Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny Review

Indiana Jones is a franchise that has been around for over 40 years and has been 15 years since the release of the previous entry. Harrison Ford is back at the age of 80 for one last adventure as the famous archaeologist.

Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) has reached a low point in his life. He lives in a rundown apartment in New York City, Marion has left him and his university has made him retire. However, Indy is approached by his god-daughter, Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) about finding Archimedes’ Dial, an item Indy found during the War. It’s also a device that a former Nazi scientist, Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) wants to find and has had the backing of the CIA. Indy is forced to go on one more adventure to stop the bad guys from finding the dial.

The original three films were perfect trilogy and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was a letdown because it felt like a film made out of obligation. It seemed like the series was going to go out on a whimper. However, Disney brought Lucasfilm, which meant they had the right to Indiana Jones and Disney loves to run a series into the ground.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny did have a long pre-production. Numerous writers worked on it and Steven Spielberg dropped out of the directing duties. James Mangold was hired to helm the film, making Dial of Destiny the only Indiana Jones not directed by Spielberg. There were even rumours that Dial of Destiny suffered from production problems during principal photography. Nor did it help that Dial of Destiny was met with a mixed reception when it premiered at Cannes. Fortunately, it was a massive improvement over Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and better than the Cannes reception suggests.

Mangold was a suitable replacement for Spielberg. He has proven himself with films like 3:10 to Yuma, Logan, and Ford vs. Ferrari. His work on Logan seemed particularly fitting for Dial of Destiny since Logan was also about an aging character who is forced to go on one final adventure and is paired up with a surrogate daughter. Although there were differences since Logan was a dark, violent story about a reluctant hero, Dial of Destiny was an adventure and allowed its hero to have one last hoorah.

One of the issues with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was its lacklustre direction. Spielberg was pressured into directing Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and it showed it with the final product. Dial of Destiny felt like it was made with a lot more passion and it delivered on entertainment value.

Mangold understood the brief: he needed to make a pulpy adventure. When the action kicked in it was incredible. The prologue sequence started with Indy nearly executed and turns into a big fight on a train. It felt like what an Indiana Jones film set during the war could have been like. The sequence where Indy sequestered a horse and rides down the New York Subway was a rollicking event and a wonderfully chaotic sequence was a three-way car chase in Tangiers. However, it was notable that many of the sequences involved vehicle chases and you could play a drinking game based on how many times a vehicle gets stolen.

There was more physique to the action sequences. There was a lot of stunt work during the chases and many of the sequences had an old-fashioned quality to them, just like the original trilogy.  Dial of Destiny did use CGI but it was of a high standard, much better than some other franchise films this year (i.e. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Flash). The de-aging effects for the prologue on the train were some of the best put to screen.

Whilst  Dial of Destiny saw another big-time skip, the fifth film felt more akin to Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade. There was an energy to action and the quest, Dial of Destiny story was set up and plotted more like the first and third films, and the villains in all three films were Nazis. It was a boys’ adventure where the good guys have to stop the bad guys. Helena felt like a character that belonged in the Indiana Jones universe since she was a quick-witted treasure hunter. She was the character who had the greatest character arc since she had to realise what was important. Her role was to be a surrogate daughter to Indy and this plot thread was done better in Dial of Destiny than it was between Indy and Mutt in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

There were also differences to help Dial of Destiny stand out amongst the series. The most obvious was the characterisation of Indy since he was at a low ebb. His wife left him and he had to deal with noisy hippy neighbours. He became a jaded old man who had lost his idealism. This was confounded by the fact that Indy had a hatred for the Nazis, yet his government ended up helping Nazi scientists come to America with the CIA helping Voller. It was even more pointed that Voller still harboured pro-Nazi thoughts as shown by his antagonist exchange with an African-American hotel porter. Indy’s place in the world was in question because of how much it has changed around him.

There was a little bit of flab in the film. This was due to the film having a lot of characters and not knowing what to do with all of them. Some characters could have been removed or merged together and could have helped tighten things up. However, one of the oddest criticisms against the film’s ending is absurd. This is a series that had religious artifacts with mystical powers and aliens being a part of human history.

Dial of the Destiny did what it needed to do: be an entertaining final adventure for the fedora-wearing hero. It was a more fitting conclusion than Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and a better summer offering this year like The Flash and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.