Mini Movie Review: INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY (2023)
With my love for historical settings, weird pulp fiction and joyful action-adventure tales, it should come as no surprise that I love the Indiana Jones movies. One of the two or three movie marathons I’ve done in my life was a day spent watching the first four films in the series back-to-back. And although that quadrilogy comes to an embarrassing and disappointing end, the experience reaffirmed my stance that there’s more good in the series than bad. Raiders of the Lost Ark is an all-time classic that I can put on and enjoy any time, and it’s probably my favorite Spielberg film next to Jurassic Park. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is just as good with its heartfelt emotional core and its question of “What if some actual academics got swept up in a cinematic globe-trotting adventure?” I even have a soft spot for the controversial Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: its depiction of India remains fairly questionable, but its darker and more outlandish tone is fun if you’re in the right mood for it.
It’s now been 15 years since the fourth film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which has (rightfully) gone down in pop culture history as a disastrous misfire. Rumors of a fifth film never died down, however, and it was clear that Lucasfilm didn’t want to leave the franchise on such a sour note. And so we have Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, designed to give the whip-cracking, fedora-wearing archaeologist one last adventure so he can finally go out in style.
Or not.
Dial of Destiny escapes being a worse movie than Crystal Skull by the skin of its teeth, with the main factors being that it doesn’t peddle in Ancient Aliens-style conspiracy theories or show a refrigerator withstanding the full force of a nuclear explosion. On the other hand, few things in the film are quite as entertainingly bad as its predecessor. Instead, it’s primarily joyless and dull. What really kills it is the length: this thing clocks in at a painful 2 hours and 22 minutes, at least half an hour longer than it needed to be. Some movies, like the recent Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, manage to earn a runtime that long via good pacing and a clear creative vision. Dial of Destiny has neither. The script is an overwritten mess full of hanging plot threads and ideas that are wasted, poorly executed or just bad to begin with. Unnecessary setpieces and exposition scenes grind the second half of the film to a halt. Characters with no personality or importance to the narrative are introduced and unceremoniously murdered a few minutes later. At least one subplot is set up and then completely forgotten. This needed a tighter edit at the minimum.
Another problem that’s less obvious but still present is a mismatch between the project and its director. Steven Spielberg remains an executive producer but has passed on the directing duties to James Mangold, whose previous work includes Walk The Line, Ford v Ferrari and the X-Men films The Wolverine and Logan. He’s a talented director, but his talents lie primarily in making moody, introspective dramas and not summer blockbusters. Under Mangold, the film ends up being a passable imitation of Spielberg’s work. Emphasis on passable—what I think it lacks is the sense of wonder and weird make-believe energy that make the original three films so enjoyable. Don’t get me wrong, a bunch of batshit supernatural stuff happens in this movie. The problem is that the movie’s taking itself too seriously. It wants to be a big fantastic adventure, but it also wants to be this more reserved narrative about dealing with loss and grief, feeling left behind by society and learning to move on from the past (to give further details would be going into spoiler territory). The film is in a tug-of-war with itself, the result being that most of it doesn’t feel very fun. And if an Indiana Jones movie isn’t fun, then what are we even watching it for?
Thankfully, there is in fact a saving grace in this movie, a gem amidst this pile of sludge. That would be Phoebe Waller-Bridge as the character of Helena Shaw, Indy’s goddaughter and the deuteragonist of the film. Much like how Crystal Skull gave Indy a foil who was designed to be everything he despised, Dial of Destiny makes him the reluctant mentor/conscience to someone who embodies all the worst qualities of his younger self. The script unfortunately keeps pushing on the “OMG she’s just like him” aspect to the point of redundancy, and it’s the kind of role that would fall flat if given to the wrong performer. Waller-Bridge, however, is pitched at exactly the tone this movie needs. Her Helena is a rakish, smart-ass, resourceful trickster who injects life into the proceedings whenever she’s onscreen. She’s one of maybe two or three people in the movie who actually look like they’re enjoying this, and her dynamic with Harrison Ford is easily the best character work we’ve gotten in this series since the stuff with Ford and Sean Connery in Last Crusade. In a way, the stakes for Indy in this adventure are less about stopping the external villain and more about guiding Helena back towards a better moral path. There’s some genuinely good material in here about them sorting out their differences while revealing their emotional scars. Had the script been cut down to under two hours, I would have found it much easier to appreciate these parts of the film, instead of feeling worn down by repetitive exposition and various dead-end plotlines.
Do I recommend this? Not for a theatrical viewing. It’s so meandering that you’ll find it a pain to sit through if you have attention issues of any sort. You’re better off waiting until the Blu-ray/VOD release when you’ll have the ability to pause, fast-forward, rewind, etc. It’s not particularly satisfying as a finale for this film series, either. Its lesson is not to fixate on the tragedies of your past, but it’s perfectly content to dwell on the triumphs of its own past and unintentionally remind you how much better the other movies were—well, the first three movies, anyway. There’s little here to help the film stand on its own, and so it ultimately enters and leaves without much fanfare.
This may be Indy’s last cinematic hurrah, but it’s not the final curtain for this franchise. Bethesda Softworks of The Elder Scrolls and Fallout fame is currently collaborating with Wolfenstein studio MachineGames on an Indiana Jones RPG with a yet-unknown release date. Time will tell if it’s a worthwhile experience or not. In the meantime, I’m now genuinely excited to see what Phoebe Waller-Bridge does with the Tomb Raider reboot she’s apparently working on. Am I upset that Indiana Jones may go out with a whimper rather than a bang? Honestly, no. The original trilogy will always have its place in film history, and its legacy lies not in the two failed revivals but in the plethora of creative works that it continues to inspire. As the eponymous hero himself might say, “That belongs in a museum.”
…And it reinforces my hardline stance that the true heir to this franchise will always be The Adventures of Tintin, a film that society as a whole should feel shame for ignoring back in 2011. Yes I will die on that hill, thank you very much.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is in theaters now, and I will be back with more stories and articles later.
—Dana