Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
I went because the music in the trailer was impossible to resist. The Indiana Jones theme by John Williams is at once adventurous and fantastic and capable of convincing me that perhaps the early rumors are not true; perhaps it's not so bad. I'll forgive a fair amount of mistakes, provided the filmmaker's love for the character and lore are true. Alas, the music betrayed me.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny finds Harrison Ford closing out his run as the titular archeologist racing through time to keep an ancient artifact out of the hands of villainous Nazi Dr. Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) who would use it to rewrite the course of history.
On the face of it, Dial of Destiny seems like it should work: a wild chase to find the Antikythera, a device based on a true-to-life historical treasure, before the bad guys get to it and use it for ill. Classic Indiana Jones plot. Except it's not. This fifth film begins with Jones alone and separated from his love Marion, just about to "celebrate" retirement, and go quietly into that good night. Yesterday's adventures, he tells his friend Sallah (John Rhys-Davies), "Those days have...come and gone."
It's an oft-used open: hero wants to retire, but alas, the world won't let him. He must find it in him for one final adventure. And that might've been all right. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, however poor of a movie, ended happily with Indy and Marion Ravenwood married and son, Mutt, by their side. You'll be shocked to find, upon the film's open, everything went horribly awry during their 15-year hiatus because, don't you know, there's no other way to have character development than crush everyone's hopes off screen.
However much I disagree with the script direction of Indiana Jones' character, Harrison Ford plays him reliably well. He seems to have a bit of a grumpy, blunt brand in the real world and lends that air to Indy's persona this time around. The rough edges are shaved off, but there's an emotional weight to his finale even if the lighter sparks of Jones' personality are allowed to pull through at times.
The de-aging done to Harrison Ford is pretty impressive. If you're looking for it, there are moments where the movement feels like a video game and, if the camera lets you in close enough, there's really no light behind the eyes, but frankly, the technological feat is a sight to behold. And it's not distracting, which is the main thing.
What is distracting is Phoebe Waller-Bridge's character. It's not just that I'm missing Karen Allen's Marion (although I am); it's that Waller-Bridge's Helena Shaw never quite fits. And she's grating. As a nit-picky note, why is she always eating? Killed me when Brad Pitt's Rusty did it in Ocean's Eleven, kills me now. But I digress. There's a point in the film that illustrates how poorly her character plays. Upon escaping a precarious situation, Helena laughs, "It's like I always say, 'when you're in a tight spot, dynamite!" Indy looks at her, "My friend just died." So...yup.
I don't think it's all Waller-Bridge's fault, though. She was really set up to fail; written poorly as a poor substitute for Marion. Steven Spielberg left the director's chair (though did stay on as an executive producer) and Director James Mangold came in with new writers who wanted to try something new. They paired Indy up with a con artist, a foil against Indy's heroics. That's the type of plot device that could have worked, if Indy had been allowed to be himself. But the only people the filmmakers are conning is the audience.
[N]ew writers...wanted to try something new. They paired Indy up with a con artist, a foil against Indy's heroics. That's the type of plot device that could have worked,...[b]ut the only people the filmmakers are conning is the audience.
Alas, this is the era of movies where we take all our old heroes and say to ourselves, "what if they're not really that great? What if they're old and sad and nothing like we remember them?" And it's that last part, the "nothing like we remember them" that really destroys Dial of Destiny in the end. Actors and stories get old, people change (or they don't and the world around them does), they become more vulnerable. All these things are ripe for story possibilities. But one thing they should never do is become someone else. And they certainly don't do so offscreen (that is, not if they have writers who care about the characters).
It would have always been a risky choice to make Indy jaded and defeated, but if it was at least woven in well as a character arc, it could have had some type of explanation. That's the kind of journey you have on-screen. Starting off with Indy as a dejected, lonely man is a cheap plot parlor trick and a slap in the face to the character. It's wrong in any story to cheat that much plot offscreen to allow for a pathetic deconstruction of a beloved main character, but to do so now, on Ford's final outing as Indy, is unforgivable.
If I had money to bet, it all comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding of the way the filmmakers imagine we as audiences see the character; that we're unaware our Indy can bleed, can age, can become disillusioned with the relentless state of affairs. But it's not true. Indiana Jones was always a man outside of his time, fighting against some of the worst, seemingly innate, impulses of man to plunder and destroy the old and beautiful things, twisting their nature for nefarious purposes. Jones isn't a hero because he's perfect. Indiana Jones is a hero because he does the right thing, despite all the things. Jones and Ford deserved better than this.
And this, this is all without mentioning the mind-numbingly ludicrous physics of the Tuk-Tuk chase scene or the finale with so breathtakingly stupid a twist it beggars belief the villain, Dr. Voller, made it this far at all. I sat in the not-even-half-full theater thinking, "wait, I wouldn't know that detail, but why wouldn't Voller know it?" Mikkelsen is an intriguing actor to watch as an antagonist, but even he can't help the scriptwriters' foolish attempt at an evil master plan.
I don't know where Dial of Destiny's $295 million dollar budget went, but Indy was robbed. The film's final moments attempt some redemption with a sweet callback that really, truly works, but it's too little, too late. I'll be sticking with the original three, as far as I'm concerned, the only three.
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