Indiana Jones & The Dial of Destiny (2023) Dir. James Mangold

After the disappointing fourth entry into the Indiana Jones franchise, Disney decide to take another whip-crack at the adventures of Harrison Ford as the ageing archeologist searching for a potentially world-ending relic.

The film opens with a flashback to World War 2 as Indiana and the Germans both hunt for a sacred artefact. Par for the course so far. And Nazi officer Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) tangles with Indiana as they discover half of Archimedes' Dial, an antiquity that possibly allows for time-travel. Speaking of which, Ford’s real voice is slightly too old in these sequences but the CGI de-aging to his face is pretty good to be fair. And Mads is suitably evil as always - adding a sinister depth to even the broadest of villains he so often plays.

But soon we are whisked to 1969 where we are presented with a washed up Indy so cantankerous he’s like Carl from Up. And the age-ist “too old” jokes quickly wear thin (or should I say get old fast). Shouldn’t he be more like his over-excited senior archeologist dad?

Anyways, moving on from Crystal Skull’s wedding ending, we are told of his pending divorce from Marion - which simply allows a Force Awakens Han/Leia exit from that particular story. And what happens to his son Mutt is a shocking revelation that seemed like an exit in bad taste, even for me.

Indy's goddaughter, Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) shows up before fleeing with the dial as they both are chased by Voller, now posing as a NASA scientist. And thus begins a globe-trotting trudge of mostly unconnected ‘fetch-quest’ scenes taking us to New York, Tangier and Greece, with each party fighting to get hold of the full device.

These sequences are very much so-so but the film’s main problem, as before, are the visuals. I cannot stress enough how bad the film looks with its abundance of CGI. No sky, no background, no car chase looks even slightly real. Mangold’s last film (the excellent X-Men spinoff Logan) had a real weight and reality, but here we get so much colour-grading and post-production image manipulation even the real places look fake.

The action scenes - or at least the ideas - are indeed fun with a neat mix of trains, horse-riding, gambling and a tuk-tuk chase - which all beat the nuclear-fridge any day of the week. But the New York city streets look far worse than King Kong from 20 years ago. And watch Ford in The Fugitive, then tell me that the film's simple foot chase through a city parade isn’t more exciting than what we have in this flick.

An elderly Ford is impressive given his 80 years (!), but sadly there’s no real stunts per se. If Ford is too old, I don’t see why they couldn’t go to an actual location with a stuntman. They did in Temple of Doom after Ford had an injury, so why not here?

But alas, when they green-screen him atop a carriage, there’s barely any wind on a barreling train, his hat doesn’t move and engine smoke doesn’t get in anyone’s eyes. This all may seem small potatoes but it all adds up to that ‘cartoon’ feeling. (Our Twitter thread here expands upon the horrid ’fake’ look of many recent blockbusters).

Waller-Bridge is mostly fine but does deliver a truly terrible “one final adventure” piece of dialogue and a line about a “beautiful woman” is too on the nose even for Disney. BUT you should dismiss the ‘girl boss’ rants of angry male youtubers, this film is bad for a whole host of legitimate reasons aside from that. And ignore their “emasculation of Indy” diatribes too - it’s massively inconsequential to the rubbery nonsense around him.

The failure at the box office in fact tells you everything. How did this cost $300million when it’s just 75% green-screen anyway? The similar Disney-made ‘man/woman/kid’ historical adventure National Treasure cost a third of that. And that film, and its sequel, are far better than what we have here.

In addition, it’s quite clear kids aren’t at all interested either. And the longer-term fans have been burnt far too often, especially with Disney recently messing up films within the Star Wars, Indy and Marvel brands. Both have therefore stayed away in droves. Understandably so, as well.

In fact, it reminds me of the Terminator franchise (review link). There’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what audiences want and I’m once again shocked that these films double-down on their repeated problems rather than addressing or solving previous ones. A 10 year-old who watched and enjoyed Raiders is now 53. Let’s be honest, that’s your demographic.

Its finale includes a Goonies-style trip through caves as it blandly ticks off the series’ greatest hits (chases, bugs, a young sidekick). And it finally drags itself to a CGI (what else) ending involving a 'now-this-is-pod-racing' plane journey to a different time, in what looks like an Age of Empires video-game crossover.

In the end, if you want to see a grizzled old retired man punch Nazis on horseback and in tanks then go watch this year’s excellent Sisu (our review) - which has just a $14 million budget by the way. But this disappointment concludes as an overlong, overstuffed and inexcusably ugly-looking damp squib of a send-off for an impotent Indy movie way past its prime.

★★

2/5

Michael Sales