The fifth and (supposedly) final “Indiana Jones” film was released in theaters on June 30, just in time for the long Independence Day weekend. The film has been discussed since 2008, and it has been delayed many times over the years. Despite rumors to the contrary, Harrison Ford reprised his title role in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” but Steven Spielberg and George Lucas relinquished their previous positions of control, acting only as executive producers. Despite the huge buildup, the strategic release date, and the years of anticipation, the movie was deemed a box office bomb after its opening weekend, failing to earn enough revenue to compensate for its astronomical production cost.
The reaction to the film, both from critics and average viewers, has been mixed. This film came at an interesting place in the Indiana Jones franchise. The last film, “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” received a lot of criticism since its release in 2008, so many felt it wouldn’t be hard to top. This was the first film made in the series since Disney purchased Lucasfilm in 2012, and many people were disillusioned by the direction Disney took the “Star Wars” sequel trilogy. As a casual viewer of all the “Indiana Jones” films, I found the latest to be at times a success, a failure, a pleasant surprise, a disappointment, and a surprisingly revealing depiction of Nazism in NASA.
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“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” is set in 1969, twelve years after the events of the fourth installment. Indy was still an active adventurer in “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” but he is just a frustrated old professor by the beginning of this film. His family relationships formed in the last film have been broken, since we soon learn he is divorced from his wife and his son has died. A new adventure finds the sad old man when his long-lost goddaughter, Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), appears in his classroom one day and enlists his aid. She is searching for the Archimedes Dial, which she knows her father researched and gave to Jones to destroy years earlier. Naturally, Jones didn’t destroy it but instead stored it in his college’s archives. That is only half of it, however; the other half remains hidden somewhere in Europe.The dial is more than an ancient Greek artifact—it is believed to indicate fissures in time and space which can allow time travel. It turns out Helena is an unscrupulous archaeologist who sells artifacts on the black market, so she heads for Tangier with the half dial to auction it off. Indy chases her to Tangier to save the dial from falling into the wrong hands. However, he is hotly pursued by Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), a former Nazi enemy of his who is now a NASA scientist going by the name of Dr. Schmidt who was responsible for the Apollo 11 moon landing. Voller is desperate to obtain the dial and go back to 1939 so he can change the outcome of World War II in favor of the Nazis. Indy, Helena, and her Moroccan teenaged sidekick, Teddy (Ethann Isidore), have to work together to protect the Allied victory.
I’m sure many people will say this film pales in comparison to the earlier “Indiana Jones” films. It was definitely less exciting and left many unanswered questions, although I appreciated that it seemed more “family friendly” than previous installments in the franchise. It’s natural to compare it to its predecessors. However, I cannot in good conscience recommend any of the “Indiana Jones” films as a superior alternative to “Dial of Destiny,” since they all have included excessive violence, disgusting wildlife sequences, profanity, and suggestive references to the leading man’s promiscuous love life. Instead, I recommend the classic film that inspired the famous Indiana Jones look, “Hong Kong” from 1952.
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Like the original “Indiana Jones” movies, “Hong Kong” is a Paramount Pictures release. It stars all-American actor Ronald Reagan as its leading man. In this role, he wears neutral slacks, a tan button-down shirt, a brown leather jacket, and a brown fedora, exactly the costume which would become the essential Indy aesthetic thirty years later. The story takes place in China, and the outdoor scenes were clearly shot on some location—although probably not China—not a soundstage. The movie is in beautiful Technicolor, showing the exotic details.Jeff Williams (Reagan) is an American Army veteran turned black market adventurer who is struggling to survive in China as it falls into Communism. His leading lady is Julie McQuade (Rhonda Fleming), a schoolteacher and the daughter of a missionary. Jeff’s job is to steal a priceless Buddha statue that belongs to an adorable little Chinese orphan boy, Wei Lin (Danny Chang). However, he unintentionally becomes a surrogate father to the lad, and his tough exterior starts to melt as he grows fond of Julie and Wei Lin. He may just end up fighting on the right side after all.
Besides the wardrobe of the leading man, “Hong Kong” bears many similarities to an “Indiana Jones” film. The protagonist is an American adventurer in a foreign land with a sarcastic edge to his personality. He has a beautiful female adventure partner. He is surrounded by enemies of another nationality who are far from friends of the American way of life, Chinese communists in this case, compared to either Nazis or Russian communists in different Indy films. A valuable artifact, which could be called a talisman or a MacGuffin, is sought by the leading man as well as his enemies. He is accompanied by a boy for whom he acts as a father figure, namely Wei Lin in this film and Short Round (Ke Huy Quan) in “Temple of Doom,” Mutt (Shia LeBouf) in “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” and Teddy in “Dial of Destiny.” In the end, the good guys always win.
Watered-Down Nostalgia
Many people love “Indiana Jones” because it’s nostalgic and patriotic. However, “Hong Kong” is even more nostalgic, since it was made in the 1950s versus the 1980s or later, and it is much more patriotic. It stars Ronald Reagan, one of the strongest presidents our nation has seen in years, instead of a lifelong Hollywood actor who sadly supports the film industry’s un-American agenda. “Hong Kong” makes a strong statement against the Chinese Communist Party, while Disney is in cahoots with the CCP. However, I must admit my surprise that a Disney film featured an Operation Paperclip scientist who was advancing an anti-American, Nazi agenda while working with NASA and conspiring with the CIA to kill people. Is Disney trying to tell us something about the moon landing?Since Hollywood still followed the strong moral guidelines of the Motion Picture Production Code in 1952, the content of this film is decent and tasteful yet highly exciting. “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” seemed “Disneyfied” in the watered-down foul language, violence, risqueity, and general nastiness, but that left it feeling bland and boring at times, since Hollywood doesn’t know how to make clean movies which are exciting.
