Review: Indiana Jones Gets A Lackluster Goodbye in "The Dial of Destiny"

It's a merciful conclusion for the iconic hero, but it's not one we ever needed to see.

July 6, 2023

On June 12, 1981, Paramount Pictures released Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark. Development began in 1977 during Star Wars when George Lucas shared the idea with the Jaws director.

The story follows Professor Indiana Jones, an archaeologist in the 1930s, who must stop the Nazis from unearthing the Ark of the Covenant, an ancient artifact Hitler believes will make his army invincible.

The film became the highest-grossing of 1981 and retains a lasting cultural impression, having inspired a renewed interest in archaeology and changed the course of family films. No longer would audiences feel satisfied by childish bursts of cinematic whimsy, zeroed in on story at the expense of entertainment. Raiders ushered in a new era of filmmaking, where adventures could be action-packed first and narratively-layered second, and a film for adults could mesmerize their children.

Of course, such a game-changing film warranted follow-ups, which it got with 1984’s Temple of Doom and 1989’s The Last Crusade, creating a revered franchise with an iconic hero. Unfortunately, 42 years since Raiders, the cinematic landscape has changed; society has altered its perceptions of what makes compelling entertainment, and thus what studios think we need is far from what they deliver.

Indiana Jones will always be a cinematic icon, but his franchise is far from the only action on the big screen. The MCU is the most profitable film series ever produced, the Daniel Craig Bond films cemented 007 as a headliner, Harry Potter dominated the global box office for an entire decade, and the Mission: Impossible series, while not as profitable as Marvel, Bond, or Potter, rakes in massive profits while restructuring our perceptions of what’s possible for a big-budget action movie.

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As such, we don’t need Indiana Jones anymore, so revisiting him 15 years after Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and four decades after his first adventure, when Harrison Ford is 80 years old, needs to feel justified, hence the dilemma: no one will stomach Indy being anything other than Indy, but if the song remains the same, it won’t feel worth singing. We have too many options now, and the generation that ooo-ed and aww-ed at Raiders has been replaced by one so oversaturated with content that reverence for something irrelevant to them isn’t going to make money. Unfortunately, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny thinks otherwise, a particularly egregious misconception considering the film’s estimated $300 million production costs.

It begins as all Indy movies do, with a sprawling action sequence staged to establish the overarching narrative, but this one feels hollow. It's overly dark and unfocused, and the CGI of a de-aged Harrison Ford running atop a train is perhaps the worst in a big-budget film in the last 20 years. It’s the beginning of a two-and-a-half hour parade of everything that wowed us 42 years ago in lesser, poorly aged and, while overall generally satisfying, mostly underwhelming form.

It starts with a concept no less silly than the preceding flicks: ancient inventor Archimedes created a dial that would allow the user to travel through time, allowing them to change the course of history. Jürgen Voller, a former Nazi working for NASA, wants to use the dial to help Germany win World War II, and only one man can stop him.

Except, he’s a little old to stop anyone from doing anything, wouldn’t you say?

Enter Helena Shaw, the daughter of Indy’s former colleague, who died before the film. Although she gets billed as a companion for Jones as he stops another madman from exploiting history to conquer the world, she’s actually a foil, an opportunist that sells treasure on the black market. Accompanying her is Teddy, the poor man’s Short Round, who is so good in a pinch one wonders how he acquired any of his skills, considering he’s a thief who grew up on the streets of Morocco.

Within these three heroes is everything wrong with The Dial of Destiny and the idea of bringing Indiana Jones back for a fifth and (hopefully) final film: if you’re going to steal from the best (especially when the best is yourself), make it your own… and good.

Helena's cheeky immorality is insufferable, making her telegraphed journey into decency both insulting and unworthy of our time. The franchise should’ve taken note of its contemporaries; the MCU taught us that no one likes a movie where the heroes do it to themselves. Helena is more of a villain than Voller ever is, constantly worsening the problem with her selfishness. By the time she’s not treacherous and has some value to offer, we’re over her.

Teddy may be a kind kid, but as an obvious ode to Indy’s Temple of Doom sidekick, he falls flat. He lacks the personality or charm of Ke Huy Quan and never has a place. Shaw admits it herself: the child’s backstory is trying to steal from her, failing, and sticking around for no discernible reason.

Then there’s Indy, who doesn’t feel necessary. As we learned from the disastrous National Treasure TV show, he is, but Hollywood ageism isn’t reserved for women. Ford is a movie icon, but everyone’s time comes. We all get told we can’t play the little boys' game anymore, except Ford, whose pedigree prevents such pronouncements but who should really watch himself on screen sometime and accept reality. Indy looks and feels old, and the movie mirrors him. The Dial of Destiny is dated and not in a fun nostalgic way.

It's essentially one overlong action piece after another; the few times it flashes the potential for more, like during a deep-sea dive to recover the artifact necessary to read the directions to the missing half of the dial, it still falters. The sea is murky and colorless, and the sequence’s climax is a bunch of people playing that fishing minigame from the original Mario Party before ultimately solving their problems with dynamite.

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It’s a film built on diminishing returns, whether it’s the Short Round copycat, an aging hero, Mads Mikkelsen doing Mads Mikkelsen things, Nazis, or women whose role is to be a nuisance with well-conditioned hair. The film should’ve taken a cue from John Williams’, who reinvigorates his classic score with modern life that fills us with nostalgia while offering something new and worthwhile.

With legendary producer Kathleen Kennedy at the helm, it’s no surprise. After all, the most skilled in any field are slaves to their time. How many brilliant athletes become mediocre coaches? Success came for them in particular ways at a specific time. Alas, things evolve. Basketball eventually defied its positional rigidity, baseball embraced sabermetrics, and as for film, it grew. As Michael Bay’s Transformers movies taught us, we don’t always want “more” in the classical sense, but we do want to feel like going to a movie is worth it, especially now that the pandemic has made streaming so popular. For Dial of Destiny to be a worthwhile investment, it can’t just be an Indiana Jones movie; that novelty wore off after Crystal Skull.

Sadly, it doesn’t seem the creative team understood this and got chained to the past, where one man could rule the box office on name alone, and there was Indiana Jones and virtually no one else. Times have changed, and this great franchise dies a painful death because no one is willing to accept that (sans Williams).

For how it caters to contemporary consensus, like its overlong runtime, it fails. For how it seeks to exploit nostalgia, like swapping Short Round for Teddy or simply thrusting an 80-year-old Harrison Ford on screen, it fails. For how it tries to toe the line, like making Helena more than the wailing Marion or Millie, it fails.

Yes, it’s watchable to a point, and you won’t leave the theater feeling like you completely wasted your time (or money). But is that the best this franchise can do after Raiders reinvented the wheel, Temple of Doom delivered knock-out set pieces, Last Crusade capped off the 80s with the franchise’s best, and Crystal Skull threw an underrated welcome-back party?

This is Indy’s last bow, and it’s a disappointment. It’s mediocre on its own, downright poor compared to the series’ peak, and overall something that brings more sadness for what will never be again than joy that we’re seeing a glimmer of it one final time.

See Dial of Destiny; it's the law for anyone born before 1996. However, be prepared: you’ll leave the theater wishing its titular artifact was real so you could travel to 2008 and convince everyone to leave well enough alone.