by Michael Fye & Laura Janota, Reporters

Indiana Jones has been a big part of our lives since childhood–we know every line in the original trilogy, own Young Indiana Jones, and showcase a black and white photo of him in a gilded frame in our living room. Having been burnt before by Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, we entered the theater for Dial of Destiny with emotional caution. We have good news for you, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is much better than its predecessor. Spoilers Ahead!

Our beloved Indiana Jones is back punching Nazis, hunting down ancient artifacts, and partnering up with a new sidekick–all to the heroic trumpets of John Williams’s score. But this Indiana Jones story is not a carbon copy of the originals, it surprisingly veered in a slightly different direction thematically, while still retaining some of the familiar beats we know and love. 

Harrison Ford gave an unexpectedly candid performance as our titular hero. After being treated to some classic Nazi-punching, we jumped forward several decades to a man who is feeling his age and far removed from his former self. Unlike our Doctor Jones of the originals, this character is some old guy whose students sit bored and inattentive in class, caring more about the recent moon landing than some old artifacts. We learn his marriage to Marion is in turmoil, and to top it all off, he’s retiring. He is incapable of doing anything but looking to the past in a society that is only interested in the future. Here we have our main theme. Indy is a bygone of another era. 

Perhaps the writers finally realized Indiana Jones pairs best with smart characters, so they introduced a new sidekick who matches Indiana’s intelligence similarly to Doctor Schneider in The Last Crusade. Phoebe Waller-Bridge graces the screen as Helena Shaw, an archeologist, thief, and Indy’s goddaughter. When we first see her on screen, she passionately geeks out over history and archeology in a completely relatable way. This makes it all the more crushing when she double crosses Indy in the very next scene. Helena is joined by a street urchin named Teddy who aids in her schemes while pickpocketing on the side. He serves more as a method to round out Helena’s character and as a plot device rather than being fleshed out in his own right. But he does the job well. 

John Rhys-Davies returns as Indy’s Egyptian friend Sallah. While it was comforting to see him again, you could have taken him out of the movie and the story would have remained the same. The character’s main purpose was really just to make this movie feel familiar. But maybe that’s okay. 

Mads Mikkelsen plays Indiana’s intelligent and ruthless nemesis, a Nazi fanatic who will stop at nothing to get his hands on the artifact of this adventure: the Antikythera. It should surprise no one that Mikkelsen makes a fantastic villain, and the writers delivered too. They created a formidable adversary for Mikkelsen to play, one who shares a commonality with our hero: passion for the past, a past that people don’t care about anymore. 

The biggest mixed bag of the whole movie was the special effects. Lucasfilm showcases every possible bell and whistle, as expected. Some actually worked. The de-aging of Harrison Ford was surprisingly well done. It was not the janky flat image we saw in the trailers. Though as with any de-aging technology, there were a few shortcomings, but to critique that would be a nitpick at best. Another big triumph was a particularly stormy flight. 

It’s in other areas where the visual effects were lacking: the chase scenes. There’s a particularly long one that comes to mind. For all the chaos the scene held, the camera work was strangely stable. The camera moves were few and uninspired. The visuals were also oddly crisp. This is a recurring element lately: the Disney polish. Everything on screen was so crisp, it was almost hyper realistic but not quite stylized either. It sometimes made the action sequences feel more like a theme park ride than a movie. 

John Williams returned to compose Dial of Destiny, and once again, he delivered. His score was playful but never cartoonish. Melancholy, but not morose. Indy’s theme played when it made sense thematically, not thrown in every ten minutes to remind you what movie you’re watching. There was more than one time we smiled at Williams doing his thing. Little moments like uncovering a new secret or punching a Nazi got their own flourish from the orchestra. His sense of adventure remains as strong as it did in 1981. 

But what you really want to know is, does this movie feel like Indiana Jones? Does it contain the classic elements that we love from the original trilogy? The answer is yes, but it was not perfect. 

This movie was not quite as funny as the original trilogy. It contained some laughable moments, but the tone as a whole felt a tad more serious. We didn’t hate this choice, it actually worked with an aging, downtrodden hero that we find Indiana Jones as. However, this choice sacrificed some of that classic Indiana Jones humor and victoriousness that we’ve grown accustomed to. As mentioned before, we were a little disappointed by some of the action scenes. One of the most joyous parts about watching the original trilogy is the creativity in the chases and fights. Every ten seconds Indiana Jones is jamming a rock into a tank gun to make it backfire, or kicking a periscope so that the handle hits the Nazi watching through it. The brawlish action scenes in Dial of Destiny came across sloppy in comparison to the choreographed dance of the others. 

However, the movie creators did bring back a bunch of classic tropes from the Indiana Jones format that we absolutely loved. First, there’s the magical artifact. In Raiders it was the ark of the covenant, in Temple of Doom it was the sankara stones, in Last Crusade it was the holy grail, in Crystal Skull it was… well… the crystal skull. In this new adventure, the Dial of Destiny, the artifact is a time traveling device built by Archimedes called the Antikythera. Indiana Jones movies that feature artifacts with clear powers and understandable origins tend to work better. The Antikythera is a time traveling dial, a concept the audience learns early. And Archimedes is a name just familiar enough to ground the device in reality. Not to mention the beauty of watching an archeologist uncover time travel.

The movie creators also brought back some of our favorite Indiana Jones tropes like Indy disguising himself to infiltrate the baddies with stealth, but always getting caught and having to fight his way out instead. Or how Indiana Jones finds himself continuously riding the winds of luck and chance and somehow the environment seems to help him out of a jam. 

Finally, without spoiling anything, the ending was a true delight to behold. Harrison Ford’s acting tugged at our heartstrings in all the right ways. All in all, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is definitely worth a watch. 

Rating:
ComicsOnline gives Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny – 4/5 final adventures of our favorite archeologist!

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