“Indiana Jones, Out with a Bang, Back in the Saddle.”
I knew I was going to see it at some point, but all the negatives I heard about Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny made me put off seeing it. I finally sat down and watched it a year after it landed on Disney+. It’s a sad way for the franchise to go out.
During an extended opening scene in 1944 (it’s about twenty minutes of the two hour twenty minutes film), we see Indiana Jones (a de-aged Harrison Ford) as he attempts to steal an object from the Nazis. When that item turns out to be a fake, Indy winds up with a different prize, half of Archimedes’ dial of destiny – a relic that would give whoever has all of it the power to rule the world.
From there, we move to 1969, where a much older Indy (still Harrison Ford, but now showing his true age) is leading a sad life. He’s about to retire from teaching at a university in New York City. However, his plans are interrupted when his goddaughter, Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) shows up asking about the dial. Before Indy knows it, Helena has taken off with the half he found all those years ago. Indy is right behind her, but too many people are also after it. Can Indy once again find the relic and save the day?
I will give the movie this – it does a good job of making us believe that Indy could still be involved in the action despite his age. Yes, we get the occasional comment about it, but for the most part, the film carries on like a typical Indiana Jones movie.
And there is plenty of action. As usual, the dial is just an excuse for globe-trotting and action. Some of the scenes are quite creative and fun to watch. Oh, they are completely unrealistic, but isn’t that the way things always go in these movies, both Indiana Jones and action movies in general? I had to remind myself of that a couple of times.
However, I do have to wonder exactly how the villains manage to always turn up when they need to so they can cause problems. I would get it if we saw them deciphering clues, but they seem to follow Indy around even when it makes no logical sense how they followed him around.
Then there’s Helena. The movie can’t quite decide what it wants or needs her to be. As a result, I wanted to like her, but I just couldn’t.
We do have the usual cross over to science fiction near the end. For some reason it bothered me more here than in other movies in the franchise. And we also get a few encounters with creepy crawlies.
I do have to ask, was Indiana Jones retiring mid-semester? That’s sure what it looked like to me. But maybe I missed a line that explained it.
But my biggest issue with the movie is that it just isn’t fun. The earlier movies in the franchise were ridiculously over the top, but we didn’t mind because they were campy with plenty of humor and an Indiana Jones we enjoyed spending time around. Here, he’s an old man who has been beaten down by life. And it’s just depressing. Yes, there’s some humor, but overall, the mood is sour.
And it’s not helped by the fact that the bad guys go around killing people indiscriminately. It just gets to be depressing pretty quickly.
Also, I never did understand how one group of bad guys fit into the overall plot. They just overcomplicated things.
Ironically enough, when I was watching the movie, I felt like the opening scene went on too long since it was obvious how that particular sequence would end. By the end of the movie, I wished we’d spent the entire time back in 1944 because that was the most fun of the entire film.
Overall, the acting was fine. It’s the script that gives us the gloomy movie.
Now that I’ve watched this film, I’m quite happy to forget that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ever happened. Fans of the franchise will want to enjoy the earlier movies and forget that this is how someone thought the character’s life should go.
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