of terrible reboots to complain about in the past, but keeping the same continuity and shoehorning in new stories when the actor(s) are 20+ years older is not the solution either. (The real solution is just to take a chance on something new, but I suppose fat cat execs will never accept that idea.)
I was keen on the rumours years and years ago of them casting Chris Pratt as a younger Indy. Although now it's a bit of a meme, casting him in stuff.
>The real solution is just to take a chance on something new, but I suppose fat cat execs will never accept that idea. The thing is... they milk this old movies because they know they will have profit, even if it's a terrible movie, like both the later ones, profit is not guaranteed in a new movie.
I haven’t seen Dials of Destiny, but I think you’re missing a few things in your analysis of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. There were definitely a lot of people who complained about the presence of aliens, but it’s a pretty subtle presence that only becomes super apparent at the end and I didn’t feel like it really changed that much. It was still about forgotten tombs and temples, ancient treasures, and punching ~~Nazis~~ Soviets, and even the sci elements still felt like magic for most of the movie, even if it turned out to be “ancient aliens” magic instead of “mystic religion” magic. I think the other problems had a much bigger impact on the quality of Crystal Skull. Even then, Harrison Ford was getting pretty old to keep doing those kind of movies and by that point every movie that trotted him out felt like the only reason he was there was as nostalgia bait. Karen Allen was also pretty old and Marion’s presence also felt a lot like she was only in the story for nostalgia purposes. Shia Lebeouf was… look, I didn’t hate him, but it was painfully obvious that they wanted to make him the new star of the franchise and he just really, really didn’t serve as a replacement for Harrison Ford. The action was pretty pulpy, but there’s a fine line between pulpy and goofy and Crystal Skull veered over that line a bunch of times (nuking the fridge, the swinging monkey gang, etc.). The CGI often looked really terrible in a way that has not aged well. And the writing got really overcomplicated sometimes and some pretty lazy tricks got used to address that (“I’m not a triple agent. I was just lying about being a double agent”). Overall, I really don’t think Crystal Skull was bad because of the slight shift in genre, despite what people said at the time. I think it was bad because it was badly constructed. It cut corners, it bet big on decisions that just didn’t work, and it overall felt like it was only there because Paramount or whoever remembered that they still owned the rights to Indiana Jones and they wanted to make a movie that played off people’s nostalgia and allowed them to pass the torch onto someone else so they could keep making money once Harrison Ford got too old to carry the franchise.
The scripts and (some) casting plain and simple. Who honestly thought an Indy film about aliens and time travel would be good, sounds like an ideas by committee situation. 0ver the top cgi sequences when it should be practical and cgi to aid the story.
Science fiction was not the problem at all. The video game *Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine* was both science fiction (it dealt with alternative dimensions) and had the Soviets as the main bad guys, and had a much better story than the second movie. Two main reasons for the franchise losing it were: People weren't interested in globe throating adventures anymore, action films with amazing effects were becoming more popular. When they tried to up the antics, the movies started to look like a parody of themselves. Second, they couldn't let go of their star. I love Ford as much as the next guy, but he clearly was too old in the fourth movie, and ridiculous in the fifth. It's not the end of the world to recast an actor, but movie companies surely act like it is.
I enjoyed Dial of Destiny way more than Crystal Skull. However, after Last Crusade they should have recast Indy. I always thought early Justified era Timothy Olyphant would have made a great Indiana Jones.
>but what happened? They spent more making #5 than they spent making 1-3 together. A $100 million movie would have been a modest hit. A $150 million movie would have broken even. $200 million+ movies shouldn't exist.
It's no great mystery. Regardless of how you felt, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was a box office success. If it wasn't, there would never have been an Indy 5. So what's the difference? How is this new thing not like the others, even if you can't handle aliens? It's Spielberg and Lucas. Unlike the first four movies, the fifth wasn't done by the folks who made Indiana Jones a success in the first place and it's pretty obvious if you compare scripts, direction and action sequences. Even John Williams phoned it in for Dial of Destiny. The ball was dropped.
>They kept you locked into your seat and you couldn't wait to see more and after it was all said and done, you were satisfied and had a big smile on your face. and at the end of Last Crusade,, they literally rode off into the sunset. All would have been fine there, a fitting end to a solid trilogy. Not exactly a trilogy in the normal sense of the word...more of a triptych, but your point is well-taken. And yes, I do think the turn to science-fiction-y mcguffins was a bit odd, but I think that's a very tertiary reason for why these latter day films didn't do well: Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, critically and Dial of Destiny, commercially. The fact that The Last Crusade was...well, certainly not a *conclusion* in the Return of the Jedi sense but definitely a *farewell to the character*...was always going to make future films feel anti-climactic. That, BECAUSE The Last Crusade was concieved of as an ending, they waited almost twenty years to make another one, and then another decade to make one more still....made it fizzle out. It sure doesn't help that Harrison Ford was already much too long in the tooth in 2008, and almost a farce of himself in 2023. There are two other issues: this series is very strongly associated with Spielberg behind the camera and Ford in front. They can't Bond this, and as Dial of Destiny showed they can't have another director bring his "spin" to it. So that's another huge limitation. But really, and this is where I'm sure to step on toes of fans...Indiana Jones is this kind of pulpier, more quixotic cousin to Star Wars. How many of these "adventure of the week" film series have a terribly great longevity? Star Trek fizzled out on the big-screen just the same. Mission Impossible is also starting to show the strain and its fifteen years sprightlier than Indy. People want "sagas" (Goodness, do I hate that term!). Frankly, the only Indy film I really love in a very deep way in The Last Crusade. I'm increasingly coming into people who left Raiders of the Lost Ark nonplussed. Temple of Doom was criticially divisive since the day it premiered, and then (notwithstanding a tellingly-short-lived Young Indy TV series) we're into Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Dial of Destiny.
This take that many people were dissatisfied with Indy4 always surprises me. It made $317m/$786m (domestic/WW), so it was not a failure in terms of box office at all. Some fans were disappointed with the movie for various reasons and have tried to paint the movie as being a big failure, but the numbers don't prove that opinion out at all.
Mmmm, no. Movie history is rife with "successful" (box office-wise) movies that now have a consensus of being bad. The Phantom Menace is the highest grossing movie of 1999, to name one of hundreds of examples.
Exactly. They assume the world feels the same as they do when the box office receipts obviously say otherwise.
I fail to see the logic in this statement. I went to the movie, contributed to that 317m and I was dissatisfied. People don’t like a movie just because they went to see it. A movie isn’t good just because it makes money.
The logic is that the movie didn't make all of its money in the opening weekend. If people really didn't like the movie, it would have not done this well because of bad word of mouth...as was the case with Indy 5.
That’s not very good logic because I heard it sucked, expected it to suck but had to see it for myself as a huge fan of the previous trilogy.
Batman and mad max and Bond really proved that you can attach an actor to a character but it is ok to pass the torch. They rolled the dice with shia Labeouf and came up craps... He did not want that kind of paycheck. Sadly, Ford did not either but took the check. I felt it was a mistake to half ass it. The honorable thing would be too pass the torch... Although most of the appeal of Indy is Harrison Ford ruggedness and attitude that you can not replicate. Mad max was easier and so was bond and batman. Indy is kind of Harrison Ford insouciance. Nobody can be him and they don't really have a good story to tell for 20 years
Apparently Lucas had always wanted Indiana Jones with aliens and had been rebuffed multiple times. When he finally got his chance it was an absolute shit show. Dial of Destiny wasn't too bad, except Waller-Bridges was awful and there was a ten hour CGI moped chase in the middle. Aside from that i liked the MacGuffin, i liked that the MacGuffin was not what they expected in that it was made to always send people back to that point in time. The de-aging was alright, but i think it generally lacked that sense of adventure and wonder that the first three had.
Refrigerator Tl;dr fridge
u/nopester24, George Lucas said it best, that movie studios (since foreever) are used to streeeeeeeach a movie thin with senseless sequels, instead on actually investing in story development.
Eh, unpopular opinion but I really liked the latest entry despite it being heavily maligned online. Crystal Skull was a dud and while Temple of Doom is ingrained in my childhood, it isn't a great movie.
To be fair, yes, it was terrible movie. Crystal Skull was a crystal turd. I felt embarrassed for everyone in it and behind it. Spielberg was very clear and intelligent in conveying his unwillingness to do another film, but Lucas badgered him into it, and the lack of creative investment and spark is sadly omnipresent. DoD wasn't as bad as TKoCS, but it wasn't much better. It was certainly a better looking film with less cheesy production values, but it still felt pointless to me. I think I fell asleep after the first two hours. It just went on and on I didn't care one damn bit about anything.
Were the first 3 Indy films really that much better than the 4th, or were you just younger?
Yes, those movies are definitely better than the last two. The fifth movie almost gets there but it’s more focused on making him broken and depressing than making the story better.
They were much, much better. Even Temple of Doom.
IMO Dial of Destiny is in the top 3. It has everything I want in an Indy movie and brought it back to what works in the franchise: * fun McGuffin for them to chase * globetrotting to multiple locations * cool evil Nazi baddie * plenty of exciting setpieces * totally off the wall final third. Sure, it lacks the gorgeous cinematography of Raiders and the unmatched character dynamics of father/son from Crusade, but it's good solid fun. Having rewatched Crystal Skull recently i think it's overhated. The sci-fi stuff only kicks in for the last 15 minutes or so, and the rest of it is decent enough. It's a pale imitation of Raiders/Crusade, but still has plenty of fun moments. Temple of Doom is awful. Williejust spending the whole film shrieking. Half the movie is just hanging about in a big cave, and it has dated just horribly by modern standards, with an uncomfortable 'White Saviour' trope. I think it's a franchise that does well with it's legacy and stories. 2 Five-star all-timer and 2 schlocky popcorn flicks (and then ToD too, if you really need it). That's better than most franchises manage.
I think the crap CGI killed the 4th and AI killed the fifth. But I enjoyed the Dial movie, it was better than Skull crap
I will forgive the worst effects if I have a good story. Crystal skull had none of that. Dial, while not perfect, also had about the best bookending scene at the end that I could have hoped for. Still not as good as Raiders or last crusade, but I enjoyed it for what it was.
I loved the Last Crusade, one of my all time favorites.
The mandatory "Put a chick in it and make her lame and gay!" comment.
It's not the concept, it's that the series drifted away from being about the adventure and got way too hung up on Indy's family. It was fun to see him reconnect with his dad, especially with Connery in the role, but that really should have been it, Spielberg's one daddy issues Indy movie. Then in Crystal Skull is Indy having to deal with his son and Marian, and then the last one we find out that all went to crap and he's full of misery. I want to see Indiana Jones given a job, some kind of quest, and then see him relentlessly pursue that goal, not get dragged out on something he's not really into because he's got drama in his life. There are other problems, like lousy comedy, but that's the primary one to me.
I think you have a good point. the first 3 movies were adventures Indy was directly involved in. 1 & 3 were "jobs" he was offered and wanted to take. 2 was just bad luck really but he stuck there and was motivated to find a way out. 4 & 5 were reluctant file drama
What I have not read here, among the also plausible explanations.. what changed was not so much the theme, but you! You also have gotten 30-35 years older. And while the movies from your youth can count on a lot of nostalgia making up the unplausible, new movies can't. You won't process them the same. Supernatural things are much harder to accept on a fundamental level when you are older. Obvious plot holes become more obvious from the start. The fact that all the actions of indiana jones in raiders of the lost ark amount to no difference in the outcome is something you have probably only picked up later and has been auto-forgiven. Ghost stories, people taking beating hearts out of a human being, jumping out of a plane on a rubber boat have all been accepted long ago. A fridge surviving a nuclear blast however... not saying kingdom was great , but it wasn't much different from temple of doom. Just 30 years older, just like you
I'm sure it wasn't supposed to be a franchise, that it would remain a trology forever, but then someone twisted Spielbergs arm and he obliged. That was entirely out of character for him to slap together and shit out that 4th installment, if he knew it was going to be garbage then he wouldn't have done it. So, he was forced is what I say, whether he liked it or not. #5 is like the makeup installment to apologize for #4.