movie reviews for the new indiana jones movie

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” is somehow both never boring and never really entertaining. It walks a line of modest interest in what’s going to happen next thanks to equal parts innovative story beats and the foundation of nostalgia that everyone brings to the theater. It’s an alternating series of frustrating choices, promising beats, and general goodwill for a legendary actor donning one of the most famous hats in movie history yet again. It should be better. It could have been worse. Both can be true. In an era of extreme online critical opinion, “The Dial of Destiny” is a hard movie to truly hate, which is nice. It’s also an Indiana Jones movie that’s difficult to truly love, which makes this massive fan of the original trilogy a little sad.

The unsettling mix of good and bad starts in the first sequence, a flashback to the final days of World War II that features Indy ( Harrison Ford ) and a colleague named Basil Shaw ( Toby Jones ) trying to reclaim some of the historical artifacts being stolen by the fleeing Nazis. Jones looks normal, of course, but Ford here is an uncanny valley occupant, a figure of de-aged CGI that never looks quite human. He doesn’t move or even sound quite right. It’s the first but not the last time in “The Dial of Destiny” in which it feels like you can’t really get your hands on what you’re watching. It sets up a standard of over-used effects that are the film’s greatest flaw. We’re watching Indiana Jones at the end of World War II, but the effects are distracting instead of enhancing.

It’s a shame, too, because the structure of the prologue is solid. Indy escapes capture from a Nazi played by Thomas Kretschmann , but the important introduction here is that of a Nazi astrophysicist named Jurgen Voller (a de-aged Mads Mikkelsen ), who discovers that, while looking for something called the Lance of Longinus, the Nazis have stumbled upon half of the Antikythera, or Archimedes’ Dial. Based on a real Ancient Greek item that could reportedly predict astronomical positions for decades, the dial is given the magical Indy franchise treatment in ways that I won’t spoil other than to say it’s not as explicitly religious as items like the Ark of the Covenant of The Holy Grail other than, as Voller says, it almost makes its owner God.

After a cleverly staged sequence involving anti-aircraft fire and dozens of dead Nazis, “The Dial of Destiny” jumps to 1969. An elderly Indiana Jones is retiring from Hunter College, unsure of what comes next in part because he’s separated from Marion after the death of their son Mutt in the Vietnam War. The best thing about “The Dial of Destiny” starts here in the emotional undercurrents in Harrison Ford’s performance. He could have lazily walked through playing Indy again, but he very clearly asked where this man would be emotionally at this point in his life. Ford’s dramatic choices, especially in the film’s back half, can be remarkable, reminding one how good he can be with the right material. His work here made me truly hope that he gets a brilliant drama again in his career, the kind he made more often in the ‘80s.

But back to the action/adventure stuff. Before he can put his retirement gift away, Indy is whisked off on an adventure with Helena Shaw ( Phoebe Waller-Bridge ), the daughter of Basil and goddaughter of Indy. It turns out that Basil became obsessed with the dial after their encounter with it a quarter-century ago, and Indy told him he would destroy the half of the dial they found. Of course, Indiana Jones doesn’t destroy historical artifacts. As they’re getting the dial from the storeroom, they’re attacked by Voller and his goons, leading to a horse chase through the subway during a parade. It’s a cluttered, awkward action sequence with power that’s purely nostalgic—an iconic hero riding a horse through a parade being thrown for someone else.

Before you know it, everyone is in Tangier, where Helena wants to sell her half of the dial, and the film injects its final major character into the action with a sidekick named Teddy ( Ethann Isidore ). From here, “The Dial of Destiny” becomes a traditional Indy chase movie with Jones and his team trying to stay ahead of the bad guys while leading them to what they’re trying to uncover.

James Mangold has delivered on “old-man hero action” before with the excellent “ Logan ,” but he gets lost on the journey here, unable to stage action sequences in a way that’s anywhere near as engaging as how Steven Spielberg does the same. Yes, we’re in a different era. CGI is more prevalent. But that doesn’t excuse clunky, awkward, incoherent action choreography. Look at films like “ John Wick: Chapter 4 ” or a little sequel that’s coming out in a few weeks that I’m not really supposed to talk about—even with the CGI enhancements, you know where the characters are at almost all times, what they’re trying to accomplish, and what stands in their way. 

That basic action structure often falls apart in “The Dial of Destiny.” There’s a car chase scene through Tangier that’s incredibly frustrating, a blur of activity that should work on paper but has no weight and no real stakes. A later scene in a shipwreck that should be claustrophobic is similarly clunky in terms of basic composition. I know not everyone can be Spielberg, but the simple framing of action sequences in “ Raiders of the Lost Ark ” and even “ Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade ” is gone here, replaced by sequences that cost so much that they somehow elevated the budget to $300 million. I wished early and often to see this movie’s $100 million version.

“The Dial of Destiny” works much better when it’s less worried about spending that massive budget. When Indy and Helena get to actual treasure-hunting, and John Williams ’ all-timer theme kicks in again, the movie clicks. And, without spoiling, it ends with a series of events and ideas that I wish had been foregrounded more in the 130 minutes that preceded it. Ultimately, “The Dial of Destiny” is about a man who wants to control history being thwarted by a man who wants to appreciate it but has arguably allowed himself to get stuck in it through regret or inaction. There’s a powerful emotional center here, but it comes too late to have the impact it could have with a stronger script. One senses that this script was sanded down so many times by producers and rewrites that it lost some of the rough edges it needed to work.

Spielberg reportedly gave Mangold some advice when he passed the whip to the director, telling him , “It’s a movie that’s a trailer from beginning to end—always be moving.” Sure. Trailers are rarely boring. But they’re never as entertaining as a great movie.

In theaters now.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

• Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones
• Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Helena Shaw
• Antonio Banderas as Renaldo
• John Rhys-Davies as Sallah
• Toby Jones as Basil Shaw
• Boyd Holbrook as Klaber
• Ethann Isidore as Teddy Kumar
• Mads Mikkelsen as Dr. Jürgen Voller
• Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood
• Thomas Kretschmann as Colonel Weber
• Andrew Buckland
• Dirk Westervelt
• Michael McCusker
• David Koepp
• James Mangold
• Jez Butterworth
• John-Henry Butterworth

Writer (based on characters created by)

• George Lucas
• Philip Kaufman
• John Williams

Cinematographer

• Phedon Papamichael

Leave a comment

Now playing.

Speak No Evil (2024)

Saturday Night

The Killer’s Game

Girls Will Be Girls

The 4:30 Movie

Sweetheart Deal

¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!

Latest articles

TIFF 2024: Table of Contents

TIFF 2024: Village Keeper, 40 Acres, Flow

TIFF 2024: The Shadow Strays, Friendship, The Shrouds

TIFF 2024: Babygirl, All We Imagine as Light, Queer

The best movie reviews, in your inbox.

Advertisement

Supported by

‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ Review: Turning Back the Clock

The gruff appeal of Harrison Ford, both de-aged and properly weathered, is the main draw in this generally silly entry in the long-running franchise.

• Share full article

By Manohla Dargis

What makes Indy run? For years, the obvious answer was Steven Spielberg, who, starting in 1981 with “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” guided Harrison Ford’s hunky archaeologist, Dr. Henry Walton Jones Jr., in and out of gnarly escapades and ripped shirts in four box-office behemoths. By the time Spielberg directed Ford in their last outing, “ Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ” (2008), Indy was in his late 50s and fans were speculating that the character was immortal, even if the franchise itself had begun running on fumes.

As a longtime big Hollywood star and hitmaker, Ford had already achieved an immortality of a kind. Indy-ologists, though, were more focused on the eternal life that Indy might have been granted by the Holy Grail when he takes a healthy swig from it in his third outing, “The Last Crusade” (1989). It’s pretty clear from his newest venture, the overstuffed if not entirely charmless “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” that while Indy may not in fact be immortal, the brain trust overseeing this installment wishes he were. They haven’t simply brought the character back for another go, they have also given him a digital face-lift.

The face-lift is as weird and distracting as this kind of digital plastic surgery tends to be, though your mileage will vary as will your philosophical objections to the idea that Ford needed to be de-aged to draw an audience, even for a 42-year-old franchise that’s now older than most North American moviegoers. The results don’t have the spooky emptiness of uncanny-valley faces. That said, the altered Indy is cognitively dissonant; I kept wondering what they’d done to — or perhaps with — Ford. It turns out that when he wasn’t getting body doubled, he was on set hitting his marks before his face was sent out to be digitally refreshed.

The guy you’re familiar with eventually appears — with wrinkles and gray hair, though without a shirt or pants, huzzah — but first you need to get past the prolonged opener, which plays like a franchise highlight reel. These nods to the past are unsurprising for a series steeped in nostalgia. “Raiders” was created by Spielberg’s pal, George Lucas, who saw it as a homage to the serials that he’d loved as a kid. Lucas envisioned a hero along the lines of Humphrey Bogart in “Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” but with morals (more or less), while Spielberg was interested in making a Bond-style film without the hardware and gimmicks.

As soon as the younger Indy appears in “Dial of Destiny,” it’s clear that the nostalgic love for old Hollywood that defined and shaped the original film has been supplanted by an equally powerful nostalgia for the series itself. That helps explain why this movie finds Indy once again battling Nazis, who make conveniently disposable villains for a movie banking on international sales. After directing “Schindler’s List” (1993), Spielberg expressed reluctance to make Nazis “Saturday-matinee villains,” as he once put it . The team here, by contrast, knows no such hesitation, even if evoking Spielberg’s films inevitably raises comparisons that do no one any favors, particularly the franchise’s new director, James Mangold.

The movie opens in 1944 with Indy — wearing an enemy uniform as he did in “Raiders” — being held captive, a sack coyly obscuring his head while Nazi hordes scurry about. Once the sack comes off — ta-da! — the plot thickens with a mysterious antique (à la “Raiders”), nods to the Führer, the introduction of an Indy colleague (Toby Jones) and dastardly doings from a fanatic (Mads Mikkelsen, whose face has been similarly ironed out). There’s an explosion, a sprint to freedom, a zipping car, a zooming motorcycle (as in “The Last Crusade”) and a dash atop a moving train (ditto), a busy pileup that Mangold finesses with spatial coherency.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

We need your support today

Independent journalism is more important than ever. Vox is here to explain this unprecedented election cycle and help you understand the larger stakes. We will break down where the candidates stand on major issues, from economic policy to immigration, foreign policy, criminal justice, and abortion. We’ll answer your biggest questions, and we’ll explain what matters — and why. This timely and essential task, however, is expensive to produce.

We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today?

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny reminds you how much Hollywood has changed

The new Indiana Jones movie hits different in the IP age.

by Alissa Wilkinson

In 1981’s Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark , the mercenary archaeologist René Belloq looks his friend-turned-foe Indiana Jones square in the eye and tells him the absolute truth. “Indiana,” he says, “we are simply passing through history.” They’re discussing the treasure they seek: the Ark of the Covenant, which might be just a valuable old artifact or might be the home of the Hebrew God, who knows. “This — this is history.”

Humans die. Civilizations pass away. Artifacts, however, remain. They tell us who we were, and who we still are.

History — the pursuit of it, the commodification of it, our universal fate to live inside of it — is Indiana Jones’s obsession, and that theme bleeds right off the screen and onto us. After all, Raiders was released 42 years ago, before I was born, and the fifth and final film (or so we’re told anyhow ), Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny , just premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, due to arrive in theaters this summer. Watch it at this moment in time, and you’re reminded that you, too, are passing through history. Those movie stars are looking a lot older.

This is a series preoccupied with time and its cousin, mortality, from the characters’ relentless pursuit of the ancient world’s secrets to the poignancy of Jones’s relationships. His adventures are frequently preceded by the revelation that someone or something in his life has died — a friend, a family member, a relationship. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade , released in 1989, makes the fact of death especially moving, with its plot point turning on immortality and the Holy Grail. More humorously, cobweb-draped skeletons are strewn liberally throughout the series, reminding us that other explorers and other civilizations have attempted what Indiana is trying to do. He’s just another in a string of adventurers, one who happens to be really good at throwing a punch.

Dial of Destiny feels like an emphatic period at the end of a very long sentence, a sequel making its own case against some future further resurrection — not unlike last year’s Cannes blockbuster premiere, Top Gun: Maverick , or 2021’s fourth installment of The Matrix . That’s not just because Harrison Ford is turning 81 this summer. It’s in the text; Dial of Destiny argues, explicitly, that you have to leave the past in the past, that the only way to ensure the world continues is to put one foot down and then another, moving into the future.

Ironic, yes, for a movie built on giant piles of nostalgia and made by a company that proudly spends most of its money nibbling its own tail . In fact, the entire Indiana Jones concept was nostalgia-driven even before the fedora made its big-screen debut. Harrison Ford’s whip-cracking adventurer descends from swashbuckling heroes of pulp stories and matinee serials that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg loved as kids; like that other franchise Ford launched, the Indy series is both original and pastiche, both contemporary-feeling and set in another time, another place, a world that’s far, far away.

Dial of Destiny is loaded with related ironies, though they’re mostly extratextual. On the screen, it’s fairly straightforward: a sentimental vehicle, one that hits familiar beats and tells familiar jokes, comfort food to make you feel like a kid again for a little while. The Indiana Jones movies , even the bad ones, have always been pretty fun to watch in a cartoon-movie kind of way, while also being aggressively just fine as films — I mean that with fond enthusiasm — and Dial of Destiny fits the bill perfectly.

This installment turns on pieces of a dial created by the Greek mathematician Archimedes, which, like most of the relics that pop up in Indy’s universe, may or may not bestow godlike powers on its wielder. Naturally, the Nazis want it, especially Hitler. So the film opens in 1944, with Indy (a de-aged Ford, though unfortunately nobody thought to sufficiently de-age his voice) fighting Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) to nab it while getting out of one of his signature high-octane scrapes via a familiar combo of costume changes, well-aimed punches, acrobatics, and dumb luck. Then we jump forward to 1969, to discover a very much not de-aged Indy collapsed into his armchair in front of the TV, shirtless and in boxers, snoozing and clutching the dregs of a beer. This is a movie about getting old, after all.

You can deduce the rest — old friends and new, tricks and turns, mysteries, maybe some time travel, the question of whether the magic is real. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is in this movie as Helena Shaw, Jones’s archaeologist goddaughter, and injects it with some much-needed joie de vivre. There are some fun chase scenes, though director James Mangold’s visual sense (richly demonstrated in previous films like Logan and Ford v Ferrari ) falls a little flat next to the memory of Steven Spielberg’s direction. But for the most part, it’s all here again. I don’t want to spoil your fun.

Yet a thread that’s run through the whole four-decade series, with heightened irony every time it comes up, is the battle between Indy — who firmly believes that history’s relics ought to be in a museum for everyone to enjoy — and fortune-seeking mercenaries or power-seeking Nazis, who want to privately acquire those artifacts for their own reasons. (Leaving the artifact where it is, perhaps even among its people, still doesn’t really seem to be an option.) It’s a mirror for the very real theft of artifacts throughout history by invading or colonizing forces, the taking of someone else’s culture for your own use or to assert your own dominance. That battle crops up again in this installment, with both mercenaries and Nazis on offer. Shaw, voicing a darker archaeological aim, wryly insists that thieving is just capitalism, and that cash is the only thing worth believing in; Voller’s aims are much darker.

It’s all very fitting in a movie about an archaeologist set in the midcentury. But you have to notice the weird Hollywood resonance. When Raiders first hit the big screen, it was always intended to be the first in a series, much like Lucas and Spielberg’s beloved childhood serials. (The pair in fact made their initial Indiana Jones deal with Paramount for five movies.) But while some bits (and chunks) of the 1980s films have aged pretty badly, they endure in part because they’re remixes that are alive with imagination and even whimsy, the product so clearly of some guys who wanted to play around with the kinds of stories they loved as children.

Now, in the IP era , remixing is a fraught endeavor. The gatekeepers, owners and fans alike, are often very cranky. The producers bank on more of the same, not the risk of a new idea. The artifacts belong to them , and they call the shots, and tell you when you can have access or not. (The evening Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny opened at Cannes, Disney — already infamously known for locking its animation away in a vault and burying the work of companies it acquires — announced it would start removing dozens of its own series from its streamers.) Rather than move into the future and support some new sandboxes, the Hollywood of today mostly maniacally rehashes what it’s already done. It envisions a future where what’s on offer is mostly what we’ve already had before.

In this I hear echoes of thinkers like Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer — two men who fled the Nazis, incidentally — who proposed the culture industry was giving people the illusion of choice, but only the freedom to choose what they said was on offer. You can have infinite variations on the same thing.

It’s a sentiment strangely echoed in Dial of Destiny . One night, Shaw is doing a card trick for some sailors, who are astounded that when they call out the seven of clubs, that’s what they pull out of the deck. But she shows Indy how she does it — by forcing the card on them, without them realizing. “I offer the feeling of choice, but I ultimately make you pick the one I want,” she explains, with a wry grin.

After 40 years and change, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny releases into a world where there’s more stuff than ever to watch, but somehow it feels like we have less choice, less chance of discovery. It is our moment in history — an artifact of what it was to be alive right now. When the historians of the future look back, I have to wonder what they’ll see, and thus who, in the end, they’ll think we really were.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and is playing in theaters worldwide.

More in Your guide to the 2024 Oscars

Most Popular

• A thousand pigs just burned alive in a barn fire
• Who is Ryan Wesley Routh? The suspect in the Trump Florida assassination attempt, explained.
• Sign up for Vox’s daily newsletter
• Take a mental break with the newest Vox crossword
• The new followup to ChatGPT is scarily good at deception

Today, Explained

Understand the world with a daily explainer plus the most compelling stories of the day.

This is the title for the native ad

More in Culture

Please pay your respects to the new queen of TV killer thrillers.

The right thinks that hot girls can “kill woke.” What?

The truth behind the ongoing controversy over the highly memeable dancer.

The highly coveted endorsement comes after a year of paranoid speculation.

From prebiotic sodas to collagen waters, beverages are trying to do the most. Consumers are drinking it up.

Why the new luxury is flip phones and vinyl LPs

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

• Upcoming Movies and TV shows
• Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
• Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

• About Rotten Tomatoes®
• Login/signup

Movies in theaters

• Opening This Week
• Top Box Office
• Coming Soon to Theaters
• Certified Fresh Movies

Movies at Home

• Fandango at Home
• Prime Video
• Most Popular Streaming Movies
• What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

• 82% Speak No Evil Link to Speak No Evil
• 77% Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Link to Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
• 95% Rebel Ridge Link to Rebel Ridge

New TV Tonight

• 90% The Penguin: Season 1
• 86% High Potential: Season 1
• 40% Frasier: Season 2
• 17% Emmys: Season 76
• -- American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez: Season 1
• -- Agatha All Along: Season 1
• -- Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story: Season 2
• -- Twilight of the Gods: Season 1
• -- Tulsa King: Season 2
• -- A Very Royal Scandal: Season 1

Most Popular TV on RT

• 61% The Perfect Couple: Season 1
• 74% Kaos: Season 1
• 63% The Old Man: Season 2
• 85% The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Season 2
• 100% Dark Winds: Season 2
• 100% Slow Horses: Season 4
• 88% How to Die Alone: Season 1
• 99% Shōgun: Season 1
• Best TV Shows
• Most Popular TV

Certified fresh pick

• 95% Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist: Season 1 Link to Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist: Season 1
• All-Time Lists
• Binge Guide
• Comics on TV
• Five Favorite Films
• Video Interviews
• Weekend Box Office
• Weekly Ketchup
• What to Watch

30 Most Popular Movies Right Now: What to Watch In Theaters and Streaming

25 Most Popular TV Shows Right Now: What to Watch on Streaming

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming

Awards Tour

Weekend Box Office: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Holds on to Top Spot

Renewed and Cancelled TV Shows 2024

• Trending on RT
• Hispanic Heritage Month
• Spanish-Language Movies
• Re-Release Calendar

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny Reviews

People who love this series, and even those who don't, will find all two and a half hours to be enjoyable and often elegant.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 10, 2024

Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny is made with nostalgia at its core and embraces the pulpy silliness of the whole franchise. Its main strength is to remind people that Indiana Jones, for all that silliness, did love and respect what he was doing.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 9, 2024

James Mangold struggles to stamp his mark on The Dial of Destiny, resulting in a bland, forgettable affair that is lacking both the adventure and cinematic magic so synonymous with many of Indy’s previous adventures.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 3, 2024

Dial of Destiny maintains an appreciative understanding of its protagonist and legacy while comfortably being its own thing in scale, stakes and excitement.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 19, 2024

For what was promised to be one last adventure, the stakes never reach full potential in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and emotions don’t run as high as needed to elevate the sentiment that this film is eagerly attempting to tap into.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 17, 2024

There’s a very distinct lack of Spielberg magic, but Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is a decently entertaining “greatest hits” adventure.

Full Review | Original Score: 6.5/10 | Jul 12, 2024

Replete with exoticism, Orientalism, and a nonsense science fiction plotline, Dial of Destiny proves the case for why this entire franchise belongs in a museum.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 7, 2024

“Dial of Destiny” is just Indy being Indy and nobody does it better than Ford.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jul 7, 2024

ugly, prosaic and dull DIAL OF DESTINY..panders to an audience willing to be spoon-fed lines that they once recognised and moves as gracefully as its geriatric lead

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 4, 2024

From a thrilling opening act, where Indy takes on a Nazi loot train, to a wild and wacky chase through Tangiers, Dial of Destiny proves the old grave robber can still deliver the goods.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 3, 2024

Post-2016, Indy’s renown disgust over Nazis feels urgent and relevant, and the film does a subtle job of condemning the US for embracing and elevating Nazis over its now obsolete and forgotten heroes, WWII veterans and anyone who resisted the Nazis.

Full Review | May 25, 2024

Far too long, but a somewhat fun time at the movies

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Apr 24, 2024

But "better than Crystal Skull" is a miserably low bar to clear. Dial's plot is surprisingly dumb, considering it took four screenwriters (including David Koepp and director James Mangold) to write it.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jan 25, 2024

I think you can find fun here. I think you can find good here. It's just not going to turn you around if you come in thinking it's a bad idea.

Full Review | Jan 12, 2024

Dial of Destiny is a fun ride, especially for moviegoers like me who just want to enjoy some nostalgia as we contemplate a retirement full of watching all those films we’ve collected over the years.

Full Review | Dec 30, 2023

There's a lot that's fun here... but the more you look at the CG, the more it looks like The Polar Express.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 27, 2023

There wasn't a world wherein this film would capture the greatness of the original trilogy but it's nice to see Indy and his compatriots sent off in fine, if unspectacular, fashion.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Dec 27, 2023

At the end of the day, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny may not be the best installment of Indiana Jones, but it certainly fits perfectly within the saga, committing to its characters and its essence. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 26, 2023

A beautiful send-off for this character.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 20, 2023

He steps back into that fedora not like he’s never left it, which is the point. He meets his character where he actually is – old, alone, grieving.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 20, 2023

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Archaeologist Indiana Jones races against time to retrieve a legendary artifact that can change the course of history. Archaeologist Indiana Jones races against time to retrieve a legendary artifact that can change the course of history. Archaeologist Indiana Jones races against time to retrieve a legendary artifact that can change the course of history.

• James Mangold
• Jez Butterworth
• John-Henry Butterworth
• David Koepp
• Harrison Ford
• Phoebe Waller-Bridge
• Antonio Banderas
• 1.8K User reviews
• 361 Critic reviews
• 58 Metascore
• 7 wins & 34 nominations total

Top cast 99+

• Indiana Jones

• Colonel Weber

• Young SS Officer
• Italian Ticket Seller
• (as Alfonso Rosario Mandia)

• Larry - Beat Poet Guy

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Who Makes Harrison Ford Laugh?

More like this

Did you know

• Trivia In an interview with Stephen Colbert , Harrison Ford explained how the filmmakers digitally de-aged him for the flashback sequence: "They have this artificial intelligence program that can go through every foot of film that Lucasfilm owns. Because I did a bunch of movies for them, they have all this footage, including film that wasn't printed. So they can mine it from where the light is coming from, from the expression. I don't know how they do it. But that's my actual face. Then I put little dots on my face and I say the words and they make [it]. It's fantastic." At 80, he is the oldest actor to be de-aged in a movie, surpassing Al Pacino , who was 79 when he was de-aged in The Irishman (2019) .
• Goofs Indy and Helena dive at a shipwreck supposed to be 2,000 years old with its wooden hull clearly visible and recognizable. In most waters, such as the ones of the Aegean Sea, wood does not last more than a couple of decades. In fact, Greek and Roman shipwrecks in the area are found by their non wooden materials, such as bronze, and their cargo, such as vases and ceramics, which is where the actual Antikythera mechanism was found.

Dr. Voller : You should have stayed in New York.

Indiana Jones : You should have stayed out of Poland.

• Crazy credits The Paramount Pictures logo appears normally, and does not fade into a mountain-shaped opening shot, the only film in the Indiana Jones films to do so. Instead, the Lucasfilm logo fades into a lock on a door in 1944 Germany.
• Alternate versions On the International prints of the film, the original variant of Disney's 100th anniversary logo (with 100 YEARS OF WONDER tagline) was shown as the first logo instead of tagline-less variant of the same logo.
• Connections Featured in AniMat's Crazy Cartoon Cast: Changing of the Bobs (2020)
• Soundtracks Lili Marleen Written by Hans Leip and Norbert Schultze

User reviews 1.8K

• bforrest-14878
• Jun 29, 2023

'Indiana Jones' Stars Through The Years

• How long is Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny? Powered by Alexa
• What year does the movie take place?
• How old is Indy supposed to be in this film?
• Is the holy lance in Indiana Jones (2023) the same as the Spear of Destiny in Constantine (2005)?
• June 30, 2023 (United States)
• United States
• Official Disney (Australia)
• Official Facebook
• Greek, Ancient (to 1453)
• Indiana Jones y el dial del destino
• North Yorkshire Moors Railway, 12 Park Street, Pickering, North Yorkshire, England, UK (German railway scenes)
• Walt Disney Pictures
• Paramount Pictures
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $294,700,000 (estimated)
• $174,480,468
• $60,368,101
• Jul 2, 2023
• $383,963,057

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 34 minutes
• Dolby Atmos
• D-Cinema 96kHz Dolby Surround 7.1
• Dolby Digital
• Dolby Surround 7.1
• 12-Track Digital Sound

Related news

Contribute to this page.

• IMDb Answers: Help fill gaps in our data
• Learn more about contributing

More to explore

Recently viewed.

• Search Please fill out this field.
• Newsletters
• Sweepstakes
• Movie Reviews

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny review: Disney whips up a lively (final?) adventure

If Indiana Jones does hang up his hat, the fifth film is a surprisingly emotional, diverting, and satisfying conclusion.

Maureen Lee Lenker is a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly with over seven years of experience in the entertainment industry. An award-winning journalist, she's written for Turner Classic Movies, Ms. Magazine , The Hollywood Reporter , and more. She's worked at EW for six years covering film, TV, theater, music, and books. The author of EW's quarterly romance review column, "Hot Stuff," Maureen holds Master's degrees from both the University of Southern California and the University of Oxford. Her debut novel, It Happened One Fight , is now available. Follow her for all things related to classic Hollywood, musicals, the romance genre, and Bruce Springsteen.

It's not the years, it's the mileage… and in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, out June 30, the titular hero racks up plenty of thrilling miles in what is supposedly his farewell to the big screen.

We open on a younger Indy (a de-aged Harrison Ford in the best use of the often questionable technology to date) running for his life amidst the death throes of the Third Reich. Infiltrating a Nazi treasure trove, he and fellow academic/archaeologist Basil Shaw ( Toby Jones ) attempt to recover priceless historical artifacts from the retreating Nazis. On board a train, Indy encounters Jürgen Voller ( Mads Mikkelsen ), a Nazi mathematician intent on locating the Dial of Destiny, more formally known as Archimedes' antikythera, a cosmological device with potentially world-altering powers.

Flash forward to 1969 and the celebration of the moon landing in New York City. Indiana Jones is living alone. He mourns his son Mutt, who died in combat in the Vietnam War (an expedient end to the problematic specter of what to do about Shia LaBeouf 's existence within the franchise); he's separated from Marion ( Karen Allen ); and he's now preparing to retire from Hunter College where he's been a professor for over a decade.

His lonely life is interrupted by the arrival of Helena Shaw ( Phoebe Waller-Bridge ), his goddaughter, who is on the hunt for the antikythera with questionable motives. Helena's appearance and bid for the dial thrusts Indy into a new adventure where he must once again face off against Voller, who now goes by the name of Professor Schmitt, and stop his quest to return the Nazi regime to power.

Ford returns as Indy, but he's not merely a guy with a cool hat and a bullwhip with a few more lines on his face. Just as James Mangold did for Hugh Jackman's Wolverine in Logan , he presents an Indiana Jones weathered by life — a man who has spent decades chasing down ancient artifacts and fighting Nazis.

Indiana Jones has always been a world-weary guy, cynical and full of wise cracks in the face of danger, but here, he feels like he's finally earned it. Ford's soulful, craggy face is the cipher for the lifetime of adventure, physical pain, and loss that Indy has endured. There's humor in that, as when Indy lists off some of the more ridiculous things he has done while scaling a wall with Helena. But there's sadness too, in the friends he's lost and the tragedy he has faced.

Ford has always lent Indy a humanity and depth that is too often ignored in favor of celebrating his capacity for dry one-liners and his rugged good looks (both well-deserving of the praise they've received). Here, he gets to unleash the emotional side of Indy, his reverence for history and love for those he holds dear visibly weighing him down. In 1969, as humanity looks to the future, Indiana Jones, a man dedicated to protecting the past, is a man out of place in his own time. Ford's curmudgeonly restraint barely conceals the open wounds of his losses.

Dial of Destiny is often best in its moments of quiet resonance, but it doesn't leave enough breathing room to maximize the impact of Ford's performance. Instead, the film volleys from one action sequence to the next, whether it be a dangerous dive into deep ocean waters, a horse race through New York City streets and subways(!), or a perilous car chase through Tangiers. Mangold crafts these scenes with precision, building them to a fever pitch and then throttling the accelerator when it seems the scene has peaked. This makes the pacing wonky, and more scenes of introspective Indy would have been welcome in exchange for shaving a few minutes off the nonstop danger. But that doesn't make the sequences any less exciting or nerve-wracking, generating an old-school adventure energy reminiscent of the original trilogy.

Unlike the monkey swinging or the infamous nuclear explosion refrigerator nonsense of Crystal Skull, the action here also feels utterly believable. The physical toll it takes on an older Indy is palpable, the stakes higher because of the acknowledgement of his mortality. At his best, Indiana Jones has always been a hero that feels utterly human. Maybe a little smarter than the rest of us, but no less earthbound. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, when he takes a punch to the jaw, we feel it — and Dial remembers that Indy's greatest asset is his conspicuous humanity in the face of peril.

Waller-Bridge, who leaped from Fleabag 's critical acclaim to writing for James Bond and starring in an Indiana Jones flick, is a saucy, slippery foil to Ford. Where Marion was feisty and reckless, and Dr. Henry Jones ( Sean Connery) was persnickety and gruff, Helena is whimsical and brash. Her loyalties shift faster than sand in an hourglass, keeping Indiana Jones, and by extension, the audience, on their toes. Waller-Bridge has a winking sense of humor as a performer that imbues her natural ability to make the audience believe they're her confidantes while remaining delightfully unpredictable.

Mikkelsen, a prince of silver-tongued, elegant villainy, is under-used. Jürgen Voller lacks distinction as a villain, possessing neither the naked ambition of Belloq (Paul Freeman) from Raiders or the self-serving sycophancy of Walter Donovan (Julian Glover) in Last Crusade. While his goons are outright unhinged, Voller is chilled cardboard, a Nazi who lacks any personality besides his commitment to the ideals of Nazism. His villainy lacks teeth, but perhaps that's because the notion of bringing fascism back feels like a day-to-day occurrence in our world. He's not half so frightening as anything on the nightly news.

Dial of Destiny is 85 percent of a delightful return to form for the franchise and 15 percent absolutely ludicrous climax. We won't spoil the reveal, but suffice it to say it leans too heavily into a plot point that Marvel and DC have exhausted in recent years — and the temporal, geographical place it decides to take its climactic sequence is both outlandish and entirely too on-the-nose.

It's not that Indiana Jones hasn't always built its stories around fantastical ancient artifacts. (See: the Ark of the Covenant, the Sankara Stones, the Holy Grail, and, sigh, the Crystal Skull.) The antikythera is as good a McGuffin as any other (and it is based on a real scientific device from ancient Greece). But while the mystical, inexplicable power of objects like the Ark and the Grail have the capacity to shock and awe, the antikythera is merely a tool for a tired trope with a payoff that verges on tritely absurd.

One can understand the allegorical impulse of the storytelling device. This older, probably not wiser version of Indiana Jones is one who feels as much a relic as the artifacts he's dedicated his life to studying and preserving. It's hard to resist literalizing the metaphor in a story where the hero is made to feel like time has passed him by. But it doesn't land the way the filmmakers intended, instead undercutting Indy's reckoning with history and his place in it.

It's a testament to Ford's performance and the movie's overall effectiveness that this disappointing climax doesn't outweigh how much fun it all is. Much like the entries of the original trilogy, at its heart, Dial is a rip-roaring adventure that borrows more from the cinematic language of golden age swashbucklers than modern blockbusters.

In a sense, Indiana Jones has always been about nostalgia. Steven Spielberg and George Lucas set out to make movies that evoked the 1940s serials they loved growing up. That operates on two levels in Dial of Destiny, both in the film's historical setting and our own yen for the way the original movies made us feel.

Dial uses nostalgia as an appetizer, not a main course, and it's absolutely delicious for it. Nothing feels pandering, but rather each nod to the past is welcome in its measured distribution, as cozy and familiar as a favorite sweater or reconnecting with an old friend. Speaking of, Sallah ( John Rhys-Davis ) is back, but mainly as a vestige of the life Indy feels he's lost. Sallah too yearns for their shared past.

There are nods to our hero's well cataloged hatred of snakes, a cheeky reversal of the Raiders bringing a knife (or whip) to a gunfight, plenty of traveling by map, and a tear-jerking return to kissing where it doesn't hurt, all set to the core memory sounds of John Williams ' inimitable score (including a new theme for Helena!).

Much has been made of the fact that Dial will be Ford's last outing in the franchise. The movie has been billed as a send-off for Indiana Jones, but it doesn't feel definitive, particularly when the film's final shot makes a very decisive point about Ford/Indy hanging up the hat.

If it is indeed the last we'll see of Ford's Indiana Jones, it's a far more satisfying goodbye than where we last left him. But Dial makes one thing clear: whatever happens next, this franchise still has fresh skullduggery left to explore. Indiana Jones does not (and will never) belong in a museum. He's far too vital for that; his mileage, as a character and a pop culture icon, is infinite. Grade : B+

Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly 's free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.

Related content:

• Indiana Jones stars Harrison Ford, Ke Huy Quan reunite at Dial of Destiny premiere: 'You're all grown up!'
• Harrison Ford defends de-aging in Indiana Jones 5 at Cannes: 'That's what I looked like 35 years ago'
• Meet Voller: Mads Mikkelsen on what to expect from the Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny villain

Related Articles

The Definitive Voice of Entertainment News

Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter

site categories

‘indiana jones and the dial of destiny’ review: harrison ford cracks the whip one last time in a final chapter short on both thrills and fun.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Mads Mikkelsen also star in James Mangold’s globe-hopping adventure about the quest for an ancient gadget able to locate fissures in time.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

• Share on Facebook
• Share to Flipboard
• Send an Email
• Show additional share options
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share on Pinterest
• Share on Reddit
• Share on Tumblr
• Share on Whats App
• Print the Article
• Post a Comment

Related Stories

Disney's big emmy wins may build streaming momentum, emmys: inside this weekend's a-list parties (updating), indiana jones and the dial of destiny.

What the new film — scripted by Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, David Koepp and Mangold, with the feel of something written by committee — does have is a sweet blast of pure nostalgia in the closing scene, a welcome reappearance foreshadowed with a couple visual clues early on. That heartening return is also suggested by a moment when Harrison Ford ’s Dr. Jones, yanked out of retirement after 10 years teaching at New York’s Hunter College, stops to reflect on the personal mistakes of his past. Which is pretty much the first time the movie pauses for breath, and it happens an hour and 20 minutes into the bloated 2½ hour run time.

Part of what dims the enjoyment of this concluding chapter is just how glaringly fake so much of it looks. Ford is digitally — and convincingly — de-aged in an opening sequence that finds him back among the Nazis at the end of World War II. Hitler has already fled to his bunker and Gestapo gold-diggers are preparing for defeat by loading up a plunder train full of priceless antiquities and various stolen loot.

Scurrying to save himself and rescue his professorial Brit pal Basil Shaw (Toby Jones), Indy ends up in a death match with a Third Reich heavy on top of the train as it speeds through a long mountain pass. But any adrenaline rush that extended set-piece might have generated is killed by the ugly distraction of some truly terrible CG backgrounds. The foundations of this series are in Spielberg’s overgrown-kid playfulness with practical effects. The more the films have come to rely on a digital paintbrush, the less hair-raising their adventures have become.

The bulk of the action takes place in 1969, when Indiana feels the strain even getting up out of his recliner (and Ford commendably shrugs off vanity, making no effort to hide his age). The unexpected return into his life of the late Basil’s daughter Helena ( Phoebe Waller-Bridge ), whom Indy hasn’t seen since her childhood, revives thoughts of Archimedes’ golden double-discus gizmo and whether its purported properties might actually work. Helena claims to have chosen the legendary doodad as the subject of her doctorate thesis.

The dial was split in half by its inventor to avoid it slipping into the wrong hands — or to help flesh out a laborious new installment requiring multiple destinations — so half of it sits in an archeological vault, courtesy of Dr. Jones, and the other half lies in parts unknown. But Helena isn’t the only one interested.

It also brings Nazi physicist Dr. Jürgen Voller ( Mads Mikkelsen ), who had a previous brush with Indy 25 years ago, out of hiding. He’s been living under an alias and working for the NASA space program, developing the technology that took the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. Turns out he changed his name but not his political persuasion, so going back in time would allow him to “correct” history.

Mangold goes from one set-piece to another without much connective tissue. They include a chase on horseback and motorcycle through the streets of Manhattan that crashes through an anti-Vietnam protest and an Apollo 11 “Welcome Home” ticker-tape parade before continuing in the subway tunnels. There’s also a frantic flight in Moroccan tuk tuks and a dive to the bottom of the sea off the coast of Greece to find a coded guide to Archimedes’ tomb. By that time, you’ll likely have given up following the contorted plot mechanics and just be zoning in and out with each new location.

Or maybe you’ll spend time wondering what drew third-billed Antonio Banderas to such an insignificant role as Renaldo, Indy’s old fisherman buddy, whose diving expertise provides a crucial assist while getting Indy into a tangle with a bunch of outsize CG eels so sloppily rendered that Disney can relax about any Little Mermaid sniping. Renaldo has a crew stacked with male models who have bodies that didn’t exist in the late ‘60s, which seems an intriguing detail, though he’s not around long enough to shed light on it.

Mikkelsen can be a fabulously debonair villain (see: Casino Royale ), but any interesting idiosyncrasies the character might have exhibited are drowned in convoluted plot. This calls for a larger-than-life bad guy, and he’s somehow smaller. Filling the plucky young sidekick spot, Isidore’s Teddy is, well, let’s just say he’s no Short Round and leave it at that.

This is a big, bombastic movie that goes through the motions but never finds much joy in the process, despite John Williams’ hard-working score continuously pushing our nostalgia buttons and trying to convince us we’re on a wild ride. Indy ignores the inevitable jokes about his age and proves he can still handle himself in a tight spot. But Ford often seems disengaged, as if he’s weighing up whether this will restore the tarnished luster to his iconic action hero or reveal that he’s past his expiration date. Both the actor and the audience get a raw deal with this empty exercise in brand redemption.

Full credits

Thr newsletters.

Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day

More from The Hollywood Reporter

Taiwanese star shu qi to make directorial debut with ‘girl’, ‘never let go’ review: halle berry stokes the ambiguity but can’t stop alexandre aja’s horror fairy tale from stalling, ‘the killer’s game’ director j.j. perry still doesn’t believe a best stunt oscar is going to happen, james cameron to direct ‘ghosts of hiroshima’ after ‘avatar’ sequels, adria arjona in talks to star in, executive produce adam wingard action thriller ‘onslaught’ (exclusive), tyler, the creator to make film debut in timothée chalamet a24 movie ‘marty supreme’.

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Movie Reviews

'dial of destiny' proves indiana jones' days of derring-do aren't quite derring-done.

Bob Mondello

Harrison Ford — who's about to turn 81 — stars again as the intrepid archaeologist in this fifth (and possibly final) adventure. It's directed not by Steven Spielberg, but by James Mangold. Lucasfilm Ltd. hide caption

Harrison Ford — who's about to turn 81 — stars again as the intrepid archaeologist in this fifth (and possibly final) adventure. It's directed not by Steven Spielberg, but by James Mangold.

It's been 42 years since Raiders of the Lost Ark introduced audiences to a boulder-dodging, globe-trotting, bullwhip-snapping archaeologist played by Harrison Ford. The boulder was real back then (or at any rate, it was a practical effect made of wood, fiberglass and plastic).

Very little in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny , Indy's rousingly ridiculous fifth and possibly final adventure, is concrete and actual. And that includes, in the opening moments, its star.

Ford turns 81 next week, but as the film begins in Germany 1944, with the Third Reich in retreat, soldiers frantically loading plunder on a train, the audience is treated to a sight as gratifying and wish-fullfilling as it is impossible. A hostage with a sack over his head gets dragged before a Nazi officer and when the bag is removed, it's Indy looking so persuasively 40-something, you may suspect you're watching an outtake from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

A digitally de-aged Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Lucasfilm Ltd. hide caption

A digitally de-aged Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

Ford has been digitally de-aged through some rearrangement of pixels that qualifies as the most effective use yet of a technology that could theoretically let blockbusters hang in there forever with ageless original performers.

Happily, the filmmakers have a different sort of time travel in mind here. After establishing that Ford's days of derring-do aren't yet derring-done, they flash-forward a bit to 1969, where a creaky, cranky, older Indiana Jones is boring what appears to be his last class at Hunter College before retirement. Long-haired, tie-dyed and listening to the Rolling Stones, his students are awaiting the tickertape parade for astronauts returning from the moon, and his talk of ancient artifacts hasn't the remotest chance of distracting them.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Helena Jonathan Olley/Lucasfilm Ltd. hide caption

But a figure lurking in the back of the class is intrigued — Helena ( Phoebe Waller-Bridge ), the daughter of archeologist Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) who was with Indy back on that plunder train in 1944. Like her father before her, she's obsessed with the title gizmo — a device Archimedes fashioned in ancient Greece to exploit fissures in time — "a dial," says Helena "that could change the course of history."

Yeah, well, every adventure needs its MacGuffin. This one's also being sought by Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), who was also on that plunder train back in 1944, and plans to use it to fix the "mistakes" made by Hitler, and they're all soon zipping off to antiquity auctions in Tangier, shipwrecks in the Mediterranean, and ... well, shouldn't say too much about the rest.

Pop Culture Happy Hour

'indiana jones and the dial of destiny' is a whip-crackin' good time.

These are the new movies and TV shows we can't wait to watch this summer

Director James Mangold, who knows something about bidding farewell to aging heroes — he helped Wolverine shuffle off to glory in Logan — finds ways to check off a lot of Indy touchstones in Dial of Destiny: booby-trapped caves that require problem-solving, airplane flights across maps to exotic locales, ancient relics with supernatural properties, endearing old pals (John Rhys Davies' Sallah, Karen Allen's Marion), and inexplicably underused new ones (Antonio Banderas' sea captain). Also tuk-tuk races, diminutive sidekicks (Ethann Isidore's Teddy) and critters (no snakes, but lots of snake-adjacents), and, of course, Nazis.

Mangold's action sequences may not have the lightness Steven Spielberg gave the ones in Indy's four previous adventures, but they're still madcap and decently exciting. And though in plot terms, the big climax feels ill-advised, the filmmaker clearly knows what he has: a hero beloved for being human in an era when so many film heroes are superhuman.

Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones Jonathan Olley/Lucasfilm Ltd. hide caption

Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones

So he lets Ford show us what the ravages of time have done to Indy — the aches and pains, the creases and sags, the bone-weariness of a hero who's given up too much including a marriage, and child — to follow artifacts where they've led him.

Then he gives us the thing Indy fans (and Harrison Ford fans) want, and in Dial of Destiny's final moments, he dials up the emotion.

• Indiana Jones

• Entertainment
• <i>Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny</i> May Be Lackluster But Harrison Ford Is Forever

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny May Be Lackluster But Harrison Ford Is Forever

Harrison Ford is known to flummox journalists by being less than forthcoming in interviews; in public appearances, he tends to radiate an “I don’t really want to be here” vibe. Which is why it meant something to see him take the stage just ahead of the Cannes premiere of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny on Thursday night, with tiny glimmers of almost-tears in his eyes. Cannes head Thierry Fremaux had introduced Ford by showing a highlight reel of his long, prismatic career, from American Graffiti to The Mosquito Coast to Bladerunner and beyond. It must be strange to sit there in a tux and watch your various incarnations across decades flash past you on a screen—it’s probably true that when you’re a movie star, others are more attuned to the natural changes in your face than you are. No wonder Ford, now 80, seemed moved by the tribute. “You know, I love you too,” he said to the audience after the applause had waned. “You give my life purpose and meaning, and I’m grateful for that.”

Ford is, pretty much, the best thing about James Mangold’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the fifth film in the franchise. The first, Steven Spielberg’s 1981 Raiders of the Lost Ark, was inspired by adventure serials of the 1930s and ’40s—the idea had been conceived by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman, with Spielberg later joining the project. In 1981, looking back at movies from 50 years earlier felt like gazing through the wrong end of the telescope; all the movie’s lo-fi hi-fun touches—its fixation on ancient golden gewgaws, slithery snakes and clearly labeled cartoon bad guys—seemed so mistily far away from what the movies had become by that time. Now, in 2023, when filmmakers have tons of new technology at their disposal, it’s easier than ever to make stuff look old-timey. (This new installment is set in 1969, around the time of the lunar landing.) By this point, any Indiana Jones picture is going to have almost too many layers of meta-nostalgia to sift through, though it’s also more likely to foster fond memories of your old, busted childhood VCR than it is to conjure Buck Rogers or Zorro’s Fighting Legion . That’s not a good thing or a bad thing; it’s merely a thing. But it does make you think about how readily your own cherished vision of the past can be used as a marketing tool, and how, increasingly and for some good reasons, we yearn to be returned to olden times that aren’t really even that old.

Yet Dial of Destiny creaks under the weight of the franchise’s stature. The movie’s opening flashback scenes give us a much younger Indiana Jones, in the form of a digitally de-aged Harrison Ford. He looks reasonably realistic—there’s nothing too terribly Hall of Presidents about him—but the effect is disconcerting even so, especially following the tribute reel the audience at the Cannes premiere had just seen, where the younger Ford had been brought to life before our eyes. That’s part of the wonder of movies: you can always go back to look at the Bette Davis of the 1930s and 1940s, the Montgomery Clift of the 1950s, and see the beauty of youth played back for you, even long after a star is gone. The de-aging technique used in Dial of Destiny scanned reams of footage from every Lucasfilm in which Ford had ever appeared, in addition to outtakes, to pick up various angles of his younger face in every possible permutation of lighting. Such an efficient tool! But efficiency isn’t the same as magic.

In the de-aged portion of Dial of Destiny, we catch up with Indiana as World War II winds down. Hitler has retreated to his bunker; the end seems near. A bunch of Nazi heavies see what’s coming and try to skate off with a bunch of looted art and artifacts, and the youngified anthropologist Indy needs to stop them. It’s here that we meet the story’s marvelously villainous villain, Mads Mikkelsen’s Jürgen Voller, an adorably nerdy physicist in Clark Kent glasses. Too bad he’s a Nazi.

In this early part of the film, we also meet Indiana’s pal Basil Shaw (Toby Jones), an academic whose eyes gleam at the mere mention of the story’s object of desire, the dial-thingie of the title, an important-looking doodly-doo—invented by Archimedes— that can locate fissures in time. Everybody wants it, most of all Voller. We watch in something that’s supposed to approximate awe, but doesn’t quite, as Indiana and Toby face off against Voller and various other Nazi thugs atop a train speeding through the European countryside. It’s as thrilling as any clatteringly fake CGI-heavy scene can be.

It’s also a harbinger of what’s to come. There are so many chase sequences in Dial of Destiny that the movie seems held together with slender bits of plot, rather than the other way around. Worse yet, they’re so heavily CGI’ed that they come off as grimly dutiful rather than thrilling or delightful. After about a half hour of Nazi-era setup, we finally get to meet the Indiana Jones of the late 1960s, who looks as Harrison Ford actually does now—phew! Just as he’s retiring from Hunter College, where he’s been a revered archaeology professor, he’s drawn out of retirement when Basil Shaw’s grown daughter Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), now a brainy archaeologist type herself, first charms him as a means of procuring the dial of whatever, and then runs off with it. Then the slippery Voller shows up: he wants it too, now more than ever. It’s important to note, though, that this is only half of the dial; you’ve got to have something to look for in an Indiana Jones movie.

As Helena, Waller-Bridge, with her Tommy Tune-like legs and daffily expressive eyes, is one of the movie’s better natural effects. But even she gets lost in the overly complex plot, which involves world travel from New York to Tangiers to Athens to Sicily that should be exciting but isn’t (aside from the little old-style cartoon maps used to trace the adventurers’ perambulations, which are adorable). And then there are those interminable chase scenes. In New York, on the run from somebody or other during an Apollo 11 celebratory parade, Indy rides a horse right into the 59th Street station and onto the tracks—directly in the path of a speeding subway train. We see how he gets out of this one, sort of. But the narrow escape doesn’t make visual sense. It’s a case of being signaled that something is truly, madly astonishing but failing to deliver the actual goods.

The movie’s best scenes are the more modest ones that remind us what we loved about the earlier movies—the way, for example, a host of creepy-crawlies come clattering down the walls of a cave, inquisitive and menacing at once. But there’s also a murky underwater sequence and, one of the movie’s worst sins, a tragically underused Antonio Banderas as ace undersea diver Renaldo. The best thing about Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is its ending, a reunion of characters that anybody who has any affection for the franchise is probably longing to see. And it’s here that Ford—with his current-day face, marked by all the actual living that goes into a life—is at his best, showing the kind of gruff, reluctant tenderness that’s become one of his trademarks. He’s already got the best face money, or technology, can’t buy.

More Must-Reads from TIME

• How Kamala Harris Knocked Donald Trump Off Course
• Introducing TIME's 2024 Latino Leaders
• George Lopez Is Transforming Narratives With Comedy
• How to Make an Argument That’s Actually Persuasive
• What Makes a Friendship Last Forever?
• 33 True Crime Documentaries That Shaped the Genre
• Why Gut Health Issues Are More Common in Women
• The 100 Most Influential People in AI 2024

Contact us at [email protected]

• Election 2024
• Entertainment
• Newsletters
• Photography
• AP Investigations
• AP Buyline Personal Finance
• AP Buyline Shopping
• Press Releases
• Israel-Hamas War
• Russia-Ukraine War
• Global elections
• Asia Pacific
• Latin America
• Middle East
• Election results
• Google trends
• AP & Elections
• College football
• Auto Racing
• Movie reviews
• Book reviews
• Financial Markets
• Business Highlights
• Financial wellness
• Artificial Intelligence
• Social Media

Movie Review: Harrison Ford gets a swashbuckling sendoff in ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’

This image released by Lucasfilm shows Harrison Ford in a scene from “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” (Lucasfilm Ltd. via AP)

This image released by Lucasfilm shows Phoebe Waller-Bridge, left, and Harrison Ford in a scene from “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” (Lucasfilm Ltd. via AP)

This image released by Lucasfilm shows Mads Mikkelsen, left, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge in a scene from “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” (Lucasfilm Ltd. via AP)

This image released by Lucasfilm shows Mads Mikkelsen in a scene from “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” (Lucasfilm Ltd. via AP)

This image released by Lucasfilm shows Boyd Holbrook in a scene from “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” (Lucasfilm Ltd. via AP)

This image released by Lucasfilm shows Antonio Banderas in a scene from “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” (Lucasfilm Ltd. via AP)

This image released by Lucasfilm shows Ethann Isidore, from left, Harrison Ford and Phoebe Waller-Bridge in a scene from “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” (Lucasfilm Ltd. via AP)

• Copy Link copied

Goodbyes don’t tend to mean much in the Hollywood franchise system. Death isn’t a reliable end for characters or, lately, even actors. Technology, nostalgia and the often-inflated value of brands and IP have created a nightmarish cycle of resurrection and regurgitation, curdling what we love most.

And yet when someone like Harrison Ford says he’s hanging up Indiana Jones’ fedora , for better or worse, you believe him. “Indiana Jones” producer Frank Marshall has also said that they won’t recast the character, which seems more dubious and, though well-intentioned, something he won’t be able to guarantee. All it takes is a new executive demanding a reboot.

Not that it would ever really work, though. Any self-respecting movie fan knows the truth: The magic of Indiana Jones belongs wholly to Harrison Ford. Apparently, he doesn’t even necessarily need Steven Spielberg behind the camera, though, to be fair, the foundation was well-laid for a veteran like James Mangold to step in . But there is no Indy — none that we care about anyway —without Ford.

In this way, it’s hard not to go into “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” in theaters Friday, without a sense of melancholy — not exactly the ideal state of mind for what should be, and mostly is, a fun summer blockbuster. But it certainly adds a poignancy to the whole endeavor whether the film merits it or not.

If only it didn’t start with that pesky de-aging technology (the best it’s ever looked but it remains unsettling), giving us a 45-year-old Indiana Jones doing some of the wildest stunts we’ve ever seen our beloved archeology professor attempt — atop a speeding train to boot. This sequence is ostensibly there to introduce the film’s MacGuffin, Archimedes Antikythera, a real celestial calculation machine with extraordinary predictive capabilities that in the film is bestowed with some otherworldly powers.

But we know the real reason: It’s there to let us gaze at that familiar face and to go on one last adventure with the Indy we grew up with, before being thrust back reality with a nearly 80-year-old Ford (he’s 81 in July) playing a 70-something Indy.

This isn’t inherently sad, but Dr. Jones is certainly reintroduced in the most unglamorous way possible: Sleeping on a reclining chair in a sad New York apartment, a glass of something alcoholic in his hand and threadbare boxer shorts on his person. He’s depression personified, retiring from the university where the kids barely pay attention to him anyway (long gone are the “I love you” eyelids), estranged from Karen Allen’s Marion and watching the world go space crazy around him.

We’ll have to see him work back up to his adventuresome self. No training montages required, thankfully, just a plane ticket, his classic uniform (still fits!) and his old improvisational spirit. The cumbersome plot (script is credited to Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, David Koepp and Mangold) strains to justify and give meaning to the search for the Antikythera: The FBI is on the hunt for it, as is Nazi scientist Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) for whom the war hasn’t ended, and the daughter (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) of Indy’s late partner Basil (Toby Jones) who was driven mad by the gadget. It’s a bit much, as are many of the overly elaborate and strangely murky-looking action sequences from the train in 1944 to a deep-sea diving sequence with killer eels. The movie hits its action high notes when it sticks to the tactile classics, like a brilliantly executed rickshaw chase in Tangier.

Waller-Bridge’s Helena is an enormously enjoyable character, too — a brilliant archeologist herself who’s chosen a more glamorous, dangerous and decidedly black market kind of existence, selling stolen antiquities to the world’s wealthiest and working her way out of debt. She’s introduced as a wild card and a lot of the tension is derived from whether Indy should trust her. It’s a very good non-romantic pairing of sharp-witted old souls, a generation apart. But you’d think in an almost two-and-a-half-hour film there might have been more time for one of our returning favorites, like John Rhys-Davies Sallah (he does get a few good moments).

I’m not sure anyone had an especially burning need to know what Indiana Jones was up to lately, but at least it gives everyone a chance to end on a higher note than “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.” Or maybe Ford just needed some closure on one of his iconic characters so that everyone will stop asking him about them.

“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” might not be “Raiders” or “The Last Crusade” but it’s solid, swashbuckling summer fare and a dignified sendoff to one of cinema’s most flawless castings.

“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” a Walt Disney Co. release in theaters Friday, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for, “language, action, sequences of violence, smoking.” Running time: 144 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

MPA Definition of PG-13: Parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr .

‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ Review: Harrison Ford Plays the Aging Indy in a Sequel That Serves Up Nostalgic Hokum Minus the Thrill

James Mangold's action epic is made in the style of Steven Spielberg, but the exhilaration is gone.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

• Can the Sundance Film Festival Survive Leaving Park City? 3 days ago
• Kamala Harris Did What She Needed to Do. She Displayed the Force of a President — and Goaded Trump Into Revealing His Inner Frothing Crackpot 6 days ago
• ‘Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’ Review: A Soulful Celebration of the Live-in-Concert Bruce, Past and Present 1 week ago

“ Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ” is a dutifully eager but ultimately rather joyless piece of nostalgic hokum. It’s the fifth installment of the “Indiana Jones” franchise, and though it has its quota of “relentless” action, it rarely tries to match (let alone top) the ingeniously staged kinetic bravura of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” How could it? “Raiders,” whatever one thinks of it as a movie (I always found it a trace impersonal in its ’40s-action-serial-on-steroids excitement), is arguably the most influential blockbuster of the last 45 years, even more so than “Star Wars.”

Related Stories

‘Star Wars Outlaws’: Disney Tests Gamers’ Appetite for Hollywood IP

'The Perfect Couple' Is The Latest Series Based on a Bestselling Novel: Here's Where to Buy the Book Online

Popular on variety.

In the prologue, Indy is racing to get hold of the device before Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), a mad-dog Nazi scientist, can steal it for himself. Mangold does a winning homage to the playful rhythms of early-’80s Spielberg, as Indy disentangles his neck from a hanging noose and finds himself in a car-vs.-motorcycle chase, only to wind up, along with his British archaeologist associate Basil Shaw (Toby Jones), dueling with Voller on top of a speeding train.

Have you ever seen an action sequence set atop a speeding train? We’ve all seen 10,000 of them, and this one, while efficiently executed, is brought off with just enough CGI that you can see the digital seams. It’s worth noting how audacious the action sequences in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” were, a sensation expanded upon in the darker, spookier, unfairly maligned “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.” But by the late ’80s, when Spielberg gave us “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” as A-okay as that movie was it was already (except for Sean Connery) a revamp on autopilot. And “Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull” (2008) was the rehash of the revamp, reducing Indy’s antics to tepid formula.

“The Dial of Destiny” at least tosses the series in a new direction, by being the first “Indiana Jones” movie built around the impressive fact of Harrison Ford’s age. He’s 80 now, and a vibrant 80, still handsome and lean, with a scruff of gray hair and a slower, more gravelly voice as well as a combative physicality that now feels more rote than compulsive. After Indy and Basil leap off that train into a river and retrieve the Antikythera (though the other half of it must still be found!), the film cuts to 1969, where Indy himself is now a relic: an old man living in a cruddy New York apartment, waking up to his hippie neighbors blasting “Magical Mystery Tour,” pouring a shot of whiskey into his instant coffee as he glances over his divorce papers.

Mangold sketches in the period well, so that it stands in for the present day ­— not literally, but as a signifier of the idea that Professor Henry “Indiana” Jones has been yanked into the modern world. He’s teaching at Hunter College, where he’s getting ready to retire and keeps that one-half of the Antikythera stashed in the archaeology stacks. Then his goddaughter, Helena Shaw ( Phoebe Waller-Bridge ), shows up (they haven’t seen each other for 18 years), announcing that she’s an archaeologist too and would like to team up with Indy to locate the other half of the Antikythera.

It turns out that Helena has mercenary motives. And while Phoebe Waller-Bridge, of “Fleabag” fame, makes her saucy, spiky, and duplicitous in a cheeky way (she’s like the young Maggie Smith with a boatload of attitude), we never feel in our guts that Helena is a chip off the old Indy block. So while it feels like the film is setting her up to become the “new Indy Jones,” I wouldn’t bet the farm on that happening.

Indy and Helena are going after the Grafikos, the missing other half of the Antikythera, a journey that will take them from New York to Tangier, where Helena tries to unload the piece they already have at an auction for stolen artifacts. Then it’s on to Greece and Sicily, to caves and ruins and giant wriggling caterpillars. Voller is right behind them, along with three assistants: one (Olivier Richters) gigantic, one (Mark Killeen) who will shoot anybody on sight, and one (Shaunette Renée Wilson) who styles herself like a Black Panther. A chase through a ticker-tape parade for the Apollo 11 astronauts, with Indy leaping onto a police horse and riding it into the subway, is grabby in its very absurdity, and a car chase through Tangier, with Indy driving a three-wheel taxi, has enough comic dash to evoke what we cherish about this series. I laughed out loud when Indy leaps into another 3-wheeler at the very moment the one he was driving gets smashed to smithereens.

But those early high points aren’t really followed through on. Mostly, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” works by translating Indy’s old daredevil kick-ass fervor into the pure will with which he’s now hunting for the artifact. As the film leaps international locations, the action starts to feel more conventional and less “Indiana Jones”-y. Did I mention that the reason the Antikythera is so valuable is that it can create fissures in time that will theoretically allow one to time travel? The film actually tests this out, with spectacularly preposterous results. But time travel, in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” is really an unconscious metaphor, since it’s the movie that wants to go back in time, completing our love affair with the defining action-movie-star role of Harrison Ford. In the abstract, at least, it accomplishes that, right down to the emotional diagram of a touching finale, but only by reminding you that even if you re-stage the action ethos of the past, recapturing the thrill is much harder.  

Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (Out of Competition), May 18, 2023. MPA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 142 MIN.

• Production: A Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures release of a LucasFilm Ltd. Production. Producers: Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall, Simon Emanuel. Executive producers: Steven Spielberg, George Lucas.
• Crew: Director: James Mangold. Screenplay: Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, David Koepp, James Mangold. Camera: Phedon Papamichael. Editors: Michael McCusker, Andrew Buckland, Dirk Westervelt. Music: John Williams.
• With: Harrison Ford, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Antonio Banderas, John Rhys-Davies, Shaunette Renée Wilson, Thomas Kretschmann, Toby Jones, Boyd Holbrook, Olivier Richters, Ethann Isidore, Mads Mikkelsen, Martin McDougall, Alaa Safi.

More from Variety

Emmy Hosts Dan and Eugene Levy Roast ‘The Bear’ for Being a Comedy Nominee With No Jokes and More During Monologue

The Postwar Streaming Market: A Special Report

Emmys 2024: The Most-Watched Show, Actor and Actress Nominees

Candice Bergen, Selena Gomez Mock JD Vance’s ‘Childless Cat Ladies’ Comments at Emmys

Venu Legal Fight Is About More Than FuboTV: What’s at Stake for the Entire Industry

Emmys 2024 Snubs and Surprises: ‘Hacks’ Devours ‘The Bear,’ Lamorne Morris Defeats Iron Man and ‘The Traitors’ Banishes ‘Drag Race’

More from our brands, miley cyrus sued over ‘flowers,’ accused of copying bruno mars song.

The Complete Guide to the Rolex Oyster Bracelet, From 1948 to Present

The Last Manse: Jordan’s Chicago Home Finds Buyer

The Best Loofahs and Body Scrubbers, According to Dermatologists

Charlie Hunnam to Star in Monster Season 3 as Serial Killer Ed Gein

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny: Harrison Ford's last hurrah in iconic role tangles with Nazis, nostalgia and aging

By Luke Goodsell

Topic: Arts, Culture and Entertainment

This is the fifth film in the Indiana Jones series, spanning four decades of production. ( Supplied: Disney )

For a pop series in which coveting treasure invariably leads to certain doom, the prospect of a fifth and supposedly final Indiana Jones movie – with a now 80-year-old Harrison Ford in the lead, and without Steven Spielberg behind the camera – may well constitute one cliffhanger too many; a last lunge for the Holy Grail that brings the whole temple crashing down.

Forty-two years after Raiders of the Lost Ark, the series has become as nostalgic for its own blockbuster heyday as its creator George Lucas once was for the serialised adventures of his childhood; the original film's seat-of-its-pants charm, roguish one-upmanship and spooky practical effects are now as talismanic as ancient relics.

It also means the franchise, now under the aegis of Disney, has backed itself into something of a creative corner.

Ford has been digitally de-aged in the film, a process that involves CGI touch-ups and overlays to render an actor decades younger. ( Supplied: Disney )

Having tangled with atomic-age aliens in Spielberg's flawed-but-fascinating Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), our globe-trotting hero is back to doing what his current minders, at least, think he does best: punching Nazis. As the traitorous American villain once sneered at Indy, in 1989's cheerfully self-reflexive Raiders redux, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: "The Nazis? Is that the limit of your vision?"

Directed by James Mangold ( Ford v Ferrari ; Logan ), who has the unenviable task of stepping into Spielberg's sneakers (Spielberg and Lucas remain as executive producers), the Nazi-heavy Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is a sincerely mounted, often gripping action movie that also runs up against the limits of its own vision.

It's a film that wants to swing big, reckoning with an aging pulp hero out of his time, and questioning the perils of living for the past, but one whose ultimately tame execution – and, you might argue, very existence – serves to refute its thesis.

Without the playfulness of the old Paramount logo dissolve , the movie begins in gloomy media res, with Indy – played by a digitally de-aged Ford – deep behind German lines in 1944, just as the tide of the war is turning against the Nazis. He and his stuffy archaeologist colleague, Basil Shaw (Toby Jones), are trying to stop a train full of antiquities bound for Berlin (seems failing to nab both the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail hasn't dimmed the Führer's enthusiasm), when they stumble upon half of the Antikythera, an ancient dial rumoured to generate fissures in time, and run afoul of a Nazi commander, Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), determined to wield the mechanism for his own power.

"Indiana Jones is an entertainment and it's an adventure, and it's got to have joy and humour and crazy characters," Mangold told Collider. ( Supplied: Disney )

"Whoever has it," Voller threatens, "will be God."

It's a long, muddy-looking sequence that, like too much of the movie's action, misses Spielberg's spatial dynamism and visual wit. But the film gathers some steam and personality in 1969, where we meet a now 70-year-old Indy, stuck in a cluttered New York apartment and snoozing on a recliner in front of psychedelic kids' show H.R. Pufnstuf, and about to be abruptly awoken by the downstairs neighbours blasting The Beatles. (The song: Magical Mystery Tour, of course.)

The crumpled professor is in the middle of a divorce and a thankless teaching job at Hunter College, where the bored, bubble-gum-popping students are more excited by the recent Moon landing than they are by ancient artefacts.

"Going to the Moon is like going to Reno," Indy grumbles, with every right of a guy who's seen extra-dimensional UFOs and Biblical phantasms.

The European-set scenes were filmed on location in Morocco, Sicily, Scotland, and England. ( Supplied: Disney )

The only person not looking to the future, it seems, is the now middle-aged Voller, who's been biding his time as a NASA physicist on the Apollo project, but whose real dream is to get his hands on the dial and turn back time, using his advanced knowledge to help the Nazis win the war.

Luckily, Indy's 30-something goddaughter, and Basil's kid, the spirited, whip-smart Helena Shaw (Fleabag's Phoebe Waller-Bridge), gets to it first. She's soon whisked the dial away to Tangier, where she's holding a black market antique auction alongside her teenage offsider, Teddy (a lively, if underused, Ethann Isidore).

With Indy joining them, it's an old-fashioned, international jaunt that takes our heroes across North Africa and into Europe by land and sea, with Voller and his goons – a moustachioed American stooge (Boyd Holbrook), presumably standing in for a contemporary Proud Boy – in hot pursuit.

Powered by Mangold's reliable craft and John Williams's typically baroque score, it all motors along at a pretty rousing clip, from an improbable horseback chase through a subway to a knockabout, Italian Job-inspired escape in tuktuks, with bugs, eels (the film's amusing variation on Indy's reptile phobia) and a salty Spanish sea captain (an all-too-brief Antonio Banderas) thrown in for good measure.

On Helena's relationship with Indy, Waller-Bridge told ABC News: "The wonderful thing about this relationship is you don't know where it's gonna go." ( Supplied: Disney )

The lanky, mischievous Waller-Bridge is the animating spark for much of the adventure; as the mercenary, ethically dubious Helena, she's a ghost of Indy's own past, and the actor brings out a lovely, cross-generational rapport with Ford that occasionally evokes his double act with Sean Connery in The Last Crusade.

Her presence also suggests a scrambled moral complexity: In an era when Indy's old mantra, "It belongs in a museum," carries a whiff of institutional colonialism, who's to say Helena's black market capitalism is any less noble a pursuit?

Dial of Destiny is at its best when it tips its fedora towards these grey areas, when Mangold's sense of fraught American idealism – previously glimpsed in his intermittently compelling Ford v Ferrari – rises to the fore.

But while Mangold is a dependable action filmmaker with a steady command of the frame, the Indiana Jones films were never merely about great action; what he can't quite summon is the ineffable magic that the original films possessed, that strange alchemy that resulted from the synchronicity of – and sometimes, friction between – their creators.

Whether reanimating their movie-matinee childhoods in Raiders, pouring their post-divorce angst into the series' exhilarating 1984 highpoint, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, or teasing out daddy issues in The Last Crusade, Lucas and Spielberg brought a deeply personal vision to their populist escapades.

Even Crystal Skull, in which Lucas's loopy digital futurism clashed with Spielberg's late-career classicism, bore out a rich creative tension, yielding one of the series' most memorable images: The aging hero framed against the modern threat of a nuclear mushroom cloud (itself a direct line to Spielberg's 50s childhood, as seen in The Fabelmans ).

Put bluntly: No Spielberg, no Lucas – no Indiana Jones.

Dial of Destiny can't help but be a simulacrum of the series' past glories; even with its admirable attempts to wrestle with time and legacy, the film's lack of imagination undoes its ambition.

Given the wild possibilities afforded by this $295-million movie's magical time-travel MacGuffin – not to mention the digital de-aging toolkit at its disposal – the big climax plays it dispiritingly safe: catnip for history buffs, perhaps, but minus the nutty lunacy of the previous films' supernatural finales. (Imagine the perverse thrill of, say, seeing old Indy watch his youthful exploits serialised on screen in 1981. No such luck here.)

"One of the greatest privileges of the film was to actually get to know Harrison," Waller-Bridge told ABC News. ( Supplied: Disney )

By the time the movie is quoting dialogue verbatim from Raiders, it's clear that it has nothing much to add to the legacy.

Through it all, it's possible to be moved by Ford, who continues to relish Indy like no other character in his 50-year stardom.

He's still capable of summoning that wry, crooked smile and schoolboy giddiness, but here, that cavalier spirit is tempered with a sense of time and loss. There's an incredibly touching moment, midway through the film, in which Indy opens up about his regret over a tragedy he wishes he could change, and Ford plays it with the kind of rare, unguarded tenderness that's escaped so many of his other legacy franchise roles in the last decade.

Dial of Destiny may not be the send-off that Indy deserves, but in those moments – and in the weight of Ford's presence – there's a flicker of the film it might have been.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is in cinemas now.

We earn a commission for products purchased through some links in this article.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is an entertaining final outing for Indy

It finally out in cinemas.

Finales are always tricky to get right, especially so when the previous instalment of a series wasn't exactly well received by fans. Do you go back to basics and just repeat past glories, or do you double down and try to change up the formula one final time?

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny has certainly gone for the former as it bids farewell to Harrison Ford's iconic character.

Despite the poor reception out of its Cannes premiere , the approach should be enough to satisfy Indiana Jones fans. Fittingly, Dial of Destiny digs into the past to play more like a greatest-hits package of what you expect from an Indy movie.

It won't end up as anybody's favourite Indiana Jones movie, but with Harrison Ford as good as ever in the role, it's a decent send-off.

Where Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull had Indiana Jones dealing with unexpected fatherhood, the new movie sees him entering retirement and pondering his own mortality. (Not in a deep way, this is a blockbuster, after all.)

His fedora, whip and leather jacket are gathering dust and his adventuring days are behind him, at least until his goddaughter Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) shows up asking about a rare artefact, the Archimedes Dial, which her father (Toby Jones) entrusted to Indy years earlier.

Helena isn't reminiscing about the past, though, and has no desire to follow in her godfather's footsteps. She's all about the money and when she gets her hands on the Dial, she plans to sell it to the highest bidder.

Indy knows that the Nazis were once after it and when his old nemesis Jürgen Voller ( Mads Mikkelsen ) resurfaces, now working as a physicist in the US space program, Indy must set off on one final adventure to protect Helena, the Dial and, potentially, history as we know it.

You can't go wrong with Nazis in an Indiana Jones movie, and director James Mangold – who also wrote the script with Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth and David Koepp – sticks with what he knows the fans want.

Even the movie's opening allows Mangold to go back to the classic Indy era as he comes across the dial for the first time in 1944. Deploying some surprisingly effective de-aging , it's a rip-roaring beginning to the movie that starts in a castle occupied by Nazis and ends with an extended chase sequence on board a moving train.

If it feels familiar, that appears to be the point. It might be an homage to the series' past but, when it's done well, a bit of familiarity isn't an issue. Dial of Destiny continues in this vein when it switches to 1969, almost feeling like there's a checklist being ticked off, from MacGuffins and tombs to creepy-crawlies and on-screen maps.

Lip service is paid to Indy being older and thankfully we get minimal old-timer jokes, but otherwise you wouldn't really know. He can still do everything we want to see him doing in several well-staged set pieces which feel classically Indy due to the decision to shoot on location and practically, where possible.

If anything, it's not the familiarity that holds the movie back. The one 'tradition' that's not held over from previous movies is the runtime. Gone is the rough 2-hour template, replaced by a runtime over two and a half hours – and it feels it.

Mangold tries to keep the energy up to make Dial of Destiny an old-fashioned romp, but the formulaic plot often halts it in its tracks. When the plot boils down to getting one MacGuffin to get another MacGuffin on the way to the ultimate MacGuffin, there's not enough to justify the extended runtime and it ends up being repetitive.

The cast manage to see the movie through its lulls though. We know how good Harrison Ford is in the role, it's one that fits him better arguably than any of his others, but unlike in Crystal Skull , he has stronger supporting characters on his journey.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge brings an unpredictability and expert comic timing to Helena, while Mads Mikkelsen is sinister and charismatic in a way that marks Voller out from the usual Nazis in Indiana Jones movies. Other characters, such as Ethann Isidore's Teddy and Boyd Holbrook's Klaber, don't feel as fully rounded as there is tomb raiding to be done instead.

While Crystal Skull has been re-evaluated somewhat in recent years, its finale was certainly divisive at the time. Dial of Destiny 's wild final act is set to be a big talking point too, although perhaps not as much as the aliens.

It's here where Mangold manages to blend Indy tradition with something new and, thematically, it works as an affecting finale for the character. It strikes you as a missed opportunity for similar ambition throughout to really make the movie stand out as much as you can understand the 'back-to-basics' approach.

The result is that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny might not feel particularly innovative, but it is well-made blockbuster entertainment that will deliver what Indiana Jones fans want.

And, sometimes, that's good enough.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is out now in cinemas.

Indiana Jones: The Complete Adventures [Blu-ray] [1981] [Region Free]

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, Volume 1 [DVD](1992)

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones Vol.2 (9 Disc Box Set) [1992] [DVD]

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones Vol.3 (10-Disc-Set) [DVD]

Movies Editor, Digital Spy  Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor.  Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies , attending genre festivals around the world.   After moving to Digital Spy , initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.  

Indiana Jones

What to expect from the new Indiana Jones game

Phoebe Waller-Bridge lands next movie role

Indiana Jones game reveals gameplay trailer

Harrison Ford chokes up at Critics Choice Awards

Indiana Jones 5 ending explained

Is Indiana Jones 5 available to watch on Disney+?

Indiana Jones 5 confirms Disney+ release date

How to get Indiana Jones 5's Blu-ray Steelbook

Indiana Jones 5 confirms UK digital release date

Why Indiana Jones 5 has been a box-office flop

Insidious 5 beats Indiana Jones 5 at box office

Harrison Ford talks Indiana Jones 5 ending

Common Sense Media

Movie & TV reviews for parents

• For Parents
• For Educators
• Our Work and Impact

Or browse by category:

• Movie Reviews
• Best Movie Lists
• Best Movies on Netflix, Disney+, and More

Common Sense Selections for Movies

50 Modern Movies All Kids Should Watch Before They're 12

• Best TV Lists
• Best TV Shows on Netflix, Disney+, and More
• Common Sense Selections for TV
• Video Reviews of TV Shows

Best Kids' Shows on Disney+

Best Kids' TV Shows on Netflix

• Book Reviews
• Best Book Lists
• Common Sense Selections for Books

8 Tips for Getting Kids Hooked on Books

50 Books All Kids Should Read Before They're 12

• Game Reviews
• Best Game Lists

Common Sense Selections for Games

• Video Reviews of Games

Nintendo Switch Games for Family Fun

• Podcast Reviews
• Best Podcast Lists

Common Sense Selections for Podcasts

Parents' Guide to Podcasts

• App Reviews
• Best App Lists

Social Networking for Teens

Gun-Free Action Game Apps

Reviews for AI Apps and Tools

• YouTube Channel Reviews
• YouTube Kids Channels by Topic

Parents' Ultimate Guide to YouTube Kids

YouTube Kids Channels for Gamers

• Preschoolers (2-4)
• Little Kids (5-7)
• Big Kids (8-9)
• Pre-Teens (10-12)
• Teens (13+)
• Screen Time
• Social Media
• Online Safety
• Identity and Community

How to Help Kids Build Character Strengths with Quality Media

• Family Tech Planners
• Digital Skills
• All Articles
• Latino Culture
• Black Voices
• Asian Stories
• Native Narratives
• LGBTQ+ Pride
• Best of Diverse Representation List

Multicultural Books

YouTube Channels with Diverse Representations

Podcasts with Diverse Characters and Stories

Indiana jones and the dial of destiny.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 18 Reviews
• Kids Say 18 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Entertaining fifth Indy movie has some shocking violence.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is the fifth and likely final movie in the blockbuster adventure franchise starring Harrison Ford. There's plenty of the series' usual peril and violence, though this one has more deaths that really feel like murders: Several characters,…

Why Age 12+?

Frequent peril/danger, lots of guns and shooting, sometimes in crowded places (i

Fairly frequent drinking: Indy spikes his morning coffee, has whiskey in a bar,

Occasional language includes uses of "damn" and "dammit," "crap," "hell" and "wh

Woman spies shirtless man (one of a couple seen on a boat), says to herself: "pr

A character drinks a bottle of Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola sign. An old Levi's ad is se

Any Positive Content?

Ingenuity, courage, teamwork, and trying to do the right thing are ultimately re

Indy is brave, resourceful, loyal, and smart, and he's dedicated to preserving h

The two primary characters -- Indy (Harrison Ford) and Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bri

Violence & Scariness

Frequent peril/danger, lots of guns and shooting, sometimes in crowded places (including an anti-war protest). Several characters are shot and killed, sometimes very abruptly/execution style by bloodthirsty villains (more deaths feel like murders here than in previous Indy films). Characters are thrown from moving trains and in-flight airplanes and jump/fall from heights. Knives. Fighting, punching. Woman punched in face. Burned/charred corpse in plane wreckage. Child taken captive/in peril. Two characters handcuffed together fall into the water; one escapes and leaves the other trapped, sure to drown. Threats, bloody wounds. Mace or similar sprayed on villains. Blood on hand leaves bloody prints on a phone receiver. Several action-packed car/train/vehicle chases, crashes. Plane crash. Noose put around character's neck; he barely escapes being hung, and swings from the rope for a bit. Explosions: bombs, dynamite, more. Characters held prisoner. Vicious attacking eels, creepy centipedes. Skeletons. Depiction of a large battle includes ships attacking, firing deadly weapons, ships on fire, etc. Yelling, arguing. Characters mourn the loss of loved ones.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Fairly frequent drinking: Indy spikes his morning coffee, has whiskey in a bar, Scotch on airplane, whiskeys on boat, etc. Characters drink from a flask before doing something dangerous. A character says "you've had too many whiskeys." Cigarette smoking. Character sucks on a cigar stub; another has a pipe. Ashtrays shown.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Occasional language includes uses of "damn" and "dammit," "crap," "hell" and "what the hell," "stupid," "pissed off," "shut up," and "cracker." Exclamatory use of "Jesus" and "my God."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Woman spies shirtless man (one of a couple seen on a boat), says to herself: "promising!" Indy shown wearing just boxer briefs. Tender kiss.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

A character drinks a bottle of Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola sign. An old Levi's ad is seen on a subway train. Pan Am logo on airplane; ConEd, Brillo logos seen.

Positive Messages

Ingenuity, courage, teamwork, and trying to do the right thing are ultimately rewarded, though some of the heroes' methods and choices are iffy. Family is important here, especially found family; knowing that people care about you can be a calming/positive influence. Violence can be swift and brutal, but it's important to acknowledge and mourn your losses.

Positive Role Models

Indy is brave, resourceful, loyal, and smart, and he's dedicated to preserving historical artifacts and protecting them from those who would misuse them. That said, you probably don't want your kids imitating him, especially given the violence he's forced to use. Helena is smart and proactive, even if her motives are questionable at best. Enemies are portrayed one-dimensionally, as purely evil. Lots of bickering. Two main characters find themselves drawn to doing illicit or unwise things because they think no one will care. When they do realize that someone cares, it settles them.

Diverse Representations

The two primary characters -- Indy (Harrison Ford) and Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) -- are White. Helena is smart and resourceful and has agency; she needs no rescuing. And Indy is now 80 but still active and tenacious. Movie is set in several places, including Manhattan, Sicily, and Morocco; many characters of color in background, but some locations still feel exoticized. Antonio Banderas plays a Spanish diver who helps the heroes. Helena has a young, fearless Moroccan sidekick (Ethann Bergua-Isidore, who's of Franco-Mauritian-Brazilian descent). U.S. Agent Mason (Shaunette Renée Wilson) is Black and is important to the plot, but her story arc plays into some stereotypes. Egyptian character Sallah (Welsh actor John Rhys-Davies) says that he wants his children and grandchildren to understand what it's like to be both American and Egyptian. A minor character uses crutches. Indy makes brief references to having drunk the Blood of Kali and been the target of "voodoo." An African American bellhop has a run-in with the Nazi villain, who says racist things to him (asking him where he's "really" from and making reference to "your people"). The villains are Nazis and all White.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Parents need to know that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is the fifth and likely final movie in the blockbuster adventure franchise starring Harrison Ford . There's plenty of the series' usual peril and violence, though this one has more deaths that really feel like murders: Several characters, including innocent bystanders, are abruptly, shockingly shot and killed. Heroes and villains alike use guns and other weapons (Indy has his trusty whip, of course) throughout the movie, and there's fighting and punching, big explosions, high-stakes chases, people being thrown from trains and planes, a villain left to presumably drown, some blood (wounds, on hands, etc.), a burned/charred corpse, vicious eels, creepy bugs, and more. Occasional mild language ranges from "damn" and "crap" to "Jesus" and "hell." A woman briefly indicates sexual attraction to a shirtless man, Indy is shown in his boxer briefs, and a couple kisses tenderly. Characters drink -- mostly whiskey/Scotch fairly frequently, and there's some cigarette smoking. Ingenuity, courage, teamwork, and trying to do the right thing are ultimately rewarded, and family -- especially found family -- is important. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (18)
• Kids say (18)

Based on 18 parent reviews

Classic Indy movie but skip the previews

Fun family movie for tweens and up, what's the story.

INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY opens with a sequence set at the end of World War II, with Indiana Jones ( Harrison Ford ) and his friend Basil ( Toby Jones ) trying to rescue an ancient religious artifact from the Nazis. What they find instead is half of Archimedes' Antikythera mechanism, a mechanical dial that's said to bring untold power to whoever possesses and masters it. Indy tangles with sinister Nazi scientist Voller ( Mads Mikkelsen ), but he and Basil manage to escape with the dial. Years later, in 1969, Dr. Jones is freshly retired from teaching when he receives a visit from Basil's daughter, Helena ( Phoebe Waller-Bridge ), who's eager to get her hands on the dial. But why, exactly? Indy quickly finds himself caught up in yet another adventure as the truth unfolds.

Is It Any Good?

This satisfying fifth (and presumably final) Indiana Jones adventure hits all the right beats, understanding that these movies have always been about more than just chases and fights. Directed by James Mangold , Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny has some of the same flavor that he brought to his earlier movies about seasoned adventurers ( 3:10 to Yuma , Logan ), and plenty of soul. Ford, 80 at the time of the movie's release, is allowed to look and feel his age (while climbing a stone wall in a cave, he complains about his aches and pains). And yet the stunts and action are all very much still exciting, with Waller-Bridge more than holding her own. A pair of flashbacks that use de-aging digital technology to give us a younger Indy are nearly seamless, too.

One of the best things about the Indy movies is that they revel in scenes set in musty old libraries or storage rooms and delight in the piecing together of 1,000-year-old puzzles -- and this one is no different. These beats provide rests between chases and build the characters. Even though Mangold goes long with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny , at 154 minutes, the pacing largely feels right. We really get the sense of just who Indiana Jones is here, what his history is, and how he feels about things. Now that his story is well and truly told, he's still our hero, but we feel like part of his family.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny 's violence . How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

Do you agree with Indy that historic artifacts belong in museums? What are today's best practices around preserving cultural treasures?

How are drinking and smoking portrayed here? Are they used casually? Are they glamorized? Are there consequences? Why does that matter?

How does this film compare to the previous Indy movies in terms of positive diverse representations ?

If you had a Dial of Destiny, how would you use it?

Movie Details

• In theaters : December 5, 2023
• On DVD or streaming : December 5, 2023
• Cast : Harrison Ford , Phoebe Waller-Bridge , Mads Mikkelsen
• Director : James Mangold
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Topics : Adventures , History
• Character Strengths : Courage , Perseverance , Teamwork
• Run time : 154 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : sequences of violence and action, language and smoking
• Last updated : December 6, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

What to watch next.

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones

LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures

National Treasure

National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets

Excellent adventure movies for family fun, best action movies for kids, related topics.

• Perseverance

Want suggestions based on your streaming services? Get personalized recommendations

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

• Trending on RT

Video Interviews

The indiana jones and the dial of destiny cast break down the morocco scene and discuss the franchise's journey, harrison ford, phoebe waller-bridge, mads mikkelsen, and more spill new details about indy's final adventure, including the making of one of its big set pieces..

TAGGED AS: indiana jones , interviews , movies

Indiana Jones is back and RT correspondent Nikki Novak sat down with Harrison Ford , James Mangold , Phoebe Waller-Bridge , Ethann Isidore , Mads Mikkelsen , Shaunette Renée Wilson , and Boyd Holbrook to break down the Morocco scene, discuss the franchise’s journey, spill new details about the film, and more.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) is in theaters on June 30, 2023.

On an Apple device? Follow Rotten Tomatoes on Apple News.

Related News

Weekend Box Office: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Holds on to Top Spot

30 Most Popular Movies Right Now: What to Watch In Theaters and Streaming

Toronto Film Festival 2024: Movie Scorecard

More Video Interviews

The Freakier Friday Cast on New Music, Filming the Iconic Scream Scene, and More

The Deadpool & Wolverine Cast Talk Fight Scenes, Dance Numbers, and Much More

The Cast of Cobra Kai Share Final Season Secrets

Movie & TV News

Featured on rt.

September 16, 2024

Renewed and Cancelled TV Shows 2024

25 Most Popular TV Shows Right Now: What to Watch on Streaming

Top Headlines

• 30 Most Popular Movies Right Now: What to Watch In Theaters and Streaming –
• 25 Most Popular TV Shows Right Now: What to Watch on Streaming –
• 50 Best New Action Movies of 2024 –
• Toronto Film Festival 2024: Movie Scorecard –
• Netflix’s 100 Best Movies Right Now (September 2024) –
• 100 Best Anime Movies of All Time –

Things you buy through our links may earn  Vox Media  a commission.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny Is Too Entertaining to Dismiss

This review was originally published in May, out of the Cannes Film Festival. We are recirculating it now timed to Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ’s theatrical release.

For about 20 minutes, there he is. The opening sequence of James Mangold’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny takes place during World War II, and my eyes marveled at the sight of Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones, as fresh-faced as he was back in Raiders of the Lost Ark , jumping through, around, and atop a speeding German train, walloping Nazis while trying to retrieve an ancient artifact known as the Antikythera. Digital de-aging has grown by leaps and bounds over the years, but the directors who’ve used it best up until now have found ways to lean into the slightly artificial look of the technology . Dial of Destiny is the first time I believed I was seeing the real thing. This movie about going back in time turns out to be something of a time machine itself.

Of course, the film isn’t about the young Indiana Jones but about the aging Dr. Henry Jones, now on the verge of retirement from teaching archeology to sleepy Hunter College students, drinking himself silly in a grubby New York apartment. The year is 1969, man has just walked on the moon, and Indy’s been served divorce papers. Into his life enters his goddaughter Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), the adventurous offspring of his old colleague Basil Shaw (Toby Jones, whom we saw with Indy in that opening sequence). She wants to drag him along on a chase for the Antikythera, which is allegedly part of a contraption built by the Greek philosopher Archimedes to predict fissures in the very fabric of time, thereby allowing travel into the past; Helena’s dad, we’re told, became obsessed with it toward the end of his life. Also chasing after it (and, by extension, them) is Jurgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), a former Nazi who has since become a prized scientist in the U.S. space program. He may be former, but he’s not repentant: Voller hopes to use Archimedes’ dial to go back in time to stop Germany from losing the war.

It’s not long before we’re off to the races, hopping continents and seas in ways that might seem familiar. Not unlike The Force Awakens did with the original Star Wars , the Dial of Destiny feels at times like a remix, offering variations on elements from earlier Indiana Jones movies. Helena could be a cross between Marion Ravenwood and Henry Jones Sr. There’s Teddy (Ethann Isidore), a young thief and driver who will prompt memories of Short Round. There are moments that evoke the Ark of the Covenant, the Well of the Souls, and that creepy little tunnel in Temple of Doom with all the gnarly bugs. And instead of a tomb filled with skeletons and snakes, this time around we get an underwater shipwreck filled with skeletons and moray eels, with Antonio Banderas as a vivacious Spanish diver thrown in for good measure. Meanwhile, the process of reassembling Archimedes’ dial involves solving a variety of puzzles and retrieving objects that themselves feel like they came out of a spontaneous Indiana Jones MacGuffin generator.

Still, the damn thing is fun. Mangold may not have the young Spielberg’s musical flair for extravagant action choreography (who does?), but he is a tougher, leaner director, using a tighter frame and keeping his camera close. That may shortchange the escapist atmosphere and evocative exotica of the material (which is, after all, one of the pleasures of Indiana Jones movies), but it does bring a ground-level immediacy to the action. Mangold is also a fiend for vehicular mayhem, which probably suits this older, slower version of Indy, who fights less but often finds himself in the middle of any number of “wouldn’t it be cool if” chases: motorcycles and tuk-tuks and trains and Jaguars and horses and planes in all manner of arrangements and rearrangements, as well as one delirious final sequence that had me giggling with delight.

Sometimes I wonder if the worst thing to happen to the Indiana Jones franchise was Raiders of the Lost Ark itself, which kicked off these films but also set a standard so high that no movie has been able to match it over the years. (I still think it’s probably the best film Spielberg ever made.) The warm light of nostalgia now bathes Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade , but those films were also found wanting by many back in their day, with elements that attempted to recapture that old Raiders magic. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny might prompt similar complaints, some of it warranted. But it’s also too entertaining to dismiss. You may not lose yourself in this one the way so many of us once did with the earlier Indiana Jones movies, but you’ll certainly have a good time.

More From This Series

• The Mesmerizing Close Your Eyes Asks What Really Makes a Life
• A Sad-Eyed Josh O’Connor Goes Tomb-Raiding in the Lovely, Mysterious La Chimera
• A Gore-Soaked Spectacle of Depravity and Pain
• vulture section lede
• cannes 2023
• indiana jones and the dial of destiny
• harrison ford
• phoebe waller-bridge
• james mangold
• indiana jones 5
• movie review

Most Viewed Stories

• Cinematrix No. 174: September 16, 2024
• The Highs, Lows, and Whoas of the 2024 Emmys
• Industry Recap: You Got Daddy’s Attention Now
• Sean “Diddy’ Combs Arrested in Manhattan Hotel Lobby
• How The Bear Lost the Best Comedy Emmy to Hacks

Editor’s Picks

Most Popular

What is your email.

This email will be used to sign into all New York sites. By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy and to receive email correspondence from us.

Sign In To Continue Reading

Create your free account.

Password must be at least 8 characters and contain:

• Lower case letters (a-z)
• Upper case letters (A-Z)
• Numbers (0-9)
• Special Characters (!@#$%^&*)

As part of your account, you’ll receive occasional updates and offers from New York , which you can opt out of anytime.