Indy 5: A Flopbuster

The fifth Indiana Jones installment--Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny--was supposed to be a summer blockbuster, but instead is what the BBC is terming a "flopbuster". According to Box Office Mojo, the film currently sits at a world wide box office take of $154,039,953 (including $83,860,951 domestic) after a week in the theaters. That isn't very encouraging since the movie reportedly cost $295 million to produce with an additional $100 million in marketing costs. Assuming that the studio get a 50% cut of the box office revenue, the film will need to earn $600 million just to break even. And that may be problematic with the next Mission: Impossible movie coming out this weekend and stealing away much of Indy's audience. 

    Even normally friendly media is taking notice. For instance, Variety published a piece called "Disney’s Harsh New Reality: Costly Film Flops, Creative Struggles and a Shrinking Global Box Office," which notes that, despite "its arsenal of key properties such as Marvel, Lucasfilm and Pixar," Disney is not having a very good year. 

There was the dispiriting release of “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” a rare Marvel movie to likely lose tens of millions in its theatrical run; “The Little Mermaid,” a remake of the 1989 animated classic that fell drastically short of expectations; “Elemental,” an original story that tried and failed to recapture Pixar’s magic; and most recently “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” a nearly $300 million investment in one of cinemas’ most venerable franchises, which no longer appears to have the same hold on today’s audiences. On paper, these films seemed like they had all of the makings of huge hits, but somehow the Disney sparkle was lacking this time, in terms of filling movie theater seats.

The BBC piece cited earlier is more blunt: "The sad fact is that The Dial of Destiny didn't deserve to do any better: the film is a dour, dreary, and largely pointless rehash of Indy's other escapades." That article goes on:

But [Indiana Jones] wasn't the only hero to fall short last weekend. According to Rubin, DC's beleaguered superhero blockbuster, The Flash, had an "embarrassing" showing; DreamWorks and Universal's Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken, "cratered"; and another animation, Elemental, "hasn't lived up to Pixar standards". In his review of Elemental in The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw pondered "the question of whether Pixar's golden age is irrevocably behind us" – the film was Pixar's worst US box office opening weekend since their very first film, the original Toy Story.

    The articles posit all sorts of excuses: super-hero fatigue, customers turning to streaming services, a slower than expected recovery from the pandemic, and, surprisingly, suggesting that the industry is suffering from low quality content. There is also a lot of discussion of the higher costs of producing films (particularly an issue with Disney) but I don't see how that is relevant to the lack of interest at the box office. 

    What is not mentioned, though, is how wokeness is destroying the market for films. And I don't just mean superficial scripts by effeminate writers from broken homes pushing homosexual characters while hating on Western Christian civilization. I'm talking about the lack of male action hero led films where the male lead is an actual hero, rather than some pathetic manling playing second fiddle to a feminist harpy or being a dolt constantly shown up by a tween or teen girl. Which is pretty much the only type of action film or streaming series currently produced by Disney.