How much did we really need another Indiana Jones movie? After Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull screwed up Last Crusade’s note perfect ending with CGI groundhogs, nuclear resistant refrigerators and the general presence of Shia Labeouf the franchise all but relinquished its perfect trilogy award over to Back To The Future (Star Wars and Lord Of The Rings have sequels and prequels and Godfather 3 blows, deal with it) after a backlash worthy of Jar Jar Binks hit the internet like a giant, rolling boulder.
If we’re being real, Crystal Skull actually isn’t that bad, but it’s true mistake was existing at all, insisting that Indy had to have one more crack of the whip when the optimal time to try it had probably passed around a decade earlier – but here we are again, preparing to watch cinema’s preeminent obtainer of rare antiquities squeeze one more adventure out of that battered fedora.
Have the executives at Disney and Lucasfilm not looked up the definition of insanity in the nearest dictionary, or will James Mangold (now nestling his butt in the director’s chair where Spielberg once sat), stop this last ride of Dr. Henry Jones ending up in a museum before it’s barely released?
We start in 1944 in the middle of a classic, Indy adventure as he and his friend, fellow archeologist Basil Shaw, attempt to stop Nazi astrophysicist Jürgen Voller from stealing yet another holy relic in order to satisfy the eccentric demands of Adolf Hitler. However, after an extended sequence that sees them take on a whole train full of armed, German troops, it seems that the artifact that everyone is chasing turns out to be something of a red herring – but there’s something else lurking on the train, an artifact known as the Antikythera, a contraption said to have been created by Syracusan mathematician Archimedes and can apparently locate fissures in time itself.
Jumping ahead to 1969 and we catch up with a very different Indiana Jones than the whip cracking, Nazi punching adventurer that we’re used to. Older and creakier than he was in Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, Jones is on the verge of retirement and has lost the spark for teaching and life he once had due to a string of personal tragedies. Compounding all this even further, the recent moon landing has all but made interest in the past obsolete , leaving Indy feeling worthless and unnecessary.
However, that old spark is reluctantly reignited with the arrival of Helena Shaw, daughter of Basil and God daughter of Indy who shows up out of the blue to enquire of the whereabouts of Archimedes’ Dial, the item that obsessed her father so. However, it transpires that Helena doesn’t exactly have the most noble intentions and hot on her trail is Voller, who has the CIA in his pocket due to the fact he helped design rockets for the Americans after the war.
Before you know it, Indy is being thrust into another globe trotting adventure in order to procure a mythical dohickey, but does he still have the goods while now being deep into his Winter years?
If you were hoping for a rip-roaring Indiana Jones adventure of old, you’ll probably think that Dial Of Destiny is not fit to lick the dust from Temple Of Doom’s Sankara Stones, but taken on it’s own terms, it’s yet another example of Lucasfilms taking an iconic hero (see also Luke Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi) and using them as a metaphor for growing old as the world moves on without them. While some have (very vocally) voiced the displeasure of seeing their childhood heroes with all the fight wrung out of them like a damp dish towel, it does provide the chance for actors to examine the mindset of a champion who has all but given up the desire to engage in daring exploits ever again. Taken in this spirit, Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny is something of a fitting goodbye, giving the artist formally known as Henry Jones Jr. (now Sr., of course) a somber and highly emotional send off that will elicit, at the very least, a quivery lip, if not full blown tears. However, anyone gearing up for some thrilling, edge-of-the-seat, action/adventure may walk away feeling a little short changed as the sober tone seeps into the bones of the action, slowing things down progressively until the final third of the film, while brave, is hardly the big, final blowout you were expecting.
Up to that point, things progress quite nicely with the opening WWII set adventure not only giving us the best, onscreen de-aging so far (not perfect, but good enough) but also sating my desire for ramped up, boy’s own, Nazi-thumping awesomeness. As the film progresses, we have a spirited chase through a procession for the Apollo 11 astronauts that sees Jones take a horse into the subway (presumably without the appropriate number of tokens) and an energetic chase through the maze-like streets of Tangier that succeeds in thrilling despite some obvious green screening. However, it’s the final act that will prove to be the problem despite the fact that it still stays within the boundaries and rules we accept from an Indy adventure. While we thankfully don’t have to process our hero going eye to eye with inter-dimensional aliens, some inflexible fans are going to hear the words “fissures in time” and immediately shut off quicker than an overloaded circuit breaker. However, while I understand this on a certain level, to simply decry the genuinely bonkers ending means to miss some incredibly poignant themes and a genuinely touching performance from Harrison Ford. Maybe the feeling could have been tempered by chucking in a last minute fist fight with Boyd Holbrook’s buzz-cutted goon, but it’s a strange, subdued way to end a franchise that’s seen melting Nazi’s, immortal knights and – yes – a bloody great UFO.
So, does that mean the Dial Of Destiny is as bad as some are making out? No, not really. Director James Mangold does a decent approximation of Spielberg and the script adheres to a great many of the franchise’s rules to an impressive degree. Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s perky Helena has a relationship with a street urchin called Teddy that nicely echoes that of Indy and Short Round from Temple Of Doom and Mads Mikkelsen’s villain is burdened with much the same overconfident ego as Belloq, Donovan or Spalko and once the movie gets the energy levels up the old Indy starts to make himself strikingly familiar.
However, while Dial Of Destiny should be commended for trying to excavate new emotional depths from its rumpled icon, the limping of Indiana Jones past the finish line proves that this time it’s not the mileage, it’s the years.
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