‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ Revisits Old History With New Horizons | Review
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is a fitting end—and a bright new beginning—for one of the most beloved franchises, particularly for moviegoers who love rip-roaring historical misadventures and an ample amount of pathetic Nazis getting socked in the face. While it is undoubtedly Harrison Ford’s last outing as Indy, the fifth installment of Indiana Jones keeps the door wide open for his plucky goddaughter Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) to follow in his footsteps through dank caverns and into the arms of history’s greatest mysteries.
The aliens of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull may have been a step too far for stuffy audiences who mistook Indiana Jones as some sort of very-serious movie about a treasure-hunting professor, so Dial of Destiny dials it back a few notches—and centuries—as if it has a point to make about the core ethos of this franchise. Sure, the stakes of Indiana Jones have always been high, but the plotlines are straightforward, the villains are cartoonishly bad, and the good guys always win.
Image via Walt Disney Studios
With Logan, James Mangold mastered the “grumpy man is forced out of retirement to help a smart-ass young girl” trope, and he builds on that excellence with the dynamic between Indy and Helena. Helena is very much a grown woman who is capable of fighting her own battles, but her impulsive nature meets its match with Indy’s level-headed disinterest, and they both push each other out of their comfort zones. Even though their personalities clash quite a bit, at the end of the day, they are both cut from the same cloth. They believe themselves to be islands, capable of thriving in solitude—but through each other, they learn just how important human connection is.
The Dial of Destiny’s most talked about sequence kicks off the film, but it is far from the film’s most memorable scene or even its most important. Mangold could have easily opted to regale us with the tall tale of how Indy and Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) braved certain death to retrieve priceless historical artifacts from the freshly-defeated Nazis when they were still in their prime, but telling is always the weakest option when the technology exists to allow an audience to see the adventure for themselves.
In certain scenes, you can see the seams of the, admittedly, impressive CGI that allows Indiana Jones to reclaim his youth for one more Nazi-punching adventure, but it is never so uncanny that it rips you out of the moment. In those more obvious moments, it’s more about the way the scene lights him—always oddly over-brightened and a little too picture-perfect—which gives away that Ford is actually in his 80s and not his 40s anymore.
Image via Walt Disney Studios
Beyond helping the film uphold the “old show, not tell” adage, seeing a spry Indy again helps the narrative far more than most seem to realize. In truth, only a handful of people are going to rewatch the previous films before seeing The Dial of Destiny, and the opening sequence helps remind us just how much time has passed between his adventure-seeking days and napping in his recliner. Weirdly, the de-aged Indy drives home the film’s core thesis about the fragility of life and our desire to—yet inability to—turn back time’s hands and relive our glory days.
As with most of the Indiana Jones films The Dial of Destiny centers around an ancient relic (in this case, the dial, formerly known as Archimedes' antikythera) which the big bad is desperate to get their hands on. Once again, it’s the Nazis who are scheming, and Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) intends to use the dial to turn back the hands of time to ensure that the Nazis win. Throughout the first two acts, Voller never quite feels like a serious threat, mostly due to the fact that he’s a rather thin-framed mathematician who lets his brute strength—Klaber (Boyd Holbrook) and Hauke (Olivier Richeters)—throw the punches for him. In that regard, he’s more sinister, but even then he’s downright pathetic (like Nazis should be portrayed). His plotline also incorporates some murky politics pertaining to the U.S. and its space race, which is never touched on beyond a nod to the depressing fact that we employed “former” Nazis to help us achieve scientific greatness.
It’s through this plot that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny gets its most nostalgic, and for all the wrong reasons. As with many childhood classics, the Indiana Jones franchise is often viewed through rose-colored lenses, which prevents audiences from seeing its faults. From its inception, Indiana Jones has been rife with problematic plotlines (you can love his relationship with Marion Ravenwood and still acknowledge that their romantic backstory is morally flawed) and blatantly racist stereotypes. With The Dial of Destiny, it is easy to see why they arrived at the decision to kill off the only woman of color in the cast, especially given who she was working with, but there were other options that they could have chosen—ones that didn’t involve shooting a Black woman. Instead, they took the most reductive route by fridging a character who carried the first act, and had the most potential to appear in whatever spin-off they give to Helena Shaw.
Image via Walt Disney Studios
Despite the bad taste that decision leaves in one’s mouth, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny never ceases to be amusing. Even in the quiet moments in between massive action-packed set pieces, you can feel the pulsing heart of the film’s humanity—still pumping hard and fast from the latest stunt. Indy may not be as nimble as he was forty years ago, but that doesn’t keep him from cracking his whip or cracking a joke that feels just like old times. Ford still has the same twinkle of mischief in his eyes, and he is truly at his best in The Dial of Destiny because it allows him to stand on equal footing with his co-stars and not just act as a mentor to the next generation. Ford, like Indy, isn’t there to be wheeled out as a monument to yesteryear, just because a studio has decided to reboot a beloved franchise with his younger prodigy. He isn’t just there to be Helena’s father figure or give her guidance—he contributes just as much as he always has without having to sacrifice who he is as a character.
Indiana Jones has always been infused with nostalgia, even when it was brand-new and premiering in theaters for the very first time. Debuting in 1981, Raiders of the Lost Ark was set in the 1940s and meant to evoke the warm comfort of old-school series that Steven Spielberg, Lawrence Kasdan, and George Lucas grew up watching. For The Dial of Destiny, the nostalgia it doles out feels deserved and intentional for the story. John Rhys-Davies returns as Indy’s old friend and ally Sallah, but he isn’t used as a prop. Instead, he’s neatly brought back into Indy’s life in a way that forces him to think about what he has allowed himself to lose in the mires of his twilight years. The callbacks Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, David Koepp, and Mangold chose to fill their script with feels on par with the enduring themes and plot devices across the film franchise.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is a fitting end to Ford’s legacy as Indiana Jones, delivering one last epic adventure, while remembering that audiences want hope-filled closure and long-overdue pay-off to the stories they’ve carried in their hearts for forty years. It is filled with heart-pumping action, comically bad villains, and the wry sense of situational humor that made the franchise an instant classic. Most of all, it whips up the perfect combination of respect for the past and hope for the future.
FINAL VERDICT: B+
