Mario's Musings: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
There’s something special about seeing an Indiana Jones movie on the big screen, especially on opening night. I wasn’t alive yet for Raiders of the Lost Ark and Temple of Doom’s release dates, and for some reason I never got to see The Last Crusade on the big screen, so my only other experience of seeing an Indiana Jones flick on opening night was Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in 2008. Suffice to say, I was both genuinely excited, as well as nervous, to see my favorite cinematic character go on his guaranteed final adventure.
In my post about the trailer, I expressed what this meant to me. I used to watch the original trilogy with my dad, and unlike many, we both genuinely enjoyed Kingdom of the Crystal Skull when it came out (dad was into the idea of Ancient Aliens before it was cool). We had made plans to see Dial of Destiny together opening night on the big screen. Unfortunately, my father passed away in November of 2021. But knowing him, he would have found a way to get out of seeing this with me like he had many times before when we made plans to go to the movies:
“Ah, I heard it stunk, I’m gonna stay home.”
“Sure, dad.”
And then I’d catch him months later watching whatever movie we were going to see on cable. Like I said in the previous post, the last movie we ever saw together in a theater was the second Ace Ventura movie. But in hindsight, I think about how during the pandemic, the last movie we watched together was the Naked Gun, and it’s the perfect movie to go out on. I never saw him laugh so hard.
“The Holy Grail worked!”
Image, Lucasfilm
But enough about the sad commentary on the last few years, you came for a movie review, and I’m here to disappoint you. After everything I just wrote here, there’s no way I’m able to give you an unbiased review of the very last Indiana Jones movie. Why? Because there’s no such thing as a bad Indiana Jones movie, just an Indiana Jones movie with a few problems. Except Raiders, that movie is perfect. It’s a Best Picture nominee for a reason.
So let’s turn the dial… to Dial of Destiny, with some spoilers, so be warned. The one and only Indiana Jones movie not directed by Steven Spielberg, who passed the mantle onto James Mangold, director of such flicks as Copland, Walk the Line, Ford v Ferrari, and Logan. Considering he got to do the movie where we saw Hugh Jackman’s Logan ride off into the sunset, Mangold seemed like the perfect guy to do the same for Indy. And he nailed it.
The flick opens with an Indy adventure set during World War II, which is something viewers never got to see before. We see a de-aged Harrison Ford working in a way that the de-aged Robert De Niro and Al Pacino didn’t in the Irishman. Ford, despite being 81, still moves like a younger man. He just sounds like an old man now. As for the CGI for the de-aging? It works at points and at other points it’s a little off, like during the action parts of this opening scene. This was also used to establish the villain and the MacGuffin that Indy and his nemesis would be fighting over in 1969.
“It’s not the years honey, it’s the mileage.”
Image, Lucasfilm
Speaking of, the viewers are then taken to 1969, where we find a sad and broken down Indy on the verge of retirement: a far cry from where he was in 1957 when he finally married Marion Ravenwood in the last Indy flick. A lot of stuff has gone down in the years since, and it’s taken it’s toll on our hero. It takes a chance encounter with his goddaughter Helena to slowly bring Indy out of his funk to stop said former villain from getting his hands on what Helena is also seeking: the Antikythera Mechanism, or Archimedes’ Dial. And that brings us to our villain: Voller, a former Nazi scientist who discovered the Dial in 1944, now working for NASA on behalf of the US government. Having helped achieve space travel for the United States, Voller now wants to fix some mistakes of the past, namely, the fall of the Third Reich. His plan is to get the two pieces of the Dial and use them to go back to 1939 and take over Nazi Germany from Hitler. But like all Indiana Jones villains, the MacGuffin ends up being Voller’s downfall.
Image, Letterbox
As my rankings show, placing this at third is a bold statement, especially placing Crystal Skull above Temple of Doom. But Dial of Destiny at third? Well, this movie gave Indy one of the most emotional send offs you can give a character. Is he riding off into the sunset with his father, Sallah, and Marcus? No, but we went back to the beginning of the series instead, with Indy being reunited with Marion. Indy was always a pulp hero, but I liked that the movies slowly made him a pulp hero with depth. Last Crusade showed that Indy had deep seeded issues with his estranged father, Crystal Skull showed Indy dealing with a country that questioned his loyalty, and Dial of Destiny showed him dealing with his grief over his son Mutt’s death in Vietnam. The scene where Helena asks him what he would change if he could go back in time gutted me when Indy gave the response he did:
Helena Shaw: If you could go back in time, what would you do? Check out Cleopatra?
Indiana Jones: I would prevent my son enlisting.
Helena Shaw: How would you do that?
Indiana Jones: I would tell him that he would die, that his mother would be overcome with a grief so intense that his father would be unable to console her, and that it would end their marriage.
All in all, this was an emotional movie, especially for me. Between seeing my favorite film character getting a proper send off, being played for the last time by my favorite actor, and not getting to see it with my old man, it’s a whirlwind of emotions for me. Should you see this? Absolutely. While you’re at it, go back and watch Crystal Skull, I guarantee you didn’t like it because it was the cool thing to do at the time. We now have five Indiana Jones movies, we should treat them like the gifts that they are, because it’s a crime we didn’t get more. So get to the theater now, especially while everyone else is enjoying the Barbenheimer double header.