Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and all the images you see in this review are owned by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Directed by James Mangold
I’ve actually gone back and rewatched the Indiana Jones trilogy recently, and for the most part, they still hold up pretty well. Not so much Temple of Doom, but even that one has some charm to it and the big action packed finale is a sight to behold. There’s just something unique about them that has kept the series relevant after all these years and sadly could not be recaptured with the fourth movie which at the time felt a bookend for the series. Now we’re back with one more adventure starring the even more aged Indiana Jones and without Spielberg or Lucas behind the camera. Does this change in direction bode well for Indy’s final adventure, or will this just feel hollow and cheap without the original creators who couldn’t even make it work again back in 2008? Let’s find out!!
The year is 1969 and Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is now just crotchety old Dr. Jones teaching college classes that no one cares about when he’s not sleeping in his old man armchair. Needless to say that the glory days have long been over with a few personal tragedies peppered throughout for good measure, but all of that is about to change as the daughter of an old friend shows up and asks him about an ancient artifact. Her name is Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) and she’s looking for a mysterious dial that her father was obsessed with and that Indy took off a Nazi researcher back during the war. Said researcher, Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), is also after the dial which holds some mysterious power and when he sends his goons to take the piece of it that is at the university, Indy finds himself whisked away on one last adventure to settle an old score, solve a mystery from his past, and save the day once again! Can Dr. Jones summon the courage and dust off the cobwebs to become Indy once again? Why did Helena show up after all this time, and what are her plans for the Dial once they find all the pieces? Seriously, is he wearing a fedora in 1969? That’s somehow more disconcerting than the guy running around with a bullwhip.
There’s been a lot of talk about the various forms of “genre fatigue” in recent years as studios consolidate their IP and theaters are ceding more ground to event blockbusters over every other type of movie. Superhero films, legacy sequels, all of these remakes and reboots, it can certainly feel like we’re digging so deeply into our cultural past that we no longer have a real future to look forward to. Indiana Jones getting one last movie should feel like the pinnacle of this mindset as there are few cows as sacred to Gen X-ers as Indy, and that’s not even mentioning that this is the second time they’ve brought him back for a swansong adventure. However, despite all these hurdles, the movie ends up working and I was quite surprised with how much I enjoyed my time with it. It doesn’t stretch itself too far or take too many chances, but it still captures the spirit of the original trilogy while being just modern enough to not feel as over-the-hill as Indy. You certainly get the classic Indiana Jones action and archaeological wonder throughout, particularly an opening sequence that walks the line between sincere fan service and lighthearted self-parody, but by laying its cards on the table so early by showing you exactly what you want to see, it sets us up for an adventure the ends up being more than that. Mangold turned out to be a great pick for this and not just because he directed Logan which shares more than a few notable similarities with this. Indy’s world-weariness is well portrayed by Ford who genuinely looks old and tired throughout, but there’s always that spark of his true self just under the surface as the fire still rages in him despite the dark turns his life has taken and his age catching up to him. This is definitely territory that Mangold has covered in his previous films and his modern sensibilities as a filmmaker go a long way to making this feel like a contemporary blockbuster in all the right ways which was one of the failings of Crystal Skull as too much of it felt like a relic of a bygone age with some of Lucas’s worst tendencies rearing their ugly head. Here, they’ve managed to maintain the look and feel of classic Indiana Jones while incorporating the realities of modern filmmaking and confronting the challenges of making this specific movie. The action set pieces are fun and they cleverly work around Indy’s age by putting a strong emphasis on chase sequences which keeps the action kinetic and tense without requiring Ford to overexert himself. The moments where he does have a physical action beat end up being all the more impactful and enjoyable because of it, and his mind is as sharp as ever which means he can still find ways to outthink his opponents when he can’t outfight them. Phoebe Waller-Bridge also takes a lot of the weight off Ford’s shoulders with a fantastic turn here and I’m honestly not sure what people are complaining about with her character. Perhaps it has to do with her prominence in the movie which is a sizable change from Indy’s previous sidekicks which isn’t to say that they’ve been underwhelming characters, but rather that the movies have always been more about Indy and it wasn’t until they threw his dad into the mix that anyone got even close to upstaging him. Here, Indy is practically sharing equal screen time with her and the relationship between them is that of passing the torch, and while they tried to pull that off in Crystal Skull, Waller-Bridge has genuine charm, she holds herself well in the action scenes, and the script gives her a lot of depth as a character which is far more than can be said for Mutt Williams. I’m not sure if this franchise should continue without Indiana Jones unless, of course, they get Ke Huy Quan, but Waller-Bridge makes the most of what she has and is one of the reasons the movie works as well as it does.
I do wish the movie was more ambitious and took more thematic chances like with the juxtaposition between the opening sequence and the rest of the movie, but we live in the time of Gen-X swansongs and I found this to be one of the better examples of it. Maybe not up there with The Last Jedi or Creed, but I appreciate how well it works as an Indiana Jones movie and it frankly blows other adventure films like Uncharted out of the water by simply having better characters and action scenes that don’t just feel like white noise. Still, it doesn’t quite stick the landing with a third act that definitely feels like the bad kind of modern filmmaking. The last two Indy films have had issues recreating the magic of the Arc of the Covenant, the Holy Grail, and even the Sankara Stones. It feels like there’s a general mindset with modern blockbusters that magic and acts of faith have to be explained or audiences will reject them; that a sense of mystery about the world has been lost now that everything we’ve ever wanted to know is a few mouse clicks or finger swipes away. The power at the center of the original films felt out of grasp and even uncertain with no one really knowing what it was they were dealing with. Did the missing Sankara Stone really cause a drought in the village? Did God cause that earthquake when Elsa took the grail outside the circle? There’s enough doubt in these movies to make the situations feel bigger and more important that even Indiana Jones himself could comprehend which I feel left us with stronger endings; especially for movies about archeology and the pursuit of knowledge. Crystal Skull with its giant aliens and this movie with what happens at the end feel big but not unreachable, and it’s honestly a toss-up which one of the two left me feeling less satisfied. Similarly, the villain here is good with Mads Mikkelsen always being fun to watch, but I’ve also seen him in much stronger roles elsewhere. Much like how hard it is not to compare this movie to the original trilogy, it’s hard not to think of superior villains like Hannibal Lecter or Le Chiffre whenever he’s on screen, and the relatively mild comeuppance he gets at the end feels like another missed opportunity for the movie.
The idea that people are, in general, sick of a particular genre or trope has always bothered me as I feel that as long as good movies continue to come out, people will want to see them. I was certainly sick of Indiana Jones after seeing Crystal Skull, and yet here I am saying that this latest adventure is one of the more enjoyable blockbusters of the year. A better movie would have gone a bit further with Indy’s character and maybe gone a bit darker in certain places, but I found this to be more than enough for what it was trying to do. If you’re a fan of the franchise and are invested in the character enough that you can see them grow old, I would definitely recommend checking it out while it’s still in theaters. It may not be his best adventure, but it’s perhaps the best adventure for him to have at this moment in time and I’m glad that he gets to ride into the sunset on a high note.
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