Box office predictions
I am curious to hear how you guys think the next movie will do in the box office.
To be honest, while I don't see it flopping, I see it underperforming. I will explain why:
1) There is no demand for this film to be made. KOTCS, for whatever reason, was something the fans and general public wanted for almost 20 years. There was hype and demand for that film. Lesser adventure series like The Mummy and Lara Croft showed there was demand for the genre, and that people missed the man in the the hat.
After KOTCS, I do not believe many in the mainstream care anymore. I think KOTCS burned a lot of bridges and hurt the franchise. Ford's age now makes a fifth film look sort of like a joke.
2) There has been no attempt to keep the franchise on people's minds since KOTCS. Between LC and KOTCS you had a line of great books, video games, the TV series, comics and other things, all of which helped people not to forget about Indy. The universe of Indy since KOTCS has been a barren desert. It's not on people's minds.
3) The novelty of seeing Ford in the hat again has worn off. There was a sort of novelty to seeing Indy play Ford a last time as an older man. How many curtain calls can you give one guy before it becomes embarrassing? LC was supposed to be the last and its ending in the eyes of some can't be topped anyway. There's no "oh wow, Harrison Ford's coming back as Indy" wonder factor. KOTCS helped dampen the nostalgia for that, too.
4) People just really aren't as big into period movies anymore. And ultimately that's what Indy is in part. The character is limited by concept to a window of time - the early to mid 20th century roughly. That hurts the character too.
I think ultimately what we will see with this next film is diminished returns similar to the Terminator franchise. You went from II which was the biggest movie of 1991 to 3 which did okayish...Four which did eh...and then the last one which did abysmally. I think given how badly KOTCS damaged the franchise, and how dead the franchise has been since, you'll not see a smashing hit at the box office. A modest hit. But not a billion dollar baby.
It doesn't have the mainstream, universal appeal of something like Star Wars, or a massive expanded universe supporting it and keeping it on people's minds. Star Wars was dead until the EU novels brought it back to life in the early '90s.
It doesn't have a strong, built in fanbase the way Marvel movies do. There are millions of people who will go to see a Marvel or even a DC movie right out of the gate simply because it's a Marvel movie. Indy doesn't have that supporting it.
It doesn't have a very universal concept. Take the Jurassic Park/Jurassic World franchise. There's a universal, transcendant concept that have helped keep that series from death: Dinosaurs. People love dinosaurs. People love seeing them on screen. Indy doesn't have anything akin to that.
It doesn't have the multigenerational appeal of James Bond. James Bond is something our grandfathers, fathers, older brothers, and ourselves all enjoyed. The longest gap between films was 6 years. What helped keep that series fresh was switching out actors every few years, because each new actor brought a fresh approach and feel to the character. Indy has relied on Ford for almost 40 years on the big screen. That would be the same thing if Connery had played James Bond until 2000.
It doesn't have a truly die hard fanbase that will see it no matter what the same way Star Trek did and does. There's this forum, yes, but I don't think the Indiana Jones fanbase is as fervent or as passionate as the Star Trek fanbase is or was.
So I can't, with all of these factors at play, see this film doing that great at the BO.
What about the rest of you?