Well, with everything old being new again, and with Disney evidently still keen to get their money’s worth from their Lucasfilm purchase, we once again see the return of a cinematic icon. A cinematic icon imagined as an octogenarian whose stunts might now have you worrying about his hips. Still, with a divisive last entry, and with Ford himself very much pushing his iconic role, let’s see if there’s a chance Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny does not in fact make you wish for a rolling boulder to appear out of nowhere.
I was one of those who felt that the prior instalment, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, while certainly flawed, wasn’t as bad as some made it out to be—and my issues were more to do with an overloaded third act act than the precise of CGI or Shia LaBouef. Ford, while certainly getting on in years by then, was just about in the believable range of punching bad guys and swinging on a whip—but with him now even older, and with some people feeling not unjustifiably that the series ended fine with Last Crusade (my favorite of the series for sure), I certainly sympathized with those wary about this one.
All in all, it’s certainly not awful, but it does come with flaws of its own. We open with a prologue set in WW2 with Ford de-aged to resemble his nineties-era, Jack Ryan-playing self. And though this CG facial mesh sometimes looks like a high-end video game, I must admit I enjoyed that part, bringing back the sense of old-timey pulp action as Ford and Toby Jones fight their way through Nazi platoons using whatever wits they can conjure up on the spot.
Jumping ahead to 1969, and we have Indiana Jones as an old man literally yelling at the kids downstairs, and who’s facing divorce issues, students not taking him seriously, and other things that I somehow doubt audiences were clamoring to see. Shia as his son Mutt isn’t here, with there being real-life reasons for that, but thankfully his absence actually does play a serious role in the film’s plot than just being brushed off. Anyhoo, Old Man Indy soon finds himself whisked along for one last adventure with goddaughter Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) with a cabal of supposedly former Nazis ostensibly working for the US government hot on his tail.
There are certainly ideas that I liked—among them the notion of main bad guy Voller (played by the always intense Mads Mikkelsen) as an Operation Paperclip-recruited German scientist co-opting CIA assets for his agenda, giving us the interesting twist of Indy up against his own government this time around. And the film plays with this…rather briefly, and then we’re left with an oddly small organization of bad guys. The imposing forces of the Wehrmacht or the Red Army, it isn’t really--and you'd want just a bit more stakes here. Then there’s the ending, but we’ll get to that.
As characters go, Helena starts off as condescending and conniving—and while she seemingly has an arc about getting a conscience, it just sort of happens, with not much to build to that. There’s another secondary character with Ethann Isidore as her young Moroccan sidekick in turn, who does actually feel like he gets more characterisation. Now, for the action—it’s fine, but feels a little by the numbers, with all the obligatory vehicle chases. Nothing that goes into silliness like we have in prior films, but nothing too wowing either.
And as mentioned we have the ending—one supposedly heavily reshot, and it shows. It is once again actually an interesting idea we haven’t seen before in the series, but once again, instead of true payoff it just sort of stops. And that sort of sums up the film as a whole—it’s certainly watchable, it’s not the worst thing ever, but there’s a sense of definitely just wanting more, from me at least.
Director James Mangold, who previously wrapped up the initial X-Men series with Logan (the real finale to that), is definitely trying to stay true to the originals here, with a conscious effort to try—if not always succeed—to channel Spielberg’s energy. Ford himself is clearly invested, being in as good a shape as possible as it is at his age, and you can see that in his performance. As such, there’s definitely decent moments, and certainly something there in terms of themes and ideas—but between reshoots and things played safe, for the ostensible finale to this series, it could’ve and should’ve done just a bit more. It might satisfy you, but I don’t think it’ll wow you. Still, if nothing else, it doesn’t end on a trash fire at least—but it also reminds me increasingly more that perhaps it’s time to leave some things in film history where they can stand by themselves.
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