I finally saw this on a small screen. I…

I had fun?

I’m not writing about it here because it was stunning or notable. Hell, part of why I’m writing about it is because it wasn’t stunning or notable. I just rewatched the Tintin movie recently, and I would much rather rewatch that than spend much time dwelling on Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. But I love adventure stories, and this movie is precisely that—and I grew up loving Indiana Jones. So why did this movie feel fun but uninspiring, and what nuggets of goodness can I still find in it?

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny does many Indy-movie things correctly. It’s an action adventure story. It has multiple dramatic chase scenes with at least one fight across vehicles. It has daring escapes. It has an artifact macguffin tied to history and wound up in weird superpowers & pseudoscience. It has Nazis that get punched.

But much like Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, this movie won’t join my fond memories of the original trilogy of Indiana Jones films. Yes, it lands the various necessary beats for an Indiana Jones story. But like Crystal Skull, it made some missteps.

The CGI hurt it.

I don’t mind the fun flashbacks in the story. I think they were important. I don’t know how they could have written those scenes and avoided showing off CGI Harrison Ford.

Unfortunately, while de-aged CGI Harrison Ford’s face might have worked in a few stills, once in motion it landed in the uncanny valley for me. Even worse in some ways, young CGI Harrison Ford’s face spoke with old Harrison Ford’s voice. I’m fine with young Harrison Ford’s voice, and I’m fine with old Harrison Ford’s voice, but mixing the face of one with the voice of the other made something in my brain squirm.

It’s funny—I remember being disappointed with the amount of CGI used for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. My sense was that Crystal Skull’s CGI was mostly used to polish action sequences, which robbed a few of them (mostly the jungle sequence) of the same visceral feeling that the original Indiana Jones movies had captured. Perhaps I’ve gotten used to CGI in action sequences, or I didn’t notice as much on the small screen, or they used less CGI for action scenes… but I didn’t feel the same dissatisfaction with the action sequences of Dial of Destiny. Despite the weird face-stuff, Dial felt like it had improved on that front.

Dial also made some choices with Indy’s character that I really appreciated. Indiana Jones may be an action adventure hero, but he’s also long been an ass who avoided dealing with any of his problems by throwing himself into his work. Dial didn’t shy away from the consequences of that. 

Time for *SPOILERS*.

Indy’s moment of deep-seated vulnerable sadness about the death of his son (which he blames himself for) and the disintegration of his marriage (which he also blames himself for) felt beautifully poignant. Indy’s quashing of celebration, saying “one of my friends just died,” also felt right. The old movies never let much bother Indiana Jones’ heart or conscience, and Dial finally feels like it’s letting the past catch up with Dr Jones. Hell, the “present-day” segment movie starts with him retiring, looking like he’s about to slip into scotch and despair.

I even enjoyed the interplay between Indiana Jones and his goddaughter Helena Shaw (aka “Wombat”), who felt like she was the mercenary inheritor to Jones’ role. I vaguely remember people complaining that she didn’t feel right as a side-kick or ally because she was too money-motivated, but I think she fit neatly. She was a meaningful foil who could both push Indiana Jones out of his rut and be changed by him in turn. Her cavalier competence was an entertaining funhouse mirror to Indy’s own old self. And in some ways, the shift in her relationship with Indiana Jones felt like the reconnection that Indiana Jones never quite managed with his father in The Last Crusade. It was good.

Despite all that goodness, I felt like the movie missed a step in how it used the spook played by Shaunette Renée Wilson. If you’re going to include a cool black woman as a secret agent-type, killing her to show who the baddies are is a waste. We already knew they were bad! They show off how much worse they are later, being literal crypto-Nazis, so killing her is just frustrating and boring. She could have been wounded and survived, and played a sort of Felix Leiter role. Now, clearly Indiana Jones wouldn’t be fully aligned with a government spook—that doesn’t fit any of the previous stories—and my example comes from the wrong franchise, but the role is still perfectly within genre.

*END SPOILERS*

Honestly, this movie is so close to being a great Indiana Jones movie that I’m starting to reexamine why I loved the originals. For example, parts of the originals haven’t aged well (or weren’t good to begin with). I mean, Indy & Marion’s relationship is Very Yikes if you pay attention to how old they each were according to the backstory.

But I also think there was better craft in the composition of the originals than in Dial of Destiny. The camera work and blocking of the originals felt better, laying out scenes so that we could be immersed in them and move focus from one set piece to another. By contrast, Dial felt like it relied more on choppy shot-opposing-shot conversational dialogue.

Anyway. I feel like I’m rambling at this point.

If you want to enjoy another Indiana Jones movie, you can absolutely watch Dial of Destiny. It didn’t thrill me like the originals, but I’m also not six years old anymore. I think it’s probably fine. Just beware the uncanny CGI and remember that this movie is going to make mistakes too. With that in mind, you’ll probably have some fun too.