4) The Christening Of Micky Mouse
When Disney bought out Lucasfilm in 2012, there was a lot of concern about what the future of the Star Wars franchise would look like. Many were afraid that the seriousness and the badassery of the original series would be lost in Disney’s attempt to attract an even younger audience. Fortunately, all of that speculation was put to rest when The Force Awakens was released in 2015 and Rouge One in 2016.
But this is Disney’s first attempt at Indiana Jones. While the company may have proven themselves capable of handling Star Wars, Indy’s fate is still very much up in the air. Though both were made by George Lucas, there’s no question that they are two very different types of movies that need to be handled very differently.
Jones has grit: he mercilessly shoots down showboat swordsmen and he smiles as one of his challengers encounters an airplane blade. And audiences watched in awe as three men met their gruesome deaths from the Ark of the Covenant: we saw one face melt, and another one shrink, and the last one explode in a burst of brain matter and assorted plasma.
Will Disney be ok showing this level of viciousness? The closest they’ve come to that point was in Pirates of the Caribbean, but few would suggest that the ferocity in The Curse of the Black Pearl came anywhere near Raiders. The same can be said about the other Indiana Jones movies, and it’s simple to deduct that this kind of wacky, cartoony violence is what we expect from them.
Though I like to think they’ll do a great job with Spielberg at the helm, I cannot be certain. Disney definitely has the right pieces to make this happen, but as terrible as it may sound, they will make a mistake sooner or later, and the only thing we can hope for is that it won’t be on an Indiana Jones movie.