Up until recently, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was riding a solid wave of hype and momentum, which came crashing down when people were allowed to see the movie.
That’s never a great look for any project, never mind the fifth and final chapter in one of cinema’s greatest-ever franchises that last whimpered onto the big screen with the wildly divisive Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but James Mangold’s archeological adventure fared even worse than its maligned predecessor among critics.
In addition, box office projections have slowly been trending downwards for this week, to the point Dial of Destiny will be lucky if it manages to even reach $70 million in its opening weekend. Earlier this year $100+ million felt like a guarantee, so how did the wheels manage to come off so spectacularly? To quote Mark Ruffalo in Avengers: Endgame, “time travel!”
Or at least, that’s the case among certain Indiana Jones fans, who believe meddling with temporal elements doesn’t reflect the spirit of the original trilogy, which is fair enough when the alien that popped up at the end of Crystal Skull was savaged for a reason.
Obviously, if Dial of Destiny is as mediocre as the early responses have suggested it to be, time travel isn’t going to be the sole culprit. As much as everyone wants to see Harrison Ford go out on his sword, it’s hard to shake off the fact that the unforgettable final shot of The Last Crusade – where Indy literally rode off into the sunset – was where the saga should have ended.