Movie Review: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

[Dave Gray]

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

Premise: Indiana Jones' goddaughter seeks to bring him out of retirement for help locating an artifact thought to be able to reach back through time, with Nazis in pursuit.

Rating: A worthy entry into the franchise and a competent end to the series.

I think it's hard to talk about this movie without laying out my feelings for the larger franchise.  Many people lump the first three movies together as similar quality.  I do not.  I think that Raiders is a near-perfect film and is a stand-out movie that is considerably better than all the rest.  I think that The Last Crusade is a very fun movie.  I think Temple of Doom has aged poorly, is not great, and has annoying characters and gross-out tropes that don't work....also the mystery isn't nearly as interesting.  And I think that Crystal Skull is a truly awful movie on so many fronts.

On top of that, there is a trend (I complain about this with the Flash) to bring back old actors in familiar roles to do a "remember this?" fest with things from their old entries, redoing lines, revisiting familiar places, and retelling the same jokes.

By and large, Dial of Destiny avoids this.  It is its own movie.  It has many parts that feel like familiar sections of the other movies, but it is its own story.  It picks up ten years or so after the last film and Indy's character has ten years of living that we haven't seen.  This movie has an occasional callback, but none of it is egregious and it is primarily interested in telling you its own story, rather than asking you to think back fondly of a better time.

In short:  They get the tone right.  They get the look right.  They get the new character right.  They get the side characters and the villains mostly right.

From there, it's a competent action adventure.  I don't think this is a great movie, but without nostalgia, I'm not sure any movie after the first one is, either.

Like The Last Crusade, this film is essentially an old scholar and a young scholar out to get an artifact, with differing motivations.  But in this version, Indy is the old guy.  There are a few side characters that have the feel of Indy's old contacts (Short Round and others) without being carbon copies.  Indy's Goddaughter is her own character that holds her own against him.

The setting of the 60s is done well.  They don't beat you over the head with every 1960s thing, like they did with the 50s and Crystal Skull.  But the 60s matters -- the space race means that Indy lives in a world where people are looking to the skies and Indy is digging in the dirt.  That metaphor plays out throughout the story and we get to see some familiar Indy locations (like a classroom), but with the slant of the world being a different place.  Additionally, they play up Indy's age.  They don't hide that he's old.  They don't really try to make him a physical action hero.   He's a bad-ass in his own way, like Connery was in 1989.

There is a long sequence to start the film where they use a de-aged Harrison Ford.  Like all instances of this (Luke Skywalker in the Mandalorian is a good recent example), it kinda works, but comes in and out of believability.  I wish they'd just back this off about 25%.  It's ok in glances, but when you stare at the eyes, the expression changes, or the lighting is too good, things come out as grotesque and off-putting.  Unlike most other examples, this is a long sequence and once the action starts, you notice it less.

Overall, I had low expectations and they were met.  On its own merit, I don't know how good of a movie this is.  It's fine and it's fun.  But as an Indy movie, it's worthy.  A few times, your suspension of disbelief might be stretched because we are dealing with the supernatural, but it's largely in line with the rest of the series.

My ranking:
Raiders
Crusade
Dial
Temple
Skull

[Pappy13]

I don't know what everyone has against Skull. I enjoyed it. I wouldn't really change your rankings necessarily, but I don't think it's nearly as bad as everyone makes it out to be at least compared to the others. The first one was obviously the best because it introduced us all to the characters, but all the others are equally entertaining/boring/stupid/campy etc. They all have some high points and low points but to call Skull a truly awful movie just isn't doing it justice. Maybe you personally thought it was awful, but it's not like it's of lower quality movie than the others, you're just letting your bias show there in my humble opinion.

I haven't seen Dial yet, I'm sure I'll watch it at some point, but I'm not going to the theater to watch it that's for sure, I'm way past that with these movies and I have been since the 2nd one. I could have done without any of the others after the first and that's pretty much how I feel about all sequels. There's a handful of sequels that lived up to the first one and all the rest are meh.

[Dave Gray]

I do think Skull is a terrible movie.  I have rewatched them all.  It looks cheap to me -- something about the choice of hue that they use.  It lacks the sepia feel of the series, the action and creatures are overly CG and have cartoony physics, it introduces new uninteresting characters, it doesn't respect its audience in terms of the setting.

I really dislike the cast, too.  Cate Blanchett doing a bad Russian accent was always awful to me.

It has its moments and I don't hate the things about it that other do, but I really do think it's a bad movie.


I think that Raiders is truly a great movie.  And I think that Crusade is also great, though much more campy and pulpy.

I don't really think that Temple is all that good and is lumped in with the others because of nostalgia.

[Pappy13]

I do think Skull is a terrible movie.  I have rewatched them all.  It looks cheap to me -- something about the choice of hue that they use.  It lacks the sepia feel of the series, the action and creatures are overly CG and have cartoony physics, it introduces new uninteresting characters, it doesn't respect its audience in terms of the setting.

I really dislike the cast, too.  Cate Blanchett doing a bad Russian accent was always awful to me.

Kate Capshaw and Ke Huy Quan were great characters in the 2nd movie? I'm not a fan of Shia LaBeouf, but he was better than either of them. I'm not even sure what CG creatures you're talking about. The aliens? Ok, I mean they are aliens, not exactly sure what "real life" aliens would look like. The scorpions and stuff all looked pretty real to me, certainly as real as any of the creepy crawlers in the other movies. I think you didn't personally like the idea of "Indy goes to space" and everything else is getting a more critical view because of it. If you forget the movie is about aliens, it's just another Indy. It's not like Temple of Doom, Crusaders and even the first one doesn't have some really stupid shit in them too. I got a feeling you might have been a little bit younger and are seeing things with a bit of rose colored glasses. I was pretty young when I saw Raiders and thought it was the greatest movie I had ever seen then too. I mean it's still a really good movie and all, but I doubt I would feel the same way about it if I watched it for the first time today.

[Dave Gray]

^ Also, now that I've been away from this movie for a few days, I can more clearly realize the things it does well and what it doesn't.

There are lots of side characters in this movie -- they are cool concepts, but they act as henchmen.  It's weird because the villain doesn't really seem like he would have or need henchmen, they don't really serve a purpose, and their reason for being there isn't really defined.  It feels like larger plot points were cut out.  If you were to do it over, I imagine that there are at least three characters that would be excised or at least combined.

There is a subplot about Indy being on the run that doesn't need to be in the film.  It feels kinda like the extra characters above.  They took so much of it out that it has no weight, but I guess they just couldn't fully remove the hooks.  It goes unpaid off.  Had you written this script over one last time with what you had filmed, you could probably cut a good portion of the middle of the film and cut the fat.

The movie lacks a great action set-piece in the middle.  Everything is OK and competent, but each movie has some kind of memorable action sequence and this doesn't really capture that.  You have a train sequence at the beginning that lacks anything special, a little car/scooter chase, a thing with a horse, and some cave stuff -- all of it is fine, but there lacks a staple sequence that Indy is known for.

The ending nails it.  The supernatural element in this movie really pays off in a way that is great.  I was truly surprised at where the movie went and I thought the clues that it laid were good, as well.

The main villain is great, but his demise doesn't fit the Indy mold.  Normally, the adversary succumbs to the Maguffin in some grotesquely creative way: face melted off, falling into crocodile pit chasing stones (this is a weak one), rapidly aging to a skeleton.  Even Crystal Skull handles this well by putting so much knowledge into that person's head that she gets her brain melted away.   This movie doesn't follow that same track and the comeuppance for the villain isn't interesting.



I think the biggest sin of this movie is that they they wrote a script and filmed a movie, realized it needed to be three hours to cover everything, but they cut it down to 2:30, which left it too long, but still had elements of the abandoned stories.  There is a cleaner version of this film out there because it has a lot of great ideas and a solid ending.

[pondwater]

I don't know what everyone has against Skull. I enjoyed it. I wouldn't really change your rankings necessarily, but I don't think it's nearly as bad as everyone makes it out to be at least compared to the others. The first one was obviously the best because it introduced us all to the characters, but all the others are equally entertaining/boring/stupid/campy etc. They all have some high points and low points but to call Skull a truly awful movie just isn't doing it justice. Maybe you personally thought it was awful, but it's not like it's of lower quality movie than the others, you're just letting your bias show there in my humble opinion.

I haven't seen Dial yet, I'm sure I'll watch it at some point, but I'm not going to the theater to watch it that's for sure, I'm way past that with these movies and I have been since the 2nd one. I could have done without any of the others after the first and that's pretty much how I feel about all sequels. There's a handful of sequels that lived up to the first one and all the rest are meh.

Usually after the 2nd or 3rd sequel they turn to trash. I'm sure there might be a few, but off the top of my head I can't think of any franchises that had any good sequels past the 3rd movie.

[Dave Gray]

Pappy, it's fine that you like Crystal Skull.  We can have different opinions.

I actually don't have any issue with the alien stuff.  I think that some kind of supernatural element is important to all of these stories and that's fine.  I do think the aliens look a little cheesy, but it's more just an artistic choice to show them as clearly as they did.

When I refer to CG creatures, I was talking about the movie opening with a CG groundhog, CG monkeys swinging in the trees, and especially the CG ants.


As for Pondwater, the Mission Impossible movies have gotten better.  They definitely don't peak at 1.  My favorite is 4, but most people think the later entries are better than the early ones.

[Spider-Dan]

Usually after the 2nd or 3rd sequel they turn to trash. I'm sure there might be a few, but off the top of my head I can't think of any franchises that had any good sequels past the 3rd movie.

Fast & Furious!
Fast Five was arguably the best of the series.

There's also some fuzziness about sequels vs. reboots.  I think the ninth X-Men movie (Logan) is the best one by far, and the same goes for the seventh Batman movie (The Dark Knight), but there are some reboots in there.  And how do we classify the 20+ James Bond movies?

[Phishfan]

I never knew Indy went to space. I guess I tuned it out before then.

[Dave Gray]

I turned on Raiders of the Lost Ark today to "show the beginning" to my daughter and My GOD, that's a great film.  We watched about the first 30 minutes, up until Indy and Marion get to Cairo to meet Sala.

The pacing is so perfect.  There are so many interesting visuals flourishes.  The characters are all interesting.  Every single scene adds to plot and character at the same time.

It really is in its own class.  It's like a perfect movie.

[Dave Gray]

Fast & Furious!
Fast Five was arguably the best of the series.

I think this depends greatly on personal taste.

I do think that, if pressed, the first movie would be considered the best.
But 5 is the best of the superhero version of the movies.

I think a lot of people love 7, though.

And I have a special love for Tokyo Drift.