This latest leak might be one of the most damning things I’ve heard about the movie. In a recent interview, legendary composer John Williams confirmed that Indiana Jones 5 is undergoing reshoots…of the movie’s controversial rumored ending.
Apparently, if BadTaste.it, presumably an Italian YouTube channel (I’ll link it below), has not taken John Williams out of context, Indiana Jones 5’s ending has not only not been completed and filmed, but is actively being written. Yeah, you read that right. Indiana Jones 5’s ending is still not finished or shot yet, despite the movie coming out in the Summer of 2023.
Okay, what Williams said could be interpreted in at least two ways. And none of them are great.
First, and probably the least concerning way, one could see this as the studio and executives trying to spruce up the ending of one of the most anticipated movies of 2023 by reshooting some questionable scenes, adding a few more well-defined visual/CGI effects, and rewriting the script to add some new ideas the writers came up with after filming.
Yeah, it’s concerning that such a massive movie with a release date in only 4-6 months is still having to think up an ending, but I guess it’s good to see that the executives behind Lucasfilm and Disney care enough about the fans and the franchise to continually improve the movie, even after a release date and most of the filming has been wrapped up.
But I don’t think that’s the actual reason for this reshoot, though I do hope that it is.
Personally, I think this reshoot is in light of the Reddit leaks and the overwhelming backlash the trailer (which has a lot of similarities to the leaks) has received since it dropped a few days ago.
It only takes a quick glance at the YouTube comments section in the newest Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (still a dumb name) trailer to see that there is a lot of backlash against this movie over supposed ‘ending’ that came from the Reddit leaks.
Sure, a fair amount of the comments looks like they were written by bots given how repetitive they are with the Tolkien and Morbius quotes, but an even bigger amount are actual concerns and valid skepticism over the prospects of this movie.
(Disney/Lucasfilm-Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny-Official Trailer)
Namely, has Disney and Lucasfilm really written an Indiana Jones movie that (SPOILER ALERT) not only kills off the icon, but also erases his existence from history and replaces him with Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character.
Now, I might be in a minority that actually likes Phoebe Waller-Bridge and some of the stuff she’s starred and written in, but I’m certainly not about to let her and those writers kill off Indiana Jones and erase him from the history of his own franchise. That’s not happening on any true Indiana Jones fan’s watch.
It’s honestly mindboggling that genius filmmakers like James Mangold (director; the director behind Logan and Ford Vs. Ferrari), Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg (executive producer on this movie), John Williams (composer), Jez Butterworth (writer; the writer behind Ford Vs. Ferrari, Black Mass) would think of/condone such a horrifyingly bad idea, let alone allow it to be put into the script.
Now, I realize that guys like Spielberg, Williams, and Ford are not really involved in the writing process, but that doesn’t excuse Mangold or Butterworth. What were they thinking if it’s true they wrote that?
Such an ending is not even bad from a letdown sense, but rather that it’s just awful filmmaking that should hopefully have been knocked out of their senses back in their film schooling days. This is an action-adventure story with one of Hollywood’s most iconic characters, not some sci-fi, out-of-the-box budget movie.
This franchise deserves to be treated with the respect that it earned from its own contributions to the history of not only the genre, but of Hollywood filmmaking itself.
The only reason I can think of for them writing such an ending would be Disney studio executives (cough…Kathleen “The Filmmaking Plague” Kennedy…cough) coming down and forcing them to write off the 79-year-old Ford in favor of a younger character/actor Disney can exploit for a bad Disney+ T.V. series.
But that doesn’t explain why Mangold vehemently denied such rumors on Twitter when the trailer first came out…to only have it revealed that the ending of Indiana Jones 5 is being changed after all. Not a good look.
Still, I hope the movie’s ending is being changed for the better and this whole “Indy being replaced” nonsense is put behind us. Or else Mangold, Kennedy, Butterworth, and everyone else involved in writing the script/screenplay better hide out in their bunkers until the backlash calms down, which might take years to happen.
Images Source: Featured Image: (Disney/Lucasfilm) (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny | Official Trailer – YouTube)
In Text Image 1: (Disney/Lucasfilm) (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny | Official Trailer – YouTube)
