INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY (2023)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological, psychological*

As I write this, DIAL OF DESTINY looks to be another of many high-priced Hollywood films that will not make back its investment. This is a shame, because it's the first good sequel to the original RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.

It's hard to say why the contemporary audience has chosen to bypass what is almost certainly the final entry in the official series. I don't think negative reviews have much power to impede the mass audience's determination to see something they deem potentially entertaining. Thus the most likely conclusion is that many moviegoers just weren't stoked by the idea of seeing octogenarian actor Harrison Ford reprise the role of "tomb raider" Indiana Jones. Despite such viewers having experienced the reality-bending wizardries of which cinema is capable, they just didn't want to see Indy as an old guy. Perhaps negative reviews weighed somewhat in the balance, even when they were as senseless as the one that claimed that the movie was just a bunch of chase scenes loosely tied together by plot. Really? What did the reviewer think the first film was, or any of the previous three sequels? In point of fact, though the plot of DESTINY is no better or worse than those of the other movies in the series, director/co-writer James Mangold and his fellow scribes made their movie far more about giving Indiana a final character-arc, as he enjoys one last adventurous hurrah during the era of the 1960s. 

Once again, Indiana is forced to chase down a valuable archaeological item-- this time, a dial-like device invented by the Greek inventor Archimedes-- while also being chased by a cadre of Nazis left over from World War II, who believe that the device can transport them back in time. During the movie's prologue, Young Indy (a digitally de-aged Ford) learns that half of Archimedes' Dial is in the hands of Nazi scientist Voller (Mads Mikkelsen). In a tour de force of action, the swashbuckling hero manages to steal the incomplete device, later hiding the object in America, though publicly he claims that the Dial was lost in a European river. However, Voller survives the war and manages to get in good with the American government by contributing his technical expertise to the space race. It's not clear why, in the twenty-plus years between WWII's end and the moon landing, Voller and his new crew of Nazi aides don't abduct Indiana and torture him to learn whether he truly lost the Dial. But if the villains had done so, the plot could not have justified its most vital element: Indiana's god-daughter Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge). 

A lot of fan-reviewers were incensed by this character long before the movie came out, or any information on her character's nature were revealed, and chief among these was a podcaster named the Critical Drinker. Again, I doubt that these fan-reviewers had any great cumulative effect on audience acceptance of DESTINY, but these limited reactions reflect some of the same reluctance to see any alteration in the sainted legend of Indiana.

Once the prologue ends, and the film proper begins in the 1960s, we see that Indiana, who would have to be no less than sixty by that time, finds his life winding down. He's retiring from his collegiate teaching position-- possibly in a forced retirement. His son Mutt (from the third sequel) has perished during the Vietnam War, and the loss has for whatever reason driven a wedge between Indiana and his wife Marion (Karen Allen), who has filed for separation. He has limited options when his god-daughter Helena Shaw re-enters his life. She's the daughter of Basil Shaw (Toby Jones), who helps Indiana steal the half-Dial from Voller, and she talks Indiana into revealing that yes, he really still has the object in question. This becomes the start of a not-so-beautiful alliance, for Helena is something of a conwoman. However, to prevent the Nazis from gaining both Indiana's relic and from finding the Dial's missing section, Indiana must work with Helena, who has in many ways patterned herself on him, more than on her actual (deceased) father.

The Drinker and similar reviewers loudly protested that Helena Shaw was a "girl boss," designed to make Indiana Jones look stupid and ineffectual while trumpeting the glories of liberated womanhood. While there have been many recent movies and teleserials which were guilty of this sin, DESTINY is not one of them. In fact, these reviewers' fierce desire to protect the "legacy" of the fictional adventurer blinded them to Mangold's deeper character arc.

I said that I didn't much like the other three sequels, but the second one, LAST CRUSADE, boasts the greater insight into the Indiana Jones character. The prologue of CRUSADE establishes that as a teenager Indiana found himself in conflict with his stuffy academic father, Henry Jones Sr. (Sean Connery). After Teen Indy tries and fails to prevent the theft of an artifact by a roguish, whip-wielding adventurer, the script heavily implies that Indiana models his own look on that of the rogue, billed as "Fedora." The script does not make explicit why Indy does so, but to me it's clearly a rebellion against Henry Sr.'s domination of his son, whom he calls "Junior." The rebellion all but screams, "You ought to love me even if I'm not the same as you!"

Though DESTINY never mentions Fedora's influence on Indiana, I think it more than likely that Mangold and his aides modeled Helena on the earlier rogue. I said above that Helena seems to have modeled herself on Indiana, who was a much more romantic figure than her bookish looking actual father. The script does not say exactly why Helena took up such dubious activities as the black-market auction of antiquities, which are anathema to Indiana Jones' ethos. But is it hard to believe that she, too, sought to get the attention of her "symbolic father" (the real one having died in the interim) by  rebelling against his ethos, just as Indy did against that of Henry Sr? There's even a slight parallelism in the use of animal-names: Indiana calls his god-daughter by the unexplained pet-name "Wombat," while the heroic archaeologist took his own nickname of "Indiana" from the family dog (again, according to LAST CRUSADE).

I won't say that I fell inextricably in love with the actress Phoebe Waller-Bridge, but I didn't despise her as did the anti-girlboss crowd. I think she did all the stunts and the badinage very well, often reminding me of Karen Allen's Marion Ravenwood from the original RAIDERS. One or more early scripts toyed with the idea of giving Marion some action-scenes in DESTINY, but I think this would have been a mistake, and not solely because actress Allen is in her seventies. I think it was important to Indiana's character arc that he should meet a new iteration of his own rebellious self-image, even though Mangold does not preach this concept to the viewers. Helena may not be the ideal god-daughter, but he allows himself to forget her existence in much the same way that he (arguably) lets his relationship with Marion deteriorate. Helena storms her way into Indiana's life of quiet desperation, and despite a fair amount of collateral damage thanks to their Nazi enemies, the world is better off that the team of Indiana and "Wombat" comes into existence. She even keeps him from losing himself in his passion for the ancient worlds of bygone history, and I for one didn't think the hero was the least bit denigrated for having that moment of weakness.

I should add that none of these high-flown theories would have saved the film for me if Mangold had not presided over the most ambitious assemblage of action set-pieces since Original RAIDERS. But while the original film wins the gold in that department, the other sequels are bronze at best, while Mangold is the only contender for the silver runner-up.