What went wrong?

wokeness, cgi, too old, too late.

A woman shouldn't have been the head of production of one of the most masculine movie franchises ever made. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be but there was no need for it to exist. No one wanted to see a Geriatric sad sack Indy that was written that way to prop up Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

It fundamentally disrespected the character of Indiana Jones. Indy was a heroic character that audiences could really identify with, not because he was the toughest or strongest or cleverest -- he gets beaten up, outmaneuvered, deceived, and suffers setbacks aplenty. But he never quits. He's tough and resourceful, and always finds a way to bounce back and win. That was what made him great, and they took that quality away from him in this movie.

Audiences don't want to see a despairing, broken down old Indy who has lost everything, has just given up, and is ready to lie down and die, and the box office returns for this film reflect this fact.

It's simple: the series ended perfectly with the Last Crusade. But, studios decided to keep making sequels. Harrison Ford is too old. The rest of the characters are unlikable. The story should have foregone Indiana Jones and just been a movie about the lead actress. It would still suck but that's how little Indiana Jones mattered in this.

They put a chick in it!!

On the one hand I think a fifth Indiana Jones movie could have worked. You look at how well Top Gun: Maverick was written and its success at the box office with a much older Tom Cruise returning. Then on the other hand, it's a geriatric Ford playing essentially an adventurer, where action and physicality had very much been at the core of his escapades in the previous movies, unlike with the character Maverick. Only so much you can do with an 80 year old Indiana Jones I suppose.

So could it still have worked as well with the lead character being very old this time? Well I guess it could, although this already changes the tone and the direction the film goes in. It would require relying on good side characters to do some of the heavy lifting so to speak, and I don't believe we got them here. It was a problem with the previous film and it's a problem here as we're faced with a young, unlikeable woman patronising and undermining Indy, every which way. It's not what any true IJ fan wants to see.

Woke agenda and Ford's age aside, I just don't think it was well written enough overall. The action was generic and forgettable, the villains didn't feel threatening, it was neither as dark or tense as Raiders, nor as fun as Crusade. It just felt all too safe. If they'd done things differently it may have been the film Crystal could and should have been.

Spielberg dropping out as director was a very ominus sign. I really think Skull killed the franchise more than anything. Then they waited over a decade before greenlighting Indy 5.

Bad decision after bad decision completely vanquished the once extremely loyal fan base.