In a quote that will age like wine, Indiana Jones 5 producer promises “everything everybody wants”

We see no danger in telling movie fans that a legacy sequel will give them everything they want

In a quote that will age like wine, Indiana Jones 5 producer promises “everything everybody wants”
Harrison Ford, Frank Marshall, James Mangold Photo: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney

Hoo boy, longtime Indiana Jones series producer Frank Marshall has (probably) stepped in it this time (or maybe not). He’s really going to (potentially) look like a fool while we all laugh (or smile and give him the kudos he deserves for being so wise). The reason for our skepticism (which we can go back in and delete if we are the ones who are proven wrong) is that Marshall recently spoke with the Motion Picture Academy’s A.frame site and promised that Indiana Jones 5—the long-dreaded/awaited sequel to Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull—is going to have a “great story” and that it’s going to be “everything… that everybody wants out of an Indiana Jones movie.”

That’s enormously big talk for this franchise, seeing as how the last movie was stupid and dumb, and it seems like he’s just asking for people to eventually point out how wrong he will inevitably be—to say nothing of the fact that fans of old franchises like Indiana Jones are impossible to please. Frank Marshall has been married to Kathleen Kennedy for 40 years (congratulations!), she must have mentioned to him what Star Wars fans are like, right? Indiana Jones fans have been sitting with the fact that they got burned by a legacy sequel for a decade longer than Star Wars fans, and not only is this guy saying that the next movie will give them “everything” they want, but “everything that everybody wants.”

We’re not saying that won’t happen, as we barely know anything about Indiana Jones 5 and it could very well end up being the best movie in the series (kind of like how The Last Jedi is the best movie in that series), but to confidently hype it up that much is just staggeringly bold. We know it will be the first entry in the series not directed by Steven Spielberg (James Mangold is trading in the claws for a whip), that Harrison Ford will be joined by series newcomers Antonio Banderas, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and Mads Mikkelsen (who also has good things to say about the project), and that it will be in theaters next June.

Now we also know that it will be a movie that gives everyone everything they want, as Herculean as that task sounds. Or, if that’s not true, we’ll know that Frank Marshall is an accomplished producer who knows that it’s his job to dramatically hype up high-profile projects, even if it means doing a little overselling.

 
Join the discussion...