Josh Reviews Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Quick run-down of my feelings on the Indiana Jones series: the original Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of my all-time favorite movies, and I also have enormous love for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  I have a lot of fondness for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, though I’ve never liked it as much as Raiders or Last Crusade, and the negative cultural stereotypes the film employs have aged poorly.  I think Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was disastrous; watching it on opening night was one of the most disappointing experiences I’ve ever had in a movie theatre (second only in my mind to seeing Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace).

I consider Crystal Skull to be apocryphal, and I thought that Indy was way too old in that film (which was made 19 years after Last Crusade).  So here we are at Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, made 15 long years later, and starring an 81-year-old Harrison Ford.

So what did I think?

The film is very good.  Not great, but very good.  It’s a billion times better than Crystal Skull.  I had a lot of fun watching it.  It’s never not enjoyable to see Harrison Ford playing this character, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge is fantastic and holds her own very well on-screen with Mr. Ford.  The opening sequence (set in 1944) is spectacular.  Unfortunately, nothing in the film that follows lives up to that sequence.  The film’s action set-pieces, the music, the cinematography, are all very good albeit not spectacular.  I thought this film was enjoyable and competently-made, but for me it lacked the magic of those original three Indy films.

This is the first Indiana Jones film not created by the main team of Spielberg and Lucas.  (Screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan cannot be forgotten as a key collaborator and a main part of the magic of Raiders.)  Director James Mangold acquits himself well.  This film captures the feel of an Indiana Jones film decently well, though it lacks the special spark present in those original films.

I also fundamentally don’t believe this film tells a story that needed to be told.  I just am not super excited to see a story of one of my classic heroes as a sad, lonely old man.  I didn’t love how the Star Wars sequel trilogy treated old Luke, Han and Leia, and I’m not wild about how this film treated Indy, introducing him as having lost his son and separated from Marion.  Now, don’t get me wrong, this type of story — of an old hero, past their prime — can be a potent seed of a story, if told well.  Frank Miller’s seminal Batman: The Dark Knight Returns was a groundbreaking story of an old, over-the-hill Batman that still resonates today and is often referenced and imitated.  Ian McKellen was very moving as an elderly, senile Sherlock Holmes in the wonderful film Mr. Holmes.  Watching Dial of Destiny, I found myself thinking a lot about Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which centers itself thematically on the passage of time, and Captain (now Admiral) Kirk’s journey from an undefeatable young man (as seen in the original Star Trek series) to an older, lonely man feeling his years.  Wrath of Khan spends a lot of time exploring this: we see Kirk get his ass kicked in a space battle for the first time; we see that he needs glasses to read the bridge console readouts; we see that he’s wrestling with the choices he’s made and the life he didn’t live (and the family he didn’t have).  While it’s sad to see Kirk as an older man, the film is wonderful as it becomes not only a deep character study of Kirk, but at the same time it’s the most rousing action-adventure story Trek had ever told to that point (and I’m not sure it’s ever been topped in the decades since).

Dial of Destiny gives a lot of nods to Indy’s age, but I didn’t think the film embraced that as much as I’d have hoped.  Indy complains he’s having trouble climbing up a rock wall at one point, but he’s still unbelievably energetic for an eighty-something year-old man.  (There’s a scene late in the film after the boy Teddy gets kidnapped and Indy starts to give chase.  I wanted to feel Indy’s anguish in that moment at his age; that as a younger man maybe he could have caught up to the bad guys and saved the kid.  But the film doesn’t play that beat; it just sort of moves on to the next sequence.  That’s the type of missed opportunity I think the film is full of.)

At the same time, I find myself also dissatisfied with the status quo the film gives to old Indy at the start of the story.  I understand the narrative reason to start with the character’s being unhappy, to give him a reason to go on this adventure.  But after marrying Indy off at the end of Crystal Skull, it feels like a betrayal here to start Indy off on his own again, separated from Marion.  I was pleased that Marion does appear in the film (from the trailers, I was worried she wouldn’t be in the movie at all); and when she does appear, Karen Allen is fantastic as always.  But I wanted her to be more involved in the story, and I don’t like the idea that Indy has led a sad, lonely life for so long since we last saw him.  (I think there are plenty of ways that the writers could have kept Marion in the picture and still given Indy a reason to go off on this adventure.  If he thought his god-daughter Helena was in trouble, I think that would have been reason enough.)

All of this filters into my feeling that the film’s story wasn’t strong enough to convince me that this film has a reason to exist.  The film builds to what is a reasonably satisfying conclusion, but so did Crystal Skull.  And frankly, Last Crusade was a much stronger “last adventure” for Indiana Jones than either of these two old-Indy films.

OK, let’s dig deeper into the film, shall we?

Let’s start with the astounding opening sequence, which is amazing and absolutely the highlight of the film for me.  I love the audacious idea to start the film in 1944, and to use de-aging CGI and other masks and prosthetics trickery to give us one more adventure of Indiana Jones in his prime, fighting Nazis at the end of WWII.  What a bold idea, and I am stunned at how effective this sequence was.  The de-aging work on Harrison Ford is incredible.  OK, there are a few wonky moments, but for the most part I was totally convinced by the reality of what I was watching.  When they pull the bag off his head and there is a young Harrison Ford as Indy, I was dazzled.  The entire extended chase/action sequence that follows is a pleasure, filled with the type of clever action beats that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas and their collaborators made such an integral part of the first three Indy movies.  (Indy trying to get the noose off his head; Indy running through a train-car filled with Nazis; Indy fighting Nazis on top of the train; all this stuff is terrific.)

Toby Jones is fun as Indy’s friend Basil Shaw.  (Though, wow, watching the film I really wanted this character to have been Marcus Brody.  Sadly, Denholm Elliot passed away a long time ago, back in 1992.  I guess they decided to create a new character instead of recasting.)  Mr. Jones is fun to watch on screen as Indy’s sort-of hapless academic colleague.  Basil’s ultimate fate is sad.  I wish I better understood just how his studies of the Antikythera drove him mad.

While I wrote above that I really didn’t want or need to see an old Indiana Jones on-screen, the film does a good job showing us what a fish out of water Indy is in the sixties.  It’s wild to hear a Beatles song in an Indiana Jones movie, and the idea of showing Indiana Jones in a world where astronauts just landed on the moon is a clever juxtaposition, and a smart way to show us that Indy’s brand of heroism doesn’t have much of a place in this new world.

I was wondering how this film would treat the character of Mutt, who was introduced in Crystal Skull with the clear intention that this character could spin off into his own adventures.  But Shia LaBeouf has subsequently become a somewhat polarizing figure, and he’s publicly criticized his experiences working on Crystal Skull, so I assumed (correctly) that he would not be included in this new film.  It’s a bold move to kill him off off-screen.  That Indy has a dead son doesn’t make me happy; but I also respect the narrative boldness to kill the Mutt character off as opposed to making up some other excuse for his not being in the film.

Speaking of Indy’s sons, I have always wanted to see Short Round again, and I am very bummed he’s not in this film, particularly considering Ke Huy Wuan’s return to prominence last year with Everything Everywhere All at Once.  I do understand that this film was made before that film exploded; but I still wish they’d found some way to include him.  I loved the character in Temple of Doom, and he and Indy seemed so devoted to one another.  It’s weird to me that they’ve totally ignored the character since.  That felt especially real to me in this movie, when Helena describes how she met Teddy, trying to pick her pocket, which is EXACTLY how Indy met Short Round.  It’s weird to me that Indy doesn’t even comment on that!

Speaking of Helena, Phoebe Waller-Jones is fabulous in the role.  I love Ms. Waller-Jones, and I love this character.  Helena would be a far better potential replacement for Harrison Ford’s Indy than Shia LaBeouf’s Mutt ever was.  I love that Helena starts off a basically a more selfish version of Indy.  (She’s sort of like the “fortune and glory”-seeking Indy we meet at the start of Temple of Doom.)  I like that she’s a disreputable thief; someone who got it on with a crime boss and who likes to flirt with hot sailors.  I like her arc in the film, of finding the heart of gold inside herself that Indy has always had beneath his gruffness.

Ethann Isidore is solid as Teddy, Helena’s kid sidekick.  Kids in adventure movies can be annoying, but they avoid most of those problems with Teddy.  I liked this kid.  I wish he had more to do in the film, and that we got to know him better!  It feels lazy to me that we see him learning how to fly a plane when we first meet him; a skill that, of course, proves important in the film’s climax.  Why was he learning how to fly a plane while hanging out in a seedy bar?  Does he want to be a pilot?  Does he want to get a job?  Does he dream of adventure?  I wish we knew.

I love Mads Mikkelsen, and he’s wonderful as the film’s main villain, the Nazi scientist Jürgen Voller.  Mr. Mikkelsen has already been an incredible Bond villain (in Casino Royale) and a strong Marvel villain (in Doctor Strange), and he’s perfect here as an Indy villain.  Mr. Mikkelsen commands the screen; menace just oozes off of him.  I love the thematic idea that, at the start of this film, a Nazi — Indy’s most hated enemy — has become accepted by the U.S. and is about to get a medal from the president.  At the same time, like so much in this film, I wish this wasn’t so thinly sketched.  I’m an X-Files fan, so I know all about Project Paperclip, but it’s weird to me that the film doesn’t take the time to better explain this for audiences.  And I wanted the film to dig more deeply into how Indy feels about all of this.

Voller is still a great villain, but this leaves Shaunette Renée Wilson’s character hung out to dry.  Her character, Mason, is some sort of U.S. agent — CIA?  I don’t believe the film ever says — and she seems like a good person, but we don’t ever understand why she’s hanging around with these creepy Nazis, and why she doesn’t pull the plug and arrest them the second Voller’s goons start pulling their guns on people.  Why is Voller allowed to have Nazi goons around him, anyways?  It doesn’t make any sense to me.  Ms. Wilson has great charisma on-screen, but her character feels like a big missed opportunity to me.

I was delighted to see John Rhys Davies back as Sallah, and Mr. Davies is a joy to watch every moment he’s on-screen.  As with Indy, though, it makes me sad that this smart, brave adventurer is now reduced to driving a cab.  I don’t like seeing Sallah like this.  Nevertheless, seeing Harrison Ford and John Rhys Davies on-screen together again is a pleasure, and I thought Sallah’s farewell to Indy outside the airport had real emotional resonance to me as a long-time fan of these characters.

Antonio Banderas was fun in his few scenes as Indy’s ship-captain pal Renaldo.  When Indy said he knew an old friend who could help him, I was really expecting to see someone we knew.  When we didn’t get Marcus in the opening scene, I thought maybe we’d get him here.  It felt weird to me that we got an entirely new character.  (After leaving the theatre, it occurred to me who this should have been: Jock!  Indy’s friend from the opening scene of Raiders!!  “I hate snakes, Jock!  I hate ’em!!”  How great would it have been to have seen Jock again???  Oh, well.)  Mr. Banderas is great, and it’s a real shock when he’s killed (which I guess is the point of casting a famous actor like Mr. Banderas in this role).

Boyd Holbrook has really impressed me in several of his recent roles (including the Corinthian on The Sandman Netflix show, and in B.J. Novak’s movie Vengeance); he doesn’t have much of a character here, but he’s an enjoyable bad-guy as Voller’s head henchman. Thomas Kretschmann, who played classic Nazi villain Baron Wolfgang von Strucker in Avengers: Age of Ultron, is memorable in only a few moments as the main Nazi bad-guy in the opening sequence.

There are some fun action sequences in the film — the horse-chase through the parade and then the subways of New York City, and the tuk-tuk chase through the narrow streets of Tangier, are both solidly constructed bits.  They’re well put-together, but neither quite grabbed me the way the best classic Indy action sequences did.  There weren’t enough memorable, clever beats woven into the action.  The idea of Indy’s riding a horse down into the subway is the great idea; but for some reason I just wasn’t as transported by that sequence as I’d hoped to be.

I was surprised that John Williams returned to score the film!  I’d thought Mr. Williams was retired.  It’s a pleasure to hear a new John Williams score.  On a first viewing, this score didn’t strike me as being as memorable as the first three Indy scores, which are each among the all-time best film scores.  (I have no strong memory of Crystal Skull’s score.  I haven’t revisited that film since it was released.)  I wonder if this score isn’t as good as the originals, or if I just couldn’t focus on it enough during the hullabaloo and excitement of my first viewing of this film?  Probably it’s a little bit of both.  I do look forward to paying more attention to this score on a future viewing.  (And this is for sure a film I look forward to seeing again, even as it’s not everything I’d hoped it would be.)

I wish the third act of the film was bigger and crazier.  If you’re going to send Indiana Jones back in time, really go for it!  Let’s have Indy get chased by dinosaurs or something like that!  The final sequence at the Siege of Syracuse felt oddly distant to me.  Indy wasn’t really involved at all in the action, which seemed like a strange choice to me.

I will say that I did appreciate how emotional the film got in those final scenes.  I really thought they were going to let Indy stay and die in the past.  That idea angered me, and I’m glad they didn’t go there.  But Harrison Ford was terrific in that emotional scene with Archimedes.  That was a powerful moment and a strong emotional climax for the film.

I wish I understood how the film’s macguffin worked.  (One of the problems with both this film and Crystal Skull is that the macguffin wasn’t nearly as strong as what they used in the original three films.)  I’d thought the dial could create time vortexes, but in the end we learn it just predicts when time-portals will appear?  This feels a little lame; it’s not special enough.  Theoretically anyone — including the villain Voller — could have replicated whatever math/science Archimedes used to create the Antikythera, right?  How exactly did Archimedes create it?  If time portals are huge glowing holes in the sky, why hasn’t anyone else throughout history noticed them?  Do they really happen frequently enough that Archimedes could create a device to detect and predict them?  Isn’t it a spectacularly huge coincidence that Voller thinks a time portal that will take him exactly where and when he wants to go is appearing in the sky just after he’s finally regained posession of the Antikythera??  I thought briefly the film would suggest a loop, in which Indy & Helena would give Archimedes the completed dial, which would then pass through the centuries for them to find it, but that doesn’t seem to be what happened.  Actually, I have tons of questions about the end.  Did they leave a smashed Nazi airplane in 212 BC???  How did that not destroy the timeline?  How did they all get back in the small plane Teddy was flying?  It looks like Archimedes was returning the watch to Indy and Helena along with the Antikythera, but we know he must have kept the watch because it was on his corpse, right?  I wish all of this was just a little clearer.

As I wrote above, I wish Marion was in more of the film, but I’m glad she and Indy were reunited in the end.  Their reprise of their “where does it hurt” scene from Raiders was lovely.  Kudos to whoever came up with that idea.

Crystal Skull ended with Mutt’s picking up Indy’s hat.  This one ends with Helena’s walking away while Indy grabs back his hat from outside the window.  So… no spin-offs from this film?  I’m not sure what the intention was behind that final shot.  No one else can be Indy except Harrison Ford, I guess?  I do agree with that.  (The film’s box office performance seems to ensure that this is the last we’ll be seeing of Indiana Jones for a while… though in today’s age of franchises I doubt it’ll be too long before someone tries again to reboot/rework this series…)

As I’m discussing the end of the film, let me also talk about the beginning — I’m surprised that they had the Paramount logo at the start of the film but didn’t use that to fade in on the action as the first four Indy films had done.  I guess I can understand why they wanted to use the Lucasfilm logo as the film’s “main” logo, but that fade into a lock wasn’t as exciting as I’d hoped.  (Though it’s better than the awful, jokey way they opened Crystal Skull…)

I had a fun time watching Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and I look forward to seeing this film again.  I don’t believe this film needs to exist, and it cannot really hold a candle to the original three Indy films.  But James Mangold and his team have done a solid job, and they’ve created a film that is a heck of a lot better than Spielberg and Lucas’ last go at an Indy film.  I’m sad the film seems to have bombed at the box office; it deserves better than that.  It’s for sure worth seeing for all the Indy fans out there.  And it makes me want to go back and watch Raiders, Temple of Doom, and Last Crusade for the billionth time…

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