"Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" - Film Review
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny being covered here wouldn't exist.
We have reached a point where the action movie stars of the 1980s are getting older. Couple that with Hollywood’s obsession with revitalizing aging intellectual property through reboots and remakes. We’re living in a nostalgia-obsessed culture, to the detriment of storytelling. With this stage perfectly set, it’s not surprising that a fifth installment of the Harrison Ford-led Indiana Jones opens this summer. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is being touted as the last outing of the archaeological adventurer. One last artifact for Dr. Jones (Ford) to protect. One last movie full of punching Nazis before he hangs up his trademark hat forever.
The Indiana Jones the audience sees in the beginning of Dial of Destiny (not including the de-aged flashback to the 1940s) is a far cry from the young man who started the series back in 1981. He’s a grumpy old man yelling at kids to turn their music down. He’s still teaching at the university, but neither he nor the students are as engaged as they once were. The only student in his class who can answer his questions is Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge). She’s not just a student, however. Helena is Indy’s goddaughter, and she drags him along for one last quest: finding Archimedes’ mysterious dial. Of course, they’re not alone in this journey. A former Nazi scientist (Mads Mikkelsen) believes the dial holds the key to a brand new frontier.
disney & paramount
The burden of the action movie is that any plot, when it’s boiled down, is simply a scavenger hunt. Our group of heroes have to travel to points A, B, and C before they reach their destination. Action movies have to fool the audience into going along for that ride, because otherwise, all the stops along the way feel like a road trip in the worst way. Raiders of the Lost Ark achieves this magnificently, but the subsequent Indiana Jones movies aren’t as successful. Such is the case with Dial of Destiny. The various stops for Indy and Helena as they race across Europe are more exhausting than jet-setting. It feels as though the studio mandated a minimum of three countries must be visited before things could wrap up.
The charm of Indiana Jones is the cockiness of Jones himself. It’s Ford’s signature reluctant hero schtick that he perfected early in his career. Perhaps it’s because Ford is now 81, but the confidence of Indy is missing. That could have worked as a storyline. It was done excellently in Top Gun: Maverick last summer and in Logan before that, but Dial of Destiny doesn’t want to commit to giving Indy his last hurrah. Any chance at introspection is lost in favor of multiple car chases. There are two scenes that stand out as thoughtful, but that’s far too few to make up for the two-and-a-half-hour runtime.
There’s a good movie hidden within Dial of Destiny. Waller-Bridge’s quirkiness is a delightful foil to Ford’s gruffness, but that dynamic is never fully explored. Mikkelsen’s villain is pure evil, and it’s always a thrill to watch Indy punch Nazis. The foundation and scaffolding of a classic Indiana Jones movie are here, but the emotional heart the franchise was built on is missing. It almost feels wrong to see Indy in high-definition like this. Dial of Destiny lacks the warmth of film, the spirit of adventure, and the twinkle in Indy’s eye.
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