Fortune and Glory Hinders Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

The long-awaited final chapter of Indiana Jones’ Adventures has hit the big screen. And the haters are out in force.

Honestly, I can’t remember the last movie release that didn’t come with a boat full of negative buzz following in its wake. Every headline on Dial of Destiny’s opening weekend centered on the movie’s box office take. Or lack thereof. When did sixty million dollars become pocket change?

For perspective, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade took in 37 million with a budget of 48 million on its opening weekend. Adjust those figures for inflation, and you get 91 and 117, respectively. But even adjusting for inflation doesn’t make this an apples-to-apples comparison. Last Crusade opened on Memorial Day weekend, not on the 4th. Dial of Destiny had a longer opening weekend, with the holiday falling on a Tuesday. Still, Monday not being guaranteed off would cause a disruption. Also, going to the movies is a very different proposition these days. Restrictions might be gone, but the public space hesitation is still real.

Obviously, I’m not a film studio executive trying to make back the film’s investment. With a 295 million budget, even from my layman’s perspective, I get that ROI expectations for Dial of Destiny would always be on the higher end. The entertainment industry is a business and, like any business, needs to make money to survive. But this focus on lack of box office earnings, especially in this case, floats the assumption the movie is not worth watching. But that assumption, like most assumptions, would be wrong.

Dial of Destiny is worth the price of admission, and not just because this is the last time Harrison Ford will don the mantle of Indiana Jones.

No one wants to see their heroes falter, but Dial forces us to do just that. We witness the mileage finally catching up to the seemingly unflappable Indy. In Dial, he has allowed himself to become a relic in desperate need of rediscovery. On the one hand, it’s sad to think of Indy as the cranky man down the hall banging on doors for peace and quiet or the professor no one is interested in. On the other, it provides never before seen depth that the other adventures have been missing. How hard is it to be the hero when you are almost unanimously adored? With a few exceptions, even his adversaries display varying levels of admiration for the man. Dial strips that all away from Indy, making this a story about good and evil and finding a way out of all-consuming grief.

Of course, it’s not all wallowing in self-pity. Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) sweeps into Jones’ life and pulls him into the globe-trotting adventures we’re more accustomed to. The creative choice to have a male-female platonic relationship drive much of the story is another departure that worked exceptionally well for this film, even though it meant less Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) than I would have liked. The relationship between Helena and Indy is refreshing. It offers a far superior alternative to the mediocre father-son interaction in Crystal Skull.

Other creative choices, however, complicated the ROI equation everyone is so hyper-focused on. Like the Last Crusade, Dial of Destiny opts for flashback exposition to kick off the action, which means the clock turned back to 1945 and called for a younger Indy to grace the silver screen again. Instead of casting an actor who looked like a young Ford, filmmakers opted to de-age Harrison Ford. I thought that it was really cool. But, the process was expensive in terms of time and overall cost. Was it worth it?

No. I don’t think it was. The story’s exposition could have unfolded using casting choices or different storytelling devices that would have been more in line with the initial inspiration for Indiana Jones. On top of that, it felt like the setting off the finale fireworks before the prelude had even started.

Is the slow financial return what we should be focusing on? Talking about how it’s going to be just another box-office bomb? Seeing as everything that’s been released lately has been a box-office bomb, I don’t think we should be focusing on that. After all, some of the most beloved movies were bombs. Wizard of Oz and It’s a Wonderful Life are just two of the many.

How would the original three Indiana Jones installments have faired in an environment where every movie released is doomed to failure or mediocrity before anyone’s even watched it? Would there ever have been an Indiana Jones franchise?

No, I’m not going there. That’s a rabbit hole I don’t want to go down. It would bring me to a world I wouldn’t recognize and one I wouldn’t want to live in.