Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny: Going into History

Summary via IMDB:

Daredevil archaeologist Indiana Jones races against time to retrieve a legendary dial that can change the course of history. Accompanied by his goddaughter, he soon finds himself squaring off against Jürgen Voller, a former Nazi who works for NASA.

Review:

In Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Professor Henry Jones must come to grips with his mortality- and as an audience, so must we. The Dial of Destiny here is Jones’ history, cinema history as known and shown by Steven Spielberg, the idea that the last ultimate adventure everyone must face and lose too- is death.

Ripping holes in time means ripping apart yourself to a certain extent, knowing you have seen the future and will not live to see all of it. Indy’s pain is more visible now, the leaps, other than those based on science, are less assured and sometimes fail.

Spielberg is not ready to do this, thus the final reins are transferred to James Magnold, who gave a good dose of mortality to the Marvel Universe with Logan and Johnny Cash deconstruction in Walk the Line and the Western 3:10 to Yuma where the time constraint plot was essentially mortality itself, defined and confronted.

Ford’s de-aged, wrinkless younger face is constantly confronted by his wan, fearful, wrinkled one. This is a man realizing his time is almost up, and trying to settle down in a comfortable place amongst the relics of his past. His younger self looks weird and distracting by intent, you know there is a body double in action somewhere in there.

Magnold gives us a glorified and studied imitation, a last adventure that looks and feels like a franchise highlight reel. It recycles and re-echoes characters and situations, settling Indy down in his proper history and deserved family, granting a proper retirement and last days that will satisfy everyone who has watched his amazing light.