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John Rhys-Davies has been a part of Indiana Jones’s journey from the beginning. Years before he blew the world away by playing Gimli in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, Rhys-Davies appeared as Indy’s friend Sallah in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Rhys-Davies would reprise the role in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and the 2023 revival Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. However, Sallah was less than thrilled with the 2023 film, and he wasn’t surprised when the audience rejected it.

“It’s very interesting when you look at the scenes and you look at a script, and you say, ‘I don’t get how this is going to work. Yes, there are going to be fans of all the activity, the chases, and all that,’” Rhys-Davies says during a panel at Tampa Bay Comic Convention.

“You’re trying to make a nostalgia film and you’ve filled it with people who are his old friends and companions whom you’ve never met. It doesn’t work and the film still has not made its money back. And it seems to me that sometimes studios are so confused. They’re so ignorant of what the audience wants. It’s just a line. Somehow the money people have taken over the real creative control. And it really is just about numbers, and if we put that star together and put $300 million into it, it’s bound to be a hit, like the other ones before it.”

“That isn’t true. We’re basically suckers for a great story. That’s what we want. We want our heart tugged when we see the older Indy back and surrounded by some of his old friends who are still there. I mean, Karen [Allen] comes in and steals the picture at the end. There should have been more.”

Rhys-Davies closed this train of thought with an impassioned speech about what he saw as one of the film’s biggest sins. “And by God, what a waste of [Antonio] Banderas, the most exciting actor of this generation for God’s sake. I would be suing them if I was him. What a waste.”

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