Indiana Jones and The Case of the Clueless Corporate CEO
About a third of the way into Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny, released this past weekend, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character takes a cheap shot at capitalism.
Waller Bridge suggests in the movie that capitalism is corrupt. She says such a system enables people to loot and pilfer from one another.
No, capitalism is not corrupt.
Capitalism is virtuous and when you practice it you either sink or swim according to your work ethic, your wits and your morals. Businessmen and women who develop reputations for dishonesty or incompetence don’t stay in business very long.
The fifth Indiana Jones film seriously underperformed at the box office. That’s capitalism. And capitalism may soon change the ways we see new movies. Hollywood better get wise to it.
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Make no mistake, Dial of Destiny is not a bad film. The first and third acts are terrific entertainment. That second act — roughly half the movie — is full of boring chase scenes and tedious exposition. The second act hurts the movie and that’s why critics savaged it.
People don’t want to pay to see 80-year-old Harrison Ford as an emotionally broken and depressed character.
Bud Light executives are learning the hard way that members of their key demographic — rednecks — don’t want a mentally ill cross-dresser representing their product and, by extension, a typical Bud Light customer. That’s why sales went into freefall.
That’s capitalism.
Studio executives at Disney forgot that members of Indiana Jones’ core demographic audience — middle-aged men — don’t care to see feminist Waller-Bridge in…well…anything.
In one recent Star Wars film, her character (an android) pontificated about how weak and stupid men are. If that isn’t wokeness then I don’t know what is. She co-wrote No Time to Die, which was the first James Bond movie where the Bond character literally died on-screen.
And now she’s rescuing a helpless Indiana Jones from Nazis and punching him in the face when his actions displease her.
Did Waller-Bridge deliver a heavy female demographic for this new film? Given the box office results, evidently not.
That’s capitalism.
Don’t forget this film’s unbelievably stupid marketing strategy.
Who was the genius at Disney who thought it wise to screen this movie for critics a month in advance of its actual release date? Critics had four weeks to savage this film. Bad word-of-mouth ultimately killed all the momentum it had going for it with audiences. That marketer should lose his or her job first thing Monday. He or she made almost the worst corporate decision since the guy who thought up New Coke in 1985.
That’s capitalism.
Don’t forget the pernicious effects of inflation. If a family of four goes to see this movie, then that’s nearly $70 in tickets plus $30 in concessions. Is $100 worth two hours of sub-par entertainment?
Grocery prices and cost of other life necessities have skyrocketed. People have far less money to spend on luxuries. If members of the Hollywood community want to make more profit off their movies, then perhaps they should stop working so hard to elect people who run up the national debt and trigger inflation?
When money is tight people must choose between paying for necessities versus paying for luxuries. That’s not so much capitalism as much as it is common sense. If you want to succeed in capitalism, then you exercise common sense and you must adjust during hard times.
Again, in capitalism you either profit or you lose what you invest. Go woke, go broke is still true.
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Hollywood executives keep having a lackluster summer. That’s not because they’re lazy. That’s because they’re stupid.
COVID-19 forced people to realize that they can watch movies in Ultra-High Definition on their 70 inch flatscreens at home for far less cost. They only must wait a month or two to see the newest theatrical releases at home. Sometimes, it’s less time than that.
Hollywood needs to find a more cost-efficient method to produce and distribute movies. Perhaps some people in the industry need to take a pay cut? Perhaps writers and directors need to put out a better product? In the movie industry, this is sink or swim time.
Rather than use their movies to insult capitalism, perhaps Hollywood should get wise to it and respect it.
Because capitalism is what ultimately controls their fates.
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