Making $2 billion off The Force Awakens just wasn’t enough for Disney.
Of course not. Now they’re in the process of bringing back Hollywood’s most famous archaeologist: Indiana Jones.
No, I don’t have a bad feeling about it. But no, I’m not bouncing off the walls in excitement either. My main interest in the show, I guess, is how they’re going to pull it off.
You see, Disney’s trying to bring back a series that ended off on a less than stellar note. (Crystal Skull had a 6.2/10 rating on IMDb.) It had positive reviews from critics, mixed reviews from the public, and bad reviews from some fans (who blamed George Lucas for making a mess).
But hey, Disney managed to bring Star Wars back, and that had three low ratings instead of one to deal with.
Will it be a good movie? Most probably. Steven Spielberg’s a good director. Will it be a box office success? Almost definitely. Disney’s making it, and it is Indiana Jones.
But will it be something new? Most probably not.
Yes, the King of Hollywood is directing it. But he’s not the one running the whole show. Disney is. And no matter how much they want to make something that will set the new standard for Indiana Jones, they probably won’t. In Disney’s playbook, it’s better to play it safe than shoot and miss spectacularly. Look at The Force Awakens. It was okay, but it could have been so much more.
I’ve already issued several predictions about the fifth movie. So what do I think it will be like?
Like Raiders of the Lost Ark. Really. It’s by far the most popular film of the series and has consistently been ranked as one of Spielberg’s best films. Some harsh critics have even said that The Last Crusade was a ripoff of Raiders. Given that Last Crusade was the second most popular movie of the series, Disney has probably realised that the formula for Indiana Jones success is Raiders of the Lost Ark.
But to cut Disney some slack, Indiana Jones is not the same as Star Wars. It’s more like Sherlock Holmes. That is, each story can stand alone, but together, they tell a greater story. Another thing about such a series is that the stories tend to follow a similar structure. But the structure isn’t there because the writers were unimaginative. Rather, they provide familiar ground, which helps when the story lines aren’t exactly connected by anything except the main cast.
One more thing. As you probably have already read, Harrison Ford is reprising his iconic role as Indiana Jones. (At age 73.) After Han Solo’s demise, some people have been speculating whether Ford’s just back to be killed spectacularly, so that the main role can be handed down to someone younger.
All I can say is that if they’re killing him again, they’d better have a more moving scene than the one from The Force Awakens (Honestly, the part that moved me the most in Han Solo’s death sequence was when Chewie started shooting stuff in anger).
You might be asking yourself at this point whether you should watch the fifth movie. Well, here’s some good news. It’s coming out in 2019, so you have a good three years to think it through.
What are your thoughts on a new Indiana Jones?
64th Opinion 
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