I wonder how releasing new films (good or bad) is supposed to "murder" an existing franchise.
Indiana Jones, as a franchise, mostly exists to present-day audiences as a series of Harrison Ford movies. Which, to sidecar a bit, seems like a shame when the point and click titles made by the Monkey Island folks were absolutely fantastic. I'd say Fate of Atlantis is a way better 4th installment than Crystal Skull.
But at any rate, following up a movie generally viewed as mediocre with what's shaping up to be one of the most expensive box office failures of all time after a delay of many years seems like it could only damage any lingering value in this IP. If it's not outright "murdering" the franchise, I'd say Disney has left Indiana Jones in a much worse spot than it was 20 years ago, and not just because the original movies are 20 years older.
Revisited Fate of Atlantis recently and was just reminded of the awesome rollercoaster in Disneyland, and it is kind of mystifying how this entire franchise was apparently allowed to slip away from relevance. Not just in movies - The Uncharted games are fantastic, the new Tomb Raiders sold many copies, people want swashbuckling adventures and the market's been saturated with milsims and scifi for years. The last 20 years of the franchise just look like one big missed opportunity parade.
20 years is a bad comparison point for "did Disney kill Indiana Jones." Disney bought Lucas just over 11 years ago. So what was the shape of the franchise at that point?
After a well-received film in 1989 and a well-received but niche Fate of Atlantis video game in 1992, and a TV series for a year or so (so not a smashing success, though I remember people liking it) in 1992-1993) it went dark movies/TV-wise, and none of the followup video games amounted to too much.
So the franchise wasn't in great shape or popular relevance pre-Crystal Skull, and that film certainly didn't help. It was largely disliked by audiences, and Dial of Destiny actually seems better received by audiences so far. Personally I thought it was a far better film, though not a "must see" - but how much blood is in that stone to squeeze out with an aging Harrison Ford compared to, say, Uncharted?
Anyone blaming Disney for the state of Lucasfilm franchises seems to have a huge chunk of selective memory for the 2000s. (E.g. for me, I stopped paying attention to a lot of new Star Wars media for a while after Vector Prime in 1999 and the resulting story arc.)
Your point that the franchise wasn't in a great spot at acquisition is noted, and I'd agree with it. I'm not the same commenter who originally voiced the broad anti-Disney polemic, I'm mostly just chiming in my general disappointment at this one franchise's lifespan in hindsight.
But, I'd say it's only gotten worse over Disney's ownership. It's not much of an achievement for any film to be better than Crystal Skull, and results seem to be indicating neither movie is a successful new installment for the franchise.
I was going to give Disney credit for Lego Indiana Jones as another positive moment for the franchise, but that game actually predates the acquisition!
On the note of squeezing blood from the stone that is Harrison Ford as the protagonist, James Bond has switched its eponymous leading act many times and remains a pretty strong franchise (and has endured quite a few clunker releases) - for some reason the various writers of Indiana Jones over the years decided to do the opposite with these films.
Neither the lego game nor Atlantis feature any voicing from Harrison Ford, but they still capture the "feeling" of the original trilogy of movies better than either of Disney's sequels, IMO. I think the decision for Indiana Jones 4 to be led by Ford again could be a good example of a franchise -steering decision by Disney that's really only been to its detriment.
It wouldn't suprise me if Lucasfilm pre-Disney may have intended to use 4 to hand things off to Shia LeBeouf, but, well, whoops.
The Bond model is an interesting one, I wonder how well it would work for Indiana Jones. First I guess you gotta decide if you are gonna bring it forward in time or not. If you do, I think there's something of a bad guy problem. Raiders and Last Crusade both benefited a lot from the Nazis being on the other side of things. Keeping that scale + keeping the focus on archeological finds vs whatever Bond McGuffin can be imagined seems a hard job to me... And if you leave it set in the WWII era... there's only so much you can plow that land too.
And once you're 30 years after major media relevance, recasting your hero is a highly risky move. Does Indiana Jones without Harrison Ford have more pull? Or even less? (Compare to, say, Uncharted, which opened to less money than Dial of Destiny, but was cheaper to make at least).
(Of course, "highly risky move" also has to include spending $300M to make a new entry after that long... so... whoops again)
Sure, "murdering" in that sense is perfectly accurate, just not in the "somehow poisoning older entries" sense.
Also, +1 on your last paragraph. I want more light-hearted swashbucklers!
I'm not sure if the OP meant it, but there's a decided different in my mind between "murdering" a series and "ruining" it. A bad new entry doesn't make the old ones worse, but it may effectively foreclose any chance of making another better one later.
For people who maybe were hoping for another good Indiana Jones movie in the same vein as the first few, having these last two be received terribly means we're unlikely to see another attempt for years, if ever.
The new material has franchise/brand association, and the privileged production (eg. as opposed to fan cannon) cements it. They're now cognitively inseparable. The mental space the OT and PT occupied now has Disney's hands all over it .
Once especially cherished, Star Wars is a completely ruined universe in my mind. The mystery of the larger universe has been filled in with things I don't like, and there's no more magic left. I can't imagine anything that can salvage it. I don't care to see any more, probably ever.
I'd rather support independent films and small creators anyway.
I'm not the biggest fan of the reboot either, but I suspect that my generation is no longer the intended target audience.
The young professionals at my workplace seems to be really enjoying it, and have praised its action sequences, diverse and inclusive casts, and themes that are relevant to them.
Each new entry in a franchise is contagious against old entries in two ways
1. It typically carves out new canon about its universe, and
2. Closes old loose ends
Canon when added haphazardly can:
A. retroactively create in-universe plot-holes (if X existed in the universe, then Y happening in the originals made no sense, they would have known about it),
B. remove magic and mystery from an existing universe (famously in Star Wars’ case, quite literally, because now “The Force” is a bunch of little biological creatures) or
C. otherwise trivialize what were previously key moments (someone who was portrayed as a big bad previously was later just shown to be some powerless, boring low-level lackey who was irrelevant)
Additionally, loose end patching is infectious to older entries of a story:
A. When an older work presents a mystery, when you have a solution in a later work and that solution is lame, it taints the original by the knowledge that the loose end is, forever after, a broken promise by the writers.
B. It typically crowds out the potential of better solutions later (typically in film, franchises have to reboot to backtrack on canon),
C. prevents the solution from being the potentially better “that’s just where the story ends, use your imagination for what happens next!”, and
D. makes it retroactively hard as a fan to justify recommending the series to new fans, because if they feel passionate too, you know there’s no light at the end of the tunnel for incoming fans, since you know how it ends and know that it’s not rewarding.
Well said.
I enjoyed watching the best show of all time. (Of course I did!) Up until Firefly got canceled, anyway, which was enormously frustrating. But at least I got to keep the sense of mystery and the potential of big reveals.
Then they made Serenity. Which I enjoyed, don't get me wrong. But I had to do some mental gymnastics to treat it as something other than a continuation. I had to think of it as its own thing, and then I could be okay with treating it as a good movie.
But it wrapped up several loose ends up a wholly unsatisfying way. If that was what the original series was leading up to, then I could no longer care when re-watching or just thinking about the series. It wasn't so much wrapping up loose ends as snipping them off. It was a 90° turn into a different story. So I treated it that way, and it was really nice when my kids were old enough that we could watch the series together and accept that it terminated abruptly at the last created episode.
3y ago
The Indiana Jones franchise exists because of the Indiana Jones character. People that go to one of those movies want to see him.
If you setup a Mary Sue that treats him like an useless geriatric waste of a man, and finish the movie by having this Mary Sue knock him out, you're basically pissing in your own franchise. And since Harrison Ford won't be able to do another one, this is how the franchise ended, with a sour note.
It's easy. Kill all of the hype that keeps the fans interested in the franchise.
Games do this all the time. Just ask Mass Effect 3, Halo 4, Metal Gear Solid Survive, Dead Space 3, etc.
I'm with you. I think most of the star wars movies are pretty bad, but some of them are pretty good. And the bad ones don't make me feel worse about the good ones.
I think there has been a serious cultural shift in this regard sometime during the 00s. Most people used to understand that sequels are generally shitty and didn't make a big deal of this. S-tier classics from the likes of Disney used to get shitty straight-to-DVD sequels (e.g. Lion King 2) and nobody even thought to whine about it. Even movies that had very well received sequels would sometimes receive further sequels that were stinkers, and nobody started ranting about how the original was ruined because of it.
Alien and Aliens were great, then you got Alien 3, AvP, etc.. a bunch of mediocre slop to put it nicely (actually I like 3, but I admit it's deeply flawed). But when did you ever hear somebody say that AvP or Alien Resurrection ruined how they felt about Alien or Aliens? Terminator and T2; great movies that got a bunch of shitty spinoffs and sequels, but nobody said at the time that their enjoyment of the first two was ruined by what followed. James Bond has been a rollercoaster of quality for decades but it keeps going and fans enjoy calm respectful debates about which are their favorites. The Godzilla franchise has lots of quality interspersed with lots of crap, I don't hear many people saying that the horrible Minilla retroactively ruined King Kong vs. Godzilla, or for that matter, that King Kong vs. Godzilla ruined Godzilla (1954). The first Jurassic Park wasn't said to be ruined by the cashgrab sequels. The Land Before Time is still warmly remembered, despite 13(!) direct-to-dvd sequels.
Even in the early 2000s, I heard a lot of people saying they didn't like the Star Wars prequels, but I didn't hear many people saying the first three movies were ruined. Not until a few years later did this attitude start to find traction.