Every actor has a magnum opus accompanied by a few skeletons here and there in their proverbial closet of filmography. For Shia LaBeouf, it was one of the Indiana Jones outings that landed at the feet of moviegoers with a dull thud at the time of release.
LaBeouf – overcome with a dangerous concoction of frustration and disappointment – made the grave mistake of pillorying the director after the catastrophe of the big-budget feature.
And it just so happened that the director in question was none other than, industry heavyweight & 3-time Oscar winner, Steven Spielberg. Uh-oh.
When Shia LaBeouf Criticized Steven Spielberg
Indiana Jones is perhaps one of the most fabled adventure-action franchises and a Harrison Ford specialty. But even the best players have a rough game once in a while, and that’s precisely what went down with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
While the fourth installment in the Lucasfilm-owned series fared shockingly well at the box office – raking in some $786 million across the globe – it failed to impress critics and audiences with that same zeal (via Box Office Mojo). Just look at its lamentable audience score on Rotten Tomatoes – a scanty 53%.
Speaking to Los Angeles Times about the same, Shia LaBeouf, who starred opposite Ford in the film, didn’t mince words while holding himself and director Steven Spielberg responsible for the movie’s critical failure.
I’ll probably get a call. But he needs to hear this. I love him. I love Steven. I have a relationship with Steven that supersedes our business work […] He’s done so much great work that there’s no need for him to feel vulnerable about one film. But when you drop the ball you drop the ball.
Little did the Transformers star know though, that his words wouldn’t bode well for him in the future.
Cue Instant Regret
Well, not that instant since it took him two years to realize what he’d done, but you get the point.
After much controversy and his 82-year-old co-star branding him an imbecile for bad-mouthing his own movie, LaBeouf, 38, told The Hollywood Reporter that he “deeply regret[ted]” his comments about Indy 4 which also put a dent in his relationship with Spielberg.
He [Spielberg] told me there’s a time to be a human being and have an opinion, and there’s a time to sell cars. It brought me freedom, but it also killed my spirits because this was a dude I looked up to like a sensei.
Meanwhile, Ford gave an earful to the Fury star, remarking how LaBeouf was yet to learn to handle such “a situation which is very unique and difficult.” “I think I told him he was a f–king idiot,” the Blade Runner star remarked in an interview with Today.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull can be rented on Apple TV+.
