Menu
What's new
Troll Kingdom

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny

I've seen it. Free ticket.

Kinda fun in the odd spot - the first 30-45 minutes were the strongest. I felt once they were abroad things started taking an ill turn. PWB vacillated between tolerable to irritating. I think she started out charming enough, but once they were off globetrotting the irritating factor kicked into high gear. Jane of all Trades and master of ... all of them, apparently. Inconsistently written. Mads was good, even if entirely generic.

Ford's charm still shone through. He hit the mark with the Mutt reveal on the boat - one of the tragically few scenes that had some weight to it. But any good was quickly washed away in favor of another CG-laden chase sequence. I checked my watch on several occasions and kinda zoned out on some of the chase sequences. Indiana Jones and the Pursuit Across Green Screens? Oof. Did the live-action remake of The Lion King have this much CGI? It just made it feel cartoonish; they really should have made an effort to ground the film with more practical effects, IMO.

It is not a terrible movie. It is however a very, very mediocre movie. The whole thing was entirely unnecessary. One could argue that no movie is necessary, of course. But in this instance, the effort was not worth it. The imperative to make this was corporate, not creative. Going by the box office receipts, it appears they would have saved a pretty penny leaving the IP in LucasFilm's vaults gathering dust.

I was fairly disappointed having seen it for free. Had I forked over money, I'd have regretted it. My take: if you're curious, just wait for digital release - not worth it.

I tried to be fair. I wasn't sitting there hating every scene. All too often online (see: every time) things are polarized between people either arduously defending it and saying it was amazing or declaring it an abomination. There's a lot of room in the middle for average / sub-par. Realistically, I imagine most average moviegoers who don't follow things like most bulletin board dwellers will find it okay, passable and unchallenging entertainment - though I imagine word of mouth is fairly tepid. It ain't a dumpster fire, but it ain't got anything on the originals.

I'd also say the vitriol directed at PWB is unjustified. Lot of shit flying about over how she looks, agendas etc. OTT IMO. I still found the character problematic, but it would be nice to see some more measured discussion about it instead of the usual performance outrage ...
 
Last edited:
I saw it today, wasn't really planning to or that bothered, but my sister was down from Dundee and we usually go to the cinema (would have rather she waited a week and could have seen Mission Impossible but whatever!) It got me out the house.

The movie is...okay. But nothing more. It's very safe. I'm sure after the reaction to Crystal Skull they didn't want to take any chances. It doesn't have any moments as bad as the famously bad parts of that movie, and it manages to avoid being embarrassing in itself. But it's kind of not much of anything? I was kind of impressed when it went to 1969 and we see Indy getting out of bed and just how old he's beomce - phsically and in his mentality sushing the hippies next door. But then once the action starts he's just unbelievably whooshing about, jumping between cars and falling off things and his age is never an issue. Plus 1969 Indy is still ten years younger than Ford's real age so I don't know why they didn't set it a bit later (it doesn't do much with the setting, all the stuff with the Apollo astronauts is just in the background.)

The opening twenty minutes in World War 2 was kind of good but the de-aging wasn't completely convincing (Michael Douglas in Ant-Man still seems to be the high bar eight years later?) and it's all really dark, possibly to disguise the CGI. Toby Jones was pretty fun.

In the 1969 stuff, when they went outside and there was a protest going on and he stole a horse I thought that was pretty fun but it never goes beyond "pretty fun." I found the music distracitng in that bit too, it didn't seem to escalate with the action?

Then there's a load of CGI-heavy chases which have their moments but aren't a patch on any of the action scenes from the original films.

PWB was quite good but they went a bit too far in making Helena unlikable once she skipped out on Indy. The kid sidekick was pretty good for a kid sidekick but just made me annoyed we didn't get a Short Round cameo. John Rhys-Davies was good in his two minutes of screentime. I was shocked when Antonio Banderas was third billed in the closing credits as I had forgotten he'd even been in the movie by then (he's the diver who dies within five minutes of first appearing.)

Mads Mikkelsen is always going to be fun as a villain but they just didn't go far enough with him. He doesn't do anything all that evil on screen, his speeches aren't menacing enough for him to really sink his teeth into. They should have at least given him a cool scar or something after he got hit in the face on the train in the opening. Pretty similar to Cate Blanchett in Crystal Skull really, a strong actor not served well by the movie. Boyd Holbrook was really good as the neo Nazi American but gets very little to do after his oepnng scenes. And both main villains just die in a plane crash? No face-melting? Nothing chopped off by helicpoter blades? It's all too clean! Even the big henchman guy just drowns offscreen. Indiana Jones is supposed to be gritty.

I did at least like that they went there with the time travel, it was the biggest chance the movie takes. But Indy not having a say in going home? Last Crusade has him choosing to give up the Grail for his father, but here he has no agency. He just wakes up in 1969 again and luckily Marion is so impressed that he time travelled that she comes back to him.

Anyway, I didn't hate it. But I'll never watch it again and probably won't think about it beyond "that could have been so much better" and "Harrison Ford is still good."
 
Last edited:
I saw Dial of Destiny & liked it. I enjoyed it but the Original Trilogy is way better. Like the Original Trilogy , Dial's one of those flicks that's great to see on a big movie screen in a movie theater.

I definitely recommend others see it while it's still on the Big Screen.

This movie , opinion wise , is very polarized , after looking at & reading threads about Dial on other message boards.

One thing about Dial that I'm not sure yet how to digest is
The literal time travel at the conclusion of the movie. I guess it was a groovy thing to do in the final analysis , but at the same for some reason to me time time travel in an Indiana Jones flick seems inappropriate? Especially given what the Nazis do once they're back in the past. And then you have a crashed plane on an ancient beach & corpses of Nazis laying there, which apparently had no effect on the time line ... somehow? And then you have Indie who wants to remain in the past for the rest of his life , something I'm glad Helena completely foiled.
Click to expand...
In the end , "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" is a sci-fi flick!
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Last weekend, Indy was knocked off the top perch by Insidious: The Red Door - a film which cost approx. 22x less than Indy. According to BoxOfficeMojo, Indy slipped to #3 behind Sound of Freedom and Insidious. Current global haul sitting at $252 million.

MI7 blasts onto the scene this week, with Oppenheimer and Barbie just round the corner. Given its performance up till now, the drop off in sales and the hefty competition (which by all accounts will all have much stronger word of mouth) I don't see how it competes. It's likely already made the large majority of its overall box office.

If they've spent between $400-500 million on this (including marketing) and only get around 50% of sales ... holy shit.
 
...unfortunately it is wrecking lots of beloved American culture along the way. I remember when they bought "Star Wars." I was like, "Oh great. They know how to do entertainment. This should be good." They *knew* how to do entertainment. :(

Seriously. These companies that have been around for 100 years and just suddenly forget what made them successful all that time. :(
 
Saw it to the end today, not impressed, many of the action peices seemed cobbled together from better ones in raiders and last crusade, cameos were shoehorned, and every bit of dialogue apart from the death of Mutt packed any kind of depth.

They could have taken a hour out of this and made a much tighter film.

Now for the love of god don't make another one.
 
For all crystal skulls faults it had two iconic moments, Indy in front of the mushroom cloud and Indy in front of the flying saucer.

What would make a good poster in this film?

Young Indy and his wobbly face and old man voice?

Old Indy complaining his back hurts?

Indy and the poorly rendered Romans?
 
whisky said:
Saw it to the end today, not impressed, many of the action peices seemed cobbled together from better ones in raiders and last crusade, cameos were shoehorned, and every bit of dialogue apart from the death of Mutt packed any kind of depth.

They could have taken a hour out of this and made a much tighter film.

Now for the love of god don't make another one.
Click to expand...

Wasn't Phoebe Waller-Bridge set up as Indy's successor? Yeah, let's not do that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top