Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny - Review [FULL SPOILERS]
- iainmacleod22
- Jul 3, 2023
- 17 min read
First, I think I get the annoyance with the movie.
I wrote my review before seeing other people's but looking them up to see the consensus, I'm going to put a few in just so you can see people's gripes and understand why I genuinely still mean it when I say I like it.
I can't stop laughing at this one. I think it's Harrison's speech bubble. It's not even a thought bubble, he just said it out loud.
But this one's my personal favourite.
Like, I think I get it, I dunno. People's thought that Phoebe's character is insufferable and too arrogant. Something about Mary Sue?
So, I don't personally feel the film did that.
To an extent absolutely the new Phoebe Waller-Bridge character is capable. To an unrealistic degree? Hell yes. Yes, she insults him a lot due to her characterisation of confident to the point of being a bit insufferable. I'd say she's a bit much.
Yes, she banters with Indiana Jones and makes fun of him for being old. She also flirts with him, and has moments where she's impressed and engaged in what he's saying and does what he says, deferring to his experience.
When guns start firing and he tells them to leave, they leave. When he has historical info they don't, they listen.
She's also specifically said in dialogue to not be as smart as him at knowing Ancient Greek.
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(...is review man / \ okay?)
There is also a scene in which in trying to fix a car Indy uses his knowledge of chewing gum to fix a car that neither her nor another character knew about.
In terms of a Mary Sue, I first off agree she is that character to an extent and I don't like that either. But not only do I not think it's the worst instance of this characterisation of young arrogant woman bantering with the first generation hero man, I don't think people would be anywhere near as harsh if the new character was a man.
I know, because the proof of that exists. It's called Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. People didn't hate Shia LaBeouf's Mutt for being too capable, they hated him because he was an idiot. Completely different.
As well, it's a big franchise. Of course they're going to introduce a new younger character who's got some capability to hint she might be the new hero. Of course it'll be a woman in 2023, and of course they're picking Fleabag Feminist Famous Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
If you're going to see an action movie based off of a character's legacy from when the hero was young, but they're now old, you're gonna have at least one younger character who can do action.
There are two things that I can fault the new Indiana Jones movie for.
Here they are:
1. Digitally De-Aging CGI
The first is the CGI de-aged Harrison Ford. The main reason is it denies an actor a role as well as makes the VFX team spend a bunch of time they don't have to in order to make a still-uncanny deepfake just for some sort of angle to sell that ends up instead looking worse for the film. As well as, well it just doesn't look that good yet.
I think this was done because given Spielberg's work on Tintin and Ready Player One, his mentality towards making action films of late has been essentially that 'CGI is good'.
To see him talk in interviews about Ready Player One and the future of technology resembling it, would be to see Spielberg more excited about the possibilities of technology than focusing on the grave nature of the reality of the ramifications.
By the sounds of things, if you asked Spielberg his opinion on the ramifications of recreating CGI actors he'd probably say "It's so amazing what we can do!" rather than "What an absolutely horrendous ethical nightmare that'll be!"
So yeah, digitally de-aged Harrison Ford.
2. Punching a 70 year old man in the face as hard as you can multiple times and then having him do stunts.
The other fault is something that does go through the entire film so it will be the deciding factor as to whether you enjoy it, but essentially; that Harrison Ford was in his 70s while playing the role of an action hero on a globe-trotting adventure movie.
This will probably make the film grating for a lot of people, as a lot of the action is requiring a heavy amount of suspension of disbelief to the point of potentially seeming comical or ridiculous.
He gets punched a lot in this movie, and hard. He gets thrown around by the bad guys, at one point when he has to chase a van, he runs through a shortcut off-screen to catch up with them when they've gone around, but going uphill.
That van chasing moment plus the amount of damage a 70-80 year old man takes were my own personal gripe, but in the moment of Harrison staring off at that van I realised two things.
Firstly, that if they didn't have that, then the character wouldn't know where they were going and plot wise it wouldn't make sense for the other character to be right there to talk to, so per the geography of the particular place, it required they go to another location to happen to be on the street to meet that character.
And secondly, that it was Indiana Jones I was watching, and that as a result, I didn't really care about that.
The next section will be FULL SPOILERS from here on out.
Why I Liked It (and why I'm not just saying it to be contrary or a fanboy)
The 1960s Space Race/Moon Day Act
The movie had a lot of incredible elements by modern movie standards and Spielbergian directorial and writing moments that made me realise just how good action movies can be again.
James Mangold's direction fit the Indiana Jones cinematography like a glove, with lots of moments which weren't just action for the sake of it, but created individual little points for this particular film's themes to shine.
The beginning of the movie is set during the 1960s, with a part during 'Moon Day', the day in which people are celebrating the moon landing.
This establishes half of the film's theme:
( Taking up space
Indiana Jones is older. He's an elderly man living alone and deliberately coded for a joke as 'Mr Jones', crotchety after being woken by the young people partying too loudly and going with a baseball bat to bang on their door for waking him with their noise.
So our protagonist is that crotchety old man. It's a nice joke, and also mentions the second half of the film's theme -
Being in the wrong time )
( Taking up space - Being in the wrong time )
(The Dial - of Destiny)
Indiana Jones feels like he's in the wrong time by being out of touch with the world around him and longing to go back to the past, more interested in history and nostalgic than enjoying the scientific discovery of going to the moon.
As well as this, it's set around the moon landing.
So they managed to take a time and place that Indiana Jones actually would realistically be living in, and managed to make themes to do with it.
This isn't making aliens like a sci-fi B-movie because of the time Indy's in, it's making him have to face being older and feeling like he's taking up space and not doing anything productive. Which is part of why he feels he has to go on the adventure again, to be useful as much as to literally and thematically dig up history.
The Dial of Destiny isn't just from the past, it's in this case something from his past. From Director James Mangold himself:
The prologue establishes their ownership of half of it in the 1940s, when Indy's at his prime, fighting Nazis, taking artifacts from them and finishing their own adventure. This isn't just a serial prologue of a different adventure before the adventure proper (a la Raiders or Temple of Doom), but it means the history that Indy's digging up is quite literally something that he himself experienced.
This plays into the themes of the Nazis he was fighting and how the prologue where Indiana Jones is shown to be a hero is incredibly different to the modern day.
The movie's new villain takes the form of Mads Mikkelsen's Jürgen Voller, a Nazi scientist from Indiana Jones's past who is now not just a returning Nazi in the modern day, but working with NASA.
So to one of the points. Time. Is Indiana Jones relevant today?
I dunno, something about a scheming villain working on going to space caring only about advancement at the expense of all his worker's lives and ultimately not even doing anything worthwhile with it, only to literally crash and burn to get nothing for it seems...
Put it this way. To jump to the end, I really liked seeing the Nazi burn in a fire his actions created after spending the whole film getting people killed just to try something that wouldn't do anything productive anyway.
Almost like a Greek tragedy of a sort.
Someone taking artifacts of Godly power, doing their best to advance technology to gain that power to enforce their own ruling over men, only to be punished by the Ancients who's knowledge allowed him to be there in the first place.
Something about taking fire, uhh something something science, using a time device to go to the past, getting shot down by the past people who invented time devices?
Something like that I think. I- I'm having all sorts of memory issues today sorry, it's all on the tip of my tongue but I just can't quite place it. Maybe I'm getting old who knows.
The technology of going to space, everyone caring about present and future possibilities rather than history where during a lecture here Indy gets a new life talking about Archimedes and Ancient Greece, in this beautiful moment of acting with Harrison Ford seeming brighter and more alive than ever-
A TV literally gets shoved in showing the moon landing space race news for everyone to seem much more excited about.
For writing moments that stood out during action scenes, the Vietnam protest one is very good.
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The 'Hell No' Chant
Indiana Jones is captured by the villains and kept alive due to his happenstance of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and then kept alive due to his potential use to them in terms of his historical knowledge, of Ancient Greek and potential historical knowledge of the Dial and things that might help them find the second half of it to create a time machine (the overarching idea is for the bad guys to go back in time to change history and have the Nazis win the war).
They capture Indiana during a Vietnam protest. Protestors are chanting.
Now this next moment is particularly emotional once you've seen the whole film.
Indiana Jones had a son with Marion, Mutt introduced in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. In this film, it's revealed that Mutt died after going to Vietnam.
When Indy's captured by the men, their van getting stuck by another car in an alley as well as the villains' need to move fast force them through the protest with Indy at gunpoint.
Indy then hears people chanting and gets an idea.
He starts chanting "Hell no we won't go".
It's explicitly shown with a POV shot that people are looking at him, so it's an idea to get people's attention to see what's going on and maybe help him.
Not only do the words fit naturally with the protest as people take up the chant, but the words are fitting for Vietnam and himself, they're literally dragging him away and his words are protesting that.
Not only does it fit for being taken away by the villains, but also, it's the theme of taking up space, being made to move somewhere else by somebody else and also speaks to his feeling of wanting to be around compared to if he died.
"We won't go", in terms of going can also mean Indiana dying. Because if they cart him off, at that moment for all he knows, they are going to kill him once they're out of the protest or get what they want from him. So it's a moment of his resolution to live after feeling an apathy about life and feeling like he's taking up space.
Not only does it add that, but as well- his son died in Vietnam.
It's him either getting angry or a second wind where he's being captured by guys in suits at gunpoint to go where they want, then protesting his capture so that he can get away. It makes sense why he started shouting not just from a point of view of trying to get attention and save himself, but also why he didn't try something else before.
Because the protest making him think of his son, getting angered at the notion of his death and of himself dying as well is what naturally spurs him to start doing that in the first place.
And it gives the audience a personal connection to Vietnam in that moment. Here's a father character who lost his son in Vietnam using the real protests in order to save his own life.
And by using Indiana Jones to do this, it helps reinforce a positive American identity in the form of America against the Nazis, and adds the US government in this instance with their Vietnam drafting decisions being shown as similar to those made by the Nazis where the ruling government displaces and sends people off to die for no reason.
The 'suits' are controlling the people being drafted, as well as in this case, physically carting off Indiana.
Indiana Jones's stance on Vietnam is an important one. It's like saying what Superman's stance is on it.
He's a typically masculine-coded gruff, punching, male American heroic character.
Which means in one line of dialogue can say something showing his sudden Republican side of these kids not knowing what real war is like and to fight for your country, easily turning into some misplaced John Wayne patriotism about having to fight for America regardless.
Or it can be a new American ideal of being anti-war, even against your own government or ideals of patriotism, stating that your America doesn't fight wars when the wars aren't protecting anybody.
I think it's a standout moment of the film, and justifies the film's existence massively.
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Gunshot at a Vietnam Protest
There's a moment in which in order for the bad guys to find Indiana, one of them fires in the air, and everybody then screams and ducks, except for him and Indy.
That's not just how he finds Indy not just realistic due to his reaction time as an older man, but does a couple other things.
First is maybe Indy could have been hiding somewhere and they play it out that the guy tried it to find him, looks at an elderly man from behind, turns him to see his face that he's not Indy, only for Indy to come from behind a car and punch him or something. That'd work as an action moment but not only does their one work better for logic, but it's good characterisation for Indy and Indy versus the villain.
You've got Vietnam protestors, and then two older men, one done up with a suit and a gun firing in the air to find an elderly man who fought the Nazis.
Indy is the hero of these movies and it's his conflict versus the villain which is always of more importance over problems regular people have in our world. Finding the artifact is always the most important thing, fighting Nazis the most important thing in the world.
So they're physically above everyone else. It also gives a couple of cool shots of the hero and villain facing each other, and as opposed to the rest of the film, rather than have the older man do unrealistically active things, his inability to react fast enough to duck with the rest or make a plan is what gets him in trouble.
It also thematically about peace and violence. The guy's at a Vietnam protest where a lot of people are protesting for peace, and the villain uses a loud gun firing to make them all duck.
It's not just a pragmatic moment and clever from the villain, but also thematic. It's good.
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Helena Shaw
Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Helena Shaw is naturally from the introduction of course meant to be a potential new Indiana Jones.
The young woman who's a surrogate daughter who's studied archaeology, she's very smart, a little bit in the criminal world and even with a kid sidekick. She takes part in action scenes, cracks jokes, eyes up guys and flirts as well as has the emotional crisis of caring about money over people and history.
As it goes, even though it was obvious from the get go they were going for it, it was never to the extent of making Indiana look dumb compared to her. It never cut him down to build her up.
Let me say that one again 'cause it's important. If you think she was insulting him and that was why we were meant to root for her- let me reiterate that the movie is about him and his character arc, but first of all, you need some action. You want an elderly man 'doing his own stunts'? They need to introduce a younger character to focus on in action.
And if you think what she was saying to him was entirely just insulting... I don't know if any of these reviewers watched the Last Crusade or most action films, but people banter pretty frequently in them. People loved Tony Stark making fun of Captain America for being old in The Avengers, including pretty much every other character while being capable himself, but I guess since they said he was a narcissist in the first film I guess he gets a pass.
The only moments she's talking in a way that could be seen as cutting him down to build her up are when she's talking about history quickly after he begins, showing she also knows the history. And when she talks about him being old.
He- he is old. Like he is old. He literally says he's getting old in the first film. 'It's not the years honey it's the mileage'.
Banter's poking fun at someone, but the other person can banter back with something they have the first person doesn't. She's younger, but he's got more experience. .
They also didn't make her flawless, she'd need help from someone else when a bad guy grabbed her while trying to get them away, like when Indy specifically has to do that towards the end. And Indiana Jones knew what she did for all of the history, including a bit more than her.
Oh no wait, apparently they did hold on.
And even though her character didn't seem particularly physically action-oriented compared to the past Harrison Ford trilogy-Indy, whenever she had to crack a joke or talk very fast about history whilst secretly hatching a plan to blow up a boat, she did it believably and I thought she was as charismatic as you could be for that role.
If you think she was talking down to him and shown in the movie as much more capable than him, when he was also participating in the action alongside her punching people and taking punches at 80 years old. Then you're focusing on the unreality of a woman being able to do action and know things, and annoyed that she's enjoying her ability to do it, over the ability for an elderly man to do action at all.
In that case, you could tell from the trailer it would probably have both of those. So you were never gonna be able to like the film. Indiana Jones films are fake. They're homages based on serials, they're jokes. They've always been jokes. That's the fun. And I found her talking to be just... banter.
I think people are just piling on it because they see anything close to a Mary Sue (and I agree that she is close to one) and the appeal of hyperbole by trashing a big-budget Hollywood film with shades of bad Feminism making a very popular review due to people loving to see it as a trainwreck and laugh at that as just fun now. I agree with them most of the time, I agree for Ocean's Eight, Charlie's Angels, even Rey in the Force Awakens. But this? She says he's old sometimes. He doesn't care. He's Indiana Jones, he can take a few punches.
I don't really mind the unbelievable punching if she can do the rest. Did you hear the punch sounds from the original movies?
And how often are you gonna need to punch people in the 70s? Just give her a gun.
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Teddy Kumar
Even the side side character of Teddy Kumar - Helena's kleptomaniacal sidekick kid who practices flying and banters about Indy being old - gets his own characterisation and arc.
He's good at pickpocketing, he's small, he can't swim. He's taught how to swim, he's captured by the bad guys, and to escape the bad guy Heavy he's handcuffed to, he pickpockets a handcuff key, falls into the water with the Heavy and when a grate with a small hole appears, he gets through it and uncuffs himself while the Heavy is stuck to the grate, only for Teddy to cuff him to the grate as he leaves. And then he has to remember what he was taught to swim out of it.
Oh, and he also flies a plane at the end. So his full characterisation of ability and inability, as well as a little bit of charm all make him a fully-rounded action character who participates. He helps them out in a fight at the end in a realistic way, just jumping on someone for a distraction while the older people figure out the plan with knowledge of his being there while the villains don't.
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Mason & Klamer
Shaunette Renee Wilson's Mason a CIA agent in collaboration with the NASA posing Nazi group. Mason is the well-to-do by the book one, and Klamer is trigger-happy and uncaring about who he kills.
Voyd Holbrook's 'Klamer' appears to be a cut-and-dry CIA agent when first introduced. Short blonde hair, chiseled jaw, P.I. style moustache, gun in hand and stiff Southern twang of an accent. Until like Mads and the heavy, he's revealed for what he truly is.
When it's revealed the bad guys are Nazis, it could possibly be a reinterpretation of a modern idea. That a lot of modern people in the American South are... well... Nazis.
That was more a thematic thing I picked up, other than that assume that all of the villains have at least one thing to characterise them properly, where Shaunette Renee Wilson's Mason a CIA agent in collaboration with the group unbeknownst that they're literally Nazis is the well-to-do by the book one, and Klamer is trigger-happy and uncaring about who he kills.
Mason, unbeknownst that they're literally Nazis is killed by them and it's the last thing she sees. It's revealed by Mads Voller that he was actually a Nazi the whole time. The movie's saying something but hmmm I can't exactly say what maybe something about CIA and collaborating with fringe groups and Nazis and how proud they are or something? Might have to watch it again to be sure but I'm pretty sure the Nazis just shot a black woman and took over the operation from the CIA.
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A New Old Ending
As for Harrison Ford's being elderly while doing action, Indiana Jones has always made a comical punching sound. He's always been wrapped up in things for just happening to be there, and the bad guys have always used the artifact to actually do the crazy thing.
And as well as all of that, punching in comic books, action serials, superhero movies, videogames, and Indiana Jones has always been a conveniant unconsciousness button with no side effects.
It isn't about him being old and then look at how much he can take, it's about whether the Indiana Jones ideals of fighting Nazis, historical knowledge or could at all be fun or useful in the 60s. As well, can they be fun and useful now?
At the end of the movie, the Dial of Destiny of course has carted them off to the past to Ancient Greece. Being shot and lying there with a clear heroic death or poignant sacrifice of Indy wanting to stay behind because he'd slow Helena and Teddy down to go back, when Indy feels like he's found his right place and time in the past-
Helena punches him in the face to knock him out, he's miraculously recovered by her to the present, and then all of the good guys return including Marion.
He's in the right time and space again.
And part of the reason for that is in that moment of wanting to stay in the past, where it's not just his sacrifice to help the others leave, his feelings of wanting to stay in the past as though that's where he belongs are refuted by Helena.
It's about a guy who feels like he's taking up space by being elderly not doing anything useful, who's then told by a younger generation, people still want you around.
If you're a grandparent or around that age, it is still more worthwhile being around your family than being alone, or going off to search about your past or wallow in self-hate, where you're literally taking yourself out of the here and now and trapping yourself in history.
In this last Indiana Jones film, it isn't enough that he finds a historical artifact or could get the chance to live in literal history. It's about how having a spark of life talking about history with a student, or in the here and now is still more important to those people here and now rather than whatever you could do in history.
Indiana Jones thinks he would be happy in the past just from sheer respect and admiration for history and being interested in it. But he wouldn't be. Same as someone elderly thinking their family doesn't like them or that in old age they have nothing to offer the world anymore. It's still better for someone to be around friends and family than focus on 'learning world history' or 'dying heroically' when there's a potential option not to.
Sometimes, it takes getting punched by the younger generation to realise that**.
And finally, the literal final shot of this movie is hanging it's hat up in a very nice and poignant shot- made by the director of Logan remember.
I don't just think this is 'good' as in worth a watch, or a good Indiana Jones movie as in 'better than Crystal Skull'. I think that it's a perfect ending to the Harrison Ford Indiana Jones franchise, potentially all things Indiana Jones franchise.
And as well as that, it goes perfectly with the third if you watch them all as a four, since then you've gone from Indiana Jones dealing with issues with his father and reconciliation, to him having to deal with a surrogate daughter as the father figure.
I don't just think this is a good Indiana Jones movie to fit with the other three:
I think this is a good movie.
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**A slap probably would have been better for the writing, but probably wouldn't have gone down as well for showing Helena knocking out Indiana Jones after he's been hit by Nazis multiple times.
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