[Review] Indiana Jones And the Dial Of Destiny (7/10)

Title - Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny
Production - Walt Disney Pictures, Lucasfilm, Paramount Pictures
Starring - Harrison Ford, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Mads Mikkelsen, Toby Jones, Boyd Holbrook, Ethann Isidore, Antonio Banderas, John Rhys-Davies, Shaunette Renee-Wilson, Thomas Kretschmann, Olivier Richters, Karen Allen
Writer - Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, David Koepp
Director - James Mangold
Release - 30 June 2023

One thing that I have to ask myself, like many others as well, if this wasn't an Indiana Jones movie, would I have liked it? 

It's not easy to answer such questions because we will never be able to live that other life and give a definitive and factual answer.

Dial Of Destiny, in a nutshell, had a strong first act, a shaky second act, and a third act that I feel either you can accept it or you can't.

The opening with the de-aging technology on Harrison Ford, Tobey Jones and Mads Mikkelsen was a big sore for a lot of people and I can see why. It's not like Robert Downey, Jr. in Captain America: Civil War where it was only a minute of de-aged Tony. I think it's even longer than The Last Crusade with River Phoenix. 

This had a whole chunk of screentime, almost like a climax of an Indiana Jones movie for it's opening act. And because it needed Ford to have that much screen time, the limitations of the technology itself became so apparent that it would take me out of the movie.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge's shared a lot of screentime with Indiana Jones this time around, and she had great chemistry with Ford to make their relationship believable and fun to watch. Mikkelsen was definitely a good choice as the Nazi-antagonist. 

There were two sub-characters that I wished had different or lesser actors. One was Boyd Holbrook whom, few years ago, looked to be a rising star and now he's doing something similar like in Logan. And the other was Antonio Banderas, who, let's face it, way better than what he was given here.

And then there was Ethann Isidore's character, someone like a Short Round for this movie, whom I didn't care for at all and wished he had less screentime. I felt like his subplot was just an unnecessary distraction.

The car-chase scenes in Indiana Jones movies are always fun to watch; and in this case a tuk-tuk chase sequence was up to the franchise's standards. 

For that controversial third act, and SPOILER ALERT for the rest of this paragraph; I can see how that whole time travelling factor was another sore-eye for some. But do remember, in every Indiana Jones movie, the third act always brought in the fantastical or science-fiction. Every artifact that the bad guys were after always came into full use. While yes, it was jarring to go back that far in time, and while it did ballooned the whole production value to over USD 300 million; it wasn't impossible for story. I thought the way they wanted to end the story had merit in bringing this aspect of the time-travelling because, this essentially, was what Indiana Jones lived for.

Had the movie ended 10 minutes earlier, I know I would have had tears flowing down because just witnessing what Indy wanted already had me choked up.

But the way the movie actually ended was also a very good choice. And in the end, it was a great way for audience and fans to bid the character one real, final farewell.