Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

6/10

Starring

Harrison Ford

Phoebe Waller-Bridge

Antonio Banderas

John Rhys-Davies

 

Directed by James Mangold

 

This is supposedly the fifth and final installment in the Indiana Jones film series, following Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008). The film opens with a jaw-dropping use of CGI to de-age Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. While many didn’t enjoy The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I did, so I was really looking forward to this one.

The massive expense on locations, costumes, and special effects is evident when watching this film, though I couldn’t help but wonder why they didn’t scale it back a bit. This is the first film in the series without Steven Spielberg directing or George Lucas working on the plot, and maybe that’s why it doesn’t quite match the magic of the previous entries.

The movie drags more than it should, spending too much time on mysteries and running around. Still, I’m not upset about it—the director clearly wanted this to feel like a grand, final hurrah for Indiana Jones. What I did find unnecessary, though, was the over-the-top CGI sequence of Jones jumping around in the opening scene.

As expected, Harrison Ford is back with his iconic hat and whip, paired this time with Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who plays Helena, Jones’s goddaughter. She’s also an archaeologist and comes looking for a mysterious artifact—the dial—that’s in Jones’s custody. The story reveals that Jones originally acquired the dial from Helena’s father, who nearly lost his mind trying to understand it before handing it to Jones to destroy. In the future, Helena gets the dial from Jones, but her complicated past and greed cause it to fall into the wrong hands.

What’s an Indiana Jones movie without bad guys? This time, it’s Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), a German villain with plans to reassemble the dial and rewrite history. What follows is a globe-trotting chase as Jones, Helena, and their team race to stop Voller from altering world events.

I wasn’t particularly drawn to Helena’s character—not due to the performance, but because of how the character was written. She felt more like a plot device than a compelling addition to the story.

It’s no surprise that this film is a box office flop. The Indiana Jones character has run its course, and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull should have been the series finale. Many older fans of the original trilogy weren’t keen on The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and are likely waiting for this film to hit Disney+ rather than going to the cinema.

On top of that, studios keep cramming too many blockbusters into the same release window, leaving no room for this movie to stand out. Disney will undoubtedly add it to their streaming library soon, but I wish it had been a bigger success both in cinemas and online.