Cinema Sunday: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Last week, Andrea and I along with our daughter Randie and her partner Aspen ventured forth from the Fortress of Ineptitude to go see Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. 

Which fits in quite nicely with our theme for July's Cinema Sunday posts which is "Journeys To the Past and Future". 

Things kick off in 1944 with Allied forces liberating Europe from the Nazis while Indiana Jones and Oxford archaeologist Basil Shaw are looking to liberate some stolen shit from the Nazis, especially  the holy Lance of Longinus.

 

The lance is a fake but astrophysicist Jürgen Voller has found something more valueable amidst the Nazis' pilfered artifacts: half of Archimedes' Dial, an Antikythera mechanism built by the ancient Syracusan mathematician Archimedes.

 

It's an ancient astronomical calculator that can make time travel possible. On top of a Nazi train filled with looted antiquities, Indy and Basil fight off Voller to keep the dial out of his vile Nazi clutches. The Allies bomb the train as Indy and Basil leap from the train with the dial into a river.

 

81 year old Harrison Ford is CGI'd back to age 40. Well, his face anyway. The rumbly voice of that 40 year old man is that of an 81 year old man.

 

Anyway...

 

It's 1969 and Professor Henry Jones Jr is in a sorry state. Remember in Raiders of the Lost Ark how the female students just dreamily stared at young Prof.Jones? Yeah, well, the teach is a really super old dude now and his students can barely stay awake.

 

That won't be a problem much longer as Jones has to endure what is a sad attempt at a retirement party. So his teaching job is behind him and so is his family. We learn of his separation from Marion Ravenwood and that his son Mutt (who we met in the last film, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) was killed in Vietnam.

Well, maybe old Jones ain't so alone after all with a timely visit from Helena Shaw, Indy's god daughter and archaeologist who is carrying on the work of her late father Basil into the mysteries of Archimedes' Dial. Which Indy still has in storage.

 

And...ZOINKS! Helena's run off with the dial. Seems Helena's archaeological pursuits are less about knowledge and more about finding the highest bidder for really cool artifacts.

 

Also after the dial is  astrophysicist Jürgen Voller who is still alive and working with the Americans help put a man on the moon but having conquered space, Voller wants to conquer time as well.

And he's also still a Nazi! We hate Nazis! 

 

And the chase is on! Literally! 

 

We get Indiana Jones on a horse riding through the New City Subway System.

 

A bizarre car chase in Tangiers!

 

A deep sea dive off the coast of Greece! (Lots of eels! The snakes of the ocean! Indy still doesn't like snakes.)

 

A dangerous clamber through caves and catacombs in Sicily!

 

Uh oh! The bad guy gets the dial.  Still bad to the bone Nazi, Voller wants to go back in time to 1939 and kill Hitler.

 

Wait! What?  Voller's all big on the Nazi ideology but admits Hitler himself was an idiot and wants to kill him off and replace him in history with someone who makes smarter decisions.  (Like not invading Russia in winter, stuff like that.)

 

With a plane load of men dressed and ready for a Gestapo cotillion with Indy and Helena on board, Voller uses the dial to guide the plane through a fissure in time.

 

And the dang thing works!

 

Except…

 

It’s an Indiana Jones movie. Yeah, the Nazis get their thingamabob and it works but never in their favor. (see face melting Ark of the Covenant).

 

The plane does go back in time to  212 B.C. 

 

It’s the Siege of Syracuse (no, not the one in New York, dummies!) where Greek and Roman armies are at war with each other.  Seeing a big honking metal dragon screaming from the skies, the Greeks and Romans bring the damn thing down with catapults and arrows. Ancient Greeks and Romans kick Nazi ass! Yeah!

 

And Indiana Jones meets Archimedes and would rather stay in 212 B.C.  because really, what has the poor old bastard got waiting for him back in 1969?

 

Helena makes several cogent and logical arguments for why Indy can’t stay in 212 B.C. which culminates in punching Indy out.

 

If Indiana Jones has taught us anything, you sometimes just can’t beat the direct approach.

 

Back in 1969, Indy discovers there may still be more to life than he had previously considered. 

 

The “It’s That Person Who Was In That Thing” Department 

 

• Phoebe Waller-Bridge from Fleabag is Helena Shaw and I couldn’t be happier. She comports herself well with lots of clever dialogue and a gung ho gusto for action sequences.  If Doctor Who ever decides to try a female Doctor again, Phoebe would make an excellent choice.

• Of course Mads Mikkelsen is Jürgen Voller. I mean, who else in modern film is going to play the role of the intense slime ball villain? (see also Doctor Strange)

• John Rhys-Davies is back as Sallah, Jones's old friend who helped find the Ark of the Covenant in 1936 and the Holy Grail in 1938. In 1969, Sallah has immigrated with his entire family to New York City and works as a cab driver.

• Toby Jones plays Basil Shaw, a chance for Toby to fight Nazis instead of being one (see Captain America: The First Avenger)

• Karen Allen returns as Marion Ravenwood for exactly one minute at the end of the movie. It's really a shame that Marion only gets a glorified cameo at the end of the movie. 

 

There have been some criticism leveled at the time travel component of this film. Seems people are OK with supernatural stuff going down in the world of Indiana Jones but introduce sci-fi elements like space aliens (Crystal Skull) and time travel, Indy fans lose their shitt. 

 

I’ll admit it was a bit weird to see Indiana Jones time travel back to 212 B.C. but it only took me moment to wrap my head around it and realize this sci-fi element works. Indy is an archaeologist and what is more enticing than studying history except having a chance to actually live it, experience it?

Sadly, the big story around Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is that it's a bit of a box office bomb, earning only $60 million last weekend with a budget of close to $300 million.  I think expectations were set a bit high for a 4 decade old franchise starring an 81 year old actor.  

The box office side show aside, I found Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny to be a perfect capstone to Indy's story, hitting all the things we expect from a rousing Indiana Jones adventure.  

Next week, Cinema Sunday's "Journeys To the Past and Future" ventures to the future with an obscure Spanish film made about 4 years ago.