Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny – Snapshot
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is a desperate attempt to recreate a movie feeling that no longer resonates with contemporary audiences. While I appreciate the de-aging and the attempt at generating the old excitement, without Spielberg, it just doesn’t work! (2.5*)
Where to Watch:
Stream: Disney+
Rent: Prime/Fandango/YouTube ($4) Apple ($6)
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny – The Oscar Buzz
Oscar Nominations (1) / Oscar Wins (0) :
Original Score (John Williams)
Composer John Williams is not only the oldest person, at age 92, to receive an Oscar nomination, but with well over 50 – starting with Valley of the Dolls (67) – I suspect he has the most nominations. He won the Oscar five times for Fiddler on the Roof, Jaws, Star Wars: Episode IV, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and Schindler’s List. His most recent nominations include The Fabelmans and the last two Star Wars films, Episodes VII and IX. Williams was director James Mangold’s first choice to do the music since he had already composed the music for the four previous Indiana Jones movies, including the iconic main theme. Williams’ music is obviously perfect for this movie – full of bombastic action and mystical interludes. He has been collaborating with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas for so many decades that there was really no other choice.
Harrison Ford has played Indiana Jones since the first movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark, released in 1981. It really isn’t possible to imagine anyone else inhabiting the role, but, at age 83, I can’t see him doing these kinds of performances again. Officially, this is the last Indiana Jones movie. Ford was never nominated for his Indiana Jones roles, but he did receive a Leading Actor nomination for Witness.
Director and co-writer James Mangold doesn’t have an Oscar pedigree like Williams, but he was a part of a trio of writers nominated for Adapted Screenplay for Logan. He also directed Angelina Jolie to an Oscar in Girl, Interrupted, and Reese Witherspoon in Walk the Line (Joaquin Phoenix was also nominated in the latter movie). And he directed and helped produce the Best Picture nominee Ford v Ferrari, which won the Sound Editing and Film Editing Oscars.
Mangold has assembled a team of technical people to help in his efforts from these films and worked on The Dial of Destiny. His Oscar-recognized team members include: Cinematographer Phedon Papamichael (nominated for Nebraska and The Trial of the Chicago 7); Editors Andrew Buckland and Michael McCusker (won the Oscar for Ford v Ferrari, and McCusker was nominated for Walk the Line); Production Designer Adam Stockhausen (won for The Grand Budapest Hotel and nominated for West Side Story and 2 others); Costume Designer Joanna Johnston (nominated for Allied and Lincoln); and Makeup & Hairstyling artists (at a minimum, won Oscars for The Grand Budapest Hotel and A Series of Unfortunate Events and were nominated for 2 other films); and Sound Mixers and Editors (winning Oscars for Ford v Ferrari, Saving Private Ryan, Titanic, Jurassic Park, and Terminator 2: Judgement Day). I confess that I did not research all 622 people credited with Visual Effects, but I’m sure many of them have been nominated and even won at the Oscars before now. The point is that Mangold, and his production team— which included Steven Spielberg— can recruit an Oscar-level support team. (It should be noted that many of these folks also worked on Mangold’s next film, released in 2024 and will most probably be on the 2025 Oscar list, the Bob Dylan biopic, The Complete Unknown— which I have not seen yet.)
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny – Related Movies
Direct Ancestors:
The Indiana Jones movie series:
Raiders of the Lost Ark (81)/IJ and the Temple of Doom (84)/IJ and the Last Crusade (89)/IJ and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (08) (Ford/Indiana Jones and sidekick characters/Musical Score)
Other James Mangold Films:
Ford v. Ferrari (19)/Logan (17)/Walk the Line (05) (Direction/Script/Cinematography/Film Editing/Sound)
Other Influences:
Star Wars movies (several)/The Fugitive (93)/Witness (85) (Ford)
Edge of Tomorrow (14) (Script)
The Trial of the Chicago 7 (20)/Nebraska (13) (Cinematography)
Fiddler on the Roof (71)/Jaws (75)/Star Wars: Episode IV (77)/E.T. The Extraterrestrial (82)/Schindler’s List (93)/The Fabelmans (22)/Star Wars: Episode IX (19) (Musical Score)
The Grand Budapest Hotel (14)/West Side Story (21)/Bridge of Spies (15)/12 Years a Slave (13)/Ready Player One (18)/Isle of Dogs (18) (Production Design)
Allied (16)/Lincoln (12) (Costume Design)
Foxcatcher (14)/Click (08)/A Series of Unfortunate Events (04)/The Grand Budapest Hotel (14) (Makeup&Hairstyling)
No Time to Die (21)/The Martian (15)/3:10 to Yuma (07)/Pirates of the Caribbean (..)/Bohemian Rhapsody (18)/Saving Private Ryan (98)/Titanic (97)/Jurassic Park (93)/Terminator 2: Judgment Day (91) (Sound)
Dial of Destiny is the fifth and last film in the Indiana Jones franchise. Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark defined the character of Indiana Jones as an adventure-seeking archeologist who always got himself into and out of trouble in the most delightful ways. Harrison Ford’s character became one of the all-time greats in adventure/action movies. Spielberg released three films in the franchise in the 80s, and coupled with his Jaws and Jurassic Park movies, he defined the genre. Spielberg resurrected the series with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in 2008, two decades later. At the time, everyone thought that should have been the end of it, but for some reason, the Hollywood moneymakers thought they could squeeze out one more. They were wrong – despite a killer budget estimated at $387 million, Dial of Destiny bombed at the box office.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny – What Others Think
Viewers didn’t hate Dial of Destiny, but they didn’t love it either. In my audience ratings, it ends up pretty much in the middle of the pack, tied with Barbie! The movie earned a respectable $384 million at the box office, but that didn’t cover production costs, so the film is considered a bust. Viewer comments include “A Muddled Misadventure”; “Flimsy Indiana Jones” and “A slow, painful watch until the final act.” One acerbic comment, that I will return to in the last section, was “No Country for Old Men”.
Critics were much less favorable, placing Dial of Destiny just above the bottom-dwellers, Napoleon and Golda, and tied with Flamin’ Hot. Ben Kenigsberg (RogerEbert) wrote, “You wanted an Indiana Jones movie? You got one. But Spielberg…is somewhere else.” Brian Tallerico (also RogerEbert) said that the movie is “somehow both never boring and never really entertaining” and that Mangold “gets lost on the journey, unable to stage action sequences in a way that’s anywhere near as engaging as how Steven Spielberg does the same.” James Berardinelli (ReelViews) opined, “There’s no suspense and not a lot of energy…Indy’s time has passed. It’s time to let him go gently into that good night.” Manohla Dargis (New York Times) called it “overstuffed if not entirely charmless.” Several critics found the de-aging of Harrison Ford to at least be distracting, if not disconcerting.
Overall, the film just doesn’t cut it.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny – Special Mention
The Antikythera Mechanism and Archimedes – The mysterious artifact in Dial of Destiny – the actual “dial” – is a device called the Antikythera. There actually is such a device, although archeologists refer to it as “the Antikythera Mechanism”. There is much in the movie that is factual about the thing – it is from Ancient Greece, dated to the 2nd century BC. (Dates are in dispute but one that is used fairly consistently is 178 BC.). It was discovered in a shipwreck in 1901 off the coast of Antikythera, Greece – and hence the name. Technology using gamma and X-ray images, has probed inside it resulting in a paper produced by Yale professor Derek Price in 1974. More recent work has helped define the workings of the device and they are able to establish that it is an extremely sophisticated piece of engineering involving at least 30 gears. Pieces are missing so a complete restoration isn’t possible. But these gears seem to have been designed, and almost perfectly engineered, to accurately predict the position of the sun, moon, and several of the planets, including eclipses. It was more accurate, at least in theory, in making these predictions than any other known mechanism up to and including the work of Copernicus, or for nearly 1400 years. It is an exciting find because it represents the earliest known analog computer.
Dial of Destiny did take cinematic license on several things, however. The dating on the device makes its origin after Archimedes died, so despite his work developing an orrery, or planetarium, it is not likely that he built the Antikythera mechanism. And, of course, there is nothing to indicate that it has anything to do with time travel – although it is a fun thought.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny – Michael’s Moments
The Antikythera Mechanism might be useful predicting parts of the future, but it seems that the Dial of Destiny has an enormous need to relive the past. Steven Spielberg thought he had put the Indiana Jones series to bed in 2008, but for some unknown reason the Hollywood machine decided to crank out another one and so here we are, 15 years later and with a substantial loss to the studios. So why did they make this movie and why did it do so poorly?
Part of the answers to both of those questions is that the filmmakers were trying to find a problem to fit a technological solution. Computerized de-aging has appeared in several films recently and the visual results are often stunning, as well as disconcerting. In Dial of Destiny, there are extensive flashback scenes that send the characters back several decades. To make 80-year old Harrison Ford look like a man in his twenties does indeed take a computer. And, sure, his face has been de-wrinkled and his hair and eyes are refreshed to give us the look we expect from Indiana Jones. But, despite some bravura attempts, Ford still does not move like a 20-something. So even the best motion-capture technology can’t get rid of how creaky joints and stiff muscles actually move your body when you get to old age (and I am there so I speak from experience). There is more to an action character than looks – and you just can’t de-age movement.
It also doesn’t help that the filmmakers felt it necessary to use Dial of Destiny as a sort of personal goodbye to the old Indiana Jones team. Many of the old characters, like Marion, Sallah, and Renaldo, return in this movie, but they make unnecessary cameos with the only purpose of acknowledging their roles in previous films. Karen Allen’s appearance in this movie is a cameo at the very end of the film and does not contribute to the action that people want to see, and does not add to the storyline. Antonio Banderas makes a slightly more important appearance as a boat captain, but did we really need that? It adds something only for those who experienced the excitement of the early films, nearly forty years ago! There have been multiple generations of filmgoers since then and these sequences just add length to the movie.
But there is something else happening in our culture these days that I think explains the poor reception of this film. Us baby boomers may wax rhapsodic over our old action heroes, like Indiana Jones, but he isn’t a character the younger generations identify with. We not only package our heroes differently now, but they behave differently. Instead of a fedora and a whip, today’s heroes wear highly refined mechanical suits. Instead of deftly avoiding a rolling boulder, today’s heroes blow it up with a simple flick of their finger. Today’s action figures don’t work on a human scale but in a far bigger world, or even multiple universes.
Spielberg knew how to push the baby-boomer’s buttons. Mangold, growing up and working in a world a generation later, has a different audience with different expectations and access to technologies Spielberg never imagined. In a different world, you have to produce a different movie – in a very real sense, you can’t re-enter the same stream.
Even baby-boomers will have trouble with Dial of Destiny, it just doesn’t evoke the same thrills. (2.5*)
