Why "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" Failed
Why "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" Failed
Disney and Lucasfilm have produced yet another unforgivable misfire that turns a beloved character into a pathetic joke.
Disclaimer: This article contains full spoilers.
“Let’s get this over with” were not words I ever expected to say before an Indiana Jones movie, and yet I could think of nothing else during the entire time I sat through The Dial of Destiny — a bloated, overproduced 154-minute slog of a legacy sequel that never should have been made.
It’s been nearly four years since Disney and Lucasfilm ended the disappointing Star Wars sequel trilogy with the abysmal Rise of Skywalker, but they’ve evidently learned nothing throughout that time. While those films saddened me for what they did to George Lucas’ epic space opera saga, The Dial of Destiny makes me legitimately angry with how much those responsible have dropped the ball with the character of Indiana Jones.
I dreaded the concept of a fifth Indiana Jones movie ever since it was announced that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas would not be involved. I never hated Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as much as others did (you can find tweets from years ago of me saying this), but regardless of whatever flaws that film had, it never strayed from who Indiana Jones was as a character because the original creators were behind the wheel.
But even if you didn’t care for Crystal Skull, most agree that it gave Indy a nice happy ending. Without Spielberg and Lucas, the result of The Dial of Destiny is an utter mess that actively works to destroy the legacy of what came before with narrative decisions that range from pointlessly cynical to bafflingly stupid.
As of this writing over two weeks since the film’s release, Dial has only just made slightly more than its absurd production budget of over $300 million, which doesn’t even include the millions in marketing Disney assuredly spent. It’s a box office bomb, as many initially predicted, which gives me no pleasure to say as a longtime fan of Indiana Jones since childhood.
To give credit where it’s due, the first 25 minutes of Dial are not a bad attempt on the part of director James Mangold. Opening in 1944 when things are going south for the Nazis during World War II, Indiana Jones and his fellow archeologist Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) find themselves captured by Hitler’s goons in a French castle while attempting to find the Spear of Destiny. The lance is revealed to be a fake, but Indy and Basil discover a far more valuable artifact: half of Archimedes’ dial. Rumored to be the key to making time travel possible, German astrophysicist Jürgen Voller (played by Mads Mikkelsen in one of the film’s many wasted roles) attempts to convince his superiors of the dial’s worth to little avail. The duo make off with the piece across a moving train and incapacitate Voller before meeting with Allied forces.
In this introduction, Mangold is clearly trying to ape the style of Spielberg in returning us to Indy’s world and does so with passable results. The best part is John Williams returning to provide the score, which is probably the most Indiana Jones-like aspect that can be found here. It’s some genuinely fantastic work, but that’s to be expected from the maestro himself. The elephant in the room is of course the much-discussed digital de-aging used to make Harrison Ford look as close as possible to how he was at the time of the original trilogy. For what it’s worth, it does come across far better than what we saw with Grand Moff Tarkin in Rogue One and Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars Disney+ shows. Yet it’s also clear that the introduction is set largely at night to disguise whatever inevitable imperfections will appear with such trickery. Sometimes Indy looks too young with how smooth they made his face, and at worst he looks like a rubber puppet if you stare to hard.
I do think that Indy’s sarcastic quips against the Nazis feel natural for the character and the overall plot of securing the spear which supposedly stabbed Jesus Christ during the crucification falls right in line with the series’ penchant for religious artifacts. At the same time, it only makes you wish that Spielberg and Lucas made a new trilogy of Indiana Jones movies in the 1990s set during WWII so we really could have seen a younger Harrison Ford taking down the Nazis when they posed the biggest threat to the world. Instead, we’re basically given the most expensive fan film or video game cutscene ever made with Ford’s face plastered onto a motion actor’s body. The action feels rather weightless due to the heavy use of CGI, which is unfortunately a pattern seen throughout the rest of the film.
As soon as Dial of Destiny flashed forward to 1969 for the bulk of the story, that’s when I knew things were going to be bad. Right from the outset, we see everything wrong they’ve done to Indiana Jones’ character. In contrast to the heroic adventurer we saw in the original trilogy and the happy note we left him on in Crystal Skull, the Indy in Dial is a sorrowful shell of his former self. His wife Marion Ravenwood has filed for divorce following the death of their son Mutt in the Vietnam War, and the elderly professor about to retire from teaching now spends his days slumped in his shabby New York City apartment as a depressed alcoholic. What a wonderful picture that is to see.
I’m not sure what Disney’s obsession of making once-great male heroes into sad sacks is, but what they turned Indiana Jones into here is worse than I ever could have imagined. Keep in mind that this is canonically the same man who lost his mother at an early age, was estranged from his father for most of his adult life, and saw some of the worst carnage human beings are capable of committing against each other while fighting in the trenches of World War I. And that’s before he experienced any of the trials and tribulations we see in the films. Indy is not a man who throws in the towel or becomes an inconsolable wreck in the face of terrible circumstances.
There was no reason to kill off Mutt or get Marion out of Indy’s life other than to make him a miserable old man just for the sake of it. The entire point of Crystal Skull’s story was to reunite Indy with his estranged former lover and make amends with the son he never knew he had. Dial expects us to believe that Mutt enlisted in Vietnam for no reason other than to piss his father off, which makes zero sense given that they were already reconciled. James Mangold appears to both want to ignore Crystal Skull, but also use parts of its narrative to create cheap emotional manipulation to tell an additional story that didn’t need to happen.
With the film having established that Dr. Jones is a depressed failure, the heavy lifting is now up to Helena Shaw, who the overbearing script constantly reminds us is the dashing, brave, and all-around bestest perfect new female character played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. The daughter of Basil Shaw from the intro, Helena comes into Indy’s life asking for the half of the dial recovered in 1944 and pushes him into finding the other piece. But in reality, she’s actually a black market antiques dealer and absconds with the artifact back to Egypt. Jürgen Voller is meanwhile alive and responsible for helping the U.S. land on the moon as a NASA scientist, but is after the dial to go back in time and fix Hitler’s mistakes. He frames Indy for murder and goes after Helena with his neo-Nazi crew.
If this story sounds needlessly convoluted, that’s because it is. One of the biggest problems with Dial of Destiny is that it tries to cram in too many plot threads and characters, but doesn’t give any of them the depth or exploration they deserve. Take Voller’s involvement with NASA, for example. The idea of Indiana Jones having to come to terms with his country collaborating with former Nazis to put Americans on the moon sounds like a fascinating concept, but the story largely glosses over it. Or take Voller’s henchman Klaber. We gather from one scene that he appears to be an American sympathetic to the Nazi cause, but barely get any kind of context for who he is or why he’s helping. Similar characters come and go with the script showing apparently no interest in telling us who they are.
The other issue is that Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character Helena simply doesn’t work. Dial of Destiny wants her to be everything from a studious know-it-all to a selfish criminal, but she switches between roles on a dime just for the sake of moving the story forward. Her transformation from betraying Indy to helping him doesn’t feel natural at all, and she provides some of the most poorly-written dialogue of the entire film.
Feisty female companions are of course a staple of the Indiana Jones films, but consistent characterization made all the difference. Marion Ravenwood was sarcastic and tough, but she still needed to be saved because she was human. Willie Scott was annoying, but she at least acted like how most people would being dragged along into Indy’s adventures. Elsa Schneider was a Nazi collaborator, and The Last Crusade made no attempt to redeem her. Helena, on the other hand, is someone we’re supposed to believe is utterly perfect. I’m not making that up either. There’s one scene where she literally tells Indy how smart, beautiful, and cunning she is, because of course that’s how real people talk.
The story moves across Egypt, Greece, and Italy with Indy and Helena after the dial against Voller and his Nazis, but in writing this piece I honestly struggled with remembering anything notable that happened. Dial of Destiny commits the worst possible sin in being boring, which is unforgivable for an Indiana Jones film. Even those who didn’t like Crystal Skull can probably tell you what happened in that movie because there were a few memorable scenes, but Dial’s action sequences feel empty and lifeless. It’s the same tired CGI car chases and plane takeoffs we’ve seen a hundred times, which really makes you wonder why all of this cost $300 million to make in the first place. The editing feels sloppy, and the dynamic cinematography that Spielberg clearly planned out with careful thought in the other films is nowhere to be found here.
Another baffling aspect is the inclusion of the character Teddy Kumar as Helena’s Moroccan sidekick who follows her everywhere a la Short Round in The Temple of Doom. Yet unlike Short Round who worked well against Indy and Willy, Teddy is completely useless and serves zero purpose other than being kidnapped toward the end, which no one seems particularly bothered about. You could take him out of the film and it would change practically nothing. The teenage actor doesn’t perform the role particularly well, and a scene where Helena asks if he can fly a plane only to immediately point out that he doesn’t know how to pilot any aircraft is only hilarious because of how utterly stupid it is. Yet somehow Teddy is able to take off with no issues, because of course that’s exactly what would happen to someone with zero piloting experience.
Let’s talk about that third act though, because that’s when this film truly goes off the rails and spirals toward a rushed conclusion that comes out of nowhere. After Indy and Helena track down the other half of the dial to Archimedes’ tomb in a Sicilian cave, Voller shoots him and takes the wounded professor aboard a plane to travel back in time to 1939 to assassinate Hitler. His plan is to take over Nazi Germany as Fuhrer and lead the Third Reich to victory before WWII even starts. As Voller attempts to fly through a time fissure activated by the dial, the film alternates between Indy being on the verge of death and acting like he was only mildly inconvenienced in being shot. Because of course that’s exactly how a wounded 70-year-old man with a lifetime of other sustained injuries that have assuredly weakened his body would act after being pumped with lead.
Helena goes after the plane to rescue Indy in one of the worst CGI chase scenes I’ve ever watched and Teddy, who’s now suddenly an accomplished pilot, follows behind on a different aircraft. Indy is entirely useless throughout this entire sequence, while it’s up for Helena to save the day. Unfortunately for Voller, Jones points out that Archimedes didn’t account for continental drift, which means that the opened portal likely does not go to 1939. Because of course a highly intelligent scientist recruited by NASA apparently did not bother to look more deeply into how the dial worked before using it to alter the very fabric of space-time.
Voller’s crew then travels back to the Siege of Syracuse in 212 BC, appearing right in the middle of the battle. We now have to contend with existence of time travel being canon in Indiana Jones, which I suppose isn’t too out of place considering this series has already done immortal knights and aliens, but all of this is crammed into a finale that barely even considers the implications of such a momentous revelation. The warring parties believe that Voller’s aircraft is a dragon and shoot it down, killing everyone on board except for Indy and Helena, who escape via parachute and soon come face-to-face with Archimedes himself. The film suddenly remembers that Indy was shot half an hour ago, yet the professor tells Helena he has no desire to go back and wishes to die here.
What could have been a touching scene mirroring the end of The Last Crusade with the Holy Grail is completely ruined when Helena punches him out and takes him back to 1969, robbing Indy of having any actual say in the matter. As for Archimedes and the thousands of soldiers who now have the wreckage of a 20th century plane? Well apparently it never showed up in the historical record since, because of course that’s exactly how archeological evidence works.
Indy is now back home in his apartment, only for Marion to come out of nowhere despite the fact that both are already established as being on bad terms. Helena apparently briefed her on the situation, which somehow means that everything is now going to be right as rain. Seemingly forgetting about the fact that he’s a depressed alcoholic who wanted to die on a Sicilian battlefield from over 2000 years ago, Indy miraculously feels the need to live again and shares a renewed moment of romance with Marion, because of course that’s exactly how couples who are soon to be divorced act in real life. And yes, this is where the film ends.
Man, what an utter disaster this wreck was. Apart from the 25-minute intro which comes close to emulating a real Indiana Jones film, Dial of Destiny fumbles the ball in practically everything it sets out to do. What’s strange is how it can’t even get the small easy details right. Despite the Paramount logo appearing at the beginning, it doesn’t fade into any in-film object or background like the other movies all did. The opening credits are written in the same font, but the lack of this series tradition was very bizarre. There’s no brutal death for our villains either, which is another recurring theme in Indiana Jones films. Come on, you’re seriously telling me that a plane crash is all they get?
The map transitions somehow look even worse than the previous movies, Indy barely uses his whip which I thought was a shame, and the script’s writers apparently forgot that he was an accomplished polyglot because there’s one scene where he needs to ask Helena to speak Arabic to Egyptian police offers. Arabic was one of the first languages Indy ever learned in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and his line to Helena about “knowing Tangier” appears to be a reference to one of these episodes. We even see him speaking ancient Greek to Archimedes, so I highly doubt he would have completely forgotten how to speak other languages. It’s also a series staple for there to be a new deadly animal in every Indiana Jones film, but all we have here are horribly-rendered CGI eels that don’t look threatening at all. Is this the best they could do on $300 million?
Dial of Destiny appears to be stuck between pandering as a nostalgic film, but also wanting to be a film which tells audiences that nostalgia is for chumps and that those days are over. It features a cameo appearance by Sallah I guess as a callback to Raiders and Crusade, but there’s no reason for him to be in this film other than him being one of the few surviving actors from the original films. John Rhys-Davies himself admits to being disappointed that he was underused, but that he appeared in Dial for the fans. Marion is even more of a wasted opportunity, with her forgiving Indy at the end coming entirely out of nowhere. We’re told that they filed for divorce because Indy couldn’t console her over the death of Mutt, but nowhere do we see any reason for them to get back together romantically. Karen Allen claims that Marion would have had a bigger role when Spielberg was still involved, which only makes her brief cameo all the more frustrating.
James Mangold has proven himself to be a good director, with Logan especially having been a fitting end to Hugh Jackman’s original run as Wolverine (until it wasn’t). That film also depicted its protagonist as a jaded hero dealing with greater weaknesses in his older years, but such themes are completely mishandled with the character of Indiana Jones. Wolverine had new vulnerabilities, but he never felt like a useless old man and his sacrifice in the end felt profoundly meaningful. X-23 didn’t steal the show from him either and their surrogate father-daughter relationship worked miles better than the awful chemistry between Indy and Helena. I honestly can’t believe the same director did both films, but I’m not sure you can shift all the blame on Mangold for Dial of Destiny given the studio meddling Disney is known for.
As for Indiana Jones himself, Harrison Ford performs as well as you could expect from someone of his age, but I don’t think anyone ever wanted to see the character this old. According to industry reports, Ford’s contract was drawn up in 2016 and he would’ve been paid regardless if the film got made, but his final salary fell far short of what he earned from Crystal Skull. I have no doubt that part of him genuinely did want to come back, yet without Spielberg or Lucas, much of what we see just feels like him going through the motions. As per usual Hollywood PR, he’s had nothing but positive things to say about Dial. Bear in mind though that Ford rarely ever criticizes his own films and famously lashed out at Shia LaBeouf for his criticism of Crystal Skull.
Initial critical reception to Dial of Destiny following its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May was not positive, which no doubt probably caused Disney and Lucasfilm to regret screening the picture so far ahead of its wide release. It subsequently reached a 68% on Rotten Tomatoes after being seen by general critics, but as I’ve pointed out, many of the reviews counted as positive are 6/10 or 2.5/4 with only measured praise. Dial demonstrates how flawed RT is as a method of measuring the quality of films, so I wouldn’t put much stock into it.
The actual fan reception I’ve seen on social media and YouTube has largely been mixed, but the Indiana Jones subreddit has been in complete cope mode about this film. A casual look shows cringeworthy memes and posts that are in total denial of the film’s financial failure, which only makes me wonder why some fans are trying to hype it up as being better than it actually is. Part of it likely stems from how disappointed many were around Crystal Skull, and I don’t think people want to accept once again that this franchise’s best days are long behind it. Will the few fans heaping this much praise on Dial of Destiny really remember the movie a year from now? I highly doubt it.
As it stands, the fifth Indiana Jones film is the least successful of the franchise and Lucasfilm is really eating it with the box office returns. Some may ask why viewers should care about how much a film makes, but keep in mind that we’re talking about a franchise that was once synonymous with blockbuster filmmaking at its prime. Raiders of the Lost Ark was something that everyone and their mother wanted to see, but Dial of Destiny produced scores of empty theaters during its first week. The decline here is obvious, and it greatly saddens me as someone who has been invested in this series since I was ten years old. Even if you’ve never looked at the box office gross of a film in your entire life, is this really how you want Indiana Jones to go out?
While Dial of Destiny being mediocre is one reason for its failure, the bigger factor is the fact that Indiana Jones unfortunately has no young audience in 2023. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull came out in 2008 when the franchise still had enough relevance in pop culture, but 15 years have passed since then with virtually no new media. A middling video game and one novel did come out in 2009, but their late releases after Skull were due to extended delays rather than creative inspiration. Lucasfilm did practically nothing with Indy afterwards, and Disney’s purchase of the company in 2012 was for Star Wars more than anything else. A fifth Indiana Jones film shifted in and out of development hell during the ensuing years, being delayed several times. The final product only makes its disjointed production all the more apparent.
As much as it pains for me to say it, people today simply don’t care about Indiana Jones and there’s an entire generation that probably doesn’t even know who he is. Take what happened to Star Wars after Revenge of the Sith in 2005. While George Lucas considered it to be the last film at the time, his company consistently kept the franchise relevant with a plethora of novels, comics, video games, and that wonderful Clone Wars television series by Dave Filoni. The sequel trilogy was undoubtedly a huge disappointment for many fans and Star Wars has seen better days than now, but the existence of other media like Rogue One, The Mandalorian, Andor, and the occasional interesting video game like Jedi Fallen Order means that there’s at least some good things still around. After Dial of Destiny, there’s one upcoming Indiana Jones video game in development by Bethesda, but it being a confirmed Xbox exclusive means that the already niche audience for such a title will be made even smaller.
There’s been almost no extra merchandise promoting the film at all, and even LEGO has only produced three new sets as tie-ins, with all of them being from the original trilogy. It isn’t entirely clear if there will be any sets for Dial of Destiny, but it’s already too little, too late. Indiana Jones is a dead franchise, and it’s been one for a long time. Long before Dial came out, I figured that even if the film turned out to be bad, surely there would at least be some new books or comics to expand the franchise’s lore, yet we’ve seen zilch. It always played second fiddle to Star Wars in Lucasfilm’s eyes even before Disney, but that at least gave authors like Rob MacGregor room to write original stories that expanded upon Indy’s character and gave him interesting adventures. What was Indy up to in between The Last Crusade and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? Did anything notable happen before Dial of Destiny? We likely will never know.
And so this is where Indiana Jones ends, on the same disappointing note that so many classic Hollywood franchises have been left on as the industry as a whole tries to bank on nostalgia without considering what made these films so great in the first place. When we could’ve gotten a Top Gun: Maverick, we’ve gotten something that’s far closer to Rise of Skywalker, and that’s a real tragedy. I would love to have been a fly on the wall during the board meetings for this movie because I can’t even begin to imagine how Disney executives were convinced that a $300 million Indiana Jones film starring an elderly Harrison Ford was a good idea after 15 years of no franchise content.
One consolation is that The Dial of Destiny doesn’t really contradict anything seen in the “Old Indy” bookend segments of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles where the character is depicted as having lived into his 90s and reminiscences about his past to anyone who’ll listen. The film moving Indy to New York City, which is where he lives in the television show, is possibly a callback to this. Regardless of what some may tell you, Lucasfilm never officially designated Old Indy as non-canon even with their removal in re-edits of the series on DVD. Interestingly, an official Japanese pamphlet set my girlfriend picked up includes these segments as part of the Indiana Jones timeline, so to me that’s as good of an indication as any that they still count.
It’s been largely forgotten by most today, but I think The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles is where you should go if you want more adventures with the character, as I outlined in this lengthy write-up. The opening and closing segments featuring a 93-year-old Indiana Jones depict him in a far better state than what we see in Dial of Destiny. He’s amassed almost a century’s worth of life experiences, which he insists on passing down to younger generations and still maintains a vicarious spirit even in his twilight years. What better conclusion is there for one off the greatest heroes of the silver screen? The best I can say about Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is that it doesn’t take away from where the character eventually winds up. Indy already has the ending he deserves.
