Rod and Karen review the final entry in the Indiana Jones universe, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” We also discuss your comments on our latest reviews.
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SMR 455: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
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We really didn’t need another one of these, regardless of our opinions of Crystal Skull which…..happened. This series “ended” in 1989 with the exceptional Last Crusade in which Connery & Ford were 12 years apart in age. I have fond memories of both Crusade, Raiders & to a lesser degree Doom. Watched these growing with family, so I have a big fondness for Indy.
I did like Dial of Destiny, if not outright love it. Not because Spielberg or Lucas weren’t creatively involved. Them not being apart of this, couldn’t fix the flaws here, so I’m pleased with what was done here. Also, I’m seeing some Crystal Skull revisionist history & I ain’t with it. I’ll just leave it at that.
Anyway, yeah, it was good. Anything that didn’t involve Harrison being de-aged, just didn’t work for me, tbh. The lighting is a problem to me. If these scenes were done in the light, I’d probably feel differently. It looked *too* artificial to me, which is unfortunate because the opener is textbook Indy, really. When Michael Douglas & Robert Downey Jr. received that treatment in the MCU for their de-aging moments, it looked good. Some of the imperfects did pop out, but not how they did in Destiny. Film did need to slow down but I understood what Mangold & his fellow screenwriters were going for here to trudge the story along. This nigga is oldddddddddd & Harrison did that well. My man was even outchea thirst trappin’ in the 60s. God bless him. God shouldn’t bless the screenwriters for killing Antonio Banderas’s & Shaunette Renée Wilson’s short-lived characters. Damn, I didn’t like that. Banderas could’ve been a useful payoff to the final act…….which I liked, otherwise?
Yes, this shit is a stretch. A big one. I wasn’t like how the last one did its weird third-act. I guess my explanation is this felt Indy to me. I admit it could’ve benefitted from some subtlety & maybe not be not so paradoxical. It worked on me. Indy wanting to pull a Fred Sanford and stay with Archimedes. Glad Helena punched the shit out of him to keep things grounded in reality, somewhat. I didn’t mind these characters being out of their depth. Mads Mikkelson, however, deserves a bit better because he’s so good at villainy, the script didn’t give him more to stretch his intellect into the material further. Same for the rest of the villains. I liked Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s kleptomaniac ass here. Never seen her act before. While her character could’ve benefitted from having more gravitas just like Ford’s Indy dealing with his grief and mortality, she did fine. The young actor, Ethan Isidore, was fine. Nothing special.
It’s like 20-30 minutes too long. An even two hours would’ve been perfect instead of this being 154 minutes long. No wonder the budget is more inflated than the damn Zeppelin. Over $295M+.
At this point, just retire Indy. Don’t reboot it or remake it. If you want to do a Helena Shaw-esqie feature? Ok, I just don’t know how you’d pay it off. This is the middle child of a long-running series. I liked this. It did benefit from some lowered expectations, but let this die. It had a great run.