Rohan Naahar is a News Writer for Collider. From Francois Ozon to David Fincher, he’ll watch anything once.
He has covered everything from Marvel to the Oscars, and Marvel at the Oscars. He also writes obsessively about the box office, charting the many hits and misses that are released weekly, and how their commercial performance shapes public perception. In his time at Collider, he has also helped drive diversity by writing stories about the multiple Indian film industries, with a goal of introducing audiences to a whole new world of cinema.
The last couple of months have illustrated that franchise fatigue cannot be dismissed as a one-off occurrence. Star Wars fans made it clear that they weren’t interested in going to theaters to see the latest adventure featuring characters they’re used to watching at home. The Mandalorian and Grogu, a spin-off to the hit Disney+ series The Mandalorian, now holds the unenviable distinction of being the lowest-grossing Star Wars movie of the Disney era. More recently, the DC Universe experienced its first major blow with its second installment, Supergirl, emerging dead on arrival at the box office. It’s now poised to finish its run as one of the worst-performing movies of its size. This streak seems to be continuing this week, with another Disney underperformer.
We’re talking, of course, about the live-action Moana remake. While the movie received a healthy A- grade from opening day audiences, critical reviews have been dismal so far. It’s also becoming clear that even though audiences still love the character and the world, there was little appetite for a live-action remake, especially one that arrives only a decade after the beloved animated original and less than two years after its sequel. This combination of events hasn’t worked in the favor of Dwayne Johnson, who would have been counting on the Moana remake to get him back to winning ways after a string of high-profile box-office underperformers.
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
Johnson is coming off his ill-fated foray into the DC Extended Universe, Black Adam, his would-be Oscar bid with The Smashing Machine, and the mega-budget quasi-streaming titles Jungle Cruise and Red One. The Moana remake was directed by the relatively untested (at this scale) Thomas Kail, with newcomer Catherine Laga’aia playing the titular character. The movie currently holds a 34% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, “The sea calls to no one in this underwhelming new version of Moana, an endeavor that solidifies its animated predecessor as the superior adventure.” Produced on a reported budget of $250 million, Moana debuted with just a little more than $15 million on opening day, including the $4.5 million that it made in Thursday previews. The movie is currently eyeing an opening weekend haul in the low $40 million range, which would put it in the same category as Disney’s disastrous Snow White remake. This is a far cry from the heyday of Disney remakes, during which titles such as Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin grossed more than $1 billion worldwide. Johnson now has Jumanji: Open World to look forward to later this year. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
