I have to ask: what the hell is going on with Harrison Ford’s nose in the photo above from “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”? It looks like he borrowed it from Dustin Hoffman’s make-up kit from “Little Big Man,” when Dustin played a 111-year old man. But I digress…
It is now certain that Disney’s fifth and one hopes final Indiana Jones movie will be a financial disaster. It cost $300,000,000 to make, and with marketing and other costs, a big Hollywood film has to clear about twice its filming costs to break even. That’s not happening; three weeks after its release, “Dial of Destiny” is already trailing two less-hyped summer films, and is being treated as “dud on arrival.”
“Movie Web” has done the best analyses I’ve seen regarding the film’s conceptual, artistic and marketing problems (here and here), and I’d love to write about those, but this is an ethics blog, so I’m officially interested in just one aspect of the debacle: Why didn’t anyone stop it?
From the moment the word leaked out that Harrison Ford, at 80+, was going to grab his whip and fedora and portray the swashbuckling archeologist again even after the last Indy installment’s blah performance, virtually nobody who admired the franchise was anything but dubious. Stephen Spielberg even pulled out as director, which should have been a huge throbbing warning sign. Yet the studio went ahead and spent all that money to make itself look incompetent and creatively bankrupt, which is the last thing Disney needs right now. Was there no one with guts and integrity connected with the movie who cared enough to walk into a Disney honcho’s office and say: “Listen to me! This is going to be a disaster! It can’t possibly be anything but a disaster! It will lose money! It will make us look ridiculous! It will devalue the property! GET OUT! GET OUT!!!!“?
Apparently not.
This is far from the first aspiring movie blockbuster that prompted that question. There were several such films in the Seventies and Eighties, perhaps the worst being “The Pirate Movie,” which attempted to capitalize on the success of a Broadway revival of “The Pirates of Penzance” by making a knock-off film containing generic 80’s junk music instead of the famous Gilbert and Sullivan score and starred aging child star Kristy MacNichol, of all people. More recently the re-makes of “Ben-Hur” and “The Ten Commandments” fell into that category. Yes, there is incompetence borne of delusion and hubris in such scenarios: Universal actually said that it expected 1978’s horrible “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (starring Peter Frampton and the BeeGees as the Beatles’ alter-egos) to be “this generation’s ‘Gone with the Wind’,” but the real culprit is the same destructive human factor that led to Pickett’s Charge, the “Challenger” disaster, and other far more deadly black marks on U.S. history than one more lousy movie.
“The March of Folly” was historian Barbara Tuchman’s most specific exploration of the theme of many of her works: how supposedly smart and experienced people in power blindly follow through on destructive and objectively stupid plans, projects and policies. They sequentially endorse and pass along approval for a mission, ordered by a leader, that travels the arc from aspiration to delusion. Tuchman called this lethal tendency of policymakers throughout history a “process of self-hypnosis.” Her varied examinations of its long and bloody history included examples like the Trojan War, the British handling of the American rebellion, and the Vietnam War. In another book, she applied the same analysis to the infamous Charge of the Light Brigade.
Here on Ethics Alarms, we have raised Tuchman’s analysis to explain Custer’s Last Stand, President Obama’s ridiculously half-hearted campaign to deal with ISIS in Syria without committing to “boots on the ground ” in 2014, Michael Bloomberg’s kamikaze effort to buy the 2020 Democratic Presidential nomination, and the Republican Party’s nomination of Donald Trump in 2016.
Yes, I know. That one, somehow, worked. And that’s the problem. Sometimes what “everybody” knows is going to be a disaster isn’t a disaster. Sometimes, the crazy self-anointed geniuses who pushes through mad plans really are, at least in one instance, smarter than everyone else….or really lucky.
I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it is relevant once again. In his memoirs of his World War II experiences, my father relates three combat incidents when he directly refused to carry out an order that he believed would be catastrophic if obeyed. In all three instances he confronted his superior officer and was threatened with a court martial. In all three instances the order was retracted and subsequent developments proved my father right. (He continued this career-crippling habit in his subsequent civilian exploits, and passed it along to me.) “Here is the thing, though, son,” he told me not long before his death. “If you are the one who cries ‘Stop!,’ you better be right.”
Or, he would tell me later, not certain but convinced that the risk is so grave that it is worth the what will happen to you if you’re wrong. That means betting your future on moral luck.
That, I think, is how we ended up with “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.”
Ethics Alarms 
Jack wrote, “I have to ask: what the hell is going on with Harrison Ford’s nose in the photo above from “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”? It looks like he borrowed it from Dustin Hoffman’s make-up kit from “Little Big Man,” when Dustin played a 111-year old man.”
Looks almost like a stunt double or an AI generated image to me.
If they were going to use AI, wouldn’t they have it give him a better nose???
Jack Marshall wrote, “If they were going to use AI, wouldn’t they have it give him a better nose???”
Maybe, but not if they wanted it to look reasonably accurate…
His nose has always been a bit cockeyed but it’s certainly been accentuated as his face ages.
Looks like it’s only been broken once, but it was a bad break.
Steve-O-in-NJ wrote, “Looks like it’s only been broken once, but it was a bad break.”
Maybe a well placed right cross to shut down a mouthy teenager. 😉
You mean like in Witness?
Looks to me like an 80 year old man with an 80 year old nose and 80 year old ears. And one with enough star power to be able to tell the makeup person to stuff it.
You owe me a keyboard.
300million isn’t chump change.
That is a lot of dental work, backyard pools/hot tubs, new cars/boats, new additions to the house, and tuition money. Not entirely a disaster. It is all a matter of perspective Jack.
Well, it brings to mind the old saying — How do you become a millionaire? First you start with $2 million…
It has apparently grossed less than Raiders of the Lost Ark did in 1981 — and the dollar was worth just a bit more in 1981 than 2023.
I have not seen the movie, and don’t plan to. I did see a couple reviews on YouTube that were less than complimentary, let’s say.
They CGI’ed Ford for a flashback opening sequence. Then they moved to the contemporary 1960’s where a retired and self-admittedly ancient Jone’s must save the day once again.
The movie itself was fine as a standalone. However, what sinks it is the same phenomenon that sank the latest Star Wars trilogy: the intervening events negated the happily ever after conclusion of the original series.
In the original three Star Wars, rebels soundly defeated the Evil Empire, and celebration ensued. In the Disney sequels, the Evil Empire returns, crushes the rebellion, and is narrowly defeated by a series of really stupid, grossly incompetent decisions (ie, a single cellphone tower controlled the Imperial Fleet; destroying the tower disabled hundreds of warships.). (No Spoiler Alerts, Star Wars has been out for years!).
Worse still, the individual characters experienced nothing but tragedy in the interim. Indiana Jones Han Solo and Princess Leah get divorced, and their son become Darth Vadar 2.0. Not to give too much away, but the almost the exact same thing happens to Indy and Marion in the Dial of Destiny!
These films suffer because they messed with the happily ever after of beloved characters. The films also get sucked into modern politics, and try to retroactively shove “science” where the movies previously had ambiguity and mystery. The original Stars Wars had the Force, which many accepted as a metaphor for God. Then the prequels didn’t want to offend today’s non-religious, and explained it to be a merely natural phenomenon (Midichlorines).
The Fourth Jone’s movie did the same (Well, the hypothetical fourth movie, as I am personally unaware of such a movie). It was not enough that the Arc or Grail were mysterious objects with unknown, possibly divine powers. No, they had to be explained away as advanced alien technology! The Fifth movie does the same, with the central mystery revolving around arcane physical phenomenon. In the process of being “inoffensive” to modern audiences, the movies alienate large segments of the fanbase.
The original movies were products of their time: proudly patriotic, uncomplex, good vs evil. The new movies try to use the goodwill and nostalgia of originals, without understanding this. They play up to “sophisticated” audiences, who want to see broken families and nuance (one of the Disney Star Wars even talked about evil capitalist arms dealers selling to both sides!). In doing so, they alienate the original fans, and fail to respect the established plot and characters.
Wait, you missed “Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull”? The infamous “nuke the fridge” sequence? How?
“Nuke the fridge” was the best part. At least I got a laugh out of it.
I saw, and even enjoyed the fourth movie; I just (stubbornly) refuse to acknowledge that the fourth movie exists, mostly because it undermined the mythology of the originals with the alien scene at the very end. The fifth movie I also thoroughly enjoyed; I just had to ignore the tragedy at every step of the way.
“Worse still, the individual characters experienced nothing but tragedy in the interim. Han Solo and Princess Leah get divorced, and their son become Darth Vadar 2.0. Not to give too much away, but the almost the exact same thing happens to Indy and Marion in the Dial of Destiny!”
SPOILER ALERT!
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I made the same comment to my husband. In fact, Indy’s comment to Sallah, “Marion doesn’t want to talk to me” is the same thing Han Solo said in “The Force Awakens”, only it was “Leia doesn’t want to talk to me.”
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End of Spoiler.
It’s as if they don’t want the heroes to be happy.
Modern-day Hollywood wants to take the happy endings and tell us why they weren’t happy endings. Wait a minute, I suddenly had an epiphany. Is this the definition of Woke I’ve been searching for? Happy endings we thought were happy aren’t because the suffering wasn’t emphasized?
Or maybe I’m a bit too sleepy.
Or grumpy?
I remember an interview with Lee Child on Reacher, and why he felt compelled to create him. He said that modern day heroes are all divorced, broken somehow, drugs, alcohol…there wasn’t a hero in recent books or TV who was simply a hero without a sad backstory and baggage.
Geez Rich, that is one fine analysis and film review, as in highly professional and informed.
Thanks!
A better question would be: is it ethical to be so WEDDED to an ideology that you take it upon yourself to trash well-liked heroes and ruin valuable intellectual property just to push that ideology? We saw this with the erasure of the original Star Wars heroes in favor of annoying Mary Sue Rey. We saw it with Rings of Power and the shoving of Second Age heroes Elendil, Gil-Galad, and Elrond into the background in favor of a version of Galadriel who looks, talks, and acts more like Lucy Lawless’ Xena: Warrior Princess. We saw it with the blackwashing of the Little Mermaid and the changing of Peter Pan’s Wendy Darling from sweet mother figure to double sword-wielding, as-kicking girl boss. Now we see it with Indy being reduced to a bitter old man who needs to be saved from himself by yet another girl boss. We’ll see it again soon in the remake of Snow White, with the titular character (whose mother in the original story asked that she have skin as white as snow) played by a Latina and the dwarves being… something other than dwarves.
None of these projects have fared terribly well, and you know what most, including this one, have in common? They blame the FANS for their less than great performance and accuse them of racism, sexism, and all those other -isms that prevent them from appreciating the work these companies did by perfecting the work that JRR Tolkien, James Barrie, Hans Christian Andersen, the brothers Grimm, George Lucas, and Walt Disney almost, but not quite, got right the first time out. Rings of power didn’t fail to hold interest because the characters were off the wall and the writing sucked, it failed because that stick-in-the-mud audience couldn’t handle a strong female lead or dwarves and elves (and a Numenorean queen who was the daughter of a white king) with a bit more melanin. The final Star Wars trilogy didn’t lose steam because it took everything from the first one and trashed it, plus writing that made no sense, it lost steam because those neckbeard sci-fi geeks couldn’t handle a strong female lead and a bit more melanin in the heroes. And Dial of Destiny isn’t headed toward the ignominy of coming off as one too many trips to the well because it overreached and the plot was too dissimilar to everything associated with IJ, it’s headed there because – you guessed it- those 50-year-olds who never quite grew up can’t handle a strong female lead taking the place of their hero.
Here’s the thing, those of us who were fans of all the original stuff won’t pay to see something that not only isn’t what we like, we find it well, insulting that the producers of these films insult us, by treating us like resistant pagans who won’t accept the gospel of Woke. It’s also annoying to have fewer and fewer choices as to the characters we follow. Some of us would rather not bother than watch what we don’t want. If I want a steak, I want a steak, not a kale salad. If I want chocolate ice cream, I want chocolate ice cream, not rice cakes, and if you offer me kale salad when I order steak, or rice cakes when I ask for ice cream, I’m going to take a pass. If I look through the season flier for the local performing arts venue and I see nothing I like, I’m going to skip, or maybe I’ll look again later in the season. And if I look at the cinematic offerings and I see nothing that appeals to me, then forget it.
Sorry, but the entire movie viewing public doesn’t consist only of wokesters.
Hey, don’t insult Xena by comparing her to ROP Galadriel.
If Christians did this, the outcry would be deafening. Imagine if Christians took a lame, pseudo-Christianity based storyline and used it for movie after movie after movie. For example, every movie starts with rich, narcissistic twentysomethings partying in the most disgusting ways, doing drugs, and spiraling into depression and self-destruction. Then, they insult a Christian and are challenged to discredit Christianity. Instead of discrediting it, all of them accept Christ and their lives become perfect almost overnight. Imagine if EVERY movie and TV show became this. Everyone would hate it. Imagine if even after it destroyed beloved franchises and lost vast amounts of money, the people kept doing it because they were true believers. There would be an outcry for the boards of directors to fire everyone involved, lawsuits would be filed, and legislation would probably be passed to stop it. When people found that virtually everyone in the industry was involved, they would shut down the companies until it could be rectified, they wouldn’t keep making failed product after failed product.
The difference is that the woke religion is the state religion. The bureaucrats that run the country, education, the media, and the social media sites are all adherents of the woke religion. The money lost by these endeavors is just the money of the investors and stockholders, most of whom are not of the woke religion.
People love strong female leads. For example, Charlize Theron in the movie Atomic Blonde.
See it if you have not.
There are a ton of other examples that work and do not ruin well established characters and story lines.
Perhaps the underlying problem is that wokesters are just really shitty artists.
Charlize isn’t just a female lead. She’s an Amazon.
I have not seen the movie. I had enough of Indiana Jones midway through the 1st sequel [Temple of Doom]
But this “March of Folly” is such an interesting topic. It fascinates the shit out of me. [And I love that phrase!]
Aside from the out of touch Disney execs – I first must wonder why Harrison Ford feels compelled to continue this? Did he feel he had to go out on a high note, after the last one bombed? He just turned 81. Doesn’t he feel silly? What was he thinking? It can’t be for the money, or is that a factor at any age, no matter how much you have?
As Jake Gittes asked of Noah Cross: “Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can’t already afford?”
I was talking about that same thing two days ago with my wife. Ford has always been a down-to-earth type and seemed level-headed. He’s still getting cast: his streaming prequel to “Yellowstone” is a hit. He can’t need the money.Incredibly, Sylvester Stallone is doing a sequel to “Cliffhanger” now: he’s 80, and that wasn’t even a good movie. Cary Grant retired when he said he couldn’t credibly “get the girl” at the end of the movie, and he didn’t want to ruin the image of the “Cary Grant” character he had built up during his whole career.
Ford doing this sad sequel is a mystery.
“Ford doing this sad sequel is a mystery.”
The same question could be asked of politicians, sports figures, and entertainers who continue long after they have ceased to be relevant or even competent. I think the answer may be that they can’t stop.
I have often wondered why so many entertainers have met an early death because of drug use. Is it because their profession absolved them of the need to show up regularly to a job or is it because of some insecurity or mental issue they were trying to escape from? I think the latter more times than not is the answer. I also think people can be addicted to things other than mind-altering chemicals.
For some, the attention and power afforded a star performer be it an entertainer or politician is like a drug. They think they can’t or don’t want to exist without it.
For some of them the money really is important. It is their drug of choice. I remember having a conversation with a very successful physician friend of mine. I had said that with my wife and I having successful careers and no children we were making more money than we needed. He responded that you can never have too much money. He was dead serious. I don’t have multiple houses, a private jet, or a luxury yacht. Nor do I want any of those. I don’t believe the one with the most toys wins.
Tom P,
The one common denominator for those who get lost in glitz, glamour, or materialism, is spiritual immaturity. The entertainment world/culture will literally consume or degrade those who are unanchored to a healthy spiritual practice/life. This of course is a universal truth for life in general but no more glaring than in the entertainment industry. There is a dark sinister underbelly within Hollywood.
Jack:
“Was there no one with guts and integrity connected with the movie who cared enough to walk into a Disney honcho’s office and say: “Listen to me! This is going to be a disaster! It can’t possibly be anything but a disaster! It will lose money! It will make us look ridiculous! It will devalue the property! GET OUT! GET OUT!!!!“?”
Gosh, I am torn.
I have two jokes here with basically the same punchline.
Which to choose?
Okay, here goes:
“From the studio that brought you ‘John Carter,’ ….”
-Jut
Isn’t the idea of a sequel, folly to begin with? At that very moment, when someone brings up the thought, it should be trashed and rejected and laughed at and bitchslapped. The odds and history are against it. And this can be said of some of the greatest movies of all time!
Other than The Godfather Part 2 – So many 4 Star films had to go and try a sequel and it just does not work.
“French Connection II”
“Texasville” [Why, oh why did they make this? Sam The Lion must have turned in his grave]
“More American Graffiti”
“T2 Trainspotting”
“Jaws 2” [and 3 and 4 and…]
“The Two Jakes”
“The Sting II”
“Caddyshack II”
When you think back, the old guard knew better than to make sequels. Why, do you think?
I can’t think of any prior to “The Godfather”…
Can you imagine –
“The Third Man 2”? He’s not dead, again?
“Back to Casablanca”? Ilsa tells Victor she’s sick of his devotion to France over her and hops a steamer to Rick’s to party and laugh and have only big fun for the rest of her days.
“How Green Is My Valley, Now”? Wait, no way! I thought he was leaving and never returning?
You forgot Grease 2!
Empire Strikes Back has to be up there with Godfather 2.
Cannonball Run 2?
Porky’s 2: the next day?
Clint Eastwood’s westerns (I forget the order of that trilogy). Does that count?
Frankenstein? And The Bride of Frankenstein?
The Merry Wives of Windsor?
The Odyssey?
The Aeneid?
The New Testament?
Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy?
Locke’s Second Essay on Government?
The Articles of Conderation?
The Critique of Practical Reason?
The Cat in the Hat Comes Back?
-Jut
Toy Story 2?
“Rooster Cogburn” John Wayne’s only sequel, and everyone hated it, including the Duke. It is his only film I have refused to see, and never will.
Scream II was pretty good though.
Pretty bold talk, for a one-eyed fat man…
You know, when I saw “True Grit” for the first time (at Hanscom Air Base), the mostly military audience burst into cheers at Rooster’s response to that insult. Are they cheering at any point in “Dial”? I suspect not.
I recall one of the times I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark, it was with a very close friend of mine whose parents had emigrated from Taiwan. In the scene where Indy realizes he’s stuck in the excavation full of snakes and the villain says something like “why are you in such a nasty place?” and his response is “Why don’t you come down here and I’ll show you!”. My friend’s dad always laughed and would say “I love it, that’s such an American response to a hopeless situation”.
Therein lies the appeal of non-woke Indiana Jones. He’s someone every boy could look up to. Yes, I know “erudite” and “sophisticated” leftists will guffaw at such low brow sentiment. But whatever, *their* movies about effeminate ‘men’ hemming and hawing about right and wrong and ultimately being buffoons who have to wait around for the leading actress to save the day don’t have nearly the kind of appeal that Old Indy did. And the box office shows it.
As a long time Star Wars fan (this will be one of the few times where I am NOT posting as a black woman) I’ve been closely following Lucasfilm Ltd. for a long time, and particularly since its purchase by Disney.
You ask “Why didn’t anyone stop it?”
The answer is simple. The topmost “Disney honcho” is Kathleen Kennedy, President of Lucasfilm, and a feminist activist extraordinaire, and Indy 5 was her pet project.
To that end, the original plan for this movie’s ending was–via the time travel element–for Dr. Jones to die in “the past”, which causes all of his exploits to be erased from history. BUT FEAR NOT . . . Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) then picks up the hat and the whip, and the audience is treated to a montage of . . . wait for it . . . HER inserted into a series of iconic scenes from the earlier movies in place of Harrison Ford. With this, the character named “Indiana Jones” gets replaced by a woman in such a way that it was really her all along, not him.
This would open the door to the production of a new Disney+ show about “Indiana Jones” starring Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
The only problem with this plan was that test audiences in pre-release screenings resoundingly HATED this ending (and IMO rightly so) and also hated the way Indy was being portrayed and constantly denigrated by the snarky Helena. So the director was forced to go back and make changes–again and again. These never-ending re-shoots were the main reason why the film cost so much to make and why it took so long to produce (along with–to be fair–an incident where Ford was injured during production which brought things to a halt for few months).
“Why didn’t anyone stop it?” Because this movie was an activist’s vanity project who really thought that this was not only sending the “correct” message but also a great movie (and a box office blockbuster too, if only that deplorable audience would get with the program and quit being so goddamn sexist and toxic).
“Why didn’t anyone stop it?” Because K.K. hired a woman-centric (whatever a “woman” is) Story Group full of her cronies who think the way she does, and who wholeheartedly agree that this is a great movie (aabobtiotdawgwtpaqbsgsat).
“Why didn’t anyone stop it?” Well, we all know how open and appreciative true-believer leftist activists are when you suggest that they are wrong about something. They’d never ever resort to retaliatory measures in the workplace, nor attempt to silence you by “canceling” you in the media. Isn’t that right Ms. Carano?
IMO Disney, in its current form, needs to go bankrupt. Fortunately for me, the top management of Disney appears to agree with me . . . ?
–Dwayne