Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, 2023.
Directed by James Mangold.
Starring Harrison Ford, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Antonio Banderas, John Rhys-Davies, Toby Jones, Boyd Holbrook, Ethann Isidore, and Mads Mikkelsen.
SYNOPSIS:
The fifth and final Indiana Jones movie, The Dial of Destiny, arrives in a digital edition that includes a making-of that runs nearly an hour. The film is a fun, albeit a bit long, romp around the world that sends our hero off with style, and the making-of does a good job of balancing nostalgia for the series with the production of this movie.
Everything ends, eventually. That’s a bitter pill to swallow for us Gen X movie fans who grew up in the 70s and 80s. Unfortunately, some of us have become as bitter as those pills, but in my case, I can appreciate a bit of wistful nostalgia while accepting the fact that the world moves on.
That’s certainly the feeling I had leaving the theater after watching Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which my 16-year-old son declared boring and headed to the lobby about half an hour in. How dare he be his own person?!
I’m kidding, of course. That experience just reinforced my desire to carve out a special spot in my heart for the Lucas and Spielberg movies I grew up with while realizing that a new generation may not feel the same way, and that’s okay. My son and I share some things, such as an appreciate of Cowboy Bebop, but I’ll never grok something like JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, and he’ll never grok Indiana Jones movies. That’s fine.
So, with that out of the way, the movie! I suppose its disappointing box office performance shows that there are more people like my son out there, despite what Disney may have thought when it green-lit a fifth and final Indy movie. If that’s the reality of the situation, I’m fine with that, and they can get off my lawn.
It will never be possible to get back the thrill of the first three Indy films (Temple of Doom has its moments), but Dial of Destiny does a much better job of that than its predecessor, the tepid Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
The action opens in 1944 as Indy and his buddy Basil Shaw, an Oxford archaeologist, try to retrieve the artifact the Lance of Longinus from the loot the Nazis have stored in a French castle and are trying to bring back to Germany. The lance turns out to be a fake, but Indy and Basil end up getting a piece of Archimedes’ Dial, also known as the Antikythera Mechanism, from the main bad guy, Jürgen Voller.
Indy is a de-aged Harrison Ford during this extended prologue, and the effect works pretty well. It’s hard for me to objectively assess modern de-aging techniques, since I’m well aware that it’s a digital effect, but I was able to suspend disbelief and just go with it. I suppose the true test of de-aging is to have someone watch this movie without knowing anything about Harrison Ford ahead of time.
Then we jump ahead to 1969 and Harrison Ford takes over in all his 80-year-old glory. Indiana Jones is about to retire as a college professor, but it’s not a time of celebration for him. His son, Mutt, died in the Vietnam War, his wife Marion has filed for divorce, and his students are more interested in the Apollo 11 astronauts who have returned from the moon than in hearing about ancient artifacts.
He doesn’t have much time for melancholy, however, because his goddaughter Helena Shaw, daughter of Basil, comes back into his life with an interest in the piece of Archimedes’ Dial. Jürgen Voller is still around too, and soon he and his goons are in pursuit of Indy and Helena because they want the artifact too.
Jürgen wants it so he can find the other part of the Dial and use the reassembled artifact to go back in time and ensure the Nazis don’t lose World War II. Indy would like to stop them, of course, and Helena has her own motivations that don’t quite line up with Indy’s desires. The resulting chases take our heroes to far-flung locales before building to a climax that’s not really out of sync with typical Indiana Jones movies, despite how jarring it may be.
With a 153-minute runtime, Dial of Destiny could have used a bit of editing, especially during a chase sequence in Tangier that goes on a bit long. I’m not sure why so many filmmakers these days feel the need to consistently blow past the two-hour mark. In the case of the four previous Indy movies, all of them were able to wrap up their stories right around 120 minutes.
But that said, Dial of Destiny is a fun ride, especially for moviegoers like me who just want to enjoy some nostalgia as we contemplate a retirement full of watching all those films we’ve collected over the years.
In the case of this one, Disney gave me a code for a digital copy redeemable at Movies Anywhere. The sole bonus feature is a making-of that runs nearly an hour and does a good job of covering the production, along with a nice reflection on the series at the beginning. The only thing I would have liked to see added was some background information on the starts and stops that led to the making of this film.
As of the writing of this review, the expected Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD editions of Dial of Destiny haven’t been announced yet, so I don’t know how they’ll compare to this digital edition. Hopefully they’ll have more bonus features, and maybe Disney will eventually make a nice long documentary that looks at all five films.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Brad Cook
