With “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” the Indiana Jones series ends with more of a dusty, disappointingly worn-out feeling than the elation of spectacular dig find. This time, James Mangold (“The Wolverine,” 2013, and “Logan,” 2017) directs and co-writes with a team of Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth and David Kopek. In this first outing without Steven Spielberg directing and George Lucas involved in either the story or the writing, the tone is more brutally dry than humorously pulpy fiction, and while the plot twist is clever, some elements seem misjudged and the sentimental ending doesn’t feel really earned.  

The brothers Butterworth wrote the 2019 “Ford v. Ferrari” (with Jason Keller) and the 2021 “Flag Day.”  Jen wrote the 24th James Bond film, the 2015 “Spectre” with John Logan, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade. Kopek co-wrote “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” with Lucas and Jeff Nathanson. He also co-wrote the 2017 “The Mummy” (with Christopher McQuarrie and Dylan Kussman).  I suppose it depends upon how you felt about the last installment with the Crystal Skull and (no they’re not aliens) inter dimensional beings. 

The story for “Dial of Destiny” begins in 1944 during World War II. Indiana Jones and Oxford archeologist Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) are captured by the Nazis as they attempt to retrieve the Lance of Longinus. The Nazis are loading their stolen antiquities on to a train.  Nearby, astrophysicist Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) tells his superiors that the legendary Archimedes’ Dial is among the treasures. Using math, Archimedes was able to locate fissures in time. Yes, we’re now moving into time travel. 

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Jones, of course, escapes and rescues Shaw. The train is derailed when it passes over a bridge destroyed by Allied bombers.

Flash forward to August 1969. Jones is now reaching retirement age and his students find him boring. He’s living alone, now separated from his wife, Marion, following the death of their son Mutt (b. 1938, who was played by Shia LaBeouf in “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”).  Although Jones had been the Associate Dean of Bedford’s (Connecticut) Marshall College (motto: “Sapientia et lux“), in 1969, he is at Hunter College in Manhattan, ready to retire. 

The retirement party isn’t a happy one and, in this film, it isn’t good luck to be friends with Indiana Jones.  Jones is approached by Basil’s daughter and his godchild, Helena “Wombat” Shaw  (Phoebe Waller-Bridge). She’s a grifter, a poor gambler and engaged to an unsavory character. She’s meant to be madcap, but she’s really just maddening.

Helena is also an archeology student, but one more aligned with the villainous Belloq from the first film. The Archimedes Dial has been split into three pieces. Jones know where the first piece is, but as they go to retrieve it, Voller, now working for NASA as part of the successful lunar landing program, is assisted by the CIA and Voller pursues after the two. Some of the people we were introduced to at this party die. Helena escapes with the dial while Jones interrupts the Apollo 11 astronauts celebratory parade before escaping into the NYC subway.

Jones finds his old friend Sallah who has immigrated to the US and works as a cab driver. Sallah helps Jones.  There’s no sign of Short Round who would be about 43 (if he was born in Shanghai in 1926). From NYC, Jones travels to Tangier (Morocco) and prevents Helena from selling the piece of the dial. He then teams up with Helena and her sidekick, a pickpocket, Teddy Kumar (Ethann Isidore); this should remind you of Short Round. There’s a chaotic chase scene, but nothing as memorable at the giant rolling rock. We learn that Voller, now disavowed by the US government, plans to use the dial to time travel in hopes of correcting mistakes that led to Germany’s defeat. He’s a Nazi. Even in 1969 (and 2023), we can pretty much agree that Nazis are bad. 

To retrieve the other pieces, Jones will have to dive near Greece with Jones’ deep-sea diving friend Renaldo (Antonio Banderas). From there, Jones will go to Sicily and look into Archimedes’ tomb, but there will be something of a surprise. Of course, we need to worry about the mad-Nazi Voller every step of the way as well as the time paradox problems. 

From the start though, despite the wonderful music of John Williams, even under the direction of Steven Spielberg and story suggestions of George Lucas, the Indiana Jones film franchise has been a bit cringy.  There was the romantic reunion where we learn that Jones had an affair with a minor in the first film, “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Jones also left Marion at the altar years later, not knowing that she was pregnant, but surely understanding that was a possibility (“Indiana Jones the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”).  The second film (that takes place in 1935, a year before the first film) features some slithery East Asian characters. That’s after the yellow face in the Nepal scenes of the first film. The religion and eating habits of South Asians is misrepresented in the second film (“Temple of Doom”), although, supposedly meant in parody, that’s not necessarily how it played out. That film also featured a shrill woman and a sidekick, Short Round. While the kid was cute, the woman’s role was basically a screaming damsel in distress who was the butt of many jokes because of her high maintenance ways and just stupidity (mounting the elephant the wrong way for a very, very cheap laugh). 

Here we have the writers of the new film “Dial of Destiny” tarnishing a moment of technological triumph: The return of the Apollo 11 astronauts from the moon at a time when NASA aims to return to the moon and ultimately make it to Mars.  Historically, Apollo 11 (16-24 July 1969) had Commander Neil Armstrong (1930-2012) and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin (b. 1930) landing the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle landing on the moon (20 July 1969) and rejoining pilot Michael Collins (1930-2021) before returning to earth. 

NASA did have a former Nazi working for them: Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun (1912-1977).  Braun was born in what is now Poland. At the end of World War II, Von Braun and his brother had been captured by the 44th in 1945. By 1960, he was the director of the Marshall Space Flight Center. In 1967, he was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering.  

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And scientists don’t work alone. In “Dial of Destiny,” you have to wonder what happened to the other men and women of the space program who worked with Voller? 

As for diversity, now it might seem a bit cringy to have a Welsh actor (John Rhys-Davies) playing Sallah, an Egyptian excavator. He is supposed to be from an Arabic-speaking family because Salah is an Arabic work meaning “righteousness” or “goodness.”  Are we supposed to celebrate because they have an FBI agent who is a Black woman (Shaunette Renée Wilson as Mason) and a Spanish deep sea diver (Antonio Banderas)?  There’s also a loss of innocence. Whereas in “Temple of Doom” Short Round acted as a conscience and has an innocence, not so with our new pickpocket friend Teddy. He kills a man on a one-to-one battle as opposed to part of a nameless horde. The man may be a Nazi, but this isn’t war time.  The non-stop action doesn’t make up for the lack of emotional investment. 

“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” premiered at the 76th Cannes Film Festival in May 2023 and was released in the US on 30 June 2023.