At least with
Crystal Skull (disappointing as the ultimate movie turned out to be), you could sense that Ford, Spielberg & Lucas all
wanted to do it, that the three men were happy to return to a character they loved and to an earlier, simpler time in their respective careers. Spielberg has stated that he considered the movie a "reward cookie" of sorts for audiences who had come with him on a string of dark movies in the early-to-mid 00s and who had been clamoring for "Just one more" for years and years. Yet with
Dial Of Destiny, you can sense no love, no passion, just a studio that Hoovered up Lucas' empire and is determined to squeeze every last penny out of his properties, no matter how ill-advised or how much it flies in the face of the original movies' intents. And look where we are, only eight years after Disney's first
Star Wars movie...a once-mighty CINEMATIC franchise reduced to blah streaming content, a
Willow series that's getting erased from existence less than a year after release, and a movie forcing an eighty-year-old man to try and emulate the rigorous physical heroics he originally engaged in 42 years ago (and badly injuring himself in the process).
DOD will coast on audience goodwill for about half-an-hour (basically until the digital de-aging money runs out and they're forced to look at Ford's craggy, ancient mug for the rest of the movie), and then the movie will crash on a shoreline of bad word-of-mouth that'll make the post-
Crystal Skull hangover seem downright sedate in comparison.
Actor George Hall (who played "Old Indy" on
The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles) was about seventy-five when he filmed that series. Ford has five years on him right now.
), so why kneecap the movie long before it opens by letting bad reviews percolate? Anyone who was on-the-fence about it to begin with is now definitely gonna skip it, with the exception of people who see EVERY bad movie just as fuel for a 45-minute YouTube rant.
