Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

“It’s not the years,” globe-trotting, whip-cracking archaeologist Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) once remarked, “it’s the mileage.” In “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” the seemingly final entry in the now 42-year-old film franchise, it’s no longer just the mileage, it’s the years too. The movie’s most potent image is not an eye-popping effect or hair-raising stunt, it’s Indy dozing in front of his television, looking like any old schmuck. He is retiring from university professor job as “Dial of Destiny” opens, gifted a weighty metaphor in the form of a clock, one he promptly passes off to someone in the street. It’s Indiana Jones as “About Schmidt.” But if that teases a revisionist action/adventure, in taking the considerable reins from Steven Spielberg, director James Mangold chooses not to dissect or subvert the franchise’s deep sense of mythology but embrace it, eschewing referencing the pulpy serials that inspired the originals to reference the Indy movies themselves. Even then, however, it is not really a festive retro revival as it is a facsimile, save for a few isolated moments and one climactic swing for the fences, conspicuously marked by a lack of exuberance and humor, inadvertently equating getting old with being a drag.

The idea of time is embedded in “Dial of Destiny’s” requisite relic, Archimedes’ Dial, an ancient doohickey built by the Syracuse mathematician that can reveal fissures in time, a DeLorean in the palm of your hand. To inflate the degree of narrative difficulty, the dial of destiny comes in two pieces, separated, of course, one of which is aboard a spoils-filled Nazi train in 1944 as the movie opens. Rather than cast a young actor in the role of Indy from a period when we have already seen Ford play the part, “Dial of Destiny” recreates the young Ford via trendy digital de-aging. They might have included Denholm Elliot as Marcus Brody, too, had they been willing to go with a hologram, but instead recreate Brody, in a manner of speaking, through Basil Shaw (Toby Jones), an old associate of Indy who is imprisoned aboard the train and needing rescue. The de-aging of Ford works until he speaks, a 39-year-old with the coarse voice of an 81-year-old, a strange half-man, half-synthetic and emblematic of a movie that can’t square plundering its own past. The action sequence aboard the train suggests the opening to “The Last Crusade,” absent the same sparkle and wit, underlined in the photographic darkness, as trendy as the de-aging effects, so you can hardly see what’s going on, while the emergent bad guy Dr. Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) becomes less modern commentary on our problem with you-know-who than lack of a better idea, going back to the well (of souls) one more time.

After the prologue, “Dial of Destiny” jumps ahead to 1969 where Basil’s daughter and Indy’s goddaughter Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) approaches the retiring Dr. Jones about the half of destiny’s dial that is in his possession. Flitting between friend and foe, she absconds with it, causing Indy to give chase, and eventually to seek out the dial’s other half. And that prompts Voller, presumed dead but working for NASA under a fake name, to chase them, from New York to Tangier to Greece to Sicily, hoping to get his hand on the ancient instrument to rekindle WWII, giving rise to an Indiana Jones movie real reason for being, action and adventure. In a way, “Dial of Destiny” becomes a victim of its own release date, its train set piece and auto rickshaw chase in Tangier suffering in comparison to the train set piece and Roman car chase in “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.” Even leaving that aside, Mangold’s movie just doesn’t measure up, the introductory game of cat and mouse between Helena and Indy and Voller paling against the nimbler and more amusing opening to “Jungle Cruise.” And when a sequence in “Indiana Jones,” once the gold standard for these sorts of movies, struggles to match “Jungle Cruise,” there’s a problem.

As much as Ford has changed, so has movie technology, and where the original trilogy was built on practical effects, computers and green screens have taken over. The original movies were not realistic, per se, but their stunt work imbued a distinct and beneficial sense of verisimilitude through practical effects that enhanced the thrill. It’s what made the joke cited at the beginning of this review work and made the larger joke work too, that he exerted so much energy for so little payoff. But now, when an old-timer like Indy would theoretically have an even harder time of it, the green screen work make it seem effortless, significantly reducing excitement. But it’s not only excitement these scenes lack, it’s twinkle. That’s what “Raiders” really effused, a sense of joy, a camera that moved with a true sense of discovery and a series of setups giving away to cheerful payoffs. “Dial of Destiny” repeatedly dampens its own payoffs, like Voller’s bulbous henchmen crossing a rickety bridge, registering them but not reveling in them, while even something like a nifty variation on Indy’s greatest fear gets trampled in the execution, underlined in the sequence’s accompanying Antonio Banderas cameo. Like Lucasfilm impossibly flattened the force of Samuel L. Jackson in the Star Wars prequels, “Dial of Destiny” improbably douses Banderas’s considerable charisma. 

Ford, on the other hand, when given space, effuses vulnerability, never more than an early classroom scene where his weary indifference gives way to joy in describing the Siege of Syracuse. It hints at the one truly delightful sequence, where not coincidentally Mangold breaks free from the original to do his own thing, less an Indy movie, almost, than a live action version of Pixar’s “Up,” succeeding in a counterintuitive way by going too far, taking the phrase of living in the past and stretching it as far as it will go.

Frank Marshall Explains Impetus for Continuation of Crystal Skull

The other day at the fifth annual FranchiseCon, a conference hosted at the Budget Inn in Wentzville, Missouri, producer Frank Marshall explained that the forthcoming fifth installment in the “Indiana Jones” franchise would be a continuation of the previous film, “The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”. The following is taken directly from the transcript between Marshall and the interviewer, Dom Flanagan.

Marshall: “Someone showed me a review written by this critic Dan something. Dan Johnson? And it was, I’m paraphrasing here, but basically something along the lines of how it felt ‘tired’. So I got my team together and showed them this review and said, you know, what do we do about this. And we came up with a lot of ideas, just kinda put everything on the table. But the one we kept returning to was making a continuation of “Crystal Skull” but making it feel less tired and more awake. So that’s the idea - “Crystal Skull” on caffeine, basically, which is how we pitched it to Steven and to Harrison. So really, it all started with a review. Which is kind of amazing when you think about it. Because, like everyone else, we don’t listen to what the critics say. Because the critics don’t matter.”

Flanagan: “But aren’t you basically implying-”

Marshall: “What’s that?” [Points at something indeterminable behind Flanagan.]

Flanagan: “What’s what?” [Looks behind him.] “I don’t see anything.” [Turns back.]

[Marshall is gone.]

A 1960's Indiana Jones...

And so it will come to pass in the year of our Lord 2019 that a fifth “Indiana Jones” movie will be released, 11 years after the last one, “Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”, a Steven Spielberg joint we all remember being met with a universal roar of derision until we realize it’s pulling down 78% on the never-not-inaccurate Rotten Tomatoes and that its reviews were more “Eh, okay, whatever” than “A Plague On All Your Houses!” Look, I wasn’t the most ardent fan of “Crystal Skull”, but the passage of time, as it’s wont to do, has allowed most of the film to fall away in my mind’s eye, leaving only fond thoughts of the Nuking the Fridge sequence (which apparently Steven Spielberg was forced to apologize for because no one bought that scene even if “Indiana Jones” movies aren’t, for the love of God, about “buying stuff”) and the glory of Indy finally acknowledging what will we all knew to be true - that is, Marion Ravenwood was always the only woman in these movies that mattered.

But then, our thoughts about “Crystal Skull” don’t matter just as our thoughts about the forthcoming new adventure don’t matter. As “No Country For Old Men’s” Uncle Ellis so aptly noted, “You can’t stop what’s coming.” And we can’t stop “Indy V” so best just to get right with the motion picture gods. And since it’s coming, it got me to thinking. It got me to thinking about how “Crystal Skull” bumped its timeframe up to the 1950’s, meaning that the Nazis were traded in for more Cold War appropriate villains and the big to-do revolved around extra-terrestrials. And so if we are to assume that this fifth installment will adhere to that same timeline advancement and bring our fine fedora-ed friend into the 1960’s then what oh what could “Indy V” be?

Cold War Thriller

Indiana Jones & the Sunken City. A search for an underwater city of the coast of Cuba leads our fearless archaeologist into the crosshairs of the Cuban Revolution and the ensuing Missile Crisis where submerged pyramids are revealed not as the archaeological discovery of a lifetime but subaquatic missile silos. Only Indiana Jones and American Olympic Gold Medal winning swimmer Lynn Burke (Amanda Seyfried) can save the world from catastrophe.

Swinging 60’s

Indiana Jones & the Queen of Mod. A late-life foray into aesthetic archaeology leads Our Man Indy to London of the Swinging 60’s where he finds himself very much not acting his age as he becomes embroiled in a Bond-ish spy caper as he attempts to rescue the original Mary Quant mini-skirt (“It belongs in a museum!”) from vile British gangsters.

Italian Auteurist

Indiana Jones & the Ancient Roman Jar. The discovery of an ancient Roman jar riddled with holes leads Indy to the capital of Italy where his search yields only questions, not answers, as he comes to see the unanswerable riddle of the holes as proof of the meaningless of existence and the uselessness of studying prehistory in the hopes of understanding it when nothing is understandable except for our inability to understand.

New Hollywood

Indiana Jones & the Quest for Gold Lake. When an archaeological dig suggests the myth of the Gold Rush-era Gold Lake might be true, Indy high-tails it to San Francisco, where he finds himself, grizzled growler, drawn into the counter-culture moment, and ultimately a violent New Left group that radicalizes him and consequently convinces him to find the gold to fund their operations to off the pigs. (No gold is found. No pigs are offed. Indy goes off the grid.)

British Kitchen Sink

Indiana Jones & the Drab Apartment. After being brought up on charges of crimes against antiquities and fired from the University of Chicago, Indy takes a position at MOLA in London which basically consists of just sitting in a basement office, reading National Geographic and staying out of the way. Disillusioned with life, as his marriage struggles and money becomes tight, the silver screen's most daring adventurer is relegated to deadbeat status on the corner stool at the pub drunkenly telling people about that one time he found a priceless golden idol.