Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ on Disney+, a Good-But-Not-Great Final Go-Round for an Iconic Screen Hero

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (now streaming on Disney+, in addition to VOD services like Amazon Prime Video) may end up being one of the signifiers in a sea change of sorts for The Movies Themselves – or at least the commercial consumption of such. The fifth and purportedly final film in the beloved franchise brought back star Harrison Ford but not director Steven Spielberg, replaced by the plenty capable James Mangold (Logan, Ford v Ferrari), which should have been more than enough to drive audiences’ interest. Wrong! The movie struggled to recoup its reported $300 million budget and additional marketing costs, and Disney likely landed in the red on the accounting sheet. Meanwhile, another shoulda-been slamdunk, Mission: Impossible 7, also kinda flopped, and Barbie and Oppenheimer ended up being the true 2023 summer tentpoles, painting at least the broad strokes of an out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new theatrical moviegoing trend. Of course, had Dial of Destiny truly rekindled the series’ magic instead of leaning on nostalgia and CGI trickery, it might’ve compelled more of us to trek to the cineplex. That doesn’t mean the movie’s necessarily bad; it’s just not the same, and might not meet our expectations.

INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Nazis! Indiana Jones still hates them. At least that hasn’t changed, eh? We find the intrepid treasure-hunting archaeologist smack in the middle of the uncanny valley, as a digitally de-aged Harrison Ford infiltrates a German train loaded with plundered priceless historical treasures. The war is almost over and the Nazis are GTFOing with their booty, which includes a temporary MacGuffin, the Lance of Longinus, the very spearpoint that tasted the blood of Christ. But it’s soon revealed to be a phony, and replaced with the real MacGuffin when Indy and his flustered pal Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) stumble over half of the fabled Archimedes Dial – which, you won’t be surprised to learn, steely-eyed buddy-of-Hitler Jurgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) also wants so he can put it in a museum where it bel- no, ha ha, joking, actually, he wants it for purposes so nefarious, they make regular nefarious purposes seem not very nefarious at all. We won’t get into that here (NO SPOILERS, although it kinda isn’t a secret), but we will say the Dial, when assembled with its other, long-lost half, might just throw a wrench into the time-space continuum. 

OH NO, I can hear you thinking, NOT ANOTHER F—ING MULTIVERSE MOVIE. Well, rest assured, this Indy is very old-fashioned, and shows no interest in blowing your mind, dude. The entire opening of the movie is a lengthy, rip-roaring action sequence in which Indy and Basil sock Voller in the nose and get away with the Dial, and I’m being reductionist in my description, because it’s a rather complicated series of events that’s a touch too CGI’ed to seem like anything more than just a facsimile of, say, the truck chase in Raiders or the boat chase in Last Crusade. Then we leap ahead to 1969, when Indy is old and wrinkled and grouchy and soon to be divorced (yes, from Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), say it ain’t so), and probably at least a little drunk a lot of the time. He’s still teaching archaeology to college students who have to prop their eyelids open with toothpicks during his gravelly lectures when Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) shows up to disrupt his lonely rut. She’s Basil’s daughter and Indy’s decades-estranged goddaughter; she says she’s picking up where Basil left off when he died, studying the Dial and letting it drive her mad. 

Except she’s not! Helena steals the thingy from Indy and jets to Tangier to auction it off for mucho bucks, with the not-dead Voller – an Operation Paperclip guy who helped get U.S. astronauts to the moon, ugh – and his henchmen, led by Klaber (Boyd Holbrook), on her tail. Of course, Indy follows, because if anyone’s going to get into scrapes in Indiana Jones movies, it’s Indiana Jones. And boy, do the scrapes get scrapey. There’s one that turns a New York City parade into pandemonium, another that tears through the dusty streets of Tangier, a nutty scuba-diving expedition with Antonio Banderas (!) and swarms of eels, a descent into a tomb heavy with centipedes and booby traps, even an airplane ride right into the eye of a terrifying storm. See, it’s all the stuff you want from an Indy movie, and some stuff you didn’t know you didn’t want but kind of end up enjoying anyway.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Here is THE definitive, non-controversial ranking of the Indy movies, and it’s frankly rather obvious:

5. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – Even Cate Blanchett vamping as a Nazi can’t make up for aliens, Shia LaBeouf and the refrigerator scene. Fun at the time, but in retrospect, the series’ only real dud.

4. Dial of Destiny – Not great but still pretty good, with Ford dialing up the charm alongside the charismatic Waller-Bridge and a deliciously hissing Mikkelsen.

3. Temple of Doom – It’s aged poorly! But it’s still a lot of semi-gruesome fun.

2. Last Crusade – Casting a comically on-point Sean Connery as Indy’s father was the most inspired tweak to the franchise formula.

1. Raiders of the Lost Ark – An inarguable classic, and as close to perfect as blockbuster entertainment gets.

Performance Worth Watching: Ford hits all the emotional cues we expect him to, and he cuts through the silliness of this story, rendering us invested in Indy’s happiness. No surprise there. But Waller-Bridge’s mischievous energy pushes Dial over the edge from merely watchable to reasonably enjoyable; without her spirited performance, this movie likely would be a dud.

Memorable Dialogue: The Dial between them, Voller and Indy stare each other down: 

Voller: You should’ve stayed in New York.

Indy: You should’ve stayed out of Poland!

Sex and Skin: No time for love, Dr. Jones.

Our Take: I neglected to mention one of Dial of Destiny’s main characters: Age. Or maybe Time. I guess they’re kind of the same thing? Ford reportedly wanted Indy to show his senior-citizenness, and his performance reflects that. He injects the character with a deep-in-his-bones melancholy that suggests regrets for whatever he did – the movie doesn’t get into those details – that landed him in his current position as a lonesome bachelor in a dumpy apartment, yelling at his young neighbors to turn that shit down. It’s clever thematic shading for Indy to find himself in a plot involving a device that creates “fissures in time,” which is no-spoilers code for “entertains the idea of going back decades to do things differently.” (I also appreciated how the story toys, at least indirectly, with the old if-you-could-go-back-in-time-would-you-kill-baby-Hitler thought experiment.)

Although Ford’s melancholy turn gives Dial of Destiny its emotional agency, it also reflects the better-days-are-behind-us feeling of the whole endeavor. That Mangold opens with a lengthy action sequence featuring significant digital enhancements to both Ford’s face and the backgrounds – the former are more convincing than the latter, believe it or not – immediately orients us to the aesthetic of Indiana Jones circa 2023: It’s not the same, and it never will be the same. Accept that, and you’ll enjoy the movie. Choose to fight it, and the next two-and-a-half hours will be a struggle. On its own terms, it’s a worthwhile diversion; as an Indiana Jones movie, it’s undoubtedly lesser, although anyone expecting a film on par with Raiders of the Lost Ark nurses unrealistic expectations. You’re more likely to find a diamond nugget on your Q-tip after your morning ear-swabbing.

Mangold’s direction is consistently diligent and kinetic, although it lacks the dextrous je ne sais quoi of Spielberg’s work on the 1980s films (Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is the exception; it played like a collection of re-recorded greatest hits). You can sense the joy of concocting a new collection of close-shaves for a character who’s the master of such things, but there’s never any doubting of Indy’s capabilities – he may be 70-something, but he can still run and leap and climb and parachute and ride a horse like someone half his age. Speaking of, part of the character’s appeal has always been his glib, cocky tone, which Ford, in a stroke of realism, significantly tones down. Which makes Waller-Bridge’s casting a calculated boon, since she delivers the winking, eyebrow-cocked one-liners like she’s cracking a whip. (Is it a pipe dream to see her reprise the character in a spinoff movie or series? Probably, especially since the film’s popular appeal smoldered without ever really igniting.)

Dial of Destiny doesn’t lack for stuff – its plentiful action and moderately substantive character arcs contribute to its narrative bloat. Neither does it lack for ideas, ideas that are silly on the surface but provide an opportunity to add something deeper and more meaningful to Indiana Jones’ journey through life. Yet it could be tamed, simplified and sharpened, and its all-over-the-placeness kind of implies that Dial of Destiny is trying to keep up with trend of 21st-century blockbuster too-muchness (how many Marvel and DC and Fast and Furious movies are long and unwieldy and the cinematic equivalent of chewing too big a wad of bubble gum?) at the same time it’s trying to be a throwback to the halcyon days of 40 years ago, when Spielberg and George Lucas paid homage to the crackerjack serials of their youth. That’s the thing about the classic Indiana Jones movies – we get older, but they stay the same. 

Our Call: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is cluttered and visually problematic, but never hopeless. I liked the idea of revisiting a beloved action hero for one last time; I liked its tone and pace and primary performances, which bring the film to life beyond its action-packed barrage. It’s not going to be a classic, but you should STREAM IT anyway.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.