It is thought that the Antikythera mechanism, rebranded the “dial of destiny” in the latest Indiana Jones movie, was a device invented by the ancient Greeks to predict eclipses and monitor the movement of the sun. Whether its prescience can be applied to box office takings isn’t known: some estimates date the contraption to as early as 200BC, when there was a dismaying lack of interest in domestic grosses and opening weekends. But, if it could, it might have revealed that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was heading for a full-on Temple of Doom scenario. If you want to imagine what the studio executives looked like when they received word of the dismal grosses for their $300m (£235m) movie, cast your mind back to the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark: eyes popping, faces melting, that sort of thing.
“Tentpole” releases, as summer blockbusters are known, are no longer the guaranteed behemoths they were in the pre-Covid era: the marquee is sagging, the tentpole in danger of snapping. Last month, the DC superhero adventure The Flash took a catastrophic dive into the red, and is now on course to become one of the biggest flops in Warner Bros’ history. Expectations were high for the movie, though maybe there should have been a shade more scepticism when James Gunn, co-CEO of DC Studios, announced that it was one of the best superhero movies he’d seen. As scoops go, “Executive Claims His Company’s Product ‘Better Than Everyone Else’s’” lacks a certain rigour, not to mention novelty value.
It transpired that Gunn was firing blanks. Reviews ranged from lukewarm to frosty, while audiences sprinted at Flash-like speeds in the opposite direction from any cinema showing the movie. Less than a month after its release, it is already a Flash in the pan. And there’s little hope that either that movie or Dial of Destiny will make up lost ground in the summer holidays, what with the triple-threat of Barbie, Oppenheimer and a new Mission: Impossible adventure waiting in the wings.
What could have gone so disastrously wrong for these apparently safe bets? In the case of Dial of Destiny, it is almost as if depending on the sustained affection of an older, nostalgic and largely male audience, rather than including anything that could entice a younger, diverse demographic, has proved a flawed strategy.
But wait – doesn’t the Phoebe Waller-Bridge factor count for anything? She appears as Indy’s goddaughter, though it’s worth remembering that, as a film performer, she doesn’t have the clout to match her TV presence, or cultural standing. This will be a hard lesson for some of us to learn, but the world isn’t made of Fleabag fans; importing into an Indiana Jones picture a scaled-down version of her usual shtick feels incongruous. Waller-Bridge has worked splendidly as magic dust, sprinkled on a Bond film or a Star Wars prequel, but there’s no evidence in movies that she can be a magic wand and make miracles happen.
Other elements that might have been offputting to audiences include the de-ageing technology that shaves a few decades, and several layers of human emotion, from Harrison Ford’s face. And look who he’s fighting this time: Nazis. Don’t we see enough of those on Twitter?
The reasons for the crash of The Flash are less mysterious. You might blame the curse of the multiverse, which makes the exploits of different versions of the film’s hero seem less compelling than they would have been before this scenario started dominating everything everywhere all at once. Perhaps there is a reality in which the allure of the multiverse is not waning – but this isn’t it.
A double helping of Batmen in The Flash was also predicted to be a winner. Surely no one could resist seeing both Michael Keaton, who played the role twice more than 30 years ago, and Ben Affleck, the first actor in the history of the part to look more expressive with his mask on than off. The rule with this superhero, though, seems to be that he only works now in a rain-swept gothic context. That explains why The Batman was a $770m hit last year while the character’s lighthearted appearance in The Flash (riding the coat-tails of the Spider-Men get-together in No Way Home) was as appetising as a Wuhan bat-wrap.
Nothing was more damaging to The Flash, though, than the assorted allegations regarding off-screen behaviour by its star Ezra Miller, which has made the movie synonymous with scandal. Audiences looking to forget their cares at the multiplex don’t want to do the heavy lifting of seeing past an actor’s dubious extracurricular actions any more than they want to pick broken glass out of their popcorn. You don’t need a dial of destiny to tell you that.
