10 Actors Who Blamed Themselves For Films Failing
2. Shia LaBeouf - Indiana Jones & The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull
Though the fourth Indiana Jones film, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, was broadly well-received by critics and made an absolute killing at the box office to the tune of $790.7 million, to most die-hard Indy fans the film was an abject failure.
Between its wonky VFX, overly silly set-pieces, the misguided inclusion of Shia LaBeouf as Indy's (Harrison Ford) son Mutt, a plot involving actual aliens and that fridge scene, it just felt like a thin sketch of an Indiana Jones film, and proof that the series should've ended at three.
At the 2010 Cannes Film Festival a few years after its release, LaBeouf opened up about his own negative conception of the film, where he unequivocally blamed himself for screwing the movie up:
"I feel like I dropped the ball on the legacy that people loved and cherished. You get to monkey-swinging and things like that and you can blame it on the writer and you can blame it on Steven [Spielberg]. But the actor's job is to make it come alive and make it work, and I couldn't do it. So that's my fault. Simple."
LaBeouf further claimed that Ford wasn't happy with the film either, leading to Ford calling him a "f**king idiot." LaBeouf later expressed regret about his uncommon honesty, though, noting that it soured his working relationship with Spielberg:
"He 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."
LaBeouf's Mutt may be one of the worst parts of Indiana Jones 4, but let's be honest, the script is always king, and few actors could've done a whole lot better with that material.