Actor Harrison Ford issued a two-word response to his recent project, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which underperformed expectations at the box office in 2023.
“S*** happens,” the 82-year-old action star recently told WSJ. Magazine of the Disney film’s lackluster box office performance. “I was really the one who felt there was another story to tell. When [Indy] had suffered the consequences of the life that he had to live, I wanted one more chance to pick him up and shake the dust off his ass and stick him out there, bereft of some of his vigor, to see what happened.”
“I’m still happy I made that movie,” Ford added.
“Dial of Destiny” was the fifth film in the popular “Indiana Jones” franchise, which began in 1981 with “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” (2008) is the highest-grossing title in the franchise, with gross domestic sales totaling $317 million and worldwide sales of more than $786 million.
The latest title brought in just under $160 million domestically, resulting in a net loss of $143 million, per Deadline.
Bad reviews didn’t help “Dial of Destiny” sell tickets. A Rolling Stone review said, “[Y]ou either die an intellectual-property hero trapped in amber, or you live long enough to see yourself riding a fake horse against a green-screened subway background when most of your peers have slowed down.”
“[O]ne can feel the four credited screenwriters grasping at inspiration and coming up short. What they did manage to make would be perfectly fine as a standalone adventure film starring some other character, but it’s not worthy of the whip,” Vanity Fair critic Richard Lawson wrote.
Many moviegoers also questioned how realistic it was to have Ford still playing an action star at the age of 80. The actor famously said no one else should take on the role after he stops playing it. “This is the final film in the series, and this is the last time I’ll play the character,” Ford told Total Film Magazine in April 2023. “I anticipate that it will be the last time that he appears in a film.”
Ford recently returned for Season 2 of the Apple TV+ series “Shrinking.” The actor will make his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut as Thaddeus Ross in “Captain America: Brave New World,” which hits theaters on February 14.
