Disney Needs To Stop Pushing the 'Next Generation'

What do Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Pirates of the Caribbean all have in common? They’re all Disney franchises, they all rake in billions – and they’re all obsessed with continuing their legacy by introducing the “next generation.”

While Disney is reportedly now considering rebooting Indiana Jones, it seemed to be taking a different track with the release of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny in 2023. With the film’s release, Disney introduced a potential replacement for Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones.

On the cusp of retirement and in the middle of a divorce with Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), the film sees the hero tugged into one last adventure by his goddaughter Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), who’s determined to steal the mysterious Dial of Destiny. There’s just one issue: the Nazis want it too.

It followed the usual blueprint of any Indiana Jones movie. As usual, Ford was stellar, proving that he’s as ready to kick Nazi butt in 2023 as he was in 1981. The key difference is that it was very much framed as a goodbye. Jones was older – as was Ford – and there’s only so much time one can logically keep going hand-to-hand with Nazis.

With Shaw conveniently placed as a character with similar interests and abilities, the film reads just as much as a farewell to Ford as it does a hello to Waller-Bridge as the potential future of the franchise.

Of course, this wasn’t the first time Indiana Jones tried to hand over the whip. The last installment, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) attempted something similar with Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf), Jones’ newly discovered son.

If you’ve seen Dial of Destiny, you know that Mutt was booted from the franchise after being killed offscreen. That came as no surprise, considering that fan reactions to LaBeouf as a potential future lead were far from positive in 2008.

That doesn’t seem to have put Disney off trying to introduce the next generation of Indiana Jones for a second time – even if critics and audiences seemed just as fond of Shaw as they were of Williams (by which we mean, indifferent at best).

Indiana Jones isn’t the only franchise to pursue this idea. When the Star Wars sequels kicked off with The Force Awakens (2015), it set up a whole new era of heroes and villains to carry the franchise forward for the younger audience.

Pirates of the Caribbean tried something similar with Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017) with the introduction of Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites) as the son of the franchise’s OG icons, Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley).

The thing is that none of these new eras have gone down well. While the Star Wars sequels have their fans (this writer included), plenty of fans didn’t warm to Rey (Daisy Ridley), Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), or Finn (John Boyega) as well as hoped.

The same is true of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, where Henry failed to make even a fraction of a cultural impression as his fictional parent predecessors did in 2003. Basically, Disney’s next-generation dream that keeps the billions rolling in for decades rarely, if ever, works.

Yes, innovation is the key to keeping a franchise alive. But at the same time, there’s only so far you can stray from a franchise’s origins before it becomes something new entirely, or worse, starts to feel like a forced rehash of the adventures that came before. Sometimes, it’s okay to say goodbye – or simply pursue a new idea. A crazy concept in the era of Disney’s live-action remakes, sure, but we can dream.

Do you like it when films introduce a new generation?