Video Games Are the Future for Dead Franchises Like Indiana Jones

ign.com:

When Steven Spielberg and George Lucas first brought Indiana Jones to the screen with Raiders of The Lost Ark in 1981, they would scarcely have believed the cultural impact their character and franchise would have over the next 40-plus years. Since Harrison Ford initially hung up his fedora following 1989’s The Last Crusade, we’ve had a string of imitators that have met varying degrees of success. Fascinatingly, Jones’ influence can most keenly be felt not in movies but in video games, with the most obvious examples being the Tomb Raider and Uncharted games. Of course, both of these franchises have also been translated into Hollywood blockbusters, and both experienced middling success – perhaps a sign that Indy’s signature style of adventure has a more promising future in the realm of video games than it does on the silver screen.

But it isn’t just Lara Croft and Nathan Drake who have struggled at the cinema. The Last Crusade was not the ride off into the sunset for Dr. Jones that its story promised, and close to 20 years later Harrison Ford made a much-anticipated return with The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull. A 1950s-set Cold War adventure that switched the Nazis out for the Soviet Union, it attempted to explore the interesting ground of an older Indy who was still graverobbing and globetrotting in his 60s. But it wasn’t enough: questionable CGI and an overreliance on old man jokes aside, the choice to eschew the mystical and mythological storylines of the first three films for a sci-fi approach felt out of place for both the character and franchise. As a result, The Crystal Skull was so poorly received by fans that it seemingly buried the Indiana Jones franchise.

15 years and a Disney buyout of Lucasfilm later, Indy was exhumed for another crack at the whip. Despite featuring a typically committed performance from Harrison Ford, The Dial of Destiny stretched audience disbelief with an Indy pushing 80 forced to fight his way through scrapes and a lacklustre