I can just picture the process for the decision behind getting the latest and final installment of the Indiana Jones series into this year’s Cannes film festival. On Cannes end, they’re sticking it in there along with other populist American blockbusters of recent years like last year’s Top Gun: Maverick and 2018’s Oceans 8. Sticking one or two movies that the general public recognize from just the name is a way for the festival to remain relevant for mass audiences. A way for them to prove to themselves and to show the world in their heavily publicized lineup over the course of the festival that they’re a part of the conversation of films that most people are familiar with. I even get the tinge that when they choose such movies, it is a way for Cannes to humble themselves amongst their plethora of high-brow cinema from across the world. However, these films would never be the type to make it into the main competition because they don’t hold the prestige in the eyes of the festival to be held on the same level and integrity that a majority of their other films get.
On Disney and Hollywood’s end, a similar sensibility of gatekeeping their films occurs in the ways that want to control the conversation surrounding an upcoming film of theirs. In some cases with recent Marvel and Star Wars films, they prevent reviews from coming out until twenty four hours before the film comes out in theaters. But the choice to include it at a prestigious European film festival like Cannes is a good way to generate buzz and continue to gatekeep it at the same time. The official world premiere for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was one of this year’s biggest events at Cannes, and the festival held only one other screening for it the morning after at 8:30. Other films in competition get at least four or five other screenings, giving the 200,000+ visitors of the festival many opportunities to see these films. Tickets for the Indiana Jones screenings were highly coveted with people waiting on standby lines for an entire day to get into them. I was miraculously able to get a ticket from a friend who drunkenly told me at 2 am that she would not be able to make her screening the next morning. The festival premiered the film over a month before it would release worldwide, giving it ample time for publicized reactions and reviews to give people the excitement to see the movie when it ultimately comes out. It’s a marketing tactic, as any choice of Disney’s would be, despite how much the festival claims to prioritize the artistic sensibilities of the film industry.
However, in this case, Disney’s marketing strategy has fallen on its face with unanimously poor reviews instantly spreading as soon as the film premiered. Word spread like wildfire of the disappointment and dull qualities of the highly anticipated film, and the limited, gatekept consensus of the audiences of Cannes will remain the only people spreading the negative word of the film until it eventually comes out. But I didn’t have to read any reviews to assess this reaction towards this movie as I could feel it instantly within the theater as soon as the opening logos finished playing.
I’ve been excited for it because I was eager to see the newest film in a series that has meant so much to me as I was growing up, and I’ve been a longtime fan of director James Mangold, who is replacing Steven Spielberg from the four previous ones. His addition felt natural as he has proven himself to be a master of action legibility with his previous two films, Logan and Ford v Ferrari. The promotional material for the film made it look refreshing compared to CG-infested contemporary action films that are so often negatively compared to when people discuss what they liked so much about the previous four. Practical effects gave the film a grounded look in its trailers, and there were talks circling around Spielberg’s approval of the results. What could go wrong?
The screening was in Cannes’ biggest theater: the Lumiere, which seats over 2000, and every last one of the seats was filled. There was a bubbling excitement as people applauded for the Lucasfilm logo that instantaneously died during the film’s opening sequence of painfully unfunny banter from Jones and an indescribable mush of action set-pieces in a gloomy, digitally recreated Nazi train. For the rest of the runtime, not a single laugh or gasp or any sort of reaction was audible from the audience that could make up a small town. I don’t particularly fault Harrison Ford, but the charisma that was once brought to the character is entirely absent, making Indiana Jones upsettingly unrecognizable. His lines never stick or zing, and his new sidekick, Helena Shaw, played by trendy comedienne Phoebe Waller-Bridge, matches his lack of energy by not landing a single one of her bits and banter. The sharpness of editing that has become synonymous with Indiana Jones and its pulpy nature is traded in for garbled storytelling that made me clock out of the plot about thirty minutes into the film.
It is ultimately the film’s over-reliance on nauseating digital effects that cements it as one of the worst major franchise films to come out in recent memory. Such a comment is far from a fresh take on the state of modern blockbusters, but the entire second half became practically unintelligible with its characters absconding laws of physics and flying around in murky CGI goop that simply left me disinterested in hoping for their survival on their adventures. Even writing the word “adventures” throws me off as I search deep in my memory for any part that lived up to the expectations of the word. Amongst the thirteen films I have seen at Cannes so far, Indiana Jones stands far and wide as the worst. I was gravely disappointed by its inability to reach its great potential, but I am happy that its unanimous negative reviews will sit for a month to influence and sway audiences to maybe skip this one when it comes out.