Indiana Jones and the Dial of Doldrums - Weeks 9 and 10

There’s a media trope in articles about how “the old guy’s still got it” whenever a celebrated man releases their latest movie, book, album. It could be Martin Scorcese, John Grisham, or Bruce Springsteen. [My personal fav is when the quotes are “It’s his best album in years” when the reality is it’s been years since his last album. It’s not like he’s competing with other people named Springsteen!] Still, even the perkiest of talk-show hosts and podcasters are going to have trouble spinning that spin about Indiana Jones when movie-goers clearly decided he didn’t still have it.  

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny opened with a dud of a $60.3 million weekend. Yes, less than Fast X and Transformers 6.1 (the .1 is for  Bumblebee… which actually might be the best of the bunch… go figure!). This was not what the Dr. Jones ordered. His last adventure opened to $100 million 15 years ago. Absence did not make the heart grow fonder in this case. 

That said, maybe there was a chance for a rebound. There was a mid-week holiday coming up. Rest home buses could plan trips for the second weekend. Maybe even a fedora hat fan club convention. Whips, anyone?

Nope. The next weekend had the film falling 55% with a $27 million take on its way to a $122 million 10-day total. A weekend where it couldn’t even hold off the fifth Insidious movie which made $33 million. [I’m a horror fan who liked the first Insidious and even I haven’t seen the other four films… and it’s bigger than Indiana Jones?!] This film might make the bottom of the Top Five. It may pass Transformers or Fast X. However, this was a flick people thought was a $300 million lock. The last Jurassic World dusted-off the original Park cast to the tune of $376 million. They couldn’t even get the original greatest adventurer of all-time past… $150?!

To prepare for Dial of Destiny, the Mrs. and I rewatched the other four Indy films. I was definitely struck this time at just… how bad a professor he was! He’s never at school, he doesn’t grade papers, doesn’t meet with students, and he always “starts” his lessons when there’s 90 seconds left in class and then just tells them to read about the rest in their book after the bell rings. This guy was NOT good at his job. 

The other main news is that the Spider-Verse officially passed the Guardians, leaving us with a new #1 film of the summer. Indy is definitely not going to catch it, but could Tom Cruise, Oppenheimer, or Barbie? Time will tell…

Oh, and the Beasts ended up faster than Fast X. Will they need to rebrand their franchise to The Slow & Slightly Annoyed? 

 

The Top Five If Today Was Labor Day:

#1. Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse - $357.7 million

#1. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 - $357.6 million

#3. The Little Mermaid - $289.2 million

#4. Transformers: Rise of the Beats - $146.8 million

#5. Fast X - $145.9 million