Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

What’s The Movie? Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

What’s It All About? The film kicks off with a digitally de-aged Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford, as if you need to be told) going through a typical punching-Nazis adventure/backstory towards the end of World War II. After shenanigans, he ends up retrieving the titular Dial of Destiny (or Archimedes Dial or Antikythera) which he leaves with fellow adventurer (sort of) Basil Shaw (Toby Jones). We then move to the present where Jones is old, divorcing Marion, retiring from teaching, and very much alone. But that can’t be it, so in waltzes Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Action Hero) to spice things up. She’s his Goddaughter and child of Basil Shaw, who was driven mad by his obsession with the Dial. Indy took it back off him to spare him his obsession but, rather than destroying it as he promised, hid it. Helena persuades him to reveal its continued existence so she can nick it and sell it.

Meanwhile, Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), a Nazi Indy met in the opening spiel and who survived the war to help America reach the moon, is also hot on the trail of the Dial. He believes he can use it to go back in time and ensure Nazi victory. Indy, now assisted by Helena – who isn’t exactly pro-Nazi herself- and a boy she’s taken under her wing, Teddy Kumar (Ethann Isidore, very much this movie’s Short Round) are hot on his trail. But after discovering the Tomb of Archimedes Voller gets the second half of the dial and Indy is shot. Voller and a few other like-minded fascists take off in a plane. He thinks the Dial will let him go back in time to Germany, remove Hitler from power and ensure Nazi victory by avoiding the mistakes he made. After some More Shenanigans, Helena gets on the plane with Teddy following behind in a light aircraft. The Dial does indeed work and they all go back in time… to 212BC and the Siege of Syracuse – the Dial only works between two points in time, then and now. The Romans make short work of the Nazi plane, ending Voller’s dreams (and life). A wounded Indy, meeting Archimedes, decided to stay in the past. Helena’s having none of that, punches his lights out, and he wakes up back in New York City where he reconciles with Marion. Aww.

Why Did You Give It A Go? I’ve seen them all in the cinema so I might as well see this one there too. But also, it had to be better than Crystal Skull, right? The best thing about that movie was walking into the cinema and falling flat on my face before the first frame of it had even been shown. It was all downhill from there (literally, as I slid inelegantly down the cinema steps), sadly.

Is It Any Good? Yes, it is any good. Let’s get the usual caveats out of the way first though. Is it as good as either Raiders or The Last Crusade? No of course it isn’t. Raiders is one of the best action movies of all time and The Last Crusade is one of the most charming movies of all time. Almost nothing lives up to that. Is it better than Temple Of Doom? It is, if possibly not by all that much. (You don’t need to ask the, “Is it better than Crystal Skull” question).

Still, that’s praising with faint damnation. Temple of Doom is badly let down (he says mildly) by its appalling racism but the action sections of it – the opening sequence, the mine-cart ride, the rope bridge – are all impeccable. Which is basically to say that Dial of Destiny and Temple of Doom have different strengths and weaknesses. They kind of level out.

The idea of doing an Indiana Jones movie in 2023, with Ford now 80, isn’t one that necessarily inspires confidence – understandably so – but what’s remarkable about Dial of Destiny is how much they get right. Not everything, of course, but enough that this works as a proper conclusion to Indiana Jones, as opposed to Crystal Skull which… didn’t. One of the things it does better is address the fact that Indy is older – Crystal Skull reduced this to a series of lame, “too old for this shit” gags but Dial of Destiny actually allows us to see the weight of the years on Our Hero.

He is lonely, isolated from his colleagues, teaching bored students, getting divorced, and drinking too much. This is all allowed to stand as real without being over-emphasised, so when we do get Indy back in action the film allows a bit of time to transition between the bored professor at the end of his purpose back into the more swashbuckling hero we met at the start of the film. Indeed, the whole opening sequence is clearly set up to provide just this contrast, and it is an effective if understated play with expectations.

But what it also is, and this is true of a lot of Dial of Destiny, is thoughtful. Later on, we discover the fate of Mutt from Crystal Skull. He died, after enlisting to piss off Indy and the resultant grief destroyed the marriage between Indy and Marion. Yet earlier, trying to give his captors the slip, Indy walks into a full-on, “hell no, we won’t go” anti-Vietnam War march. Seeing Indy grab a sign and yell “hell no, we won’t go” is given much more poignance after we discover that his own son met with the same fate as so many other Americans in a pointless war. The film, again, doesn’t over-emphasise this moment but rather lets it stand and trusts the audience to draw their own connections. That anti-war protest runs alongside the ticker-tape parade for the astronauts going to the moon and we get another juxtaposition – the gaudy triumphalism of Americans being the first to get to the moon set against the fact they managed to do it only because of the work of a literal Nazi, and one who is being offered a medal by the president, no less. The contrast couldn’t be starker.

Those moments of faith in the viewer make a big difference and show a degree of intelligence working here. Later in the movie, when Indy and Helen discover the tomb of Archimedes, the corpse of the mathematician is wearing a watch and there’s an engraving of a phoenix with propellers. We, the audience, come to the same conclusion as Our Heroes – the Dial works and Archimedes time-traveled to test it out. Yet this is a complete misdirection and in fact is easier (and better) explained by the fact that it’s the adventurers that go back in time instead, leaving evidence of their journey. It’s a thoughtful and smart piece of writing.

And more often than not, this is what the film gets right. It puts its trust in the audience that they will come along on this journey and can actually figure stuff out for themselves. Some have questioned why you want to have scenes of our once-young hero in his old age but in many ways, that’s the whole point. It isn’t undermining Indy to see him that way, it’s the opposite. He gets his life back. He finds his purpose. Grief doesn’t win out over hope. Allowing us to see vulnerability in our heroes doesn’t detract from them, it makes them more. After all, what else is Indiana Jones about if not the power of relics?

One of the great things about Indiana Jones, especially in Raiders, was that he could be hurt. He wasn’t some muscle-bound 80s action star that took the sort of punishment that could fell a herd of elephants and keep on going with barely a scratch to show for it. He could be wounded, shot, and could take real punishment. Seeing Indiana Jones hurting in the way he is at the beginning of the film is the same process, it’s just that this time the hurt is emotional. Well, that’s what happens when you get older. And the wound of Mutt’s death – played so brilliantly by Ford on the trawler – even manages to give purpose to an otherwise useless and entirely unloved character from the last movie that nobody wanted back. Making Mutt actually worth something? Now that’s good writing.

How Many Of These Have You Seen? All the movies, all in the theatre, all at the time of release, but not The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.

Would You Recommend It? Well, yeah. Which, after Crystal Skull, wasn’t in any way a foregone conclusion. But there are just so many details to enjoy here that it’s simply impossible not to recommend. Everything from two very unexpected musical cues (one national anthem (mine), one deeply unexpected Beatles track) to what ought to be a ludicrous time-travel ending all just lands.

In all of this, we do of course have to talk about Harrison Ford, taking his final bow in the role. And he’s simply perfect. The de-aged footage at the start of the movie is honestly as good as I have ever seen it and waaaaaay better than similar things done to Samuel L Jackson over at the MCU (to take one example). It works ridiculously well, and because it’s a breezy, here-we-go! adventure in the classic Indy mould, it’s easy to just get caught up in it and let it go.

Yet when we get to the contemporary Indy, Ford has everything nailed down. He’s able to sell the depths of Indy’s unhappiness without it ever becoming wallowing, he’s able to land the pleasure of going on another adventure, and he’s able to… well, do everything really. His yell of “continental drift!” on the Nazi plane, as he figures out something the supposedly brilliant ubermensch hasn’t let us see the intelligent man Indy’s always been, right alongside his action-adventure side. There are plenty of those moments, from him knowing obscure languages and codes to working things out that make him feel like the Indy of old, yet there’s plenty of space for new dimensions to him as well.

It’s positively shocking when, after Indy, Helena, and Teddy escape the trawler after the usual derring-do, Helena grins with the thrill of the exciting escape only to be slapped down by the righteous fury of Indy telling her, “My friend has just been murdered“. That reaction isn’t something we’ve seen from Indy before but it also works because Helena is in many ways being an Indy-surrogate in the moment, only for the contrast to come back and metaphorically hit her in the face. Ford is, again, amazing in the moment and deserves all the praise in the world for his performance, not just there but throughout the movie.

The rest of the cast is fantastic too. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Action Hero wasn’t something I had on my bingo card but she excels at playing the bubbly, cash-driven, and morally dubious Helena. Waller-Bridge is clearly having the time of her life, and who can blame her? She gets lots of great action bits – let’s be honest, the bits Ford is too old for now – and has a great rapport with her two main co-stars. As a Nazi scientist, Mads Mikkelsen is almost too-perfect casting, yet he is, of course, brilliant at it. The moment he realises his plans are undone and he simply crumbles, when faced with the reality of the past, can’t be an easy thing to land but he makes Voller’s reactions seem entirely genuine, helping to anchor some realism in scenes where “realism” has otherwise nipped out for a quick pint.

Still, there are things here that need to be criticised. This movie is two and a half hours long. It does not need to be two and a half hours long. In particular, though the opening twenty minutes is fine a touch more brevity might have lent it a little more zip. And the momentum sags around a lot of the trawler material in a way that could easily have been tightened up – that middle section is slower than it needs to be. Saying that, the film doesn’t seem over-long and there was never a temptation to sneak in a quick watch glance. Early on in the movie we have Toby Jones and he’s great – because he’s Toby Jones – but he also feels a bit wasted, restricted to that opening section and a couple of flashbacks. There are a couple of contrivances – ohh Teddy can fly a plane even though he’s never flown a plane in real life for Plot Reasons, for example – but nothing too out-of-character for a series that in its first outing literally had God punching melting Nazis. So sure, there are flaws, but they’re pretty small in a movie that gets so much right.

And how refreshing is it to have an action-adventure movie like this where the Big Hero our adventurers get to meet isn’t some grand Emperor, general, or King but instead is Archimedes, thinker, philosopher, and mathematician. It once more emphasises the ways that Indiana Jones isn’t just Another Action Franchise but speaks to the importance of things like history, knowledge, understanding, and personal connections. It’s a lovely end to the movie. Except it isn’t the end of the movie. That’s the triumph of hope and fresh chances over despair. Is it a bit cheesy? Hell yes, but that’s baked in at this point. It still works though.

And “it still works” is a fine way to leave Indiana Jones one last time. The franchise has had its ups and downs but it’s leaving on an up. That alone justifies Dial of Destiny. So as Indy heads off into the this-time metaphorical sunset, let’s be grateful he got the chance for a better exit than the last one. If this film isn’t perfect, well, that’s OK. Indiana Jones himself isn’t perfect either.

But he’s so, so much better for being that.

Scores On The Doors? 8/10