Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

It’s fine. It’s better than Crystal Skull. I’d watch it again, but it will never be my first pick for satisfying an Indy fix. I struggle to say much more than that, because I didn’t have high expectations for this. I mean, Harrison Ford is at an age where the stunts and swashbuckling adventure of Indiana Jones doesn’t make sense. He’s kind of irascible at all times, even acting. There was only so much this movie was capable of achieving in capturing the spirit of Indiana Jones. They were gonna have to use a proxy for the more energetic scenes (hello, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Helena Shaw), which sometimes relegates Indy to being a sidekick in his own movie. But I knew these limitations coming in. So, I think if you come in knowing all this, you can have a fine time with this. It will never be seen on the same level as the OG 3, but I don’t think it’s trying to, either. It knows its place as a legacy sequel. It embraces the passage of time and makes aging and being too old for the world and a life of regrets as part of the movie’s fabric, rather than blatantly ignored like its direct predecessor. Now, can I see the flaws in this movie that drove others to give it such a low score? Sure. The villains are generic Nazis again. The … CIA agent? … that is with them is useless. The Helena character is unlikeable until the movie needs her to be noble for plot purposes, and her child sidekick feels like Short Round without the charisma or fun. There’s a couple major plot holes in this movie that you have to ignore, not the least of which is the entire movie doesn’t happen if Indy stays home and does nothing. At 155 minutes, the movie is too long. And the climax is a damp squib of an ending. And the whole movie feels like a back door pilot for Helena Shaw, and Waller-Bridge does not have the feisty charisma to anchor an action-adventure franchise (Jenna Coleman, Hayley Atwell, Jodie Whitaker, or Lily Collins would be much more believable). I recognize all that. If this is a 4/10 or lower for you because of it, I get it. I can’t argue that away. I can only tell you, friend, that I enjoyed it for what it was; a send-off to one of cinema’s greatest rogues. Last Crusade was a better send off, but Crystal Skull ruined that, so, we have this. It’s not perfect, but I never thought it could be. I just wanted some Indy fun, and for the most part, I got a reasonable facsimile of it. Good enough.