Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)
dir. James Mangold
Rated: PG-13
image: ©2023 Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Like Star Wars before it, the Indiana Jones franchise has escaped the hands of its original creators. What makes this fact notable is how aggressively this first – and perhaps last? – installment in the Indy saga without Steven Spielberg and George Lucas at the helm looks back to the franchise’s past. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny walks a fine line between honoring what’s come before it while forging a path ahead.
For the most part, it works.
Director James Mangold has gotten his Ford v Ferrari band back together for this fifth outing of Dr. Henry Jones, Jr. Mangold wrote the script for Dial of Destiny with frequent collaborators – and Ford v Ferrari co-scribes – Jez and John-Henry Butterworth, the brother writing duo behind Edge of Tomorrow.
Screenwriter David Koepp also received a credit, but his script was heavily rewritten by Mangold and the Butterworth brothers after Koepp left the project when Spielberg decided in 2020 not to direct. Koepp wrote the screenplay for 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, from a story by George Lucas, making Koepp the bridge between the old guard and the new. Some of his other work includes cowriting the screenplay for Jurassic Park as well as penning Panic Room and Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man picture.
We begin our adventure – and I’ll note that this is the first Indiana Jones movie that does not open with a dissolve from the Paramount Pictures logo into a real-world equivalent – in 1944, Indy’s heyday. The Nazis have our hero cornered. Indy and fellow archeologist Basil Shaw, a new character in this universe, have retrieved the Lance of Longinus, or, as one Nazi describes it, “the blade that drew Christ’s blood.” Der Führer covets this mystical artifact, but Jürgen Voller, Hitler’s agent in the matter, has found something even more intriguing.
Voller has come across one-half of Archimedes’ Dial. It’s a device akin to the Antikythera mechanism, which was devised in antiquity to predict the positions of heavenly bodies and eclipses decades in advance. But Archimedes’ Dial is special. It can predict where fissures in time will occur, making it possible, in theory, for the user to travel to the past. Knowing the potential danger of this device falling into the wrong hands, Archimedes made it as two distinct pieces and separated them for safe keeping.
Twenty-five years after the events of the opening sequence, in 1969, Indy is a shell of his former self. His wife, Marion Ravenwood, whom we met in Raiders of the Lost Ark and caught up with in Crystal Skull, has left Indy due to his depressed and withdrawn nature caused by the death of their son, Mutt, in the Vietnam War. The college where he teaches also forces him into retirement.
Helena Shaw, Basil’s daughter and Indy’s goddaughter, turns up with questions about the dial. Her godfather tells Helena that obsessing over the mechanism drove her father mad, and he warns her against the same fate. Meanwhile, Voller, now working for NASA in the Space Race, is also trying to recover both halves of the dial. The insane Nazi is convinced that he could have been a better Hitler than Hitler and wants to use the dial to fix the “mistakes” of the Führer. The race is on to protect humanity from Nazi domination.
Dial of Destiny opens – and returns to at least once – the sound of a ticking clock. Mangold and the Butterworths are exploring the theme of time running out, the sense that Indy’s best days are long behind him. A stellar example of this is comparing the first scene of Indy interacting with students in Raiders to his last in Dial of Destiny. In the former, one of his female students – what’s the best way to describe this – blinks aggressively so that Dr. Jones can see she has written the words “Love” and “You” on her eyelids. In the latter, Indy is a tired old man who only excites his students when they’re curious why he’s being pushed out of the university. Harrison Ford’s grizzled, 80-year-old mug is the perfect vessel for Indy’s sullen despondency. Mangold likely felt empowered to go this route when Ford made clear that this would be his last outing as the fedora-wearing archeologist.
The director, who brought gritty realism to Marvel franchise player Wolverine in 2017’s Logan, makes this new version of Indy more like the central player in an emotional character-study drama as opposed to a non-stop action serial icon. There is a weight given to the character and his existential pain that is never evidenced in any of the prior installments. The closest we get is the fraught relationship between father and son that is explored in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
But please don’t misunderstand me: there is oh-so-much action to be had in Dial of Destiny. Perhaps too much. Clocking in at 154 minutes, the movie would have benefited from shaving as much as half-an-hour from its runtime. It could have easily achieved this by axing two or even three less-than-stellar action set pieces.
The effectiveness of the action sequences varies wildly. The first, set during the 1944 segment of the movie, is utterly entrancing. It involves an anti-aircraft gun on a train being turned against the train itself, demolishing everything in its path as the train rounds a bend. The fight between Indy and the Nazis on the tops of the train cars is one of the most harrowing action scenes I’ve seen in a movie this year. Another highlight is a chase in the middle of a we-landed-on-the-moon parade in the 1969 portion of the film.
Unfortunately, there are as many action set pieces that underwhelm, making Dial of Destiny feel much longer than it needs to be. One features the tried and true late-Hollywood blockbuster technique of hiding sketchy CGI stunts in the dark of night and with so much rain that it makes the action practically indecipherable. Another features Indy gliding between moving motor vehicles during a car chase. It looks preposterous. Any misogynist who harps on and on about female characters not being able to do certain action movie stunts because it’s not “believable,” yet stays quiet on an octogenarian jumping effortlessly between cars moving at break-neck speed, can kindly fuck right off of the planet.
We also need to talk about the CGI-generated “young” Harrison Ford in the 1944 passage of the film. This needs to stop. The uncanny valley feel that the character invokes – which is made more intense when we hear an 80-year-old voice coming out of it – made focusing on what was happening around this computer-generated monstrosity all but impossible. Every time “young” Indy was squarely in the frame, I couldn’t pull my eyes away from this unsettling creation; it was that distracting. At one moment, I felt like I was watching The Polar Express.
And it lasts for quite a while. As I wrote in the introduction, Mangold and the Butterworths look back on Indy’s golden era with a great amount of reverence. The segment of the story that takes place in 1944 amounts to a third of the movie. I will admit, though, that the only time the younger iteration of the character looked right to me was when he had his iconic fedora and jacket in place.
I should be grateful. Mangold’s obsession with the past meant I got to watch a lot of Nazis die.
Like, a lot, y’all.
I really like watching Nazis die on screen. When I was growing up, I probably watched the original Indiana Jones trilogy the most between about 1989 and 2000. Growing up during the ‘90s, I thought of Nazis and Nazi ideology as settled history. They were a group of abhorrent monsters who caused unimaginable suffering across the entire world. It is unconscionable that Hitler’s twisted and sick view of the world is making a powerful resurgence, and among suburban moms in my own country, for fuck’s sake. So, yeah, to paraphrase Ray Parker, Jr., watching Nazis die horrible deaths on screen makes me feel good.
Mangold & Co. did a splendid job by casting Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen as the Nazi big bad for Dial of Destiny. After the costume and makeup departments got done with him, Mikkelsen’s look, as Voller, is evocative of Arnold Toht – played by English actor Ronald Lacey – the brutal Gestapo officer causing death and destruction in pursuit of fortune and glory in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Anyone familiar with Mikkelsen’s previous work and creepy visage knows instantly why he was cast as Voller, the “former” Nazi working for NASA.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge is in the mix as Helena Shaw, daughter of Basil Shaw. Helena kicks off the plot when she approaches Indy about how to find the missing piece of Archimedes’ Dial. Waller-Bridge perfected her cynical, sarcastic persona as the main character in her breakout series Fleabag. Helena might not be quite as cutting as that character, but she’s every bit as driven. She’s an unapologetic mercenary, always looking out for herself.
Harrison Ford is Old Reliable as Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones, Jr. He does fabulous work with the material he’s given. In Dial of Destiny, there is a palpable sense of sadness in realizing you’re closer to the end of life than the beginning, and Ford does a splendid job of personifying that sadness.
Ford has said that this will be his last turn as the famous globe-trotting archeologist, and, a few too many action sequences and some ill-considered CGI aside, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is a fitting and satisfying way to close out his adventures as one of the most iconic characters in movie history.
Why it got 3.5 stars:
Not that I put too much stock in star ratings, but I was leaning toward giving Dial of Destiny three stars. The extra half-star is for all the Nazis getting killed. It’s also a satisfying send off for Indy and Ford.
Things I forgot to mention in my review, because, well, I'm the Forgetful Film Critic:
- I loved seeing Toby Jones — who plays Basil Shaw — in this world. Maybe it’s his turn in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but Jones just fits here.
- Indy’s nickname for Helena, Wombat, is adorable.
- Speaking of Helena, I loved seeing Phoebe Waller-Bridge in the swingin’ ‘60s mod getup. It suits her.
- It warmed my cold, dead heart to see John Rhys-Davies return as one of my favorite characters in the franchise, Indy’s trusty sidekick Sallah. I can’t ignore the cultural appropriation inherent in the Welshman Rhys-Davies playing an Egyptian character, but Sallah has a brief soliloquy that moved me about how he misses the excitement and adventure of his earlier years.
- The sound effect signaling that the Millennium Falcon won’t start in Star Wars can be heard throughout the Indiana Jones franchise when various vehicles won’t start. It’s faint and I almost didn’t notice it, but the sound effect is present in Dial of Destiny.
- There’s a fairly preposterous moment during the climax when someone yells something to the effect of, “The portal is closing any minute!” The movie then has the characters take about five action-packed minutes to get them to said portal.
- Karen Allen was right, Marion gets the short end of the stick here by appearing on screen for approximately 3 minutes.
Close encounters with people in movie theaters:
- Seen at Cedars Alamo with Rae. She was not a fan. Not a big crowd — as evidenced by the fact that Dial of Destiny has been deemed a box office bomb — and no disruptions during the screening.