I thought that I had shared a quick reaction to seeing James Mangold’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny somewhere online, either here or on one of the MANY social media sites I’ve tried out recently, but it looks like I never actually got around to it? Or maybe I did and I the search functions on those sites aren’t so great? Or there’s a social media outlet that I’ve forgotten about…?
In any event, yes, I was able to see the final Indiana Jones film in the theater on opening weekend, and I absolutely loved it. I thought that it was a fitting finale for the character and a loving tribute to the films that came before it. If Mangold didn’t quite stage action sequences quite like Spielberg would have, he still really captured the tone and spirit of the originals. I went in with some hesitation about the new de-aging techniques for the flashback sequences, but ended up very, very impressed with the results. The third act twist was a big swing that I absolutely did not see coming, and I really respect that they took that big of a creative risk, but ultimately I think they pulled it off nicely.
I’ve always felt that the character of Indiana Jones only really worked as well as he did all these years because Harrison Ford was the perfect actor to embody him, and that has never been truer than here. Ford brings a real gravity and weight to this older version of the character, while still diving headlong into the action and humor of it all.
It was great to see some familiar faces again, but the new characters introduced were fantastic, too. I would be more than happy to watch the ongoing adventures of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Helena Shaw and Ethann Isidore’s Teddy for years and years to come.