Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Disclaimer:

The movie I’ll be reviewing this week is rated: PG-13

Some content in this review is unsuitable for children.

Since the previous installment, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, had left so many people uncomfortable with the prospect of another Indiana Jones sequel, it took Disney 11 years after acquiring Lucasfilm to come out with the final film in the franchise: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. I was definitely not in a rush to see this movie much like other people who hated the fourth film, yet Disney+ still went out of its way to put in this film’s description that it’s the ‘highly anticipated final installment of the iconic franchise’. Look Disney, I want to want to see this movie as much as you want me to want to, but I just don’t. No one else does either unless they weren’t scarred for life by the last movie in the series. Despite my discomfort about this film going in, it definitely wasn’t painful to sit through like Crystal Skull, but it still was a pretty lackluster way to end this iconic series. That is definitely saying something as well considering that this film is the longest in the series clocking in at 2 hours and 37 minutes.

The way I see it, this was probably the most middle-of-the-road of any of the films in the franchise. Not great, not awful, but nothing to get excited about as Disney+ suggests, and definitely no way I would expect an iconic series like Indiana Jones to wrap things up especially since they already had a perfect ending with Crusade but they botched that up with the piece of crap I reviewed last week. Despite having a few cool moments here and there, it still doesn’t have the epic weight of adventure that the better films in the franchise had even with a time traveling climax. Yes, they go back in time in this. Although I suppose there are some noteworthy moments that are still worth talking about so we may as well go over them. Let’s finish out Indiana Jones month with his latest and mid-est eh-dventure.

Call up your goddaughter that was never mentioned until now and click your dials back to the time when this series was good, this is Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny!

So we open back in WWII era Germany, because we all know this series was surprisingly more fun when Dr. Jones was fighting Nazis, where we see some soldiers dragging a bag-headed prisoner into a fortress. They force him into a chair and rip the bag off his head to reveal:

Oh, I’m sorry, it looks like I accidentally plugged in the PS4 version of this movie. Oh, doubly sorry, these are apparently very convincing effects. What makes it even worse is that while they went out of their way to digitally de-age Harrison Ford, they kept his voice the same. So while we’re seeing an uncanny valley version of classic Indiana Jones, we’re getting the voice of current Harrison Ford and it’s super distracting. At least we don’t have to look at this face for very long.

Right?

As it turns out, this intro aside is also the longest of the series lasting nearly 30 minutes. Why did you think this would work?! Each of the other films that had these little intros to them often got in and out quickly giving you an interesting look at the iconic hero in action, keeping the adrenaline high, while also not feeling like a waste of time even if they didn’t tie into the main story. This intro weirdly has everything to do with the main story since it gives us the set up necessary to be able to follow the story later down the line, yet it astoundingly has even less impact on the story than the intros that are supposed to not have an impact on the story! That and we also have to look at that face for the entire time which is just embarrassing.

Okay, so before I go any further, let me just say I’m glad that we live in a time where we’re able to have technology like this that’s ambitious and almost magical in its ability to do things like what we see in the movies. It really has come a long way and I want effects artists to be able to experiment with what this technology is capable of. At the same time though, there are examples of other films today that have utilized this technology better. In Terminator: Dark Fate we saw a brief flashback between Sarah and John where we see John look like this:

Compared to how we previously saw the character in Terminator 2: Judgment Day:

How they did it is that they cast a new actor in the same role and brought back the original actor for the de-aging process while superimposing their face onto the new actor to create this effect all while keeping the flashback short and sweet so they didn’t have to work with these effects for too long. If in Dial of Destiny they had cut down the intro significantly more, actually recast a younger actor to be the body of Indiana Jones, and made an effort to recreate Harrison Ford’s voice I could’ve gotten behind this, but what we got is just beyond ridiculous.

This doesn’t look like Indiana Jones, this looks like a wax sculpture of Indiana Jones!

Anyway, back to the story. Indiana Jones got himself captured while searching for the Lance of Longinus and the Nazis plan on trying to get some information out of him before they kill him. This plot thread doesn’t go anywhere especially since the Lance of Longinus turns out to be a fake anyway and of course they try to kill Indiana Jones and it doesn’t work because…do I even need to say it? Also this is a flashback, we obviously know he’s gonna be fine. That and we’re introduced to another supposed long-time friend of Indy’s named Basil Shaw (played by Toby Jones) who also got himself captured and the Nazis try to get information out of him as well. I suppose the escape involving Indy freeing himself from the Nazis and catching up with Basil on the train they have him on is kinda cool if a bit nonsensical. I especially love how after Indy hijacks one of the Nazi’s cars, the Nazis in the backseat just tap him on the shoulder going ‘Stop it! Stop it!’

The lance may be a fake, but they find out something else on the train is real and it’s the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch. No really, when Indy makes it to the treasure car he bypasses what’s clearly a replica of the Holy Hand Grenade and it’s freaking hilarious! Jokes aside, what they really discover to be a powerful relic is an ancient dial (hence the title) called the Antikythera. This is an actual historical device created by the great Greek mathematician Archimedes who intended it to be used to predict when eclipses and other astronomical events will occur. Of course in the movie it’s used to become a God because movies. Not gonna lie, when I heard the villain explain this I legit wanted to see Indy try to become a God at the end of this movie. That would’ve been grand and epic to me and also given the franchise a big exit that I would’ve liked it to have. He doesn’t and instead creates more plot threads that could be interesting if they actually decided to explore them, but that’s later. For now he gets his BFF that he’s totally known for years to safety and supposedly kills off the villain of the movie before managing to recover one half of the dial. In the movie they explain how apparently Archimedes split the Antikythera in half to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands and he also made what was called a Grafikos as a kind of treasure map to the other half. It took multiple viewings to fully understand what these things were and that’s another problem I have with this movie, it’s very explain-y and not in any fun kind of way.

In some of the previous movies such as Raiders or Crusade there were moments that were slow moving and had a lot of exposition, but the characters sounded invested in what they were saying and even excited about what these archaeological finds could mean. Not only that but it effectively built up the adventure you were about to see, the relics they were talking about, and made you want to keep watching. These exposition scenes in Dial just make me want to fall asleep. This especially didn’t help the first time I watched this movie since it was late at night and I actually did fall asleep. I’ll also say what I said for Crystal Skull, these themes don’t match with the tone of Indiana Jones.

Even with Temple, as bad as it got, it still more or less kept to the feel of Indiana Jones which was based in mythology, religion, folklore, and the like. This is just math. Math and space. Yeah, we’re doing space again because it worked so well last time. Don’t get me wrong, I like space as much as the next person, it’s just not Indiana Jones. Speaking of Indiana Jones, we flash forward again to see the man himself (played for the final time by Harrison Ford) being rudely awakened by the Beatles’ ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ playing at full blast. This might sound weird, but I actually like Indiana Jones in the movie. Instead of like Crystal Skull, Harrison Ford actually seems to be playing an aging Indiana Jones as opposed to imitating a younger version of himself. He’s kind of a crotchety dejected old man who’s having a hard time coming to grips with his present while yearning for the past. After seeing this guy’s adventures for 4 whole movies at this point, I totally believe he’d be like this in his old age. Also he’s divorced. How many times are these movies going to tease his and Marion’s relationship?!

It’s never expressly told to us in the movie either, but it takes place in 1969. You can tell because early in the film we have mentions of ‘Moon Day’, talk about astronauts touring the city, and Vietnam protests. It doesn’t really add much outside of giving Indiana a quick escape in one of the chase sequences, but…no that’s pretty much it. After all, if you’re going to steal from an Indiana Jones film, may as well steal from the best one. That was sarcasm in case you couldn’t tell. Either way, Indy goes to school and teaches a class discussing what’ll eventually become the main focus of the film, the siege of Syracuse in 214 BC. Afterwards he gets an award for his hard work and dedication to the college (not Barnett College, but a different one) which he immediately gives away to the first person he sees, goes to drink at a bar, and we’re introduced to Helena Shaw (played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge) who is the daughter of Basil Shaw and the goddaughter of Indiana Jones. I don’t care.

I suppose she has a distinct-ish personality and is acted fine, but honestly I’m just tired of seeing random people who’re supposedly from Indy’s past popping up out of nowhere and the movie immediately expecting us to care about them. No movie, I don’t care, and I’m tired of you repeating crap over and over. Why not actually make this movie feel like it was part of the original plan for Indiana Jones and utilize characters from the previous films? Show us how these characters grow and develop, introduce new ones along the way, not just ones that the movie says were there from the start even though they weren’t, and have them offer new and interesting things. As I’m writing this review I’ve also been Googling a lot of images and whatnot (as you can see) and I’ve come across articles such as “Why Indy calls Helena ‘Wombat’ in Dial of Destiny,” and “Was Basil in the Series Before Dial of Destiny?,” and to me, if you’re having to make articles like this in the first place, the movie isn’t working. The movie should make these things clear in its 2 hour and 37 minute running time, you shouldn’t have to go hunting for these answers yourself. For some movies it’s fine to leave things vague, but in Indiana Jones that’s what got us burning rock turds in Temple and the “Space between Spaces,” so I’d like more detail please.

As it turns out, Helena is also obsessed with the Antikythera just like her father and Indiana (as the movie tells us but doesn’t show us), and she has information about it that Indiana doesn’t. In between these two talking in the bar and going to find out more about the Antikythera, we see how the villain of the film, currently going by Dr. Schmidt (played by Mads Mikkelsen), somehow survived getting birch-slapped by a railway pole at 80 mph 25-30 years ago (movie, your Crystal Skull is showing) and he’s apparently still obsessed with the Antikythera. Funnily enough, I actually am more interested in the villain’s henchmen than the villain himself. Well, henchmen and henchwoman. These might actually be the most developed henchmen I’ve ever seen in any of these films. I actually get distinct personalities out of them, and while they are still one-note, they’re kinda fun to watch. There’s Klaber (played by Boyd Holbrook) who’s fast, loud, and reckless, Hauke (played by Olivier Richters) who’s the not-so-smart brute character, and Mason (played by Shaunette Renée Wilson) is the by-the-book one. Can I just get a TV show starring these three? I don’t know what it would be called or what the plot would be, I just know that I want it.

Might I also mention that having a Black woman as a villain in your movie that takes place 1 year after Dr. King’s assassination is pretty…Disney.

So Indy and Helena go to a repository of information, which just so happens to have the half of the dial that Indy recovered in the flashback, and they talk about it which is when I fell asleep the first time. They’re eventually intercepted by the Three Stooges fresh off of murdering two innocent bystanders who chase Helena away with the dial half in her possession and capture Indy. Of course he escapes by riling up the crowd of Vietnam protesters they just so happen to be walking through and he steals a police horse. Eventually Indy makes his way into the subway system where he finally eludes them on one of the shortest subway stops I’ve ever seen. Literally the train pulls up and 10 seconds later it leaves. Did the subway stop to pick up the Flash? Also, Mason calls Klaber a ‘trigger-happy cracker’ for shooting at Helena and scaring her away. Why did they have her say that? Mason calls Dr. Schmidt who’s supposed to meet the President because he supposedly helped create the Apollo 11 shuttle and tells him the bad news. He takes it well.

In the meantime Indiana ends up getting framed for the murder of those two innocent bystanders and has to ask Sallah (played one last time by John Rhys-Davies) for help, who I’m only just now realizing might be my favorite Indiana Jones character. He’s usually happy and energetic when he’s on-screen, is the only one who can randomly break out into song which always makes me smile, has good jokes that land, and he’s probably the most virtuous character in the series with being a great father and now grandfather as well as a top-notch friend to Indiana. Sallah tells Indy that Helena is likely taking a plane to Tangier, Morocco, so the only logical thing to do now is to head to Tangier and leave Sallah behind. You had one job movie, actually include characters we know and love and you couldn’t do it even when you brought back the original actors! Even Jurassic World Dominion got that down even if it was done badly, why are you so weirdly comfortable reminding us that characters we love exist and then not utilize them? I know it does technically tie into Indy and his character since he knows he’s not who he used to be and doesn’t want anymore adventures, but how does he not know this is going to be another adventure? He’s freaking Indiana Jones! Adventure sticks to him like magnetic objects sometimes stick to the Crystal Skull, this is obviously another adventure! He also ends up trying to find the path Archimedes left behind with his dial by the end anyway, so why wouldn’t he take Sallah? Jeez!

Anyway, Indy makes it to Tangier where we’re introduced to our child sidekick for the movie named Teddy (played by Ethann Isidore) who seems like an afterthought when we first see him but eventually becomes a main character. He’s busy guarding Helena’s private auction of the dial half and setting up for the third act when Indy busts in and gives Helena a talking to. Not long after, Schmidt comes in as well (this is what happens when your security is a child) and a fight breaks out for the dial. After a lot of fighting the dial makes its way into Schmidt’s hands so Indy and Helena follow him out of the building and right into police hands. They have them surrounded, but Indy tells them to put their guns down and they…do. Great police there. They’re also found out by Helena’s mobster fiancé (nothing ever comes of this so I’m just moving on) and another chase begins. It can be cool from time to time but my big problem is that it takes forever. Nearly 10 minutes of straight chase and the thing they’re fighting over hasn’t even been properly built up, so why are we supposed to care? One thing I do like is how Helena confronts Indy about his motives for going on these adventures since he tries to give her an ethics lesson on the drive but she turns it right back on him. It’s probably about time someone talked to him about that thrill addiction and savior complex he clearly has.

Schmidt eventually escapes, but Mason is not happy with him. She tells him that the President doesn’t want to talk to him anymore and isn’t pleased with the chaos he’s caused thus far. Now their only option is to disappear if they want to carry out this mission, but too bad, Mason is out. This causes a fight to break out on the plane which gets Mason shot and killed which begs the question: why was she a character anyway? She didn’t really add anything outside of the chemistry she had with the other henchmen, so why even have her as a character if you’re just going to kill her not even halfway through the movie? Was it just for that ‘trigger happy cracker’ line? We all know how golden that nugget was. Who wrote this?

Ah, that explains a lot. But wait, we’re then revealed the shocking twist! Just before Mason dies, Schmidt turns to her and says:

*It is a thing! I’m the cool epic villain of this film!*

After cutting back to Indy and the rest of his gang, they do a bit of arguing until they decide to head to Greece where Indy says he has a friend who’s a diver and can help them because the Grafikos is underwater. I don’t know, I stopped paying attention. They come across this supposed friend in Greece named Renaldo (played by Antonio Banderas) and I would pay so much more attention if he was a CG cat with a hat and boots. I guess he’s kinda the Sallah stand-in, but if you were gonna just do Sallah again, why not just do Sallah?! You literally showed you were able to get him back already, it’s like you’re actively trying to piss us off at this point! Although, I will give Banderas some credit. While his character isn’t much of a character he is the only one who looks like he’s having fun in the movie since he’s easily delighted by a simple card trick Helena does for him which gets me to laugh every time. Still just wishing he was Sallah though.

There is a genuine heartfelt moment between Helena and Indy after this though. After spewing some more tired exposition Helena asks him what he would do if he could go back in time. Indy says he would stop his son from enlisting. As it turns out, Mutt decided to sign up to fight in Vietnam but was killed in battle and his death caused a rift in Marion and Indy’s relationship eventually leading to their divorce. I’m not going to act like I cared about Mutt, like at all, but Ford’s acting in this scene is what makes it emotional to me. It’s not so much that Mutt is dead that makes me feel in this scene, it’s that Indiana Jones, a long-running cinematic hero, is a broken man because of it and Ford totally sells it. They then decide the next morning to dive for the Grafikos, which they do, and manage to recover it from a sunken ship while we get our final Indiana Jones snake fear joke. The water’s full of eels, so they’re basically like water snakes. I also just wanna say that, in a weird way, I like how each movie in some way has a joke surrounding Indy’s snake fear. Whether it’s done well or not, in a strange way it helps tie them all together.

However, by the time they get back above water with the Grafikos, it turns out Voller and his crew have tracked them down. How? What tipped them off that they would be here of all places? You forgot to show the scene where they picked up clues as to where the Grafikos might be so this just makes no sense. Once back in the boat, Voller tries to motivate Indy to help them, but he doesn’t wanna. Since Indy doesn’t wanna, Voller shoots and kills Renaldo. Again, would’ve been so much more sad if it were Sallah. I know I mentioned it a lot already, but dammit, I’m dying on this hill! This convinces Helena to help them for a small fee. She does just that and then blows up the boat with dynamite that was established to be there not long ago. This allows them to escape and follow the trail to the Ear of Dionysius. Voller watches them as they escape and figures out where they’re going just by watching them sail away, because it’s so easy to do that. Seriously, from this point on it’s like Voller has a tracker placed in Indy’s hat or something but they forgot to show the scene of him putting the tracker in Indy’s hat. I can’t believe I’m saying this…but even Crystal Skull managed to do that. You made me do it, movie! You made me find something that made sense in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull! I hate you!

Either way, they make it to wherever they were going where Teddy gets himself captured because sure, why not? Meanwhile, Indy and Helena try to get him back by beating Voller and his crew to the place and during this time we get a much clearer picture of the reality of their situation. It’s kinda funny, but while Indy’s climbing the side of a rock with Helena he pauses and Helena asks him what he’s doing. He says he’s thinking about why when he’s 80 years old he’s still climbing rocks with a bum shoulder, plated leg, screwed leg, and multiple years of gunshot wounds. Helena doesn’t really get what he’s whining about, and honestly I don’t either it’s not like the movies were that big on logic in the past anyway, but he also tells Helena that she’s still young and agile and she never had to drink the Blood of Kali, or get tortured with voodoo. His words, not mine. Kind of a weird place to put an explicit Temple of Doom reference especially since it’s tossed aside quickly as well, but whatever. Back with Voller’s group Teddy kills Hauke in what’s honestly a pretty comedic way. It’s obvious they want to get across that Teddy is a resourceful kid, kind of like Short Round, so what they have him do is pull the both of them into a river since Hauke had handcuffed himself to Teddy to keep him from escaping, and while they’re in the water Teddy steals the handcuff key from Hauke, crawls through a small gap in a grate, uncuffs himself, and cuffs Hauke to the grate. The only problem I have with this is that it was said earlier back on the boat that Teddy doesn’t know how to swim, but he’s clearly able to pick up on it surprisingly quickly here for the purposes of this kill.

They all end up making it to Archimedes’ tomb where they discover the second half of the dial, and also that Archimedes’ corpse is wearing a watch for some reason. Hmm. So Voller comes in with Klaber, takes the second half of the dial, and they have a brief shootout resulting in Indiana Jones getting shot in the shoulder. Whew, I almost thought this climax wasn’t going to have any stakes. Don’t worry, it still won’t. They end up taking Indy hostage and Voller’s plan is revealed. He wants to use the Antikythera to go back in time to the year 1939 and ensure that the Nazis win the war. The major difference though is that he wants to overthrow Hitler and lead the Nazis to victory himself. I suppose that is a motivation, but if I’m being honest it’s also kind of a let-down. When Voller first saw the Antikythera half in the opening and was talking about how the one who uses it will become a God, I was honestly expecting more than this. Also, this plan is one that could be easily thwarted. In the end these plans take time to enact which could involve years even after he travels back in time and he’s going to need a lot of people behind him in order to make sure it works, and as of right now he has maybe a dozen including Klaber.

Anyway, hot on their trail is Helena and Teddy who catch up to the Nazi plane they’re riding on in a motorcycle and a plane respectively. Teddy is also flying the plane himself. Third act payoff like I said. You know, if they’re going to make Teddy this resourceful I kinda want to see him team up with the kid from Jurassic Park III to see what kind of crazy things they’ll do. With their powers combined I’m sure they could probably figure out how to cure cancer or something. So they travel through the rejected Galaxy Quest wormhole to find, not 1939 Sicily, but 214 BC Sicily. Yep, came right back around full circle. And what’s going on outside? The siege of Syracuse of course, and right in the heart of the city is Archimedes (played by Nasser Memarzia) working on the Antikythera at that exact moment! Crazy how that works, huh?

The whole time, Voller is freaking out and trying to figure out how to get back to where they were while they’re still in the plane and getting ballistae bolts shot at them. Not gonna lie, seeing the contrast of the 20th century planes in the air and the ancient Roman ships in the water is pretty awesome to me. I don’t know why, it’s just cool. Although, I would’ve preferred my Indiana Jones villain to retain at least some form of dignity while he still can. He spends most of the climax just screaming like a little birch which the same could not be said for the previous good Indiana Jones villains. Even when they were at their corniest, villains like Belloq or Donovan still had a sort of air of confidence and coolness about them. After looking up even more images for this review, I found out that Voller was supposedly based on a real life person who was both a NASA scientist and a Nazi. That on its own does make him moderately cooler but that doesn’t always show up on screen, and especially not here.

Eventually the Nazi plane crashes after Indy and Helena parachute out of it (yeah, she jumped off her motorcycle and into the wheel-well of the plane), Archimedes examines the wreckage and puts Voller’s watch on (hehe), and Teddy goes to help them in his plane. While they’re on the ground together, Indy starts to get sentimental with Helena despite the fact that he’s been bleeding from a gunshot wound for at least the past 15 minutes of screen time while he watches history unfold around him. Helena is understandably confused and Indy tells her that he wants to stay here. If you’re like me, you’re probably a bit surprised at the direction the movie’s taking right now and I’m not sure what to feel about it either. Is this really how they’re going to make Indiana Jones go out? I suppose I’m not necessarily against the idea since I think Indiana Jones does deserve a proper and respectful exit from cinema, but he keeps talking about how he wants to stay because he’s dreamed and studied about this place all his life. Maybe if they had him talk about how there’s nothing left for him back home I would be able to get behind this a bit more, but they just have him talk about the place that we’ve only seen him talk about for 1 movie. Why would this be a satisfying exit for him if that was his reasoning?

Either way, you don’t have to think about it for too long because in the end Helena makes the decision for him. She punches him in the jaw knocking him out and takes him back home by force. Okay, what pisses me off more is that if you’re going to introduce this idea, why won’t you follow all the way through with it? I know I literally just talked about why his reasoning for wanting to stay was shaky at best, but it still would’ve at least been challenging and maybe even emotional if they did it that way. In the end they just do the Frozen 2 thing. They introduced in that movie as well that the kingdom Anna and Elsa had grown up in was built on discrimination and lies (much like America) and that the consequence for that was going to be the kingdom getting destroyed. In the end, Elsa just saves the kingdom at the last minute so nothing challenging is explored. Much like in that movie, I don’t think everyone would’ve liked it if Indiana Jones decided to retire to Syracuse, Sicily in 214 BC, but it at least would’ve started a conversation and made people think about the franchise up until now. If you’re not going to follow through with these ideas, don’t put them in your movie.

So Indy wakes back up in his apartment where Helena is waiting and she explains why she brought him back. For one, he would’ve changed the course of history (which, fair) and two he needed to stay in his own time period. This is when he asks “For who?” Only now do they acknowledge his lack of support left which would’ve been more powerful if they had him mention that before Helena punched him. Of course this prompts Teddy to come in with Marion (played for the last time by Karen Allen). If that’s the only reason they waited to acknowledge his support system that’s pretty stupid. Sallah is also there and leaves soon after along with Teddy and Helena while Marion and Indy get familiar again. They do this by retreading the same conversation they had on the boat in Raiders. If you’ve seen the movie you probably know what I mean, but here’s a quick recap: Where doesn’t it hurt? Yeah, they do this exact same thing practically line-for-line and it’s pretty annoying. Especially since this is the third time they’re teasing Marion’s and Indy’s relationship together! Are they in love or not, pick something! Then we also go out on the most boring note any of these movies have ever closed on. We see Indy’s hat hanging on a clothesline outside his apartment window and he grabs it. That’s where it stops. I’m not kidding.

I guess my graphics department decided against a closing image.

So that’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Is it good, is it bad? Yes. Let me be clear, even though I did talk a lot of crap about this movie, there are still some things I like in it. Bringing back some OG characters was pretty sweet even if I wish they were utilized more, the kid Teddy can be fun to watch and I’m kind of a sucker for smart kids in movies anyway, some of the action is cool though a bit drawn-out occasionally, and the three henchmen Klaber, Hauke, and Mason are surprisingly interesting when they’re all together. Besides those things it is very hard to follow, repeats a lot of the mistakes of the lesser films before it especially when it comes to characters, goes out of its way to piss fans off, and is mostly very boring. In the end do I recommend it, do I not recommend it? It’s honestly up to you.

While my opinion on this movie I think has been made clear through this review, I hope that it also gives you some clarity as to whether you think it would be a good fit for you as well. If you’re a fan of action films there’s definitely some of that here especially if you couldn’t care less about characters or story, but I personally can’t get behind it. It’s not Indiana Jones, it’s just another action movie, and that’s not what Indiana Jones is. Indiana Jones can be creative, can be immersive, can be heart-pounding, can be grand, and can be unforgettable, but this movie just isn’t those things. As I’m writing this I’m already starting to forget a lot of the scenes I watched which isn’t a good sign for a film trying to stand the test of time. Good luck on your journey if you plan to pop this in for your weekend movie night, but I think this is a series I’m glad to retire from.

If I were to give it a rating the absolute best I can give it would be a 2.5/5 tuk-tuks. Certainly an underwhelming note to end this series out on. Better than the last one, but not by a whole lot.

Thank you for joining me for Indiana Jones month! If this is something you’d like to see me do more of in the future, by all means leave a comment. I’m open to any and all suggestions!

Other Indy Reviews

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

(I make no claim of ownership for any of the images used in this post)

(Each of them are owned entirely by their respective copyright holders, which are not me)

(I am just a humble blogger who talks about movies, I do not make them)

(Yet)

WALL-E

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull