Indiana Jones et le Cadran de la destinée

I'm at a loss. I thought Indiana Jones was about an adventuring archeologist hunting ancient religious artifacts to be preserved in museums. And the first 20 minutes confirm that sentiment.

And to be fair, John Williams' fantastic score reminds me that I did walk into the right showing. But instead of a rousing epic, I witnessed a strange concoction of overblown ideas, baffling casting choices, plot conveniences, bad dialogue, and some of the worst written characters I can remember. Especially Helena, who's played by a talented PWB but is written to be an insufferable, pedantic braggart.

There's a strange veneer that makes everything resemble something familiar. But it all feels off. Even the deepfakery produced some chuckles in the theatre.

There's some fun scenes and cameos and I enjoyed the villain. But calling this an Indiana Jones movie? Maybe Illinois Jones.

It was ok as a romp to not take seriously but it was spoilt by Phoebe Waller-Bridge's character, Helena, who seemed to be smiling incessantly. Very 1-sided character I disliked, and given the amount of screen time, spoilt the movie.

Chases were fun if not ridiculous: would three-wheeled vehicles be able to travel that fast round corners without toppling over?

I felt many of the action sequences relied too heavily on computer generation making them feel unrealistic. Some of the vehicle manoeuvres and the shooting of the characters within them didn't ring true and took my attention away from the movie.

Glad there weren't be anymore, even though I grew up with Raiders.

Harrison Ford is a legend, and his enormous talent is called upon to carry this reboot of the character he single handedly made iconic. Once again, he dawns the patented hat and whip with charisma and force. But even our hero Indy can't rescue this coffee house script, that may have not gone through a rewrite. The female lead is unwatchable, and I found myself wishing she'd go away, and take her unnecessary side kick with her. She looks like a WNBA star drafted to play a character in a movie. Her character is arrogant, and self absorbed. For some reason, she seems to have animosity towards Indy, but it's unexplainable why. There are a lot of classic chases, and different adventures, that are nostalgic for the original films. I saw Raiders of the lost Ark when I was 5, and I can still remember where I was when I saw it, it was that good and memorable. Harrison Ford recaptures the magic of young Indy. This film is not memorable or even very good, otherwise. The end plays like a sequel to Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Hello Ancient dudes! I left the theater realizing that the years of monumental film making are over, and these plastic, lifeless imitations are all we will get. Harrison Ford you're one of the greats, thank you for all of the incredible memories. But this one I'm going to try to forget.

So much negativity ahead of the release considering the role of a certain female support character. Then lots of stories about early reviews being bad to mediocre at best. We went to see it today and honestly, I liked it.. quite a lot! This isn't a story about replacing Indiana Jones with a female character. This is a really good final film and a worthy send off for our beloved adventurer. Don't expect it to be as good as the original three films. Go in with an open mind and realistic expectations, and you'll walk out entertain and humming a famous tune. In the end that's what Indiana Jones movies are all about.

In The Monkey's Paw (spoilers for a 100 years old horror classic, I guess), the protagonists, after the death of a loved one, use a cursed artifact to bring him back, only to find a shambling undead monstrosity knocking at their door.

Being a movie nerd in these days is a similar experience: the franchises you loved as a kid keep coming back, and for a while, maybe after a decent trailer, you are happy and optimistic... but then you see them and regret their return.

In fact, Hollywood just can't let a beloved series end at the right moment. Alien should have ended with Aliens, and it got a diarrhea of terrible sequels, prequels and spin-offs; Terminator with T2, and I've lost count of the reboots; Star Wars with Return of the Jedi, and it got the awful sequels (I'm giving the prequels a pass because they at least tried to tell an interesting story)...

... and, of course, Indiana Jones should have ended with The Last Crusade. It would have been an amazing trilogy (I have my issues with Temple of Doom but oh boys, is it looking better in retrospect), and now it has not one but two pointless sequels.

So, is this one better or worse than Skull? I'd say more or less on par: not terrible and unwatchable but clunky and mediocre.

Ford was my favorite actor as a kid ("Imagine being both Indy and Han Solo!"), and he gives it all here, but the sad truth is, he was already too old in Skull, and that was 15 years ago.

Mangold is a solid director but Indy movies live and die on the strength of their set-pieces, and he isn't prime Steven Spielberg. Then again, who is? Not even Spielberg himself nowadays, since the set-pieces in Skull already sucked.

Mangold keeps the camera too close so we do not get the geography of the action; his set-pieces are all momentum and no triumphant release. See the scene with the underwater relic and the eels, a cool premise which peters out into nothing. Also, the protagonists (especially Indy) rarely if ever do anything COOL to resolve the action - a crack of the whip, a last-second dive: they are just there, ping-ponging between different obstacles.

Story construction is bloated, with pointless characters (the governative agents, the Moroccan mobster), setups without payoffs ("continental drift") and endless tedious exposition: a scene with Waller-Bridge (moderately less annoying than I was expecting, but it was a low bar) smugly decrypting a tablet with a clue feels like the longest ten hours I've ever spent in a movie theater.

Here's a hint, scriptwriters: characters dealing with treasure hunt clues is only interesting if we, the audience, can also SEE the clue and GUESS the possible answer. Otherwise, it's like watching someone on the bus mumble as he does his Sudoku, and you can't even peek over his shoulder.

Dial of Destiny takes a weird turn in the last act and I sort of wish they had embraced the sheer cheesiness of it. I enjoyed a couple of scenes (the prologue is decent enough), but, if you absolutely need a good Indy sequel, play the old adventure game The Fate of Atlantis.

5/10.