Indiana Jones And The New Disney Movies Thread

[Bill1978]

One could argue that it's not totally suprising since the 4th of July was opening day for Sound of Freedom. It then tumbled 71.6% on the Wednesday compared to Indy's tumble of 52.7% which regained the top spot.

[James]

It was Indiana's Jones opening weekend! It was released by Angel Studios! It was in half as many theatres!

[Ben]

Ironically, Sound Of Freedom's plot mirrors that of Temple Of Doom…

[EricJ]

Apparently, faith studios like Angel have now become the equivalent of those little low-rent third-party indie animated studios that noticed all the other movies had strangely vacated one of the big box-office weekends of the year, and that the "coast was clear" to now be the big mainstream July 4 release:
"Legends of Oz will be the hit of the summer!"

[Randall]

Okay, a week later, I am ready to get real about the new Indy film. Yes, we loved it in the moment, but... yeah, it has serious plot issues.

First, though, to address a couple of criticisms we're hearing:

"Indy is barely in his own film. They have a woman taking over all the action." Phooey!!! Indy is all over this film, and he does plenty of stuff. The opening scene alone stands tall with the best of the series. And it's Indy punching Nazis,

riding a horse through a subway, diving to the bottom of the ocean, driving through the streets of foreign cities, and meeting up with Archimedes.

"The action is limp." Wow, that's not the film I saw at all. I really wonder how people set their expectations. Maybe it helps that I didn't really grow up watching the films, but I don't have inflated ideas about what to expect. The action in Dial of Destiny was thrilling and well done, as well as easier to follow than many messy blockbusters.

"The ending is too far-fetched." Well, yes. That's my main issue with the film, but not exactly because of it having time travel involved. I don't' think that's a spoiler at this point. Time travel really does not belong with Indy, I feel, but I could go along with it if it was done well. (I do cringe now every time a film or TV show uses time travel. Enough already! It didn't belong in Avengers Endgame, and it doesn't belong with Indy. Star Trek has overdone it as well). The Indiana Jones series has always had fantastic elements to it, though the interdimensional beings of the fourth film was a bridge too far for many (personally, I thought it fit the 50s setting). My issues with Dial are...

The use of the dial itself makes no sense, and the writers don't even follow their own ideas. The dial finds fissures in time, okay, but how does it allow the user to select time and place? That was not explained well at all. I am always eager to suspend disbelief, but there needs to be SOME logic to it. This had none at all.

The "continental drift" idea was good, but it was waaaay too much of a coincidence that they ended up in Archimedes time, at Indy's favourite historical moment, which he was discussing earlier in the film. They just happened to fly into a major historical event just in time to meet the inventor of the dial?? One could argue that that was Archimedes' plan all along, okay, except that Indy just told us that Archie couldn't possibly have known about intercontinental drift. So.... what? Writers tend to lose their minds entirely when writing time travel plots, and it happens here. Really, it's more and more terrible the more you think about it, but even in the theatre I was not impressed.

And, as for the final scene:

It was such a sweet, tender moment with Marion that gave the perfect ending. The problem, of course, is that the film did absolutely nothing to earn it. We had no reason to think there was any possibility of Marion showing up at the end. Why would she come back, when separation papers had been drawn up? It's easy enough to explain, but they didn't even try. We never even glimpsed Marion until the very end. Her showing up was so random, and relies too much on the audience simply being pleased to see her. And how did Indy get back to his place anyhow? It seems like he just woke up from the adventure (as if it was just a dream), and there he was! Oh, it makes my head hurt. The storytelling is just so sloppy. Yeah, I went with it because it's otherwise a nice scene, but it could have been done so much better.

Still, I admit we enjoyed it at the time, even though the ending(s) didn't work for me. My wife, certainly the less logical of us, loved every bit of it. It was a grand adventure. Too bad that, with all that lengthy development time, they still couldn't come up with some better storytelling at the script level.

[GeffreyDrogon]

Okay, a week later, I am ready to get real about the new Indy film. Yes, we loved it in the moment, but... yeah, it has serious plot issues.

First, though, to address a couple of criticisms we're hearing:

"Indy is barely in his own film. They have a woman taking over all the action." Phooey!!! Indy is all over this film, and he does plenty of stuff. The opening scene alone stands tall with the best of the series. And it's Indy punching Nazis,

riding a horse through a subway, diving to the bottom of the ocean, driving through the streets of foreign cities, and meeting up with Archimedes.

"The action is limp." Wow, that's not the film I saw at all. I really wonder how people set their expectations. Maybe it helps that I didn't really grow up watching the films, but I don't have inflated ideas about what to expect. The action in Dial of Destiny was thrilling and well done, as well as easier to follow than many messy blockbusters.

"The ending is too far-fetched." Well, yes. That's my main issue with the film, but not exactly because of it having time travel involved. I don't' think that's a spoiler at this point. Time travel really does not belong with Indy, I feel, but I could go along with it if it was done well. (I do cringe now every time a film or TV show uses time travel. Enough already! It didn't belong in Avengers Endgame, and it doesn't belong with Indy. Star Trek has overdone it as well). The Indiana Jones series has always had fantastic elements to it, though the interdimensional beings of the fourth film was a bridge too far for many (personally, I thought it fit the 50s setting). My issues with Dial are...

The use of the dial itself makes no sense, and the writers don't even follow their own ideas. The dial finds fissures in time, okay, but how does it allow the user to select time and place? That was not explained well at all. I am always eager to suspend disbelief, but there needs to be SOME logic to it. This had none at all.

The "continental drift" idea was good, but it was waaaay too much of a coincidence that they ended up in Archimedes time, at Indy's favourite historical moment, which he was discussing earlier in the film. They just happened to fly into a major historical event just in time to meet the inventor of the dial?? One could argue that that was Archimedes' plan all along, okay, except that Indy just told us that Archie couldn't possibly have known about intercontinental drift. So.... what? Writers tend to lose their minds entirely when writing time travel plots, and it happens here. Really, it's more and more terrible the more you think about it, but even in the theatre I was not impressed.

And, as for the final scene:

It was such a sweet, tender moment with Marion that gave the perfect ending. The problem, of course, is that the film did absolutely nothing to earn it. We had no reason to think there was any possibility of Marion showing up at the end. Why would she come back, when separation papers had been drawn up? It's easy enough to explain, but they didn't even try. We never even glimpsed Marion until the very end. Her showing up was so random, and relies too much on the audience simply being pleased to see her. And how did Indy get back to his place anyhow? It seems like he just woke up from the adventure (as if it was just a dream), and there he was! Oh, it makes my head hurt. The storytelling is just so sloppy. Yeah, I went with it because it's otherwise a nice scene, but it could have been done so much better.

Still, I admit we enjoyed it at the time, even though the ending(s) didn't work for me. My wife, certainly the less logical of us, loved every bit of it. It was a grand adventure. Too bad that, with all that lengthy development time, they still couldn't come up with some better storytelling at the script level.

Why do you think time travel doesn't belong in Avengers: Endgame?

[Ben]

After all that post, that’s what you come away with? That time travel doesn’t belong in Endgame…!?

I’m glad Rand is coming around to the hiccups in this final Indy film. I can’t hate it like a certain Supermam flick or even the last Indy, but it’s a sad and sorry end to a great trilogy. Yes, it’s still a trilogy, with two extra films.

It probably helps that Rand didn't grow up with them: on the other hand, I *literally* did. I went to the sets of Raiders, saw Indy fight on the rope bridge for Temple, and had a phone call from Dad during the shooting of Crusade to say he was watching Wimbledon with Spielberg and Ford, as you do. We had the first ever sell-through VHS of the first Raiders, and actually bought a rental tape of Temple, which both got watched out. So, yeah, Indy means a lot, and I really, really wanted to love this new one.

From the (lack of, for no reason) Paramount dissolving logo onwards, it all felt off. The main title didn’t emphasize the right words: if following the last two's formatting the bold words should have been INDIANA JONES and the DIAL OF DESTINY, not just Indy's name and the rest just smaller capitals. But then it shouldn’t have been called that anyway, for the reasoning previously said.

The opening I wanted to get into, but floating videogame head didn’t help as much as I tried not to look. An 80-year old Ford's voice coming out of 35-40-something Indy didn’t gel. It was all just off. Indy running atop the train and jumping from car to car right at the start? Worse CG since that guy walked across the deck of the Titanic in, er, Titanic. Horse in the subway? Poorly done, you could almost see the greenscreen matte around him!

It’s funny it took a week for you to process, because I’ve been on the same journey. My head hurt after seeing it, as I wasn’t sure what I’d just seen and how much of it had been intended to be good or bad. I was futzed. And still am. Bonkersly, I want to see it again sometime as I want to pick it apart now I know what to expect. I did not hate it! I didn’t even mind PWB for most of it, as oit of Place and too gangly to partake in the action as she was. I just felt sorry for Indy, for Ford, for Spielberg and Lucas, for what has turned out for their character and how disappointed they themselves are with the final result.

[EricJ]

Why do you think time travel doesn't belong in Avengers: Endgame?

First of all, it plays like that plot resolution I personally can't stand in movies (the '98 "Lost in Space" movie springs quickly to mind), where we see all the bad stuff happen, everything is left in ruin, and the hero has to risk everything on a last-minute time-travel to just before, to prevent all the bad stuff from happening in the first place...So what the heck did we just WATCH for the last half hour??

But in Endgame's case--and tying into the Indy movie--it was just a farewell-concert excuse to go back and revisit all the Greatest Hits from across the early series.
Sort of like the last ST:TNG episode, where Picard TT's back to the first episode, and sees Lt. Yar, beardless Ryker, and annoyingly literal Data.

Haven't seen DoD yet (might play around with some special Amazon Paramount+ discounts and wait for it to show up on streaming), but I, for one, was perfectly happy with Crystal Skull's Spielberg-approved attempt to wrap up a finale, complete with in-memoriam tribute to Denholm Elliott.
Indy ended up with Marion, and we were only left to wonder about Mutt's future, instead of arguing over a fifth film that ended up mutated in fourteen years of production memos.

[droosan]

I still enjoyed the new movie enough, for what it is.

Certainly, I do feel that it could've been more .. and the ending does feel a bit wonky (but knowing that several endings were shot -- and, likely, several more beyond that were written -- helps to excuse that, somewhat).

Funnily enough, my primary complaint is that the 'McGuffin' this time around is an actual artifact, with a known history and a well-documented past .. it was not 'lost' during World War II .. and -- while it does appear to have been a navigational device, of some sort -- navigating through time itself was not its likely function.

It seems some of those other endings might've revolved around Indy encountering his younger self; shades of Back to the Future II ..

I wonder whether a more reasonable (and certainly more 'recognizable') legendary McGuffin to achieve that end might've been The Fountain of Youth..? I know, the FoY doesn't canonically imply 'time travel' .. but if the concept can be grafted onto the Antikythera device, it could be done with the FoY, too.

we were only left to wonder about Mutt's future

note: Mutt died on the way back to his home planet.

[Randall]

Re: Endgame - Aside from agreeing with what Eric says, superheroes shouldn't need time travel as a crutch used to save the day. Once you open that door, there are no stakes anymore. Lose a battle? Just go back in time and change the outcome. The Avengers fight time villains like Kang, they don't use time travel for their own selfish ends, no matter how desperate. And it had been 5 years already! Rather than take the loss, they messed with time, a dangerously questionable strategy. Villains do that, not heroes. (Look at how The Flash messed things up when he tried it.) It didn't feel right to me at all. Sure, I still enjoyed Endgame, but I wish they'd gone a different way with the story.

As for Dial, I was amazed that Ben didn't chime in earlier to tell me how wrong I was to like it (and Droo, too), and tell me all the reasons why the film sucked. I am still a little surprised that Ben didn't hate it, in fact. I'm sure he will, though, after subsequent viewings - and I'm not being cheeky, i honestly feel the film will not hold up well.

It didn't actually take me a week to see the flaws, either. I did earlier allude to my dislike of the plot holes. But I did have a great time at the cinema. it was a rollicking adventure, and in fact it was more entertaining than I was expecting, given the lackluster trailers and my uncertainty about Mangold handling such material. This was one time that lowered expectations really helped. Unfortunately, the film disappointed in other ways, in terms of a sloppy use of the McGuffin and an awkwardly manufactured ending.

The opening worked much better for me than Ben. I don't have nearly as critical an eye for effects work. Ford's raspy older voice was noticeable even to me, though.

As for PWB, I don't get the hate we're seeing for her. Her character wasn't meant to be likable. Mission accomplished.

I was okay with the dial being based on a real-world item. I just consider its use in the film to be fictionalized. (Well, obviously. )

And here's a bottom line: t doesn't really feel like a proper Indy film, never mind a proper resolution, just knowing that Lucas and Spielberg didn't even come to the set. I mean, how could that even be the case? It seems like, after over a decade of development going nowhere, they just gave up and passed it on, hoping for the best. Not the best way to end things at all. Without Lucas and Spielberg, it's just fanfic.

And yet, despite it all, I still really enjoyed watching what we got. But I'm not sure how it'll be a second time through.

[ShyViolet]

note: Mutt died on the way back to his home planet.

[Ben]

Apart from the Dial being a "real" artefact, I also had issues with Indy interacting with real history, as in disrupting the NYC moon landing parade. All his adventures have occurred while history plays out in the background. Even when he bumped into Hitler he didn’t change the path of events, but we know he wasn’t at that parade and that gunfire didn’t disrupt things. Indy should never affect real events, which is just yet another aspect to this ill-judged outing that didn’t get things right.

No, I won’t and can’t hate it on future views. It’s just too sad and lame and, at the end of the day, trying too hard to be liked to really feel any real vitriol towards it. On Numb Skull all the primary players really should have known better, but here only one of them was involved (in front of camera) and the "fan" who had taken over seemingly didn’t have the real support of those around him so was left out a bit in the woods. I’m sure it was all well-intentioned, and no one sets out to make a bad film. Sometimes, however, one is unaware of their limitations or *ability* to make the right kind of film.

To say this is the Indy film "we deserved" is silly. It’s certainly not the Indy film the character deserved, and could have just as easily been something astonishing, celebrational and genuinely surprising. Instead we got a videogame opening, and a weirdly depressing and sorry midsection with an (intentionally!?) unlikeable woman (really? Who makes their second lead unlikeable in an intended family blockbuster!?) and an unraveled ending where again Indy interacts with history — although he kind of really doesn’t, since that’s all going on around them, for some reason, and they're just on the sidelines — and opens up whole cans of what the, why the questions.

As for the Dial itself…if Archimedes knew it worked, which he clearly does even before he’s finished making it, why didn’t he just use it to lord over time and rule the world…?

[James]

Just got back from seeing it. Just two quick thought for now on your post, Randall.

...The use of the dial itself makes no sense, and the writers don't even follow their own ideas. The dial finds fissures in time, okay, but how does it allow the user to select time and place? That was not explained well at all...

...it was waaaay too much of a coincidence that they ended up in Archimedes time...They just happened to fly into a major historical event just in time to meet the inventor of the dial?? One could argue that that was Archimedes' plan all along, okay, except that Indy just told us that Archie couldn't possibly have known about intercontinental drift. So.... what?...

I think they said in the film that they were wrong about the dial and it only ever takes you to that point in time because Archimedes was trying to get help win the battle.

...And, as for the final scene:

It was such a sweet, tender moment with Marion that gave the perfect ending. The problem, of course, is that the film did absolutely nothing to earn it. We had no reason to think there was any possibility of Marion showing up at the end. Why would she come back...

Just personal speculation, but I took the ending as Indy having not been honest earlier in the film when he claimed it was Marion who never recovered from the death of Mutt, causing their rift. Marion asks Indy "I heard you were back. Is it true?" That makes me think she left him after he lost his way.

[Randall]

First point: Maybe. I'll have to listen closely when I see it again. It was all kinda jumbled. Regardless, it's pretty far-fetched.

Second point: There are many wonderful and plausible ways that it could all be explained. It's too bad they didn't bother to flesh it out. Your theory works well, but better storytelling could have hinted at that more. The audience shouldn't need everything spelled out, true, but there should be at least some connective tissue pulling things together.

And yeah, Ben, my "deserved" comment has not aged well! We did deserve much better. At the time I wrote it, I was caught up in the excremen--- I mean, excitement!

[James]