This weekend, one of cinema's most legendary heroes had his swan song. It was 42 years ago that the world was introduced to Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones in Steven Spielberg's Raiders Of The Lost Ark, and James Mangold's Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny has now provided closure for the aging adventurer. The blockbuster, the fifth feature in the series, has been one of the most hyped of 2023, and regardless of anything else, it has a significant place in pop culture – though the modest results at the box office admittedly don't instantly paint that picture.
Check out the full Top 10 from this past weekend below, and join me after for analysis.
Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny Lays Claim To Just The Ninth Biggest Opening Weekend Of 2023 So Far
When Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull hit theaters in the summer of 2008, it was the subject of significant fanfare – a result of it being the first blockbuster from the franchise in nearly 20 years. That hype led to a $100 million opening... but 15 years later, its sequel hasn't managed to generate that kind of juice.
Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny earned a mild response from critics, it sports a modest "B+" grade from CinemaScore surveys, and it made a tepid $60 million during its first three days in release on the big screen. That total is enough to make it just the ninth biggest opening weekend of 2023 thus far – sitting behind other recent summer releases including Steven Caple Jr.'s Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts ($61 million), Louis Leterrier's Fast X ($67 million) and Rob Marshall's The Little Mermaid ($95.6 million). It can be said that the film's opening weekend numbers are the second best in the full history of the franchise, but one has to recognize that doesn't account for inflation.
When looking at the film's opening weekend performance from a global perspective, the picture doesn't get much rosier. In addition to the $60 million brought in by Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny in both the United States and Canada, the movie only made $70 million from foreign markets, bringing its international total to just $130 million thus far. It's going to need to make a lot more money to ultimately be seen as profitable, and that's going to be a significant challenge when the month of July offers box office competition that includes Greta Gerwig's Barbie, Christopher McQuarrie's Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 and Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer.
From a financials perspective, Disney and Lucasfilm can't be happy about the way that things have started for Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny – a film based on one of the world's most popular intellectual properties – but there is a positive way to look at things from a broader pop culture perspective. After all, the movie's job was to bring an end to the big screen story of its titular hero (Harrison Ford having essentially said that Indiana Jones dies with him), and it does that. There's no hoped-for sequel that box office success will permit, and failure isn't exactly going to stop the production of general action/adventure movies in the future.
In those respects and from the fan perspective, the stakes for the film are pretty low; it primarily exists as one last opportunity for fans to see the legendary hero on a new ride. It may end up being labeled as flop, but at the very least it shouldn't generate the kind of extreme industry panic that we've seen recently around superhero blockbusters like Andy Muschietti's The Flash.
Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken Doesn't Get Much Attention, But Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse Continues To Crush
Following last weekend's animation domination at the box office – which saw Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse and Elemental finish in first and second place, respectively – the positive trend for the medium didn't exactly continue with this weekend's new wide release: Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken. According to The Numbers, the new film only managed to make $5.2 million in its first three days, resulting in a sixth place start. But while that release is failing to garner much attention, its fellow animated blockbusters are still holding on in the Top 5, both experiencing weekend-to-weekend drops of 39 percent.
Sitting behind Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny, Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse added another $11.5 million to its domestic total. To date, the movie has made $339.9 million domestically and $607.3 million globally. That's enough to make it the fifth biggest 2023 release worldwide in 2023, and it will need to make $66.3 million more to move up the rankings past director Zhang Yimou's Full River Red from China.
Elemental, which had a slow start at the box office last month, finished in third place by adding $11.3 million to its total from the United States and Canada. The feature has now made $88.8 million domestically and $186.8 million internationally. It will only need to make $32 million more globally to outgross Lightyear from last summer. The film still isn't quite performing up to the pre-pandemic standards of Pixar, but it may end up doing well quietly coasting in the middle/back half of the Top 10 through July.
How will things change at the box office this Friday, which will see the release of Patrick Wilson's horror sequel Insidious: The Red Door and Adele Lim's new comedy Joy Ride? Be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend next Sunday to see how the Top 10 is shaken up, and check out our 2023 Movie Release Calendar to discover all of the movies set to come out in the months ahead.
