Every Indiana Jones movie opens with a big action set piece already in progress. This in-media res approach ensures that the excitement of these features is there right from the get-go. Why wouldn't new installment Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny also go this tired and true route? Our story begins with Nazis collecting lots of loot in the final days of World War II, with Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) being held hostage by these nefarious fascists. As he's plopped down into a chair, a Nazi officer removes the bag concealing the face of this archeologist. The reveal of Jones is meant to be a moment that gets the audience clapping like there's no tomorrow. Instead, I found myself recoiling. The digitally de-aged face of Harrison Ford has consumed the frame, his rubbery and too-perfect features proving incredibly distracting. In attempting to bring back the past, Dial of Destiny has only provided a reminder of the limitations of today's technology.
Normally, the kick-off action sequences for Indiana Jones titles inspire cheers and excitement for what other thrills the ensuing film will provide. In Dial of Destiny, the awkward reveal of CGI young Harrison Ford is a bad omen of what's to come. Buckle up, folks. You'll be praying for the digital prairie dogs of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull before the credits on this newest installment begin to roll.
After this extensive World War II prologue is finished, we cut to Indy as an elderly man in 1969. On the day of the moon landing, Jones is more aware than ever of his age and irrelevance to the wider world. As he grapples with retirement, Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) walks back into his life. Jones's goddaughter, she's determined to find an ancient relic, that titular dial of destiny known here as the Antikythera. Shaw is a morally shady character, but she looks like a clean-cut citizen compared to Dial of Destiny villain Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), a Nazi whose been searching for the Antikythera for decades. With this object split into multiple pieces across the planet, the race is on to prevent this device from falling into the wrong hands. Jones may feel like the world has passed him by, but he's about to get pulled into an adventure that may just prove that assumption wrong.
Back in 2013, Dial of Destiny director James Mangold (who also penned the script with Jez and John-Henry Butterworth, and David Koepp) helmed The Wolverine. A prevailing criticism of the feature was that its super conventional finale, relying on the titular superhero duking it out with a CGI robot, was the worst part of the film. Unfortunately, Dial of Destiny is like that finale stretched out into an entire film with an overdose of exposition added in for good measure. Mangold commits to mimicking director Steven Spielberg's retro-adventure style for so much of Dial of Destiny yet never comes across as being comfortable with that aesthetic or having much fun with it. The "fun" sections of this installment are all rigid mimicry of the golden years of the Indiana Jones saga told through shockingly subpar visual means.
Dim lighting abounds, with certain sequences like an underwater hunt for a MacGuffin often being difficult to make out thanks to how dark every frame is. There's now little grandeur in the scrapes Indy and his accomplices get stuck in, just muted color palettes and minimal lighting. Terrible CGI is also rampant, particularly with poor work putting live-action actors into digital backdrops. If you loved the digital ants and fake-looking CG jungle from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Dial of Destiny has even more of that visual effects wizardry in store for you! A lengthy chase scene in Morocco especially gets disrupted by this element. Why even put that set piece in the movie if it was going to look so fake? The convoluted plot, meanwhile, stretches an already thin premise well past the breaking point. Way too much screentime is dedicated to characters explaining things flatly in unimaginatively framed shots. Were Mangold and company so self-conscious about all the divisive silly elements in Crystal Skull that they now felt they had to justify every bit of treasure-hunting tomfoolery in this sequel? Or was Mangold trying to bring Indiana Jones to the "grounded" vibes of his other directorial efforts like Logan? The world will never know, but what is clear is that Dial of Destiny needed way fewer explanations and more excitement.
The script also feels like a hodgepodge of storytelling elements cribbed from prior Indiana Jones films, albeit done with far less polish than earlier features. We've got a kid sidekick in the vein of Short Round, Nazi villains (but I repeat myself) are back as the antagonists, the mismatched duo banter between Shaw and Jones harkens back to the central father/son dynamic in Last Crusade, while various reflections on the titular lead aging are reminiscent of certain moments from Crystal Skull. Constantly reminding people of earlier superior Indiana Jones movies just highlights the flaws of this newer installment. Making me think so much about Raiders of the Lost Ark just made me wish I was watching an adventure movie that didn't feature bad digital de-aging.
The strangely stifled atmosphere of the proceedings sucks out a slew of opportunities for good supporting actors like Mads Mikkelsen and Antonio Banderas to make full use of their many talents as performers. Phoebe Waller-Bridge at least has more to do as the co-lead of the movie, though her dialogue deliveries often felt too modern for me. She gets some chuckles (this is Phoebe Waller-Bridge, after all), but the anachronistic qualities of her performance never felt like they coalesced into something cohesive or entertaining. Meanwhile, Harrison Ford seems game for all this treasure-hunting mayhem, but aside from a few wistful monologues about life regrets and growing older, Dial of Destiny doesn't give him much substantive material to work with.
It's baffling that this feature isn't more interested in utilizing Ford's talents as an actor, but then again, there are lots of bizarre shortcomings to Dial of Destiny. The 1960s setting, for instance, quickly proves superfluous to the proceedings once Indy and Helena begin to travel overseas searching for the pieces of the Antikythera. Meanwhile, returning characters like Sallah (John Rhys-Davies) are awkwardly shoehorned into the story. If you're going to bring vintage staples of older Indiana Jones movies back, give them something fun to do! The less said about the laughable finale, which is brought to life through atrocious green-screen work and incredibly awkward dialogue, the better. At least composer John Williams isn't asleep at the wheel here. Much like with his compositions on Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Williams gives a subpar modern blockbuster way better music than it deserves.
We really didn't need a new Indiana Jones movie. Then again, though, we didn't need a new Rocky feature before Creed came along in 2015. Any long-running saga can be livened up with a quality installment. As Indy himself once said, "it ain't the years, honey, it's the mileage!" Alas, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is far from a creatively rejuvenating entry in the Indiana Jones saga. On the contrary, it's a tedious slog lacking even the admirable big swings of previous weaker Indiana Jones yarns like Temple of Doom and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Unfortunately for fans of this iconic adventurer, the staggeringly terrible digitally de-aged Harrison Ford at the start of Dial of Destiny is a truly appropriate harbinger of what the rest of the movie offers.
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