I may be completely out of the loop, but I just don’t understand the reviews for this movie. Despite arguably being a worst film than Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Indiana Jones 5 is weirdly getting some of the most fantastic reviews the franchise has ever seen on the most popular rating aggregates.
Either I’m completely out of touch with cinema and what makes a good movie, or these reviews websites and aggregates have been blatantly rigged.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Dimwittedness…wait, that’s not it (though it should be)….Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny has been widely and rightfully ravaged, mocked, and belittled as a horrible, garbage, Kathleen Kennedy masterpiece in corporate trash that only seeks to make a quick profit and usher in a shiny new “franchise” on the internet. Well, everyone except for the audience and general public scores on usually reliable review websites.
I’ll give my own review of Indiana Jones 5 in a few days as I need to let all of my anger and frustration for what that piece of shit (and I don’t say that lightly) Kathleen Kennedy and Disney has done to the Lucasfilm brand has fizzled out, but first I’ve got to talk about the reviews I’ve seen for this movie.
Or, more accurately, how polar opposite the “live reviews” (aka: YouTube, Tik-Tok videos, Twitter posts, etc.) and the “classics reviews” (Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb, etc.) are to one another.
You can look at any corner of the internet, whether that be massive YouTube/Tik-Tok/Twitter review channels/accounts (1M+ subscribers), medium sized channels (200k-999k subscribers), or a small channel (>200k subscribers), you’ll see that the vast majority of channels range from either giving the film a mediocre review to utterly scathing reviews. And, as I’ve said, rightfully so as the film trashes on the legacy of Indiana Jones in a way that only Disney and Kathleen Kennedy’s Lucasfilm can do (aka: Han Solo and Luke Skywalker).
I just don’t understand how or (more importantly) WHY Disney has allowed the utter decay of Lucasfilm and its two most popular IPs, Star Wars and Indiana Jones, or why the company has allowed the biggest cancer in all of Hollywood (Kathleen Kennedy) to stay on for as long as she has.
Star Wars and Indiana Jones used to be the most respectable, sensational, and guaranteed $1B box office brands in all of Hollywood, yet now they are mere jokes and tools for corporate cronyism and modern-day messaging.
Nevertheless, getting off that tangent, even though this film has had mixed reviews to say the least, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was one of the greatest Indy movies to have ever come out with its Rotten Tomatoes AUDIENCE scores.
Disney/Lucasfilm-Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny-Official Trailer)
Yes, for one of the few times I can remember, the Rotten Tomatoes critics score of 66% is actually the more reasonable of the two as the general public (or whoever is behind the Audience scores these days) decided to give this film a whopping 90% as of me writing this. 90%!
That would not only make this one of the few films in all of 2023 to reach a 90% score from audiences, but it would also make this film the third most successful Indiana Jones film ahead of The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (53%) and The Temple of Doom (82%). Moreover, it would also place this film just 4 percentage points behind The Last Crusade (94%) and only 6 percentage points behind The Raiders of the Lost Ark (96%)!
And, I don’t know about you guys, but there’s no way in hell that The Dial of Destiny is in the same galaxy as The Last Crusade and The Raiders of the Lost Ark, let alone being just a few percentage points behind them. NO WAY IN HELL!!!
Thankfully, the reviews are a little better on IMDb as the aggregate score is 6.9/10 from 19k reviews, while the Metacritic score amongst critics (the audience score is not out yet) has the movie at a 5.7/10. Personally, I think the Metacritic score is far more reflective of this film, and I would even bump that score down to 1.5-2 points if we’re being honest.
But I really have lost all my faith in Rotten Tomatoes at this point as at the risk of sounding like a deranged conspiracy theorist, I think the audience scores there have been rigged. Not only does the site now display “Verified Audience” reviewers, who have shot this movie up to an 89%, on the homepage alongside the critics instead of all audiences, but these verified accounts also have some of the blandest, one-sentence, generic reviews on the face of planet earth that offer very little insight into the film…apart from the blatant promotional messages.
Just read them if you don’t believe me (PS: there’s even some reviews talking about the cinema chairs being great).
But the non-verified audience reviews are honestly just as bad (though they have the film at an 80%) as there’s people out there saying this is the best Indy film of all-time, film didn’t have too much CGI…when literally (SPOILER ALERT) Harrison Ford was deaged for 20 minutes with CGI, the movie went back in time to Ancient Syracuse and Ancient Rome, and 3/4ths of the chase scenes were done in front of a green screen, and that this film was just as good as the STAR WARS SEQUELS!!!!
Disney/Lucasfilm-Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny-Official Trailer)
ARE YOU KIDDING ME? THE STAR WARS SEQUELS?!?!?!
I have to be going insane as there’s no way people out there are saying that the Star Wars sequels are works of cinema excellence that all films should be judged by.
I’ll leave a review (and probably make a YouTube video) about this film a little later, but I just had to get this article out in the annals of the internet as I couldn’t believe what I was seeing on those review sites.
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)
In Text Image 2: (Disney/Lucasfilm) (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny | Official Trailer – YouTube)
