Why Indiana Jones 5 is Complete GARBAGE | Video Essay

the Indiana Jones franchise is something that I have loved since I was a little kid the original Three films are sacred and iconic pieces of action adventure Cinema and when lucasfilm decided to dive back into the franchise in 2008 for a new indie Adventure yeah it didn't go very well well it looks like history has repeated itself once again because our favorite archaeologist is back for one final adventure and yeah this franchise should have ended in 1989 A fitting end with Indy literally riding off into the sunset but no we now have two confirmations that this franchise has run its course because as if Kathleen Kennedy wasn't hell-bent enough on ruining Star Wars she seemingly managed to drive the Indiana Jones franchise into the ground as well now I'm going to be completely honest I had so much copium flowing through my veins during the marketing for dial of Destiny as an Indiana Jones Fanboy I wasn't willing to accept that the last time we see Harrison Ford playing this iconic character that it would be a disappointment but the trailers were worrying but I let my fanboyism take over in the hope that it would be good but I got to the halfway point of dial of Destiny and I thought to myself I am bored that was when I knew dial of Destiny had completely failed everything down to the implementation of one of Cinema's most iconic characters to the typical Disney trollop flooding our screens to running a beloved franchise into the ground Indiana Jones 5 is a raging disappointment and we're gonna go in deep on wide dial of Destiny is complete garbage so Indiana Jones and the dial of Destiny oh boy I was worried when the trailer and early critics reactions dropped but like I said before my copium held me through so I was naive enough to walk into the theater and expect to see something I loved as you can imagine my disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined I wanted to be sitting here gushing over how great of a final send-off this was for one of Cinema's most iconic characters but one of the biggest issues this film has is it is just boring it drags it is too long the original Three indie films all went for two hours give or take and as a result of the good pacing the entertaining sequences they are amongst the most enjoyable watches that you can have the Isle of Destiny goes for over two and a half hours and you feel every extra minute of that run time even some of the action sequences are genuinely boring which boring action sequences in an Indiana Jones film that's a crime again Humanity the best sequence of this entire film is in the first 20 minutes where we get the flashback train sequence of Indie first coming into contact with the film's MacGuffin meeting the villain volar and establishing Toby Harold's basil sure who comes into play later it's pretty sad when the best thing this film does is a 20-minute flashback sequence with a distractingly de-aged Harrison Ford clogging up your screen is it entertaining yes but all it does is highlight where the rest of the film just doesn't work the first 20 minutes of this film artificially recaptures the Indiana Jones of old and oddly enough it's what most people are praising as the film's best sequence but then you transport to the modern day and this is where dial of Destiny falls apart we're in 1969 India is on the verge of retirement he's a broken old man who complains about his neighbor's music being too loud and he seems to have nothing more to live for because him and Marion are now divorced due to complications from the death of their son mud during his service in Vietnam so as the typical modern Hollywood bring back the iconic beloved character have him as a rundown shell of his former self and have the spry young replacement injected into the story to inevitably not latch onto as the viewer and Hate Now I'm going to go heavily into that specific element a little later in the video as it's a key reason as to why this film just doesn't work and I'm giving it its entire section of the video but I just wanted to establish that issue early on so anyway we get introduced to Helena Shaw played by Phoebe Waller Bridge Indies previously not mentioned goddaughter from his previously not mentioned friend her presence in this film felt completely unfocused and ultimately kind of pointless she's not a good person necessarily she's a shady individual that basically goes against everything Indy stands for but when the script calls for it she's a good person it's very manipulative this character was completely all over the place with conflicting ideas who to be honest seemed to be a different character with every passing scene never mind having her be set in her selfish materialistic ways and then through adversity have her more aligned with indie's values giving her an arc no she's just a complete mess of a character and one of the things with this character that seriously annoyed me especially is a temple of doom fan was the implementation of Short Round from wish I mean Teddy I think that's his name they literally describe how Helena and budget Short Round meet and why they're still together and it's literally the exact same thing that Indie explains to Willy in Temple of Doom so they clearly tried to do that again here but the thing that pisses in my cornflakes here is that there is like no reaction from Indy here regarding this it's like the writers had a selective memory of what happened in Temple of Doom and wanted to borrow what worked from it without actually acknowledging that they literally copy and pasted it like was Helena and budget Short Round supposed to be some sort of on the nose joke or was it just lazy writing I honestly don't know anyway Indie is sent on an adventure to stop volar played by mads Mickelson on his quest to retrieve the anti-ky theorist so he can go back in time to kill Hitler and Lead himself or whatever but yes time travel I might as well just address it if you thought aliens in Crystal's skull was Jumping the Shark well time travel time travel what mystical artifacts with Fantastical powers are no stranger to this franchise it's never been necessarily grounded in reality but I think aliens and time travel kind of took it a bit too far like they really went for it here and it didn't land look I don't know why mads Mickelson keeps finding himself in underwhelming roles this dude is like s tier caliber Talent yet he ends up playing such mid characters in okay at best films kycelius and Doctor Strange Grindelwald that dude in chaos walking and now vola not to mention Volo developed magical tracking abilities halfway through this film he notes that after being abandoned on a sinking ship in the middle of the ocean that Indie Helena and budget Short Round are heading into the opposite direction to where they should be so he manages to take a little emergency raft track them to their exact location and even Ambush budget Short Round in a clearly planned kidnapping on the exact Beach he happened to be walking down like the writing is so lazy I think vola was a very mishandled character there was potential there but they really bottled it like bellock in Raiders that's a good Indiana Jones villain this is a waste of potential now across the adventure we see pretty much what you'd expect from an Indiana Jones movie but just not the same there's a real digital look to this film the OG Indie movies had that filmic gritty realism that just helped make them the adventure that we know this time round it's a whole lot of green screen it's a whole lot of digital de-aged Harrison Ford or deep faked Harrison Ford onto stunt doubles it just feels like an artificial attempt to recapture the magic of films that came out 30 to 40 years ago like I love James Mangold who directed this film Logan is a masterpiece but this really felt like a sad attempt on his hard to recreate That 80s Spielberg aesthetic like one of the key elements that made the original film so great was that Harrison Ford did most of the stunts himself bringing an element of authenticity to the action obviously this can't happen anymore given his age therefore dial of Destiny loses something like we see an 80 year old Harrison Ford waddling down the hallway and then we're supposed to believe that he's riding horses through crowds jumping and sliding over obstacles and the suspension of disbelief it seriously gets tested when you watch this film on a practical level now this isn't a fault of the film itself but more so the decision to green light a film in a franchise with a lead so far past his action days it's not even funny don't get me wrong Harrison Ford is in good shape for his age but there's only so much you can get away with let's finish this part of the video up by addressing the ending so in the Final Act Volo gets his hands on the anti-kythera and flies through the devil's anus there they end up way further back in time than planned and after meeting Archimedes who built the device Indy decides he wants to stay there and die there because you know we can't have a male protagonist that's actually hopeful about life and you know he's got to be miserable because that's how it works now now obviously as he's been shot the medicine of the time wouldn't save him so Helena knocks him out brings him back to the present day because budget Short Round flies now and then we're left with Indy waking up presumably days later and then Marion walks in the door Salah starts singing Marrying an Indian brace with a call back to Raiders the end this ending did not hit for me at all and it seems like a lot of people even people who did like this film actually have this problem as well the lazy riding hits again with the ending Helena just makes a phone call to Marion and all of a sudden everything is okay and they're together again it's just it's just lazy writing so one of the biggest frustrations audiences have with modern films that bring back Legacy characters from beloved franchises is the treatment of said characters the go-to archetype these days when bringing back Legacy characters is always the same as I said earlier you bring back the iconic beloved character you have him as a rundown shell of his former self have the spry young replacement injected into the story that inevitably you're not going to like more often than not they're female we have seen it across many franchises and we've seen it not work across many franchises the Isle of Destiny is just another one of those franchise films that modern writers have injected this crap into now I have seen it done worse than other franchises absolutely but when you watch the previous Indiana Jones films you get attached to Indy so seeing him in the later years of his life living miserably how is that supposed to instill enjoyment from viewers why bring back a character that Millions want to see just to have him be a shell of his former self because life has beaten him to a pulp I'm not saying this isn't something that shouldn't exist but again it's a constant in franchise films making the return to the big screen after years on the sidelines this always happens so Mark died in between the events of Crystal Skull and dial of Destiny and as a result of that Indy and Marion have divorced as it just put too much strain on their marriage leaving Indy rotting away in his apartment all alone so it's just typical at this point for a Legacy character to have these kinds of obstacles down on their log probably don't even care if they die in fact don't care if they die I think the third Act of this film was very clear evidence of that it's just tiresome at this point now this Fallen Hero archetype is a very real thing take a look at top gun Maverick as a prime example of why seeing Maverick back on the big screen 30 years later is awesome he doesn't nearly carry as much cultural impact as say Indiana Jones but Pete Mitchell and top gun Maverick wasn't this run down beaten old man who lost everything who's incapable who needs a new Young replacement to get him off his ass and out of his pool of misery no Maverick was arguably a better character than he was in the first Top Gun actually not even arguably he was a better character in the sequel by far and it wasn't because they did the Hollywood Trope of tearing down Legacy characters no they did the complete opposite and would you look at that fans loved it critics loved it and it completely overachieved something chronic at the box office and delivered something better than the original do you seriously think that's a coincidence I think not like why does this keep happening when it's just been proven not to work so many times before disrespecting Legacy characters leads to failure respecting them ends in success it's not that hard studios are more than happy to use these Legacy characters to Market their films to gather audience interest but when it comes to the creative process they seem hell bent on absolutely destroying the character it happens way too often to just be a coincidence and I know it's got a lot to do with the political aspect of the way Hollywood likes to formulate their films and casting these days bringing back beloved male characters and having new diverse ones tear them down like I would be completely disingenuous to Omit that from the argument here but one thing I think we all can agree on is that we're tired of seeing beloved characters make a triumphant return to the big screen to just be this broken down version of what we once knew now the second half of this Fallen Hero character type that these kind of films keep going for also has actually nothing to do with the character it's the younger new replacement character that is the other half of the problem Helena in this film obviously is the example why do writers insist on making these characters so unlikable by essentially taking the piss out of our Legacy character undermining what they've been through with the Riders knowing fully well that the audience has been on that Journey with the character again not all films do this the ones that succeed and are good don't do it Blade Runner 2049 and top gun Maverick are prime examples the new replacement character of sorts makes sense in their interactions with the returning character any tension between the two makes sense from a story standpoint whether it's due to Links in the past like Rooster's dad being Mavericks Rio which led to his death like there are reasons why the characters have tension and in Blade Runner 2049 anytime K shows any kind of malice toward Deckard who of course is funnily enough played by Harrison Ford it actually makes sense it's not just Mindless it's just not like that in those films and wouldn't you know it people like them and I know some people are going to say well Descartes wasn't exactly in a good place in 2049 so aren't they just doing the same thing by breaking his character down to a shell of his former self but the difference here is it actually makes perfect sense for him not to be in the best place because of where the first film ends but at the end of crystal skull for example which is the last time we saw Indiana Jones it's literally a very happy ending Indy has a son now he's married to Marion things are great for him and then Flash Forward to Indy 5 and he's a broken shell of a man or even The Last Jedi for example Luke goes from the symbol of Hope and savior of the Galaxy to a grumpy old man drinking titty milk you see the difference here you need to respect these characters and by making a new one to replace them and have them on the new one in every single way as well as retroactively undermining everything they've gone through is just not how it's done taking previously Happy Endings and spinning them so the character is now a mess so you can make way for your new character is just not the right approach and dial of Destiny Falls straight into that trap Indiana Jones 5 is just another notch on the belt of lucasfilm and Disney almost seemingly intentionally ruining their franchises Star Wars the MCU Indiana Jones everything just seems to be tanking in quality and financially and to be honest I think this is something that this industry needs audiences seem to be voting with their wallets more now than ever before Word of Mouth seems to be the number one dictator as to whether or not films are successful these days it's no surprise to me that Indy 5 is underperforming what is a surprise to me is that the audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes are as high as they are but I mean to be fair rise of Skywalker sits at an 86 audience score so I mean can we really take it seriously when that dumpster fire sits that high not really but Indy 5 just adds to the list of recent misses from Kathleen Kennedy we all know she seems to be absolutely hell-bent on ruining Star Wars and she is doing a bang-up job but it seems like Indiana Jones is the latest victim but because dial of Destiny really does feel like a modern Disney movie that's honestly just the best way to describe it really it's a franchise built outside of Disney with Spielberg and George Lucas at the helm but now it's just a typical Disney movie with an out of touch producer and a good filmmaker that had a really bad day at the office there were moments watching this film where I was just like yeah this is a Disney fight version of what was once a great franchise like what have they done this is just a film that should never have been made it's about 10 years too late and I'm not really a believer in fan head Canon but for me this franchise ended when Indy and his dad rode off into the sunset in 1989 with the Last Crusade it's easier to adore this franchise that way the fact I'm even wrestling with whether or not I think dialogue's Destiny is better than Crystal Skull as honestly mind-blowing to me seeing Marion and Salah again wasn't enough Nostalgia bait to keep me happy here hearing John Williams iconic score Renditions synonymous with this franchise was not enough to make up for what was lacking so dial of Destiny ultimately just fails to recapture the magic of the original Indiana Jones movies with a script seemingly written by bad AI AKA modern writers as well as the continued Trope of ruining our beloved characters in order to elevate the new far less interesting ones to telling a story that is ultimately just a complete mess with the typical Disney modern day BS plaguing everything released under their umbrella Indiana Jones and the dial of Destiny is an unfortunate but ultimately expected tragedy that is just becoming all too common with modern blockbusters

Channel: Movie Overload

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Keywords: indiana jones, indiana jones 5, video essay, dial of destiny, indiana jones video essay, indiana jones and the dial of destiny, lucasfilm, disney, kathleen kennedy, harrison ford, phoebe waller-bridge, steven spielberg, video essay film analysis, the dial of destiny, james mangold, mads mikkelsen, movie overload, feminism, feminist, george lucas, indiana jones review, indy 5, raiders of the lost ark, indy, film video essay, film, movies, film analysis, indy 5 review, indiana

Id: gXK3YCIZMog

Length: 18min 38sec (1118 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 05 2023