Disney has burned the effigy of Indiana Jones. The Dark Herald explains how on the Arkhaven blog:
The original Indiana Jones Trilogy of films all revolved around religious artifacts that held immense power.* In Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the Antikythera Machine turned out to be a time machine, created by Archimedes. A machine created by the One True Science and not religious at all. The Spear of Longinus is in this thing too and has no power at all because religion is now fake and gay in Indy’s new horrible world. Everyone knew this thing was going to be a disaster when we heard that Fleabag had been cast. Phoebe Waller-Bridge has become a greater harbinger of impending franchise doom than any plague spot. Woke Hollywood is still determined to make her thing and she’s not and never will be. But they will be getting over that soon.
Truth be said, this movie had a much worse casting decision going for it. Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. I’ve said before and I’m saying it now, the attraction of Indiana Jones wasn’t that you wanted to see his movies, it was that you wanted to BE Indiana Jones. Young, mid-thirties, Nazi-punching Indiana Jones. Nobody wants to be old-as-fuck 80-year-old Indy. Bringing him back to the franchise was a terrible idea… Unless you were planning to obliterate Indiana Jones and the rumors all said the same thing, that, that was what they were planning to do. Indiana Jones would be humiliated by Fleabag for the entire movie then, time travel back to his forties, meet his younger self, and then his younger self would be killed. Banishing Doctor Henry Jones Jr from all of his adventures. Then Fleabag would pick up his hat and have those adventures for him thus cucking Indy, his audience, and all men everywhere.
LucasFilm actually had the nerve to be surprised when the test screenings bombed. Much to her rage, Kathleen Kennedy was ordered to unfuck the ending.
The ending was resentfully changed to Indy getting heroically clocked by Fleabag, because he wanted to stay in the past. He wakes up in the present and is bummed about it until Marion walks in with some groceries. At the start of the movie they had been divorced, and that got Butterfly Effected away. So now it’s a happy ending.
I stopped watching Indiana Jones after The Temple of Doom. Frankly, I thought the greenscreen Apple II game Aztec was vastly more entertaining. But it’s still nice to see the satanic corporate skinsuit of what was once Disney crashing and burning repeatedly this summer. As Razorfist mentioned in his epic rant on UATV, it wasn’t all that long ago that Disney was flirting with bankruptcy. It’s looking increasingly possible that they’ll go down for good this time.