Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

I've had that famous John Williams tune playing in my head for about two hours now, and not because I enjoyed the fifth Indy so much, but rather because I'm in the mood to watch the first three episodes. I'll never watch the fifth one again, I'm almost certain of that. It’s not a completely bad movie, which could be said of the fourth, but it's just not “it”. The new Indy is carried by Harrison Ford and he's really trying his best, but he's just left on his own and he’s obstructed by everything else. The Fifth Indiana Jones film is visually bland and in some moments regularly repulsive, but mostly it has a boring story full of boring characters, and especially the bad guys are a bunch of uninteresting bums who are impossible to be scared of – Mads Mikkelsen is looking like he's about to start crying the whole time. Moreover, the treasure hunt itself leading up to the very weird (and slightly uglier) finale consists mostly of routine chases, because someone figured they couldn't have an 80-year-old Ford running around the set doing action shenanigans. James Mangold directs it all with no attempt at invention, and the result is at best a passable piece of craftsmanship somewhere on the level of National Treasure: Book of Secrets and a tiny bit above Uncharted, which is definitely not praise for this franchise. It lacks the style, the inventiveness and the evident joy that accompanied the first three films and, to some extent, the fourth. A product without soul. (28/06/2023)

When I think back over the last three months of movies I've seen in the cinema, Indiana Jones comes out as the weakest. Objectively, it might have been worth 3 stars, but I struggled for the first time in a long time and the film failed to engage or captivate me at all. If I look at my watch at least five times in the cinema during a film, I can't give it more than 2 stars. Indiana Jones is not my favorite franchise even though I grew up on it, but I wasn't too pleased with Mangold. The acting is not bad, though Mads Mikkelsen is terribly bland when he's supposed to play the bad guy. Harrison Ford is likeable but didn't entertain me, and I liked Boyd Holbrook but he didn't have much to play here. I didn't enjoy the action scenes, they were digital and lacked pizzazz (the car chase was good though), and when it came to the adventure rides it was one of the highlights (the eel scene was probably the best), but there were only two such scenes in total. The humour was completely absent and I found the plot also quite uninteresting and not very engaging. At home I would probably have turned it off, for me it was an exhausting movie. 4/10. (08/07/2023)

Anyone who gasped at the flying saucer last time may be caught off guard by the end of the fifth Indy, but for me that was perhaps the most interesting part. The film is certainly not bad, but it noticeably and fundamentally lacks the creative contribution of Steven Spielberg. I'm not saying that an Indiana Jones film can't be made by someone other than him, but it probably can't be made by someone unable make it entertaining. Spielberg's vision, imagination, sense of suspense and humour and ability to think through scenes to the smallest detail, James Mangold can’t do any of that (so well). I felt as if he was trying to evoke a Spielberg-like atmosphere mainly in the excellent opening scene (where the digital Indiana Jones, vintage 1944, looks almost flawless, but speaks in a voice decades older), and then not again, or only occasionally and perhaps accidentally. It’s not unwatchable, but it’s not that good either. And the different approach is also evident in the work with John Williams's excellent score, which is an equal partner in Spielberg's films, whereas here it rather supports it. The whole time I was wondering what this film would look like if Spielberg had directed it. Do you remember that less than five-minute scene from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull that starts with a bar fight and turns into a car and motorcycle chase? Well, not a single scene from Dial of Destiny is that good, and that's a shame, because otherwise everything that should be here is here. Harrison Ford still sells every look, every dry line, every emotion, Phoebe Waller-Bridge is charming, Mads Mikkelsen is probably the weakest villain of the series, but the bar was so high. In the end, I think the most important thing is that I want to see Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny again. (29/06/2023)

To a certain extent, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is a safe and modern film stripped of all the appeal, originality, physicality and creative prowess that we loved about the first three installments, and it has also lost much of the magic of adventure. The credits list four screenwriters and the disparity is evident in the result, which feels like it was actually written by an artificial intelligence, it has seemingly all the elements and Indiana Jones film should have, yet it feels more a knockoff than the proper thing. Is it worse or better than Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? Hard to say. In some things is better, in others it’s worse. In any case, the qualities of the original trilogy can’t be seen even from the digital train. (27/06/2023)

A nostalgic adventure ride, but Mangold should have gone easier with some the unnecessary CGI and sped up the pace. In any case, Harrison Ford is the driving force and especially in the emotional scenes (the ending) he can grab you by the heart. Again, though, I had the overwhelming feeling that having multiple people writing the script was harmful. The opening chases are formally fine, but they are basically pointless – a shorter one would have been enough. The depression-ridden and aching Indy is so much better. Phoebe Waller-Bridge could pull an entire film or franchise on her own as a more grounded Lara Croft, she’s actually the only one who’s a match for Ford. Mads Mikkelsen is an unremarkable villain, he does know how to play one, but his Nazi scientist is not fully a villain, he’s more of a smart-ass. Completely untarnished, however, is the reputation of John Williams, whose timeless motif and playful themes will hold any true believer to the end credits. (28/06/2023)