I was a little apprehensive to see the final Indiana Jones movie. The critics were giving it bad ratings, but the high audience approval got me in my seat. Let’s face it; we all know that Harrison Ford is getting older, so the thought of sinking my money and time into an aging Indiana Jones caused some apprehension. The story that rolled out to allow for the aging factor worked. Let’s set the apprehension aside and dig into this movie, though.
When we last saw Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and the Kingdome of the Krystal skull, Indiana found out he had a son he never knew he had. He also reunited with his old flame, Marion, who was the mother of his son. At the end of that movie Marion and Indiana were married. The opening of the movie begins with a flashback of a young Indiana attempting to retrieve an artifact from a Nazi train during WWII. The artifact was created by Archymides for time travel. During this adventure half of the artifact was lost. Indiana is still a professor at a university, but is moments away from retirement. He is also living alone in a small urban apartment. We soon find out that Indana have parted ways after their son was killed in the Vietnam war. Jones’ god-daughter, Helena, visits Jones to research the dial that she knows her father gave to Jones before his death. Jones leads her to the dial half that was stored in the university archives. Of course, nothing is as it seems. Helena is really after the dial half in order to sell it on the black market. She is pursued by CIA operatives who are assisted by the evil Dr. Schmidt, who was thought to be killed falling off the train with the other half of the dial. The plot follows the adventure as all parties are in pursuit of the two halves of the dial in order to attempt time travel.
Since this is the last Indian Jones movie (no, really, it is this time), some nostalgia was taken into consideration when selecting the cast. Of course, Harrison Ford reprises his role as Indiana Jones, an adventurous archeologist and college professor. I don’t think anyone else could pull off this role like Ford does. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is Indiana’s goddaughter, Helena Shaw, who is basically a sheister. Dr. Schmidt, the villain in the film is played by Mads Mikkelson. Antonio Banderas plays an old friend of Jones and participates in Jones’ quest as a diver. His role coud be called a cameo appearance. John Rhys-Davies reprises his role as Sallah, who was seen in Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade. Karen Allen comes in at the end as Jones’ wife.
Originally, Paramount agreed to make 5 Indiana Jones movies, so this is the final film in the series as origianlly planned. George Lucas started to sketch out ideas for Dial of Destiny back in 2008; however, Disney bought Lucasfilms in 2012 and also purchased distribution and marketing rights from Paramount. The writing process stalled, but started up again in 2015. This time, George Lucas was not involved in the writing of the script. An initial release date was announced to be in July 2019. Steven Spielburg would direct the movie, but the release date had to be pushed back to 2020 due to his prior commitments on other films. In early 2020, Spielburg decided to step down as the director and a new director was hired. Due to all the script writing and director issues, the release date was again pushed back to 2021.
new technology was used in a lengthy process to de-age Ford for the first scenes of the film’s opening that set up the story for the dial. Masks of Ford’s younger face were created for stuntmen standing in for action scenes. Another blast from the past is an original film score by John Williams, who was rumored to say this will be his last film score before his retirement.
I will give Indiana and the Dial of Destiny a 5 out of 5 star rating. The plot was solid and goies along with the fantastical themes of the other movies. The movie gives a satisfactory ending to the film series The nostalgic characters are fun as the final send off comes to a close.
