Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Harrison Ford returns for the fifth and final time as the iconic bull whip using, fedora wearing archeologist in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. The first few minutes are set in 1944, wherein a younger Indy and Basil Shaw, a friend of his played by Toby Jones, fight the Nazis to obtain half of an artifact created by Archimedes. The rest of the movie moves forward to 1969, right after the moon landing. Indy now lives alone as his marriage with Marion strained due to Mutt's death in Vietnam and is getting ready to retire from teaching. After he reunites with Helena Shaw, Basil's daughter and Indy's goddaughter played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, they both get entangled with Neo-Nazis who want to find the rest of Archimedes's device. The Neo-Nazis are led by Mads Mikkelsen's Voller, a former Nazi scientist whom Indy fought at the beginning, who plans to use the device to travel through time and ensure Nazi victory in the war. While Ford, John Rhys-Davies, and Karen Allen all come back from the previous films, this is the first time that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were not involved for the direction or story conceivement. They do serve as executive producers while James Mangold takes over directing, while cowriting with Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, and David Koepp. The writing still has that great flare that the past four films had, getting the characters right, and doing the usual globetrotting and solving puzzles tropes. Although it does lead to really well done drama and beautiful character moments elevated by Ford's performance, the decision to kill of Mutt felt very forced and incredibly pandering just because he wasn't well liked by fans back in 2008. There's also the length, at over two and a half hours, making it the longest of the series and the writing really makes you feel it. Compared to the last four, there are really long scenes or scenes that really feel sluggish. The intro, for example, could have been a tad shorter. When it isn't because of the writing going on, another aspect to the length are the action scenes. Mangold is no stranger to incredible set pieces, but it's easy to tell how his style differs from Spielberg. The action scenes, while fun and inventive, rely on a lot of close ups and often are way too long. Though they use CG effects and Phedon Papamichael's cinematography to help make it compelling as much as they could. What made the action with Spielberg so great was knowing when to end and not overstaying their welcome. Even after all these decades, Ford has never lost his touch. Whether he portrays a younger Indy through de-aging or in his older state, Harrison shows his love for the character all the way until the end. Sure, younger Indy sounds like an old man with the face of a younger one, but one could easily say he had a cold. All the while the rest of the cast are all strong, with Waller-Bridge using her natural comedic chops to the full advantage, Boyd Holbrook making for a menacing henchman, and Mikkelsen being compelling. Besides three of the cast, someone else who returned to the series is regular composer John Williams as he perfectly mixes older tracks with newer stuff. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which while finishes off a franchise that first began in 1981 thanks to Spielberg and Lucas's love of adventure serials, is a great, though very flawed, finale and while not the absolute best of the series it's at least not Temple of Doom. Over all: 98%

2023 top list so far:

1. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

2. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

3. Elemental

4. Air

5. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

6. Creed III

7. John Wick: Chapter 4

8. Scream VI

9. M3GAN

10. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

11. Cocaine Bear

12. Knock at the Cabin

13. The Flash

14. The Super Mario Bros. Movie

15. Renfield

16. Fast X

17. The Little Mermaid 2023

18. Shazam! Fury of the Gods

19. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

20. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania