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“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.

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Film credits.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, language and smoking.

154 minutes

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

• James Mangold

Writer (based on characters created by)

• George Lucas
• Philip Kaufman
• David Koepp
• Jez Butterworth
• John-Henry Butterworth

Cinematographer

• Phedon Papamichael
• Michael McCusker
• Dirk Westervelt
• Andrew Buckland
• John Williams

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‘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.

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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.

Things improve once the story cuts to 1969 and Ford and his beautiful, lived-in, expressively alive face make their entrance, with Indy staggering awake wearing just boxer shorts, an intro that elicits chuckles, admiration and bittersweet feelings because Ford’s years are etched into every crease. After some more preliminaries, Indy finds his usual fast-paced groove with familiar friends, foes, narrative beats and action-flick clichés, including a gal pal, Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge, from “Fleabag”), who’s an ethically challenged wisenheimer. The script — by Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, David Koepp and Mangold — keeps playing the greatest hits, at times nearly blow-for-blow, kiss-for-kiss.

The story turns on the treasure, a prize that dates back several thousand years and, like time, just keeps slipping away. Pressed to retrieve it, Indy suits up — fedora, bullwhip, leather jacket, check, check and check — and he and Helena race around the globe chasing it while trading banter and, by turns, evading and fighting villains. For some reason, a grizzled Antonio Banderas pops in as a boat captain. At another point, Indy et al. land in Tangier, a setting that evokes “Raiders” and, uncomfortably, the scene in which Indy shoots a sword-wielding Arab, a death that Spielberg played for laughs and that distills that film’s breezy colonialist mind-set.

“Dial of Destiny” avoids such missteps simply by taking aim at Nazis. Indy and company still embark on breakneck chases in putatively exotic locations — including on tippy three-wheelers that careen through Tangier — but with less obvious collateral damage to the locals, if not their food stalls. Like all the action sequences here, this one drags on long enough to kill the fun. Mangold can do action. He’s best known for “ Logan ,” that rare comic-book movie that achieves a just-so balance between genre familiarity and novelty; he should be better known for “ Ford v Ferrari ,” a smart, nimble car story that underscores he can do one of the hardest things in film, which is to turn two people just talking to each other into cinema.

The Indiana Jones series was customized for mass appeal, which doesn’t leave room for Mangold to do much, though at times he slows things down enough for Ford to shift rhythm. It’s hard to believe this or any other installment would have worked half as well without Ford, whose gruffly appealing, unthreatening (to women, importantly) masculine persona has always felt natural and unforced. No matter how outrageous Indy’s trouble, Ford’s persona and outwardly effortless charm — and his ability to drop that rakish smile for something darker, meaner, even threatening — have kept the character tethered to the real world of feelings and consequences. Lucas and Spielberg sketched a cartoon; Ford created a character.

That character, or rather Ford, or really the two of them together are the main arguments for seeing “Dial of Destiny,” which is as silly as you expect and not altogether as successful as you may hope. Among other things, it takes a while to settle down. Everything seems overly strained, at least at first, including the pacing, the story and Waller-Bridge’s performance. It all improves as it continues, or maybe I just surrendered, yielding to the movie’s disposable pleasures, its yearning to entertain you, Mangold’s old-school classicism and, of course, Ford, who, as befits a Hollywood veteran confident enough to make a grand entrance in only his boxers, can still run away with a movie — and run and run — without breaking a sweat.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny Rated PG-13 for largely bloodless violence. Running time: 2 hours 34 minutes. In theaters.

Manohla Dargis is the chief film critic of The Times, which she joined in 2004. She has an M.A. in cinema studies from New York University, and her work has been anthologized in several books. More about Manohla Dargis

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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+

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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny review – Harrison Ford does the heavy lifting in lightweight sequel

The octogenarian star gives it his all in James Mangold’s fun but formulaic action adventure co-starring Phoebe Waller-Bridge and a scenery-sucking Mads Mikkelsen

A fter scoring box-office bullseyes with Jaws (1975) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Steven Spielberg blotted his Hollywood wunderkind copybook with 1941 (1979). A “comedy spectacular” set in the wake of the Pearl Harbor bombing (yes, really), 1941 cost nearly twice as much as Spielberg’s previous outing yet took less than a third of its box office. Chastised, the director teamed up with George Lucas on a project inspired by the serial cheapies of the 1930s and 40s. The result was the moderately priced Raiders of the Lost Ark , which promptly became the highest-grossing film of 1981, and which Spielberg later told me helped him get back to his crowd-pleasing roots.

Four decades and as many sequels/prequels later, the Indiana Jones franchise is still a money-spinner, although exponentially soaring budgets (this latest instalment cost close to $300m) have put paid to the original’s comparatively cheap and cheerful ethos. In its place we have a strange combination of cutting-edge, computer-enhanced nostalgia (Harrison Ford is digitally de-aged for flashbacks to second world war-era Europe) mixed with a string of old-but-new action set pieces involving big trains, small cars and nippy bikes – sequences that weirdly mirror this summer’s other massively expensive action franchise release, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One . The difference is that while MI7 looks machine-tooled to keep you on the edge of your seat, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny just wants you to sit back and wallow in it.

With Spielberg no longer directing, it’s left to safe pair of hands James Mangold to crack the whip, with the help of his Le Mans 66 ( AKA Ferrari v Ford ) co-writers Jez and John-Henry Butterworth. Thankfully, Shia LaBeouf’s insufferable Mutt Williams, whom Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) had clumsily attempted to lineup as a successor to Dr Jones, is gone, his absence handily explaining why Indy finds himself alone again, naturally.

It’s the late 1960s, and the good doctor has become a bone-aching grouch, a live-action cinematic cousin of the old guy from Up . While Indy growls at retirement, the US co-opts former Nazi Jürgen Voller (a scenery-sucking Mads Mikkelsen) to aid Nasa’s moon landing efforts. But Voller has his sights on a bigger prize – the titular magical MacGuffin, which he last laid hands on back in 1944. Here, young(er) Indy and the oddball Prof Basil Shaw (Toby Jones, stealing every scene) do knockabout battle with Voller’s Nazi henchman for possession of Archimedes’s Antikythera mechanism; a two-piece contraption (crucially, you need both pieces) that can not only predict but perhaps control temporal anomalies… or something. Think Ark of the Covenant meets the Tardis. But smaller. And in two bits.

Meanwhile, back in the 60s, Basil’s daughter Helena (a clearly delighted Phoebe Waller-Bridge ) has her own monetary designs on the dial. Helena is Indy’s goddaughter, setting the stage for much lively quasi-familial bickering as everyone hotfoots it around the globe, racing to find the ancient artefact with mysterious powers that will change the course of blah, blah, blah…

According to the British Board of Film Classification’s splendidly straight-faced consumer advice, “those familiar with the series will not be surprised by the violence and the threat”, to which it might well have added: “Or indeed anything else.” There’s literally nothing here to frighten the horses or upset any applecarts, save for those knocked over during the crowded-street chase scenes. Even the preposterousness of the final act (not so much WTF? as OFFS!) seems par for the course in a series that started with Nazi faces being melted by scary angels and most recently had Dr Jones and co communing with space aliens through a multidimensional portal in the mythical city of Akator.

Instead, you’re invited to feel warm and fuzzy about reuniting with old friends (even those whose reappearance has proved divisive) and to marvel at the scenic vistas and passably unremarkable popcorn adventures, all played out to sturdy John Williams themes. Hats off to Ford, who continues a winning streak of later-life role reprisals (Han Solo, Rick Deckard), proving that whatever gruff genre appeal he possessed in his heyday has aged better than Indy’s knees. He may be 80, but Ford carries the weight of the film, which, for all its gargantuan expense, feels a bit like those throwaway serials that first inspired Lucas – fun while it lasts, but wholly forgettable on exit.

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‘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

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Inside richie akiva's cannes all-nighter, where cher partied and travis scott allegedly fought, chinese drama 'black dog' wins cannes un certain regard, 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.

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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.

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• Trivia In an interview on Harrison Ford/Vic Mensa (2023) , 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 identifies the half lion half eagle creature carved on Archimedes' tomb as a Phoenix. The creature is actually a griffin and bears little or no resemblance to a Phoenix.

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

Indiana Jones : You should have stayed out of Poland.

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• 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.
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‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’: A fitting if far-fetched finale

The fifth film in the action-adventure franchise bends over backward, at times literally, to put a bow on the series

Father Time casts his long shadow over “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” and not just because the 42-year-old action-adventure franchise, now in its fifth installment, was already old-fashioned — a throwback to “Buck Rogers” and other serials of the 1930s — when “ Raiders of the Lost Ark ” debuted in 1981. Nor is that ticking of the clock that you hear merely echoed in the sound of news reports that this film will be the last outing for Harrison Ford (81 years old next month) in the title role, or that “Dial” marks the last film for composer John Williams, 91, whose instantly recognizable theme music can be heard through the new film. Franchise director Steven Spielberg, 76, has also finally ceded the reins to James Mangold (“ Ford v Ferrari ”), who makes a capable contribution to the canon here.

But in other ways large and small, the hands of the chronograph are spinning out of control.

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First off is the film’s prologue set in World War II: a derring-do-heavy flashback on a speeding train in which we watch a digitally de-aged Indy — pleasantly plausible — once again facing Nazis as he did in both the first and third films, as he and a colleague, Basil Shaw (Toby Jones), attempt to make off with the titular artifact. Also known as the Antikythera mechanism, this clocklike device is said to have been designed by the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes and to be capable of predicting “fissures in time.” (Don’t ask.) This putative ability will prove significant in the climax of the story by Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, David Koepp and Mangold, a supernatural tale that stretches credulity, even by the standards of an Indiana Jones movie.

Flash-forward to 1969, with a now-white-haired Indy — excuse me, Professor Jones — seen waking up from a nap (and perhaps that bad dream) to the sounds of the Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour,” appropriately enough, from a neighboring apartment. Indy collects himself and heads in to his office at Hunter College, from which he is retiring. But any quiet plans Indy might have for his golden years fly out the window with the appearance of two characters: Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), a German rocket scientist now working on the U.S. space program, and Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), the daughter of Basil and Indy’s goddaughter. Both of them seek to possess the highly prized Antikythera (which has been broken in half, with one half missing), albeit for different reasons: Voller, a fugitive Nazi, naturally, wants to “correct” Hitler’s mistakes; Helena, a cynic who traffics in collectible antiquities, just wants to sell the thing for whatever the market will bear.

And so begins another Indiana Jones movie, very much in the mold of every other Indiana Jones movie in that it quickly jumps from New York to the narrow streets of Tangier for a chase scene with Indy, Helena and her young ward Teddy (Ethann Isidore) in a tuk-tuk in hot pursuit of Voller and his thugs. Other exotic locales follow, including the tomb of Archimedes in Sicily — an underground cave filled with “Da Vinci Code”-like puzzles to be solved with minimal effort, an infestation of icky beetles and a funhouse-style secret stone door that slides open mysteriously, defying physics but obeying all the laws of entertainment.

Along the way, some loose ends are tied up, particularly as they apply to Shia LaBeouf’s character in the franchise, introduced in 2008’s “The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” who disappeared thereafter without explanation. A supporting character from the early franchise will reappear — more than one, actually — satisfying fans but adding little to the narrative, except in the case of the second cameo, which wraps up some unfinished emotional business in a serviceable but syrupy way.

Time does have a way of catching up with you, especially in a movie that appears to be bending over backward — literally at times — to put a bow on a beloved series of films, not all of which have been recognized as paragons of logic or storytelling.

With her tartly delivered dialogue, though, Waller-Bridge does bring a certain zest to the overly familiar proceedings, and — after initially being presented as sort of, well, unlikably mercenary and at times even heartless — Helena and Indy eventually develop a nice partnership, one forged via hardship, the necessities of narrative and a third-act plot development that pushes the limits of suspension of disbelief.

But critical thinking was never a prerequisite for appreciating an Indiana Jones movie. (It is, in fact, a detriment.) And this one is no exception. If “The Dial of Destiny” takes its cast somewhere far-fetched — and boy, does it ever — it makes sure to bring us all back to where we belong, just in time for the closing credits.

PG-13. At area theaters. Contains sequences of violence and action, coarse language, and smoking. 142 minutes.

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‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ Review: Time Is of the Essence in a Sequel That Gets Old Fast

David ehrlich.

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Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2023 Cannes   Film Festival. Disney releases the film in theaters on Friday, June 30.

Not only is “ Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ” an almost complete waste of time, it’s also a belabored reminder that some relics are better left where and when they belong. If only any previous entries in this series had taken great pains to point that out.  Related Stories Getting Your Film Seen: 10 Rules Every Filmmaker Must Know Right Now ‘The Most Precious of Cargoes’ Review: Michel Hazanavicius’ Animated Palme d’Or Contender Is an Elegant Fable About the Darkest of Times

Back to Mangold for a moment: It’s important to note that the failure of his latest movie has much less to do with his talents as a filmmaker than it does with the time at which he’s been asked to apply them. Mangold is as worthy an heir to Spielberg’s crown as anyone working at the studio level today, and the most electric setpieces in “The Dial of Destiny” — all of which are crammed into the opening 45 minutes — display the same charismatic flair and competence behind the camera that helped the vastly underrated likes of “Knight + Day” to punch so high above its weight class. No, the biggest (or at least most evident) difference between Spielberg and Mangold is that one of them would never have allowed himself to make anything this stale, and one of them probably wasn’t given any other choice. 

Of course, that’s partially Spielberg’s fault. Or yours. Arriving at a major inflection point in movie fan economics, “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” immediately became synonymous with the sacrilegious treatment of beloved Hollywood franchises. That 2008 fiasco made its fair share of Mutt Williams-sized mistakes, but the reflexive outcry over “nuking the fridge” overshadowed a deliriously well-directed thrill ride that dared to reconcile the contradictory impulses that had defined Indiana Jones from the start: family and adventure. 

An empty slog of a movie that only exists to smooth over any of the stray fan complaints that have splintered the franchise’s audience over the last 15 years, “The Dial of Destiny” is a globe-trotting adventure movie so safe that even its 80-year-old hero never seems to be in any significant danger (a more accurate “Star Wars” comp would be “The Force Awakens,” but that legacy sequel had the luxury of promising something new, whereas this one just devotes itself to untying perfect knots into loose ends).

The artifact in question is Archimedes’ Dial, a mathematical tool believed capable of opening fissures in time. Nazi scientist Jürger Voller — a too-obvious Mads Mikkelsen, playing a Wernher von Braun type who’s easily the most boring villain Indy has ever had to face — certainly believes in the device’s power, and when the story picks up in 1969, he’s still desperate to find the missing piece that might allow the jumpstart to fulfill its mysterious purpose. Indy, meanwhile, has no such motivation. His marriage to Marion Ravenwood in shambles and his son out of the picture (feel free to breathe a sigh of relief), Indy is trudging towards retirement as a professor at Hunter College, and the “get off my lawn” vibes have never been stronger. Nor has his relevance ever been in greater doubt; his students used to blink love notes at him with their eyelids, and now they sleep through class. 

It’s a race that will take the cast from Tangier to Sicily (among much stranger places) as the lopsided script labors to cross off all the necessary obligations. There’s a fantastic chase between a motorcycle and a horse, a random kid who adds even less to the plot than usual now that Indy is a father figure twice over, and a whole lot of Nazis being punched in the face. And dropped out of airplanes. And smashed into train tunnels. Some things never change, but at least this film’s easy nostalgia has some meta-textual purpose behind it, as “The Dial of Destiny” is deeply keyed into a simple idea that explains both its plot and its pitfalls: You can’t change the past, but you might be able to revisit it for a while. 

At the end of the day, “The Dial of Destiny” isn’t about adding new layers to Indy’s legend so much as it’s about polishing off the ones it already had. Like the relic at the center of this movie — which the self-interested Helena is constantly trying to sell to the highest bidder — the real issue here is about restoring the full value of a cinematic icon before he rides off into the sunset for good. You can feel how desperately Mangold, Ford — and even executive producers Spielberg and George Lucas, the latter of whom would no doubt smile at the silliness of the film’s grand finale — desperately want Indy to go out on top in the public imagination, and “The Dial of Destiny” needlessly unearths ancient history in order to make that happen.

“Yesterday belongs to us,” someone says at one point, and when it comes to Indiana Jones, yesterday always will. The problem is that it already did, and today feels like a complete waste of time.

“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. Disney will release it in theaters on Friday, June 30.

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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)

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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 .

Review: With the messy but poignant ‘Dial of Destiny,’ a franchise strains to keep up with the Joneses

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The first time Harrison Ford appears in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” you can’t take your eyes off him, and not really in a good way. It’s 1944, and Indy, captured while trying to plunder a Nazi stronghold, doesn’t look a day over 46, an illusion that director James Mangold and his 80-year-old star have fostered with the latest and uncanniest in digital de-aging technology. The effects are fairly astonishing, and all the more spookily disorienting for it (why does this Indy look so young but sound so gravelly?). If this is movie magic, it strikes me as magic of a decidedly dark vintage, and not just because of the dim haze that seems to cloud the finer details of cinematographer Phedon Papamichael’s images.

Who or what exactly are we looking at here and why? As Indy hurls himself into a familiar round of death-defying high jinks, you may find yourself scanning the lightly scruffed but artificially smoothed contours of Ford’s mug and wondering precisely that question. It’s still a beautiful mug, of course, and it’s one of the reasons this well-worn series, originally conceived by director Steven Spielberg and creator George Lucas as a kind of parodic homage to the weekend action-adventure serials they loved as children, is still chugging along in its fourth decade. But there’s something jarring about seeing Ford’s face turned, even briefly, into a special effect — an amalgam of images yanked from deep within the Lucasfilm vault, in the latest example of artificial intelligence’s incursion into big-budget moviemaking.

If you find these matters in any way ethically or aesthetically troubling, Mangold (one of the script’s four credited writers, along with Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth and David Koepp) trusts that you’ll be too caught up in the action to give them more than a passing thought. And maybe caught up in your own nostalgia too: The runaway train that backgrounds the first of Indy’s many high-speed melees also means to transport us swiftly and fondly down memory lane. Here, despite the phony-looking digital scenery, the busy, tension-free action and Spielberg’s absence from the director’s chair, the movie aims to serve up a smorgasbord of familiar Indy blockbuster pleasures. There are jokes to be cracked, Nazis to be punched, explosives to be detonated and ancient artifacts to be discovered and purloined — none more coveted than the Antikythera, a.k.a. the Dial of Destiny, a clock-like instrument that dates back to the time of Archimedes and is rumored to be capable of detecting “fissures in time.”

Cinema being its own nifty time machine, the movie then cuts World War II short and zips ahead to 1969, landing on the sad-sack spectacle of Indy (Ford, now sans digital airbrushing) drinking and languishing away in his New York City apartment. Regret and loss are apparent in every crease in Indy’s weathered face, every fold of his sagging frame. His long career in academia is coming to an end, as is his marriage to his longtime love and fellow explorer, Marion (Karen Allen). As Vietnam War protesters and moon-landing revelers flood the streets beneath his window, his predicament becomes clear: In a world increasingly consumed by present-day perils and future frontiers, what place is there for Dr. Henry Jones, who has always found his greatest excitement, fulfillment and meaning in the past?

It’s an existential question whose cultural and commercial implications can’t help but rebound on this beleaguered franchise: More than four decades after “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981) became a smash hit and helped set the template for the contemporary Hollywood blockbuster, is there still a place on our superhero-clogged, action-overloaded movie landscape for the handsome charmer with the fedora, the whip and the dyspeptic grimace? “Dial of Destiny” clearly wants us to believe there is, even if the evidence it marshals over the next 2½ hours proves inconclusive at best and unpersuasive at worst. Funnily enough, the picture is at its best when it casts its own argument into doubt, when it leans poignantly and even self-critically into the notion that time and the movies themselves may well have passed Indy by.

Spielberg had already entertained that possibility — and orchestrated a symbolic passing of the underground-cavern torch — in “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” the lucrative but unfondly remembered 2008 film that introduced Shia LaBeouf as Indy’s impetuous long-lost son, Mutt. With Mutt pointedly absent here, the role of quarrelsome foil and possible heir apparent falls to Indy’s goddaughter, Helena Shaw (“Fleabag’s” Phoebe Waller-Bridge), a fast-talking, light-fingered dynamo who shares Indy’s jones for archaeology but has her own playfully duplicitous, mercenary agenda. Before long, Indy and Helena are tossing off second-rate quips and mapping their way from New York to Tangier to the Aegean Sea — all as part of a quest to recover the Dial of Destiny and keep its potentially history-altering powers from falling into the wrong hands.

No hands could be wronger than those of Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen, solid but predictable), an embittered SS officer who’s determined to rewrite the ending of World War II. Nazis have, of course, long been Indy’s most reliable nemeses, and if their front-and-center villainy here feels like a somewhat rote gesture, it also supplies one of the story’s few points of contact with the real world. (A brief scene in which Voller dresses down a Black hotel worker carries an insinuating chill that the rest of the film doesn’t quite know how to handle.) Mostly, though, the use of Nazis signals an ostensible return to basics, if that’s the word for an elaborate, often tortured series of winks and callbacks to the original Indiana Jones trilogy.

Nearly every beat, every quip, every character dynamic and every outbreak of fisticuffs has its clear antecedent. Teddy (Ethann Isidore), Helena’s plucky juvenile sidekick, is this movie’s version of Ke Huy Quan’s Short Round. Toby Jones does typically fine work as one of Indy’s archaeologist allies, one whose incipient madness sounds an echo of John Hurt’s character from “Crystal Skull.” John Rhys-Davies returns in a few welcome scenes as Sallah, Indy’s faithful pal from “Raiders” and “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” (1989). There are the expected diversionary battles, skittering creepy-crawlies and a fresh reminder of Indy’s horror of snakes. There’s also a strangely uncomfortable echo of one of “Raiders’” most famous moments, when a jealous, scimitar-wielding ex-fiancé tries to have his vengeful way with Helena in Tangier.

For the most part, “Dial of Destiny” tries to steer clear of the exoticizing First World gaze and monkey-brained racist stereotyping that has so often marred the series, especially 1984’s “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.” The new picture might have also done well to apply the brakes on its many endlessly attenuated car chases, which, like most heavily green-screened action sequences, are at once high-speed and low-stakes. Only George Miller in full-throttle “Mad Max” mode can really rival Spielberg for this kind of vehicle-hopping mayhem, and Mangold — a solid Hollywood craftsman who’s done strong, genre-straddling work (“3:10 to Yuma,” “The Wolverine,” “Ford v Ferrari”) — never makes the overused action-movie signature his own.

That’s hardly his fault, given the general thanklessness of trying to put a personal stamp on an industrial product as mechanized and fan service-driven as an Indiana Jones sequel. In a way, Indy has been swallowed up by not only the very action-comedy movie formula he helped normalize but also by the dispiriting, depersonalizing trends in 21st-century studio filmmaking. The greatness of “Raiders” and parts of the original trilogy lay in qualities you rarely encounter in movies anymore: their jaunty exuberance, the arresting physicality of their action and the tactile creepiness of their practical effects. And, of course, it also lay, most of all, with Ford, whose persistent stubbornness and equally persistent likability made you want to follow Indy into every booby-trapped fortress, every spider-infested cave and, yes, every underwhelming sequel he came across.

Ford’s sheer movie-star charisma is the one flame this film can’t extinguish. As throwback entertainment, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” engages only in fits and starts; its workmanlike script bogs down in tedious treasure hunts and gives mind-boggling short shrift to some of its more intriguing supporting players (Antonio Banderas as a fisherman friend of Indy’s, Shaunette Renée Wilson as a government agent on Helena’s tail). But as a meditation on Indy’s (and Ford’s) mortality, on the passage of time and the plasticity of the motion-picture medium, it’s an unexpectedly, even accidentally resonant piece of work, especially as it gradually finds its footing in the final stretch and sprints toward a loopily audacious climax.

I don’t think it’s entirely coincidental that the fabled Antikythera looks, from certain angles, like a dusty old film-reel canister (talk about rare antiquities). I also can’t deny having shed a few tears over a crucial scene in which Indy, like many an aging movie protagonist, learns to embrace his moment — and to realize that moment was always destined to be fleeting.

His pop-cultural immortality, of course, is more than assured, and it’s in that tension that the sneaky poignancy of “Dial of Destiny” emerges. It’s worth remembering that Spielberg and Lucas dreamed up Indiana Jones, a consummate man of history, as a means of keeping their own favorite chapters of movie history alive, only to wind up making some not-insignificant movie history of their own.

“Dial of Destiny” may wind up little more than a footnote to that history, but that’s not nothing. It’s a muddled if on-brand addendum, a tarnished curio, a not-bad epilogue and, intentionally or not, a lament for the film industry that used to be. Its seamless, largely soulless digital wizardry reminds us of everything Hollywood can do now, and also everything it can’t do anymore and maybe will never do again. It belongs in a museum — which is to say, a movie theater.

‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’

Rating: PG-13, for sequences of violence and action, language and smoking Running time: 2 hours, 34 minutes Playing: Starts June 30 in general release

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'Dial of Destiny': Harrison Ford's final 'Indiana Jones' plays it safe raiding past films

Harrison Ford ’s iconic whip-cracking archaeologist literally rode off into the sunset with his dad in the closing moments of 1989’s “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.” So how do you wrap up what is actually the last adventure and somehow live up to an all-time great movie ending?

Therein lies the greatest struggle of “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” (★★★ out of four; rated PG-13; in theaters Friday). Director James Mangold ("Logan") takes over from Steven Spielberg in this fifth and final outing, following 2008’s underwhelming “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.” Ford still wears the character’s signature fedora like nobody’s business, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s new Helena Shaw brings refreshing vigor and roguish attitude to a throwback story that feels both wildly bizarre and way too safe.

“Destiny” feels most like a thrilling “Indiana Jones” ride at the beginning, an opening sequence set in 1944 as World War II is coming to an end and the hero’s up to old tricks: slugging Nazis, trying to rescue historical artifacts from Hitler’s goons and lucking his way through perilous predicaments – in this case, saving partner Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) from a train and absconding with the mythical Archimedes Dial.

The film then shifts to 1969, and an older Indy who's more likely to raid a liquor cabinet than a hidden tomb. His globetrotting days now behind him, Indy weathers personal problems and an uncertain future. On the same day he retires from teaching – and a parade celebrating the recent moon landing rolls through New York City – his estranged goddaughter Helena shows up asking about the dial, which supposedly can find fissures in time. Indy retrieves it from storage, and to his surprise, Helena steals it to sell to the highest bidder, though they’re not the only interested parties: Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), an extremely punchable former Nazi scientist working with the American space program, is an old nemesis who wants to use the dial to change history.

Is Harrison Ford really retiring Indy? He might role play at home: 'Not your business!'

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Of course, Indy catches up with Helena, but they only have one half of the dial, sparking a race between good and bad guys that tends to drag over the film's two-and-a-half-hour running time, even when propelled by a fabulous John Williams score. The film misses the Spielbergian twinkle and lightness of previous episodes while borrowing from past treasures, from specific “Raiders of the Lost Ark” callbacks to a Tangier tuk tuk chase reminiscent of the “Temple of Doom” mine cart sequence. One left-field choice is the Archimedes Dial (based on the real-life Antikythera mechanism) as this movie's prize MacGuffin, which lacks the cultural significance of the Ark of the Covenant or Holy Grail but ties in nicely with the ticking clock of time for Indy (and the guy playing him).

At 80, Ford remains a top-notch action hero, and gives the aging adventurer more gravitas this go-round as Indy's hit a low point in his life. The actor even gets de-aged for the 1944 opening using special effects: It's effective most of the time, less so in the busier action bits.

'Indiana Jones': Ke Huy Quan, Harrrison Ford all smiles at 'Dial of Destiny' red carpet

More often, though, Indy feels like a supporting player next to Helena in his own story. “Destiny” creates a wonderfully conflicting duality between the twosome, as Helena reflects the Jones of “Temple of Doom” who’s all about “fortune and glory” while old Indy’s on his “it belongs in a museum!” kick. But Waller-Bridge plays her ambitions and evolving character so well that she pops off the screen in a more dynamic way. (I would absolutely watch a 1970s-set Helena Shaw Disney+ spinoff series and buy the action figures.)

Mikkelsen’s an obvious choice for a Nazi villain but more than does the job, while Antonio Banderas has a too-small role as Renaldo, an old Indy ally who helps the heroes on a deep dive into a Greek shipwreck. Familiar faces from past movies also make an appearance, including a welcome return by loyal pal Sallah (John Rhys-Davies).

“Dial of Destiny” is a solid Indiana Jones adventure that ultimately dodges the giant boulder of expectations. But as a franchise closer, it’s an anticlimactic affair that, while not a memorably rousing last crusade, at least bids Indy adieu in an emotionally satisfying fashion.

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Indiana jones and the dial of destiny, common sense media reviewers.

Entertaining fifth Indy movie has some shocking violence.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Ingenuity, courage, teamwork, and trying to do the

Indy is brave, resourceful, loyal, and smart, and

The two primary characters -- Indy (Harrison Ford)

Frequent peril/danger, lots of guns and shooting,

Woman spies shirtless man (one of a couple seen on

Occasional language includes uses of "damn" and "d

A character drinks a bottle of Coca-Cola. Coca-Col

Fairly frequent drinking: Indy spikes his morning

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,…

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.

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.

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.

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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."

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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.

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.

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, 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.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (17)
• Kids say (18)

Based on 17 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.

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• Movie Review

The Dial of Destiny is a ruminative, remedial Indiana Jones history lesson

The newest indiana jones movie isn’t trying to reinvent the classic lucasfilm formula, but it is trying to make you think about what it really means to obsess about the past..

By Charles Pulliam-Moore , a reporter focusing on film, TV, and pop culture. Before The Verge, he wrote about comic books, labor, race, and more at io9 and Gizmodo for almost five years.

Share this story

The more reverence you have for Lucasfilm’s original Indiana Jones films and the younger, scrappier Harrison Ford who made them so mesmerizing to watch, the less fun you’re likely to have with director James Mangold’s The Dial of Destiny. But if you, like Ford , have spent some time really disabusing yourself of the idea that nostalgic warm and fuzzies are the only feelings moviegoers should be searching for in the cinema, The Dial of Destiny might just surprise you with how hard it’s working to say something poignant about who Dr. Henry Walton Jones Jr. is.

Set largely in the late summer of 1969 right as he’s planning to retire, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny tells the story of how, after years of being out of the madcap adventuring and treasure-hunting games, Indiana Jones finds himself sucked into yet another unbelievable predicament stemming from — what else — his time fighting Nazis during World War II.

This post includes very light spoilers for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, so proceed with caution if you’ve not yet seen it.

Before The Dial of Destiny fully focuses on Indy’s present, the movie actually opens decades before in the mid-40s right as Jones and his fellow archaeologist Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) were captured by Hitler’s goons while searching for a legendary (and biblical) artifact to steal from them.

As old-hat as Indiana Jones using his wits and charm to out-maneuver cartoonish European villains is for the franchise, The Dial of Destiny tries to breathe new life into that facet of these stories by working the deepest, darkest de-aging technological magicks on Ford’s 80-year-old face during flashbacks to transform him into a barely convincing likeness of his 45-year-old self. For the most part, it’s genuinely astounding and only but so unsettling to see Ford-as-Jones in his swarthy, sweaty prime punching Nazis and ogling the invaluable relics they’re attempting to spirit away to the führer as the Allied forces descend upon Germany.

Part of what makes the de-aging here work so well for Ford but less so for the younger version of Nazi researcher Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) is the way that flashback Indy is very clearly the product of VFX artists using AI tools trained on old Indiana Jones footage to subtly dial back the aging we’ve witnessed Ford go through. But as soon as Ford — who delivered a motion capture performance for the flashbacks assisted by stunt double Mike Massa — begins to talk and move around in his youthful guise, you immediately clock that there’s an octogenarian acting beneath all those visual effects and the illusion’s effectiveness wavers.

It feels a little too generous to call the uncanny dreaminess — a not altogether off-putting un-reality — that defines the de-aged Ford wholly intentional on The Dial of Destiny ’s part. The effect smacks of an unsettling desire on Disney’s part to keep the Indiana Jones IP machine running complete with Ford’s likeness long after he himself steps away from the franchise. But the way The Dial of Destiny juxtaposes the idealized frozen-in-time Indy of 1944 with the world-weary, worse-for-wear, and regretful Indiana of 1969 does a magnificent job of establishing one of the movie’s core ideas: that obsessively reveling in the past’s greatness rather than embracing the present is a surefire way to set one’s self up for misery.

There’s quite a bit of that idea present in The Dial of Destiny ’s depiction of Jones as an older, wiser man whose specialized passion for history feels at odds with the younger public’s fascination with the Apollo Moon landing and really the future in general. But you can also see it reflected in the way the movie catches up with Voller in the present, where he and a number of Nazi sympathizers are rather free to move through the world — so long as they’re with their government handler Mason (Shaunette Renée Wilson) — after having been hired by NASA to help put a man on the Moon. Pitting Indiana Jones against Nazis is nothing new for these movies.

What does feel surprisingly fresh and quite tapped into our own current real-world political moment , though, is the way The Dial of Destiny frames Voller’s past and his fixation on lost glory as evils that’ve become subsumed into society rather than stamped out — in part because of people’s refusal to fully engage with the past and see the man as the quiet, deranged Nazi that he actually is.

In presenting Indiana Jones as a historian who remembers things (because he was there) rather than an old man who feels like he’s being left behind by the progress of time, The Dial of Destiny avoids some of the cringey narrative pitfalls that made 2008’s The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull such a rough ride. But this presentation also lends a kind of narrative neatness to the way that Basil Shaw’s daughter Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) — a brainy student of history who takes after her godfather — comes crashing into back Indy’s life for the first time in more than a decade.

Because we’ve had so much time to spend with Ford’s Jones over the years, with him specifically, there’s a certain degree to which The Dial of Destiny ’s able to get away with merely mentioning and gesturing toward off-screen events that’ve turned him into the man he is here. Because Helena’s such a new presence, though, and the movie doesn’t spend all that much time really letting her just exist before the action picks up, it’s often hard not to see her and her pickpocket sidekick Teddy (Ethann Isidore) as Disney’s new, remixed spins on Marion (Karen Allen) Short Round, and Crystal Skull ’s Mutt. But as somewhat derivative as their characters feel, Waller-Bridge and Isidore are clearly having proper fun with the roles and know exactly what sort of energy classic Indiana Jones supporting characters call for.

But ultimately, that strength ends up cutting both ways like a double-edged sword because of how they highlight some of The Dial of Destiny ’s less-inspired instances of drawing on classic Indiana Jones beats. As good as it is to see The Dial of Jones pump the brakes on the exoticism that’s always plagued these films, there are many times where it feels as if, after making that solid judgment call, Mangold opted to recreate more than a few too many moments from older Indiana Jones , only with new characters delivering those same iconic lines.

This all has a handy way of making The Dial of Destiny play like a big, epic retrospective of Indy’s greatest hits, which might work for some viewers (the way it did for me). But for hardcore fans looking for something that feels innovative and new on all fronts, they might find the film lacking.

Thankfully, something the film isn’t lacking at all is a broad variety of action-packed (if occasionally overlong) set pieces that play to Mangold’s strengths as a director who knows how to use his camera to transform even the most haggard-seeming characters into revitalized, robust, heroic versions of themselves — a talent that works to Ford’s benefit. With Ford insisting that The Dial of Destiny is his final outing as Jones, it’s not entirely clear what the future holds for the franchise, let alone any of this movie’s new characters. But the way The Dial of Destiny comes to a close is one of the more fascinating and risky choices Lucasfilm and Disney have ever gone with for an Indiana Jones movie, and it very well could be a sign of even more interesting things to come.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny also stars Antonio Banderas, John Rhys-Davies, and Alaa Safi. The movie is in theaters now.

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All Indiana Jones Movies Ranked by Tomatometer

In creating Indiana Jones , Steven Spielberg and George Lucas paid tribute to the movie serials of their youth, featuring thrill-a-minute action in far-flung locations, breathless cliffhangers, and a clear delineation between good and evil. It doesn’t take too much character work to motivate punching a Nazi in the face.

And they say every actor desires to dress up and play cowboy; Harrison Ford got to wear that hat and ride that horse as Indy, and so much more. He’s a learned doctor, an archaeology professor, a whip-cracking swashbuckler, a romantic lead, and a museum advocate.

The original trilogy — action showpiece Raiders of the Lost Ark , dark prequel Temple of Doom , and spirited The Last Crusade — may be ’80s movies riffing on the ’30s, but they feel timeless. These fantastic voyages of danger and discovery are filled with iconic characters (including Karen Allen as Jones’ old flame Marion, Ke Huy Quan as sidekick Short Round, and Sean Connery as his flinty pops Henry), and strengthened with significant emotional beats and that legendary John Williams theme and soundtrack. Their direct storytelling and stunt-driven action is why we fell in love with movies in the first place.

Past the ’80s, the adventure continued with 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull , moving the series past World War II and into the atomic era. With 2023’s Dial of Destiny , Indiana Jones takes one last step into the spotlight during the space age. And now we’re ranking every Indiana Jones movie by Tomatometer!

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) 93%

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) 84%

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) 77%

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) 77%

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) 70%

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• DVD & Streaming

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

• Action/Adventure , Drama , Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Content Caution

In Theaters

• June 30, 2023
• Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones; Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Helena; Ethann Bergua-Isidore as Teddy; Mads Mikkelsen as Dr. Voller; Karen Allen as Marion; Boyd Holbrook as Klaber; Antonio Banderas as Renaldo; John Rhys-Davies as Sallah; Toby Jones as Basil Shaw; Olivier Richters as Hauke; Shaunette Renée Wilson as Mason

Home Release Date

• August 29, 2023
• James Mangold

Distributor

• Walt Disny Studios Motion Pictures

Movie Review

It’s 1936, and a youngish archaeologist named Indiana Jones is about to be buried alive in an ancient Egyptian tomb. His nemesis, Belloq, gloats from above. Recalling an earlier conversation they had over the value of a dime-store pocket watch after a thousand years, Belloq offers a cutting quip.

“You’re about to become a permanent addition to this archeological find,” Belloq says. “Who knows? In a thousand years, even you may be worth something.”

It’s 1969, and luckily, Indiana Jones wasn’t buried alive after all. He is, however, getting—and feeling—older by the day. Only he doesn’t feel like he’s gaining value. He feels as though he’s losing it.

Forget the days when underclassmen would write “love you” on their eyelids and blink slowly in the handsome Dr. Jones’ direction. When his students shut their eyes these days, it’s to take a quick nap. Forget the years when he came back to a home filled with love and family: His only son, Mutt, died in Vietnam. His relationship with wife, Marion, was wrecked by the grief, and she left him.

The man who survived the blood of Kali? Who braved the most devious of medieval traps? Who ran pell-mell from a gigantic boulder and nonchalantly brushed tarantulas from his leather coat? That man is 30 years gone. A big adventure these days might be more fairly called Indiana Jones and the Afternoon Nap .

Or so it would seem.

But then, on the day of his retirement, a familiar figure walks through his classroom door: Helena Shaw, Indy’s goddaughter. She’s after the Antikythera, an ancient Greek construct that was her father’s obsession. What does it do? No one really knows. The technology it represents shouldn’t, technically, exist for another thousand years. But Helena’s dad—in his crazed, waning days—thought that it might be able to manipulate time . 

Whatever it does, its Greek creator (the famed Archimedes) thought it was so powerful that he broke the thing in half.

Indy has one part of the Antikythera: Helena wants his help in finding the rest. Or so she says.

But she’s not the only one after the fabled mechanism: Dr. Voller, once-and-future Nazi, has his eyes on the prize, too. And you can guarantee that the bespectacled baddie has his own plans for it.

Nazis. We hate those guys.

Positive Elements

We can’t quibble with stopping Nazis. And, as we all know, Indiana Jones (for all his faults and occasionally questionable choices) has stopped more than his fair share. The stakes are high this time around, because even though Germany lost the war, Dr. Voller is scheming to make everything … Reich.

Helena’s not the do-gooder that Indy is. She’s on this particular quest for (as Indiana Jones himself once said) fortune and glory. Or so she says, at least. Indy sees something more in her, though: A desire to connect with her late father. She develops a real attachment to her godfather, too.

Helena also serves as a guardian/friend/mentor to a teen named Teddy. Now, their relationship is hardly perfect, given that it’s based on stealing and cheating and all sorts of bad behavior. But Helena has managed to keep Teddy relatively safe and off the streets, and she might be the closest thing to a mother/friend that Teddy’s ever had. And when things get particularly dangerous, we see the lengths that they’ll all go to save one another.

We also see some nice messages about friendship, marriage and reconciliation.

Spiritual Elements

When the movie opens in flashback (during the final days of World War II) we see that Indiana and his friend, Basil Shaw, are after another biblical relic. The Nazis have in their possession the Lance of Longinus—the spearhead that pierced Jesus’ side during His crucifixion—and Indy and Basil are attempting to liberate it.

The spear is revealed to be fake (though we see it again in a later scene).

The Antikythera, meanwhile, is very much real and (again in flashback) very much in Nazi hands. We hear that if the ancient dial finds its way into Hitler’s hands, “He will be God.”

We hear that Archimedes was a “mathematician, not a magician.” Indy says that he doesn’t believe in magic, but he does allude to his many experiences that he can’t explain. He’s come to the conclusion that “It’s not so much what you believe; it’s how hard you believe it.”

A picture of Christ is seen hanging on a wall. A Bible reference (Philippians 22) is scrawled on a subway wall. A Catholic statue makes its way through a Sicilian street. Indy alludes to earlier adventures, including drinking the blood of Kali. (The name refers to the Hindu goddess of death, and the blood itself apparently held magical powers.)

Sexual Content

Helena wears a top that reveals a bit of midriff. She was also engaged to a violently lovelorn mafia don. Indy walks around shirtless and in his skivvies. A couple shares a kiss or two.

Violent Content

The violence in Dial of Destiny isn’t as gross as we’ve seen in previous Indiana Jones adventures: No melting faces, no monkey brains, no one gets chopped up by airplane propellers. But the body count is quite high.

We can “thank” the opening flashback for a great many fatalities. Cars and motorcycles crash and fly around, killing and sometimes throwing free their occupants. On a train, a huge machine gun goes haywire (thanks to the sudden demise of its operator) and shoots dozens of people (most of whom fall off the train). Several folks are killed via handgun, too. A guy is killed a bit grotesquely while on the top of said train.

Several people—many of them entirely innocent—are flat-out murdered in the film. One or two are shot in the back as they try to run. One man is handcuffed to something underwater and presumably drowns. Another person nearly drowns, as well. Bullet lead flies frequently, often finding fleshy termination. (Not everyone dies from these gunshot wounds, but many do.)

People are killed via arrows and (more grotesquely) gigantic harpoons. Cars crash. Planes crash. Trains crash. Bridges collapse. Boats are dynamited. We see several corpses. Punches upon punches are thrown. People are threatened. Various vehicles careen in disturbingly unsafe ways. Indy says that he’s been shot nine times. We hear that Indy’s son died in the war.

Characters must brave eels (which can, and do, issue a painful bite), tarantulas and giant centipedes.

Crude or Profane Language

We hear several misuses each of “d–n” and “h—.” Language such as “crap” and “p-ss” is also used. God’s name is misused three times, once with the word “d–n,” and Jesus’ name is abused once. A racial slur is used.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Indiana’s first scene in 1969 finds him in his apartment, empty bottles strewn about. After Indiana retires, Helena finds him in a nearby bar, drinking. She joins him, and she tries to encourage him to join her quest over glasses of whiskey. He spikes his coffee with a bit of liquor from a flask. The consumption of liquor is fairly common throughout.

Characters—especially Nazis—also smoke. Voller often puffs on cigarettes, while another character chomps on a cigar.

Other Negative Elements

Teddy is a skilled thief. Helena tells Indy that they actually met when Teddy tried to steal her purse. He swipes several possessions during the film, including some money from a couple of Italian kids who made fun of his clothes. While he’s often forced to give the stuff he steals back, he uses that money to buy ice cream.

Helena lies frequently and steals the Antikythera. (She calls it “capitalism.”) She also calls out Indy for his questionable archaeology—saying he’s more a tomb robber than noble scholar. We hear that Indy broke a promise to a friend.

We learn that the American government has shielded an ex-Nazi from prosecution and put him on the payroll, using his expertise to help win the Space Race. (It seems that they’re willing to let a great many things slide when it comes to the behavior of him and his ever-present attaches, but his CIA handler will only go so far for him.)

There are references to blackjack and gambling debts.

Indiana Jones’ adventures have always been, in a way, about time. A 3,000-year-old ark. A 2,000-year-old cup. Stones too ancient to guess. With each new exotic setting, Indy and his friends dive into the dirt of history, peeling away pages of time.

Paradoxically, time has always seemed on the verge of running out on Indy, too. The torch fades. The tank trundles to the edge of the cliff. Even though he’s after such timeless artifacts, Indy always needs to do something right now , before the boulder catches up to him.

On one hand, Indy deals in eons. In the other, seconds.

It seems altogether fitting that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny deals so explicitly with time and the desire to turn it back. Here, we can feel the weight of time not just on Indiana Jones’ adventure, but on Indy himself.

Turns out, he didn’t need to worry about the careening boulder. The thing that threatens to crush Indiana Jones is the sands dropping through the hourglass, one grain at a time.

And yet he still has something to say. And do.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is no Raiders of the Lost Ark . Like Indy himself, the franchise is well past its prime. But it is a reasonably entertaining adventure story that is far better than Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (the franchise’s midlife crisis, perhaps?) and comes with, if not a treasure, at least a keepsake. A bittersweet poignancy at its core. And while it loses its way sometimes in its own convoluted story, it still boasts heart.

Of course, any archeological dig turns up plenty of unwanted detritus, and Dial of Destiny is no different. You’ll turn up shovelfuls of muck: foul language, irresponsible behavior, drinking, smoking and, of course, tons of violence. Nope, the Indiana Jones franchise didn’t turn all sweet and innocent while you weren’t looking.

But compared to some of the previous installments, the Dial of Destiny does dial the content back—just a touch. So maybe Dr. Jones did mellow in his old age.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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Indiana Jones

The hat, the whip, the theme song. Harrison Ford stars as the iconic adventurer Indiana Jones, a swashbuckling archaeology professor who spends his free time tracking down lost artifacts in mythic locations.

Indiana Jones Features

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Indiana jones videos, indiana jones movies + tv shows.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992 - 1993)

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny review: a shabby counterfeit

Ford gives it his all – but while the three original films moved like page-turners, this fifth instalment is painfully short of spark

Bringing back Indiana Jones in the 2020s is a potentially risky business. When your hero is trafficking in pillaged artefacts, can he really claim they belong in a museum any more? Shouldn’t he be returning the golden idol to its Peruvian tomb, before slotting the poison darts back in their silos and heaving the boulder back up its launch ramp?

In his first adventure in 15 years, Harrison Ford’s Dr Henry Jones dodges these ideological pitfalls as nimbly as he does the actual pitfall ones. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is every inch a replica of the standard Indy experience, with subterranean booby-trapped dungeons, an escape from a Nazi fortress, a chase through a North African bazaar, and an ever-so-slightly irritating younger sidekick (in this case Teddy, played by the 16-year-old French newcomer Ethann Isidore).

Unfortunately, though, it ultimately feels like a counterfeit of priceless treasure: the shape and the gleam of it might be superficially convincing for a bit, but the shabbier craftsmanship gets all the more glaring the longer you look. 

At 80 years old, Ford himself really gives it his all, even though the role initially requires him to look like he’d rather be anywhere else. It’s now 1969, and just as he retires from his archeology lecturing post at a New York university, his goddaughter Helena Shaw ( Phoebe Waller-Bridge ) tumbles back into his life: she’s on a hair-brained mission to track down Archimedes’s Antikythera – the Dial of Destiny of the title – after her late father Basil (Toby Jones, good value in flashback, in a mad squirrel sort of way) was driven half mad by the quest.

One half of the device sits in Indy’s office archive. But the other is goodness knows where, and it’s also being hunted by both the CIA and a German scientist played by Mads Mikkelsen, who Indy thinks he might just recognise from a scrape in the Third Reich years beforehand. (This adventure comprises the prologue, in which AI technology has been used to pretty convincingly de-age Ford to his Raiders of the Lost Ark vintage.) So off everyone goes on a globe-trotting chase for the lost cogs, whose ultimate purpose is left so vague for so long that you sometimes sense that the film is trying not to spoil itself.

What set apart Spielberg’s masterful three original Indiana Jones films – and, to a lesser extent, the underrated fourth , Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, from 2008 – was the sheer balletic spring in their tread. They actually moved like page-turners, as if they could hardly believe how exciting the stories they were telling were, and the most memorable comic details (think Raiders of the Lost Ark’s sieg-heiling monkey, or its master swordsman felled with a single bullet) were carried off with pure blink-and-miss-it showmanship.

Here, though, the action is generic and clunkily staged – for all the local detail in every individual shot of the heavily advertised tuk-tuk chase, it might as well be taking place on an endless conveyor belt. As for the comedy – well, Waller-Bridge has clearly been given the instruction to “just do Fleabag” but she’s operating without Fleabag-level material here, and her frequent attempts to juice up the clumsy gags with her trademark winking delivery tend to fall flat. (While she’s perfectly decent in the role – and every bit as much the hero of the piece as Ford – audience members unfamiliar with her television work may be puzzled as to why she’s here in the first place.)

Director James Mangold – the man behind such sturdy entertainments as Walk the Line, 3:10 to Yuma and Le Mans ‘66 – must have struck Lucasfilm as a safe alternative pair of hands when Spielberg stepped down from the job in 2020. Perhaps that’s the problem. The film is loaded with mayhem but painfully short on spark and bravado: there’s no shot here, nor twist of choreography, that makes you marvel at the filmmaking mind that conceived it. 

Even the unapologetically pulpy climax, in which the dial’s time-travelling powers are finally put to use, feels frivolous and offhand. As the antikythera does its history-altering thing, you can’t help but wish someone would twist it back to the point at which this film was commissioned and say: “Actually, do you know what? Four were enough.”

Cert 12A, 154 mins. In cinemas now

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RETRO REVIEW: Indiana Jones & the Raiders of the Lost Ark Is as Perfect as It Gets

Indiana Jones is an iconic cinematic character, and Raiders of the Lost Ark remains the best story in his film canon more than four decades later.

When it comes to adventure movies from the dawn of the blockbuster, Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark is as perfect as a movie could get. The brainchild of George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan, the movie began as a homage to old adventure serials from the '30s and '40s before it became a legend in its own right. However one may feel about its sequels, there is no denying the first installment is an irreplaceable piece of cinema.

In the making-of documentary on the home release, Lucas said that his archaeologist adventurer -- originally named "Indiana Smith" -- predates Star Wars . It was only when on a vacation to Hawaii with Spielberg as Star Wars (later renamed to Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope ) opened that he and the director of Jaws agreed to team up for the film. Beyond his expert direction, Spielberg's major contribution to the character was changing his surname from "Smith" to "Jones." The character has since become much bigger than his movies in pop culture -- and not necessarily for the better.

Indy's merits as an archaeologist are called into question and rightly so, since the map room at Tanis is a greater archaeological find than the Ark itself. His effectiveness in the film was also debated for decades, spurned on by The Big Bang Theory in a bit of narrative analysis that's more incorrect and reductive than hilarious. However, looking at Raiders of the Lost Ark (the "Indiana Jones" part of the title came later) as a self-contained film, it stands as one of the best in either Lucas's or Spielberg's already impressive oeuvre. While one particular element didn't age so well, the movie is a joy to watch, whether it's for the first time or the hundredth.

Yes, Indiana Jones Affects the Plots of Raiders of the Lost Ark

Indiana jones' incompetence and mistakes are the movie’s point and part of his appeal, indiana jones' best romance is also his creepiest.

To suggest that Indiana Jones isn't an effective hero because he failed a lot is to completely misunderstand the plot of Raiders of the Lost Ark . Perhaps his most heroic act is saving the love of his life, Marion Ravenwood from Major Arnold Toht and his goons. Were Indiana Jones not involved in the story, Toht would've tortured and, most likely, killed Marion, thus leading the Nazis to the Ark of the Covenant even sooner. Much like Princess Leia in Star Wars , Marion is no damsel in distress. She's capable and feisty, and she even saves Indy from being shot in her bar in Nepal.

Truthfully, Indy's relationship with Marion is creepy, given the history stated in the film. Doing the math, Marion would've been a high-school-aged teenager when Jones was her father's student. By today's standards, their wide age gap and romantic past is cause for concern. Of course, in the early 20th Century, it wasn't as uncommon for a 16-year-old girl to be picking out wedding dresses rather than filling out college applications.

Still, Raiders of the Lost Ark is as much Marion's story as it is Indy's. The reason people think Dr. Jones didn't do much to prevent the Nazis from getting the Ark of the Covenant is because Marion is the "treasure" he was really interested in protecting. Even Indy didn't realize this until the movie's end.

Everything You Need To Know About Indiana Jones And The Great Circle

From the movie's iconic opening scene , rolling boulder and all, Indiana Jones is a screw-up. He's book smart, driven and physically capable, but he's also something of a loser. His boyish bravado and machismo could even be read as overcompensation. Indy's heroic feats and awesome fights owed more to dumb luck and sly improvisation than flawlessness and impeccable competence. He was arguably never meant to succeed in finding the Ark before the Nazis. This inevitable failure, in turn, saved his life and made him better.

For one thing, what lets him and Marion survive the Ark's opening is that he had the presence of mind to not look into it. Even if he doesn't believe in the myths and legends, he has enough humility to not stare face-first into the raw power of the gods. Indy's role in Raiders of the Lost Ark was not to be an unstoppable and infallible hero, but to be a flawed yet lovable power fantasy who fought for good.

Indy's bumbling personality and heroism stood in sharp contrast to the Nazis' faux discipline, formalities and inhuman definition of perfection. He defied the Nazis' arrogance by acknowledging that some parts of history were not meant for mortal understanding and meant to be "owned." Most importantly, he showed how there were things more important than the pursuit of absolute power.

Raiders of the Lost Ark's "Plot Holes" Aren't Mistakes

Indiana jones is a classic and mythical hero who demands the suspension of disbelief, is indiana jones based on a real-life archeologist.

After four decades of living with this movie, fans of Raiders of the Lost Ark love to point out its "plot holes." None of them have any real merit in a film that ends with spectral energy melting Nazis in the middle of the desert. The biggest complaint was that Indiana Jones was a bad archaeologist, which is, in fairness, true. A sincere archaeologist would've spent the rest of their career studying the meticulous recreation of ancient Tanis in the map room, after all. Indiana Jones is a product of the era in which his films are set, namely when colonialism was still prevalent. He calls himself an archaeologist, but he's essentially a grave-robber selling treasures for money to Western museums.

Similarly, there is the submarine "controversy" and Indiana Jones's survival on the U-Boat. There is a deleted scene that shows Indy holding onto the periscope just above the waterline for dear life. While this was scrapped for budgetary reasons, there are real-life reasons why the U-Boat wouldn't have fully submerged, especially during peacetime (the movie was set in 1936, three years before World War II began).

Still, the moment where Indy emerges from the water onto the surface of the submarine to the cheers of Captain Katanga and the Bantu Wind crew is one of the films' best. Indy is a headstrong hero racing to save the woman he loves. Who cares how he got from there to the pile of crates and tarps he hides behind the next time fans see him?

Part of what makes Raiders of the Lost Ark such a perfect adventure film is how moments of such unreality don't matter. A grounded story about real-life archeology in the '30s needs such explanations and a fealty to realism, but not in what Spielberg and Lucas called their "Raiders Pictures." Indy is as much a classic mythical hero as Luke Skywalker or Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Despite being a pastiche of past films and serials from the early days of movies, Raiders of the Lost Ark is timeless and changed cinema forever. Unlike the brutal action heroes who followed or the square-jawed leading men of the past, Indiana Jones is an imperfect hero who survives on wits and luck. His achievements demanded a suspension of disbelief, and a surrender to imagination.

Indiana Jones Works Best When His World Is as Imaginary as Star Wars'

Raiders of the lost ark elevated and surpassed the problematic films it was inspired by, 'just goofy all the time': indiana jones 5 star reveals harrison ford's on-set antics.

One of the great things about cinema is how meaning can be found in even the smallest details. Case in point, Raiders of the Lost Ark's iconic "sword fight." When Indiana Jones is met with a skilled swordsman all dressed in black. After a display of his skill, Indy merely draws his gun and shoots the man dead.

This scene gets a laugh because it subverts the audience's expectation for a prolonged fight. What made it even funnier was how it was actually an on-set improvisation because of budget and timing. Yet, the scene can also be interpreted as a troubling metaphor for the real-world way the West used technology, especially guns, to colonize and plunder other nations and continents.

That being said, Indiana Jones doesn't occupy the world audiences do. He lives in a world where the Ark exists, along with Shankara stones, the Holy Grail, crystal alien skulls and a time-traveling dial from ancient Greece. In creating this homage to the problematic serials and films of old Hollywood that othered cultures that were deemed "exotic," Lucas and Spielberg's adventurer means that audiences don't need his outdated predecessors anymore.

10 Smartest Indiana Jones Villains

While this carries through the rest of the saga, Indy's journey from skeptic to believer is a (possibly unintentional way) of subverting the audience's expectations just like Spielberg and Ford did with the swordsman. This pulp adventurer wasn't an extension of his colonial era's white supremacy; he was a righteous but flawed hero who was willing to learn and better himself.

In the movie's opening, Indy loses his prize because he "chose the wrong friends." Belloq was not a good person, and he only wanted these relics for wealth and power, but he at least had enough respect for the indigenous culture to learn their language and use them as his guides. Throughout the film, Indy isn't meant to be some colonizer asserting his will on people, but a curious man who is, at least through Sallah, accepted by the people who are there. After all, when Indy shoots the swordsman, the gathered townspeople cheer.

Indy's character arc through Raiders of the Lost Ark and its sequels shows that even if he doesn't "win," he survives and enjoys a long life afterward because he comes to respect the power that the belief behind these objects gives them. Conversely, those he fought almost always died as a result of their greed, hubris and unearned superiority complexes.

Raiders of the Ark Is a Fun & Thrilling Adventure That Hits All the Right Notes

Indiana jones would not have endured this long without the maestro, john williams, 'there was no hope': indiana jones actor recalls nearly dying on raiders of the lost ark set.

Just as he did with Star Wars , legendary composer John Williams made Raiders of the Lost Ark work. With the wrong score, the movie's scenes would be as hokey or even offensive as the films that inspired it. Williams' music, specifically the march that became Indy's theme, elevates the film beyond the sum of its parts. Spielberg's direction is masterful, the special effects sequences are legendary, and the performances are pitch-perfect. Yet, only when put to Williams's score do these elements truly take off.

Whether in a crowded theater in 1981 or a high-end TV in 2024, Raiders of the Lost Ark is a film that reaches right into audiences' hearts. The fights and chases brim with fun tension. The cheer-worthy moments are bolstered by the heroic "Raiders March." Even though the audience knows that Marion doesn't die, the second Williams cues her theme, viewers are as mournful as Indy. All these elements create the kind of timeless adventure that kids grow up loving and, when they become parents, show their kids.

While it's not the only great entry in the Indiana Jones franchise , Raiders of the Lost Ark is the only truly perfect one. From its straightforward plot to meticulously shot action, the movie is glorious. If Lucas and Spielberg had left Indiana Jones behind after this film, the industry and fans alike would never have stopped begging them for more of them.

Yet, even for the fan who is disappointed by every successive Indy film, Raiders of the Lost Ark delivers a complete, satisfying adventure. No one knows what the future of Hollywood or blockbuster cinema is in the age of streaming and generative AI. But so long as a copy of Raiders of the Lost Ark is available, people will love it and cinema will endure.

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark is available to own on DVD, Blu-ray, digital and streams on both Disney+ and Paramount+ .

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark

In 1936, archaeologist and adventurer Indiana Jones is hired by the U.S. government to find the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis can obtain its awesome powers.

The Best Indiana Jones Movie is the Perfect Example of How to Expand a Franchise

It runs in the family.

After five movies spread out over more than 40 years, it seems we’re done with Harrison Ford’s version of Indiana Jones for good. What started in 1981 as a riff on the serials Steven Spielberg and George Lucas loved so much as kids became a cultural phenomenon chronicling Indy’s adventures from the 1930s through to the ‘60s.

While every entry has its merits (yes, even the one you hate ), it’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade that represents the best of what the franchise has to offer. It’s not necessarily the best movie of the bunch; Raiders of the Lost Ark offers outstanding adventure storytelling, and is one of Spielberg’s best directorial efforts. The Last Crusade , though, has much of Raiders’ charm but a little less self-seriousness, making it the platonic ideal of an Indy movie.

Last Crusade , which follows Indy as he’s recruited to track down both the Holy Grail and his father, plays as a two-handed road movie, and Sean Connery proves to be Ford’s perfect foil. Connery could have easily played some version of Indiana Jones 20 years before Ford got the part, but while his Henry Jones Sr. is just as brilliant as his son, he has none of his knack for adventure. Adding Connery to the mix changes a straightforward action adventure into something closer to slapstick comedy. Together, father and son manage to set the room they’re being held prisoner in on fire, shoot down their own plane, and bicker throughout the entire film.

While they’re searching for an important historical artifact with mystic powers, just like in every Indy movie, the quest isn’t taken too seriously. The film’s primary goal is to leave audiences tickled by the Jones family’s antics, and The Last Crusade ’s script, written by Jeffrey Boam, deserves credit for its ability to manage the tonal shifts the movie requires.

It’s the sheer joy on display here that future sequels never fully captured. It’s as if Spielberg and his collaborators bottled the energy from the famous Raiders scene where Indy just shoots the talented swordsman rather than fighting him and turned it into an entire movie. Every franchise has fans who insist that, regardless of the tone of the films they’re defending, the series itself is important and must be taken seriously. That’s why The Last Crusade feels so refreshing: Spielberg closes off his original trilogy with an installment that feels like a sendup of the franchise he just built.

As a stuffy academic, Connery offers the perfect foil to Ford.

In Raiders , the Nazis are over-the-top villains, but there’s real menace to Ronald Lacey’s Arnold Toht. Temple of Doom takes things further, creating a cartoonish but grotesque reality in which children work as slave laborers and our hero can literally have his heart ripped from his chest. But in The Last Crusade, Indy infiltrates a Nazi castle with nothing but a slapdash Scottish accent, and when he meets Hitler it’s played as a punchline.

While the prior two installments seemed interested in giving their drama and action a bit of weight, The Last Crusade feels lighter than air. Its emotional beats come from the relationship between father and son, and from the sense that in finding the Grail, they’ve finally come to a better understanding of each other.

Raiders of the Lost Ark is a weightier and perhaps better movie. But if you’re going to turn on an Indiana Jones film to have a good time, you should turn to The Last Crusade . Rather than trying to outdo Raiders , it tells a similar story with a different tone. The result is a perfect trilogy capper, and the platonic ideal of a franchise installment.

Where to Watch All the 'Indiana Jones' Movies on Streaming Before 'Dial of Destiny'

Welcome home, Indiana!

Already got your fedora and bullwhip ready for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) ? Well, in case you're also a Disney+ subscriber who has been wanting to get caught up on the four prior adventures of Indiana Jones ( Harrison Ford ), we have some good news for you.

Shortly after a little movie called Star Wars changed the industry forever, two future filmmaking legends named Steven Spielberg and George Lucas came up with a wild idea: an action story about a daring archaeologist who saves sacred and supernatural artifacts from those who wish to use them for nefarious purposes. That idea eventually morphed into Raiders of the Lost Ark , one of the greatest action-adventure films ever created, and the introduction of one of cinema's most iconic characters, Dr. Henry "Indiana" Jones Jr. Produced by Lucasfilm and directed by Spielberg, Raiders of the Lost Arc proved that the blossoming production company could catch lightning in a bottle twice, now armed with an epic historical fantasy to go along with their ambitious space opera. After uncovering the Ark of the Covenant in his debut feature, Indiana's epic adventures wouldn't end there. In the years that followed, Indy would also explore a cultist-infested crypt in Temple of Doom , discover the location of the Holy Grail in The Last Crusade , and follow the trail of a mysterious civilization in The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull . Later this Summer, Indy will embark on a fifth and final adventure with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny , which is expected to be his wildest expedition yet.

Ever since Lucasfilm was purchased by the Walt Disney Company and the House of Mouse introduced the world to their premiere streaming service, Disney+, fans of the series have been expecting to see the four original films become available on the service. Years later, the wait has persisted, until now. All four Indiana Jones films will be coming to the service very soon. How soon, you ask? Well, read below to discover where and how you can experience the Indiana Jones saga so far before Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny swings into theaters this Summer.

Related: You Can Now Dress Like Indiana Jones With US Wings Collection

When Do the Indiana Jones Films Arrive on Disney+?

Announced by Disney on Tuesday, May 16, Indiana Jones will be making his Disney+ debut in just a few weeks. Save the date for an epic binge-watch for when all four Indiana Jones films will be available to stream on Disney+ starting Wednesday, May 31, 2023 . That makes for plenty of time for a marathon as Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny will release just a month later on Friday, June 30, 2023.

Watch Disney+'s Trailer for the Indiana Jones Films' Arrival on the Service

To celebrate and announce the many adventures of Indiana Jones coming to Disney+, the streaming service released the above thirty-second sizzle reel to reveal the exciting news. It offers only a glimpse of Indy's greatest hits before eager subscribers can see the journeys for themselves on May 31.

Where Are the Indiana Jones Films Currently Streaming?

Prior to the announcement that the iconic films would be coming to Disney+, the four Indiana Jones films had another home, on Paramount+ . This makes perfect sense given that Paramount distributed the original four films before The Walt Disney Company purchased Lucasfilm. While the rights to the franchise and future entries in the series now belong to Disney, Paramount still retained the distribution and streaming rights for the existing four films.

Are the Indiana Jones Movies Leaving Paramount+?

Paramount+ subscribers who don't have Disney+ and love the Indiana Jones films can breathe a sigh of relief. The arrival of the Indiana Jones films on Disney+ was made possible by a new partnership between Disney and Paramount. The conditions of that deal stipulate that all four films will not only be coming to Disney+ but will also still be available on Paramount+ for the foreseeable future. Both Disney+ subscribers and Paramount+ subscribers win at the end of the day!

If you already have a subscription to Paramount+, click the following links below to experience Indy's adventures again or see them for the very first time:

• Watch Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark on Paramount+
• Watch Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom on Paramount+
• Watch Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade on Paramount+
• Watch Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull on Paramount+

How Much Do Disney+ and Paramount+ Cost?

There are several ways to experience the many offerings of Disney+, two of which are solo subscription plans and three of which are bundle options. The solo plans consist of Disney+ Basic, which features limited ads for $7.99 USD per month, and Disney+ Premium, with removes most ads and allows for downloading of select titles for offline use for $10.99 USD per month or $109.99 USD per year. Alternatively, there are three Disney Bundle Options which additionally include Hulu and/or ESPN+. The plans are Duo Basic, which includes Disney+ and Hulu with ads for $9.99 USD per month, Trio Basic, which includes Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ with ads for $12.99 USD per month, and Trio Premium, which removes ads from Disney+ and Hulu (but not ESPN+) and allows for downloadable titles for $19.99 USD per month. Keep in mind, these plans are subject to change at an undisclosed date following Disney's plans to merge Disney+ and Hulu .

Sign up for Disney+

As for Paramount+, there are two subscription plans available. The first is the Essential Plan, which includes limited ads along with the entire Paramount+ library, live football and soccer, and live news, all for $4.99 USD per month. The second is the Premium Plan, which removes ads apart from live television and includes more live sports, the live CBS station, and the ability to download movies and shows for offline use, all for $9.99 USD per month.

Sign up for Paramount+

Are the Indiana Jones Films Coming to Theaters Before Dial of Destiny?

While not all the films will be coming to the big screen before Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny premieres on June 30, the movie that started it all will be. For two nights only, Raiders of the Lost Ark will be returning to theaters everywhere on Sunday, June 4, and Wednesday, June 7.

Now, for those of you who really want an Indiana Jones marathon but don't want to sign up for the above streamers, there's one last bit of news we'd like to share. All four movies are available in 4K as a complete Indiana Jones 4K collection and, as an added bonus, Lucasfilm is releasing individual 4K UHD slipcover editions of each of the movies on Tuesday, June 6, 2023. These new 4K editions will cost you around $25 each, and they come with the original poster artwork of each movie. It might not be the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail, but they still sound like quite a treasure to add to your home media collection. Here's the link where you can preorder the 4K slipcover edition of Raiders of the Lost Ark :

Pre-Order on Amazon

Movie review: 'Dial of Destiny' is worst 'Indiana Jones'

LOS ANGELES, June 15 (UPI) -- Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny , in theaters June 30, promises a return to form for the pulp hero. After a very rough start, the film progressively falls shorter and shorter of that promise at every turn.

It begins in 1944 with Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) searching for a Christian artifact amongst the last throes of the Nazis. While pursuing Nazis in cars and onto a train, Indy's attention turns to the Antikythera, the Dial of Archimedes.

The gimmick of de-aging Ford for a post- Last Crusade Indy long overstays its welcome with the train sequence running about 20 minutes. But, if it were a de-aged Indy intercut with real location stuntwork, the sequence might work.

Unfortunately, the entire sequence never looks like any human beings are in a car or on top a train. Compare that to the train top set piece in Last Crusade where stuntmen really ran atop a train, and Steven Spielberg cut to the actors for closeups.

Every sequence in Dial of Destiny apes the same disembodied look plaguing most studio blockbusters now.

Twenty-five years later, Indiana Jones is retiring from Hunter College, not Marshall where he taught in the first four films. Indy's goddaughter Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), the daughter of his companion on the 1944 train, comes to talk to Indy about the Antikythera.

Indy kept the piece of the Anikythera they recovered from the Nazis, and Helena believes she knows where to find the other half. Indy is actually intent on retiring when Dr. Schmidt (Mads Mikkelsen), whom Indy also encountered on the train, and his goons come after them.

Some of the action might have been fun if it weren't so easy to see all of the seams. Turning a cannon around on the Nazi train or riding a horse through the subway are clever ideas, but it never looks like the cast went to a location to film it.

Even those chases run out of steam by the time Indy and Helena go to Tangier, where some past associates of Helena chase them through the streets. By that point there are so many different parties chasing the heroes, it's hard to feel a sense of which ones are really threats.

The Tangier chase is also where the movie definitively runs out of style. It has a series of beats where the vehicles will navigate thin alleys and tight corners, but no flow to get from beat to beat.

The production did film in Morocco, Sicily and Canada, with some underwater work at Pinewood Studios and background plates filmed in Austria. Every action sequence loses the feeling of adventure when it includes shots that look like the stars were added to them later.

Having Ford engage in fisticuffs is not a problem. Audiences suspend disbelief for aging action heroes, from Liam Neeson to Clint Eastwood.

Ford even looks like he's really riding the horse, as Ford does have equestrian skills. It's just unfortunate he's always riding the horse in front of a screen with the subway added behind him.

True Lies did a horse chase through Washington, in 1994. Of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger didn't do the dangerous stunts, but someone did.

Finally, the Temple of Archimedes looks like a set. It forces Indy and Helena to solve puzzles like the temples in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Last Crusade , but it's far too little too late at that point. There's still more disembodied action to follow.

2008's Kingdom of the Crystal Skull got a lot of guff for incorporating too much digital work, but at least Spielberg still staged practical stunt sequences. And if fans thought aliens were a bridge too far in Crystal Skull , the artifact of Dial of Destiny has powers even more outlandish.

As a nonromantic leading lady, Helena has potential to provide Indy a new dynamic. Unfortunately, their one-upmanship and contentious banter feel unmotivated by their actual relationship or characters.

The plot needs them to be fighting right now, so they hate each other. Helena needs to bail Indy out right now, so she comes around.

Oh, they also pick up a kid in Tangier, Teddy (Ethann Isidore). Someone should probably look into Indiana Jones enabling several generations of street hustling children.

When long-awaited sequels disappoint, it tempts fans to swear off the whole endeavor of a franchise. It's not that Indiana Jones should retire; rather his adventures should be crafted with the same standards of his classics.

How to Watch All the Indiana Jones Movies in Order

With a new installment on the horizon, there's never been a better time to catch up.

Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. We may earn a commission from these links.

Now, 15 years after the last movie debuted in theaters, we get to experience the magic that is Indiana Jones all over again. With the arrival of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny imminent (unfortunately, sans Spielberg's involvement ), you may want to begin brushing up on your Indy lore before it lands on the big screen on June 30, 2023. But what about watching these movies in chronological plot order? That's what we recommend, anyway. Now that they’re all currently available to stream on both Disney+ and Paramount+, you truly shouldn’t miss out.

Here are the Indiana Jones movies in order.

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992)

Okay, so technically this is a TV series and not a movie. But it does chronicle how Indy became the man we know and love, so it makes for an obvious entry point.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

Sure, this movie is technically the second in the famed franchise. But because the film is set in 1935, we need to start our adventure here. Following Indy, his kid sidekick Short Round, and nightclub crooner Willie Scott, the trio go up against an evil cult with an affinity for human sacrifice and child enslavement. But with mystical stones at the heart of their quest, maybe there’s more fame and fortune for Indy... so long as he finds them before the movie’s over.

Watch on Disney+ Watch on Paramount+

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Ah, the (second) one where it all began. It’s the story that brought Indy to life, but in our chronological timeline, it goes here. Set in 1936, Indy’s fighting the Nazis in a race to obtain the Ark of the Covenant, said to hold the Ten Commandments and give power to the one who has it. Naturally, Indy must go on his quest, but not without taking his former flame and an Egyptian excavator to help him out. And here’s a rule of thumb for you: if a giant boulder suddenly comes at you, please, for the love of God— run .

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Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

Aside from a short stint in 1912 (and an appearance from a young River Phoenix), we continue our journey here. Taking place in 1938, Indy’s back working against the Nazis. This time, though, he’s after a new thing: the Holy Grail. You know, the famous chalice deeply embedded in Christian iconography and Arthurian legends. Yes, our favorite explorer has a few kooky characters accompanying him for the ride, but we all know Indy’s back for another adventure very soon…

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

...or rather, two decades later. Set in 1957, Indy’s casually replaced the Nazis with Cold War-era Russians as his natural enemy. He’s out looking for the Crystal Skull, an artifact which supposedly has ties to the otherworldly creatures. Plus, Shia LaBeouf makes his appearance in the canon, playing the long-lost son the explorer never knew he had.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

Heavy use of de-aging technology has brought Harrison Ford back to us for one last ride . He's finally retiring the character, but first, fellow archeology professor and newcomer Phoebe Waller-Bridge will drag him back in to find the fabled "Dial of Destiny." We'll have a multi-decade tale on our hands as we bounce in-between current day Indiana Jones and Nazi-punching Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny hits theaters on June 30, 2023.

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