The Writer's Take #6 Dial of Destiny
Iger eyes big budgets blockbusters during the Writer's Strike
Ba Ba ba bammm Ba ba ba, Ba Ba Ba bamm ba da da…. If you don’t know what theme song I am humming here then, well then I don’t even know how we are friends. Indiana Jones has been the gold standard in adventure movies since Raiders of the Lost Ark basically invented the genre. The Triple threat of Steven Spielberg, Harrison Ford and John Williams imagined the greatest adventure to ever exist in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and has delivered 3 additional stellar installments before Dial Of Destiny.
Oh wait, did you think this week was going to be another helpful tip of writing? Well, if you did, so did I, I have a post planned, on how to think about choosing your artist as a creator/ writer of graphic novels, heck I even alluded to it at the end of the last post, but I went to see Indy on Sunday, and was so upset with the populous narrative about this film being “subpar” or not a great send off of Harrison Ford as Indy, that after leaving the theater thoroughly fulfilled by my favorite archaeologist, I felt it was my patriotic duty to inform you all of the lies your reading in the trades.
With all of that said, we are 100% going to divulge spoilers below. You’ve been warned!
Listen, I am the first to criticize a script, a “send-off movie” “victory laps” the gambit of disingenuous reasons for Hollywood's biggest studios sucking dry the fan bases money with a subpar installment as a money grab. But this isn’t that.
Since June 12th, 1981 Lucasfilms, Steven Spielberg, and Harrison Ford promised three things. A badass archaeologist, representing nerds of all walks of life’s inner voice, a relic that borders magic but is based on enough historical references that you buy in, and Nazi’s, lots of Nazi’s who are thwarted by Indiana Jones every step of the way. Oh, and of course, the incorporable sensation of sounds by god himself, John Williams.
That is exactly what you want in an Indiana Jones Movie.
Raiders did it best
Temple of Doom brought us to Asia and gave us Short Round, (WE LOVE YOU Ke!!!!)
Last Crusade brought us James Bond as Daddy Jones- (I see you George, Gangster move George, Gangster move.)
Crystal Skull saw the return of Marion Ravenwood and the entrance of his son. Oh yea, and aliens.
And last but not least, Dial of Destiny brought us time travel. Freaking time travel everyone. And it worked pretty damn well. Fissures was a clever tool, oh yea, you’ll get it soon enough.
So when you bought your ticket to see Dial of Destiny and had an expectation other than the above, then sure, you might have been disappointed, or called it “Troppy” or be annoyed with the “nazi thing again.” But if you are a fan of Indiana Jones, and you understand the expectation of the films, I think Dial of Destiny sits comfortably in the middle of the series. Not the best, not the worst, but a stellar addition to an incredible franchise that has yet to really be recreated anywhere else. Ok ok ok, National Treasure rocks. But we only got two, come back to me when we have five.
As you can see, I don’t always have haterade for films. Sometimes, like today, I am pleasantly delighted by the review I get to write, and I'm a HUGE Indy fan, as if you didn't know that already…. Ok, let's dive into a breakdown of the film.
First and foremost, and this isn’t a plot point, but a VFX one. The incredible work by the VFX team at ILM really outdid themselves with the de-aging of Harrison Ford for the flashback scenes, they are really A+. And that’s actually where we start, in the past. Indiana is captured by… you guessed it- NAZI’s!!! And is getting interrogated as the stronghold was getting attacked.
Needless to say, the circumstances clearly articulated this post the downfall of Hitler, and the thinning Nazi army is scattering and hiding, but trying to seize as many relics as possible, and Indy is here to stop em! With the help of Oxford Professor, Basil Shaw of course. The use of AI here to de-age Harrison Ford was pretty cleverly done I must say. You could barely tell, except for a few movements atop the train, and all in all I felt pretty much in the action.
Should I wait or Should I Go?
As you can tell, this is exactly what an Indiana Jones film is supposed to be. The proceeding 2+ hours is more of the same, it's Indy fighting Nazi’s, it’s Indy arguing with a stuck-up girl, though her writing could have been better, but that's a story for another take. What I wanted to focus on here is the controversy around “Is it a good Indiana Jones film.” And I think the problem we have with this film, as we have with a lot of Films today, is the size of the budget, and the expectations that it brings. For example, Raiders was at a modest 20 million in 1981, that's roughly 65 Million adjusted for inflation in 2023. That is in stark contrast to the 300+ million it cost to produce “Dial of Destiny,” the question at hand is, would this film be looked at differently if it had cost 65 million to make, hell, if it even cost 90 million to make?
The answer is an emphatic yes!
The expectations set by your eyes seeing a budget line of a small country's GDP sets an unrealistic expectation for success. This film, while it might not rank atop all Indiana films, most definitely filled the void for any Indiana Jones lover, and was a victory lap for the iconic and irrefutable legacy of Harrison Ford. That movie was fantastic. But, when you put a price tag of 300 million on a film, the game changes, the stakes change, and the grandiose expectations are afoot. The reality is that this film marks the beginning of the end of these needless huge budget films, that can be made a third of the price, and just as good.
The times of wasting money on VFX and not investing in better scripts over more jaw-dropping visuals have come to a sketching end. Bob Iger confirmed this with his words about the pullback we are going to see from Marvel and Star Wars, in his words- “We are going to make less, and spend less on the things we do make.” This is a critical moment in film history and how we move forward is going to tell us a lot about the next 20, 30, or even 50 years of productions and the leveraging of technology to better support our Artists, not the other way around. With the SAG and Writers strike afoot, the very thing we love about film and television is at stake. So next week, while I will dive deeper into the nuance of the pitfalls of acts 2 and 3 in Dial Of Destiny, I wanted to leave this week's entry with a point of view and a question.
Every filmmaker, every writer, every actor, every contributor to a production brings life experiences and nuance to the way they put their soul into the work of art. From the pain and sorrow of their lives to the bubbling explosion of ecstasy, it is all seen and heard on the screen. What makes films so much more palatable than a book?
Sure it's the visual aspect, but the reason visual adaptations rule all is the simple fact that every human who goes to experience it, subconsciously or consciously knows that it took thousands of people to bring it together, it took the effort of raising a child from conception to adulthood, that feeling, indescribable from anything else is the fondness of human compassion and corporation, that’s what makes television and film so special.
Otherwise, we just become electrical circuits consuming to keep the hamster wheel moving, diving deeper into a Matrix reality.
Where art is not meant to make you feel, or think, but to make you click onto the next item for purchase.
Oh wait… this entry is about Indiana Jones, not Neo, let me reset that…
So think of the souls in the ark… you get it.
So I’ll leave you with this question: Do you believe Dr. Jones and the pricelessness of art, or do you believe … (Yup i’m going to go there) the Nazi’s, and that art is just a commodity to get to the end goal of power.
Stay Curious, and Keep Writing,
Matthew Medney
Herø Projects, Gungnir, and other musings…
I wanted to take a moment during our intermission here to shamelessly and directly promote my two companies. Gungnir Entertainment, a genre-focused publishing company with best-selling titles from yours truly hitting shelves nationwide this Fall. With books focused on classic sci-fi ideas like “What does it mean to be human” and “is the bible right?” “Adventures throughout the stars” are just a few of the prompts for the books you can dive into with Gungnir. Gungnir’s website will launch this summer, and you can stay up to date on the forthcoming titles on my Instagram, @matthewmedney, or at my author page on Simon & Schuster.
And then there is Herø Projects. The Perennial leader in custom comics and animated services, Herø is a state-of-the-art creative studio that has worked with talents such as Floyd Mayweather, Shaggy, Nghtmre, and brands such as Remi Martin, Live Nation, and Rolling Loud. If Branding through storytelling isn’t your thing you can check out our original titles, the Onyx line with books such as Stable, Remnant, and Best Selling Comic The Red. To learn more about Herø Projects visit us at heroprojects.io
Hope you enjoyed this Inaugural writer’s take, keep a look out as we will have more spread-out writing tips coming up in between the big movie or tv show breakdowns!