There was genuine curiosity for many of us when James Mangold was confirmed as director Indiana Jones and the Dial of Fate, the fifth and final installment in the beloved franchise that kicked off with a bang in 1981 when Steven Spielberg and George Lucas reimagined the Saturday matinee adventure series they grew up with for a new generation that couldn’t get enough. After all, Mangold was the man who not only revived the tired Wolverine, but gave the character a genuinely poignant sendoff that was thoughtful, textured, and even profound in 2017’s Logan.
Perhaps the Indiana Jones movies, with their attractive combination of laughter and clean-shaven excitement centered around a gritty, quick-thinking archaeologist in a fedora and leather jacket, would never sit well with that kind of gritty treatment. But it seemed reasonable to at least hope for a new look that moved beyond the reel-and-repeat formula of car chases and gunfights strung together in various locations around the world – or even just an invigorating back-to-back. basics course correction after the polarization Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Fate
It comes down to
Butt dial.
What the new film – written by Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, David Koepp and Mangold, with the feel of something written by a committee – does have is a sweet explosion of pure nostalgia in the final scene, a welcome return foreshadowed by a few visual cues early. That encouraging return is also suggested by a moment when Dr. Harrison Ford’s Jones, who has been ripped out of retirement after ten years of teaching at New York’s Hunter College, stops to reflect on the personal mistakes of his past. That’s pretty much the first time the movie pauses to take a breath, and it happens an hour and 20 minutes into the bloated 2½ hour runtime.
That non-stop pace may sound ideal, but it’s mostly an exhausting slog. When Dial of fate gives an explicit nod to previous episodes – Indy remembers drinking Kali’s blood, undergoing voodoo torture, or being shot nine times; or he and his new companions squeeze through a narrow stone hallway and discover halfway through that it lives on creepy critters – it reminds us how much fun those early movies were. And they still are, despite some striking racist caricatures belonging to a simpler, less culturally sensitive time.
Part of what obscures the fun of this concluding chapter is how patently fake so much of it looks. Ford is aged digitally – and convincingly – in an opening scene that finds him among the Nazis at the end of World War II. Hitler has already fled to his bunker and Gestapo prospectors prepare for defeat by loading a loot train full of priceless antiquities and assorted stolen loot.
Indy races to save himself and rescue his professor-British friend Basil Shaw (Toby Jones). But any adrenaline rush that an extended set piece could have produced is killed by the ugly distraction of some truly awful CG backdrops. The basis of this series lies in Spielberg’s overgrown playfulness with practical effects. The more the films have come to rely on a digital paintbrush, the less hair-raising their adventures have become.
Another problem here is the tendency to overcomplicate everything. It begins with the red herring of the opening scenes, the lance of Longinus, which is said to have pierced Christ’s side on the cross. Much talk about this sacred relic turns out to be just a distraction until we get to the real treasure, Archimedes Dial, a device believed to have the power to locate cracks in time. The best Indiana Jones movies all have a supernatural element, so why not time travel? Well, you see why in the messy climatic piece.
Most of the action takes place in 1969, when Indiana feels the strain even as he rises from his recliner (and Ford commendably shrugs off his vanity and makes no effort to hide his age). The unexpected reappearance in his life of the late Basil’s daughter Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), whom Indy has not seen since childhood, brings to mind Archimedes’ golden double discus gizmo and whether its supposed properties could really work. Helena claims to have chosen the legendary doodad as the subject of her dissertation.
The dial was split in half by its inventor to prevent it from slipping into the wrong hands – or to flesh out a laborious new installment requiring multiple destinations – so half is in an archaeological vault, courtesy of Dr. Jones, and the other half lies in parts unknown. But Helena isn’t the only one interested.
It also brings together Nazi physicist Dr. Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), who came into contact with Indy 25 years ago, comes out of hiding. Living under an alias, he works for the NASA space program, developing the technology that brought the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. Turns out he changed his name, but not his political affiliation, so going back in time would allow him to “correct” history.
Helena, whose intentions are not what they seem, jumps on a flight to Tangier with half the dial, reconnects with her junior associate Teddy (Ethann Isidore), and organizes a private auction to sell the relic to the highest bidder. Indiana follows to stop her, and she’s unapologetic about valuing cash above all else. But as the half-disk slides from one hand to the other, they all try to outrun Voller and his villainous henchmen (Boyd Holbrook and Olivier Richters), following clues to locate the missing half and test Archimedes’ invention .
Mangold moves from one set piece to the next without much connective tissue. They include a horseback and motorcycle chase through the streets of Manhattan crashing through an anti-Vietnam protest and an Apollo 11 “Welcome Home” ticker tape parade before continuing into the subway tunnels. There’s also a frantic flight in Moroccan tuk-tuks and a dive to the bottom of the sea off the coast of Greece to find a coded guide to Archimedes’ tomb. By then you’ve probably given up following the twisted plot mechanics and just going in and out with each new location.
Or maybe you’re wondering what drove third-beaked Antonio Banderas to play such an insignificant role as Renaldo, Indy’s old fishing buddy, whose scuba diving expertise provides a crucial help as he so carelessly confuses Indy with a bunch of outsized CG- eels. displayed that Disney can relax about everything Little Mermaid snipe. Renaldo has a crew full of male models with bodies that didn’t exist in the late ’60s, which seems like an intriguing detail, though he hasn’t been around long enough to shed any light on it.
Sadly, none of this amounts to much more than a talented director letting it down with mind-numbing, rote-plotted video games. Waller-Bridge makes Helena quick with a joke, handy with her fists and a demon at the wheel, and as is the rigor in these less restrictive gender-coded times, she’s imperturbably resourceful, never helpless. But it isn’t until the very end, when Helena has put aside her mercenary instincts long enough to show genuine concern and affection for Indiana, her godfather, that the chemistry between Waller-Bridge and Ford yields any enjoyment.
Mikkelsen can be a fabulously debonair villain (see: Casino royale), but any interesting quirks the character might have exhibited are drowned in a complicated plot. This calls for a larger-than-life villain, and he’s somehow smaller. Isidore’s Teddy fills the plucky young sidekick spot and is, well, let’s just say he’s not a Short Round and leave it at that.
This is a big, bombastic movie that goes through the motions but never finds much pleasure in the process, despite the hard-working score of John Williams constantly pushing our nostalgic buttons and trying to convince us we’re on a wild ride. Ignoring the inevitable jokes about his age, Indy proves he can still corner himself. But Ford often seems unconcerned, as if weighing whether this will restore the tarnished shine to his iconic action hero or reveal that his sell-by date has passed. Both the actor and the audience get a rough deal with this empty brand redemption exercise.
