We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY (2023)
Eleven years ago, I attended a theatrical marathon of the four Indiana Jones movies – Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – that was billed as “Indiana Jones: The Complete Adventures”... and at that time, there wasn’t much reason to believe that wasn’t an accurate description. Four years had passed since the poorly received Crystal Skull and franchise star Harrison Ford was already seventy years old. Maybe there would be a reboot at some point, but the Ford era was probably over. And yet, here we are. All these years later, fifteen years after Crystal Skull, an eighty year old Harrison Ford has put the iconic costume back on to play Indiana Jones one more time in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
My first viewing of the new film was a very bittersweet one, as my father was a fan of the Indiana Jones franchise. He even kept a replica Indy hat safely stowed away in a cupboard when I was a child. I have clear memories of watching Indy movies with him, especially Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade – I even remember how he reacted to certain moments in The Last Crusade when we rented it on VHS when it was first released. (That was my first viewing of the movie, but he had probably seen it before during its theatrical run.) He passed away in 2017, and would be bummed to know there was a new Indiana Jones movie that he wasn’t around to see. Really, the same could be said for a lot of movies, particularly ones in the action genre. So here’s hoping for an afterlife where they have movie screenings.
Dial of Destiny comes from a different creative team than any of the previous films. While Steven Spielberg had directed the other four, he decided to step back into an executive producer role so he could focus on directing other projects like The Fabelmans (good choice) and his version of West Side Story (I prefer the original). He passed the helm over to Logan director James Mangold – which, if someone else was going to direct an Indy movie, I couldn’t think of many better choices than Mangold. George Lucas, also credited as an executive producer, had come up for the basic ideas / MacGuffins for the previous films, but the idea for Dial of Destiny didn’t come from him. Instead, Mangold worked on the screenplay with David Koepp and the sibling duo of Jez and John-Henry Butterworth. Together, they came up with the idea of centering the film on a fictionalized version of the Antikythera mechanism, pieces of which were discovered in a shipwreck in the early 1900s. Referred to as the oldest example of an analogue computer, this thing was believed to have been constructed a couple hundred years BC and was used to “predict astronomical positions and eclipses decades in advance”. In this case, it’s called Archimedes' Dial, as it was built by the mathematician Archimedes, and some believe it reveals time fissures that can be used for time travel. Archimedes was also involved in building war machines to defend his home of Syracuse against Roman forces in 213 BC, which is something to keep in mind when you’re watching the movie. (Indy is shown teaching a class about this subject to inform the viewer of it.)
Like the interdimensional aliens in Crystal Skull, time travel is not something I ever would have gotten Indiana Jones mixed up with. I preferred the supernatural religious artifacts of the first three movies. But the idea of travelling through time fissures doesn’t really come into play until toward the end of the movie, so that made it a bit easier to swallow. At least we don’t have Indiana Jones jumping through time for the duration.
After a twenty minute flashback to 1944 that shows a digitally de-aged Ford playing a younger Indy, taking on Nazis during World War II (and features a great moment involving a bomb coming through the ceiling in a room where the Nazis are attempting to hang our hero), Dial of Destiny moves forward to its primary setting of 1969 – where it proves to be a rather dark and depressing follow-up to the ending of Crystal Skull. Things have not gone well for Indy since we last saw him, and I’m not convinced Mangold needed to make his life so miserable. It’s good that we don’t have a lot of time to wallow in the misery, because soon Indy’s goddaughter Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), the daughter of his pal Basil (played by Toby Jones in flashback), shows up asking about Archimedes' Dial, half of which Indy and Basil got their hands on back in the ‘40s. Indy still has that half-a-relic in his possession... and Helena isn’t the only one who wants it.
The same day Helena comes searching for the dial, so does Nazi turned NASA rocket scientist Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), who has some of your typical bloodthirsty goons working for him – including Logan villain henchman Boyd Holbrook – as well as the backing of the CIA, since he was so helpful in getting Apollo 11 to the moon. Indy wants to protect the dial, Helena wants to sell it, and Voller wants to use it to travel back in time to 1939 so he can manipulate the outcome of World War II. So it’s because of the dial that Indy, who is now retiring from his teaching job at Hunter College, has to go on another adventure. This involves a chase through the streets and subway system of New York City, a tuk-tuk chase and gunplay in Tangier, a dive down to a shipwreck in the Aegean Sea (where Indy is surrounded by eels – similar to the snakes he hates so much), a trip through the Ear of Dionysius cave in Italy... and then, yes, a quick journey through time.
Indy and Helena pick up a child sidekick named Teddy Kumar (Ethann Isidore), Indy’s old pal Sallah (John Rhys-Davies) is now working as a cab driver, Antonio Banderas makes an appearance as a diver and boat owner, and Karen Allen shows up to reprise her Raiders and Crystal Skull role of Marion.
Critically and financially, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was more poorly received than Crystal Skull was. It even qualifies as being a box office bomb, as it couldn’t reach $400 million at the global box office. I’m surprised more people didn’t turn out to see it – and I’m surprised it wasn’t more positively received, because I felt that it was at least a step up from Crystal Skull. It might be needlessly dark in both tone and cinematography at times, at 154 minutes it’s about 30 minutes too long (and longer than the others), and you obviously can’t have Harrison Ford running around and handling action like he used to (and when the movie does have Indy handling some serious action, the digital work done to put his face on doubles is obvious), but I had a good time watching Dial of Destiny. I did spend the whole movie wishing I had been able to watch it with my father... but I was able to watch it with the father of blog contributor Priscilla, an action fan and longtime Indy fan himself, so that brought some consolation.
It has always felt to me like The Last Crusade was the fitting conclusion to the franchise. After all, that movie had Indy actually finding the Holy Grail, the ultimate in missing objects, and then literally riding off into the sunset at the end. Crystal Skull and Dial of Destiny weren’t necessary additions after that... but I don’t mind have a couple extra Indiana Jones movies to make. Most actors wouldn’t have been able to make a movie like this at eighty, but I’m glad Ford was able to make Dial of Destiny before hanging up his hat. And, given his age and the box office, this time it seems like the adventure might really be complete.
THE FABELMANS (2022)
Steven Spielberg knew he had a childhood worth making a movie about. Not only did he spend his free time shooting movies with friends and family on 8mm cameras, preparing for his incredible career as one of the most successful filmmakers of all time, but he was also witness to plenty of family drama and was surrounded by odd characters, including his own mother. He just didn’t know exactly how to approach the concept – and he also didn’t want to insult his parents, who lived to the very impressive ages of 103 and 97. But both of his parents are gone now, and with screenwriter Tony Kushner he figured out a way to tell the story, setting aside a script he had written with one of his sisters twenty years earlier. The opportunity to make this movie about his early years was enticing, he even decided to step away from a new Indiana Jones movie to do it. We got the Indy movie anyway, with James Mangold taking the helm. And with Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, we got the film that I would have given the Academy Award for Best Picture to (choosing it over the year’s actual winner, Everything Everywhere All at Once).
The story begins in 1952, with Mitzi and Burt Fabelman (Michelle Williams and Paul Dano) taking their young son Sammy to see a movie in the theatre for the first time. The movie is The Greatest Show on Earth, and Sammy is both terrified and blown away by a moment when a train is shown colliding with a car. He asks for a model train so he can try to recreate the crash scene, and it’s his mom who suggests filming the crash with his dad’s 8mm camera so he can gain control over the scenario... and watch it over and over again without ruining his train. That opens the door for Sammy to continue making 8mm movies with his friends and family, including his three younger sisters, throughout his childhood. By the time he’s a teenager, played by Gabriel LaBelle, it’s clear he’s going to be pursuing a career in the entertainment industry.
But between making movies (and we get to watch Sammy make small epics like a Western and a war movie), Sammy has to navigate his family’s rather unusual life. His father works with computers and has to keep moving the family – from New Jersey to Arizona, from Arizona to California. His mother clearly needs to start going to therapy long before she actually does, and is also carrying on an affair with Burt’s co-worker and best friend Bennie (Seth Rogen) – who the kids call Uncle Bennie. There are also coming of age elements to the story, as Sammy has to face bullies and has an interesting relationship with a Christian girl (he is Jewish) named Monica (Chloe East), who actually had a crush on her Lord and Savior based on the paintings of him. David Lynch and Judd Hirsch both have brief but memorable appearances as legendary filmmaker John Ford and Uncle Boris, respectively – and Hirsch even earned an Academy Award nomination during his short time on screen.
The family scenes are interesting, the high school scenes are amusing, and I found the scenes of Sammy making movies and learning his craft to be a lot of fun. The Fabelmans is a great movie that made shockingly little at the box office, especially given the fact that it’s a Steven Spielberg movie. When audiences won’t turn out for a widely accessible, heartwarming, intriguing and amusing movie made by one of our greatest filmmakers, it really makes one wonder where theatrical distribution is heading.
I’m glad Spielberg finally made a movie about his family and his childhood, because it gave us another addition to the long list of great Spielberg movies.
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