Fifteen years ago, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. While it received generally positive reviews and is so far the franchise’s highest-grossing film, it felt like a disappointment in a similar vein to the Star Wars prequels, with its overuse of CGI and a script that was both formulaic and lacking the simplistic brilliance that defined the initial trilogy. With the latest instalment, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, had its premiere at this year’s Cannes, is history repeating itself?
When Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012, reviving the Indiana Jones franchise didn’t seem that much of a priority, whereas Star Wars has been littered with content throughout the last decade. Now with Dial of Destiny, featuring Harrison Ford’s final turn as the iconic whip-cracking archeologist, we have an Indiana Jones instalment without the involvement of not just George Lucas, but also Steven Spielberg, with James Mangold stepping into the director’s chair.
Following the opening minutes where a de-aged Indy is battling Nazis in classic Indiana Jones territory, the story jumps to 1969, where Indy is being pushed into retirement at Hunter College in New York. Upon reuniting with his estranged goddaughter Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), Indy goes on one last adventure where he tries to locate a device that could change the course of history before Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), a Nazi-turned-NASA scientist, can get it for himself and alter the outcome of World War II.
Considering that Mangold has directed 2017’s Logan, which showed the former X-Man on one last ride, the director wasn’t going to bring a grim, violent tone to a series that is known for its pulp, swashbuckling sensibilities. However, it is worth noting that Mangold, who can direct action, is no Spielberg and that is very apparent in those opening minutes. Whilst an efficient set-piece with Indy fighting his way through Nazis to rescue Toby Jones’ Basil Shaw and a McGuffin, the WWII-set prologue doesn’t have the tension or the kinetic energy that you would expect from the series. Certainly, the sight of a de-aged Harrison Ford is a jarring one.
However, once we get to 1969, where everyone is excited about the Space Age, while Indy feels like a relic tied to history, the movie finds its emotional core, which is Indiana Jones himself. Although Harrison Ford is at an age where he can’t achieve the physical stunts that he did before – as you can see the trickery on how the actor is placed in the action here – he delivers a wonderful retrospective performance as Indy feels like his adventuring days are over and wondering if he has a future at this point in time. This feeling of being old is nicely contrasted with the younger and modern Helena (Waller-Bridge in snappy form) who serves as a fun ally and foil as you never know what her true intentions are throughout.
Along with the four previous instalments in the series, we have also many movies that have imitated the Indiana Jones formula, so not only is it a case of coming up with new inventive action set-pieces, but also the amount of puzzle-solving when tomb raiding. Mangold achieves the former with two chase sequences from horse-riding across a parade in New York, to driving auto-rickshaws through the streets of Tangier. There may be no being chased by a boulder or stepping on the word of God, Dial of Destiny makes a leap of faith with its fantasy-driven climax that many will find divisive, especially with a resolution that feels like a cop-out, resulting in Indy’s final adventure ending not really with a bang.
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