I finally did it... and it was meh.

It took me some time, but I finally got around to seeing “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”, and I have some thoughts about it.

First, let me “pretext” the crap out of this.

One of the first movies I saw as a kid was “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”. This set the pace for my movie-going experience. Granted, Temple (as it will be referred to moving forward) isn't the strongest of the entries in the franchise. It does, however, have the honor of being one of the originals. As I said, it's not the strongest, but it carries a ton of fond memories. I watched that tape again and again until it broke. That’s right, VHS, not to date myself. a couple of years later I managed to get a boxed set that also included “Raiders of the Lost Arc”, and “The Last Crusade”, which incidentally come in as the best in the series, at least in my opinion.

For years I waited and wished for another film. By the time Starwars came out with its sequels (“The Phantom Menace”, “Attack of the Clones”, and “Revenge of the Sith”), I was wise to the ways of Hollywood and decided it might be best to let the Indy trilogy just be a trilogy and nothing more. I mean, common, no one wanted Jar-Jar, and we sure as shit wouldn’t want a character like that to ruin the Indy movies. That being said, somewhere in my heart of hearts I still wanted that magic to return to my life in some way.

So, years passed and I heard rumblings that Harrison Ford was putting on the fedora, grabbing his whip, and reprising the role of Indy.

Then 2008 brought us “The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”... and that was a thing, I guess, maybe. It was a film, does that count? I wasn’t impressed, but I counted it as one of the movies in the franchise, eventually. It was the new Temple.

There are some horrid problems with that movie. Specifically, four things that ruined it for me, outside of the crappy dialogue, which was clearly written by a preschooler on ADD medication. I don't know what ass-hat edited and screened it, but I suspect they might have been drunk and high that day.

Outside of the dialogue, the first was plausibility. We all know what I am talking about. Do I have to say it? It’s the “Indy survives an atom bomb in a fridge scene”. It was so poorly done it has its own meme- Some of you might remember the Nuke the Fridge meme.

The second is the character Mutt Williams, the casting didn’t match the character. It was really hard for me to buy the Mutt was Indy’s son. Shia LaBeouf wasn't the right choice and everyone knew it, but we did nothing when it was announced. We gritted our teeth and wished for the best.

The third was that they treated the aging Dr. Jones as a “spring chicken” rather than embracing his age and making him wise instead of tough. The movie felt like geriatric Jones rather than Indiana Jones, which was sad because Henry Jones Senior in The Last Crusade was done masterfully by the late Sean Connery.

The soul was missing from Crystal Skull. It was off in so many ways, when all was said and done, it lacked the magic. This led me to the conclusion that it was not made to tell a story, but rather that it was a cash grab.

Afterward, I kind of hoped that they would never make another one. Then the evil empire of Disney decided it would be a great idea to fire up the idiot-o-tron and fart out another sequel. I wasn't surprised, more so disappointed. I sort of knew it was coming, and sure enough, we got it- post-pandemic, after the world went bat-shit.

So, 2023 brought us “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”. I won’t make the claim that some idiot pooped on my childhood, but what I will say is “Crystal Skull” is still the worst entree.

So, let's break this latest film down and review it a little, but only just a little, because more that than will hurt our heads and give us indigestion.

Let's start off by saying exactly the same thing about it that I did about Crystal Skull - It’s a movie, I guess, maybe? Where Crystal Skull was a 5 out of 10, it might be a 6.5 out of 10. I mean it was watchable-ish if you were super bored on a Saturday night and all you have were crappy movies to watch. Again, "maybe"? (Those quotes are sarcastic).

The biggest issue with the movie is that it tries too hard to outdo the rest of the series. It seems, at least in Hollywood, that each movie must be bigger than the last one, instead of just a good movie (case in point, the M.C.U.). Everything must be bigger, badder, more, more, more! Harkening back to the original three, Temple didn’t try to be bigger than the rest, it just tried to be its own movie with Indy in it. Dial of Destiny tries to make itself the end-all of Jones movies. That being said, there are some positives here. I am glad they brought the Nazis back, they are just simply the best of evils for Jones to fight.

I have mentioned that the soul was missing from the last movie, this is also true for Dial of Destiny. It lacks the passion that the first three had. When you are watching the film, you are accompanied by a hollow feeling. It's not authentic to the franchise or the characters. The movie has some moments where it feels authentic and true but for the most part, falls on its face. Poor dialogue. Poor setups. Cheap cop-outs. And, yes, our favorites, McGuffins, an ass ton of McGuffins.

At this point, it's the 60s and Jones should be full of soulful wisdom and insight, much like Jones's senior was. But he isn’t, he’s just a crusty old man yelling for people to get off his lawn and drinking all the time. That's not the Jones we were looking for, somehow it's the Jones we got.

Next are the Tropes. We will start off with the goddaughter. She is a typical Disney Trope- She definitely checks off the boxes on the list, but in the process of checking off that list, she comes across as an inauthentic idiot, not a strong female character. Some of the other tropes include, but are not limited to: the tragic backstory, the chosen one, the side-kick (remember short round, this movie has one too), the mad (nazi) scientist, the smart girl, and the token minority, just to name a few. And am I supposed to believe that the Nazis would find and hire the only black female CIA agent in 1969? Really? Are the writers not aware of what was going on in the 60s? Do they not know history?

The Character development feels forced. This leaves the audience with a stilted and hollow feeling in their guts. That's right, the characters we all grew up with, are no longer the characters we love. With the exception of Sallah, the only friend Indy has left from the original movies (outside of his estranged wife Marion Ravenwood). The problem is that Sallah is only in the movie for a couple of minutes. Marion too, is only in the movie for a couple of minutes, not even enough time to add some soul and familiarity to the film. The one continuous bit of soul we get is from the Nazi’s. Let's face it, that's the wrong kind of soul. Don't get me wrong, they were done well, but... You get the point.

This movie has a huge problem with the use of language. I have discussed this before, it’s a huge peeve of mine- inappropriate use of period language! If you are going to write a movie that takes place in a different time, research the time and use language that would be typical of the time. Don’t just write it how you think it should sound using today's speech, colloquialisms, and idioms. Nothing brings me out of a movie like jarring and poorly thought-out dialogue. Dial has some very bad dialogue- granted, not as bad as Crystal Skull, but still bad enough to make me notice.

Lastly, Dial also suffers from bad special effects, more precisely, the CGI isn’t consistent. Sometimes it looks good, and sometimes it is downright horrid. Throughout the first part of the movie (about twenty minutes), there is a flashback to WWII. Jones is his younger self. To do this they superimposed Harrison's younger face onto another actor. Sometimes it looks really well done, other times it looks terrible. It was like they hired two separate village idiots to animate him. This discontinuity is jarring to say the least. Throughout the movie, the CGI has this issue. In many ways, it isn't as good as Crystal Skulls' special effects, and that film was made in 2008. So what gives?

All in all, the film is- meh. That's all I can really say about it. It was just so-so, the fourth-best Indy film out of five films. I maintain that they should have let Indy die at 3 films, but since they didn't, I am going to watch it a few more times and try and find a reason to like it. Which is sad, no one should struggle to like an Indiana Jones movie. I am not going to promise anything however, first impressions are usually right when it comes to these things.

My recommendation is to wait until it comes to a streaming service you already have so you don't pay extra for it. Sit down on a night when you have nothing to do and nowhere to go, and lower your expectations a whole lot. If you don't fall asleep watching it, you might, maybe like it. Better yet watch it in 10-minute segments while you poop. It will be much more enjoyable that way, yeah, Quibi that shit.

Cheers!