Turning back the clock with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

One thing that can be said in favor of Hollywood’s addictive cycle of prequels, sequels and reboots is that I’ve been able to replay many of my favorite cinematic experiences with my kids in the theater. 

Though I was too young (or too non-existent) to see the first two original Indiana Jones films in the theater (but unfortunate to have endured the fourth installment), I recently enjoyed the experience of watching Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny with my 11-year-old son.

It was with a palpable sense of time travel that I sat in the Bonner Mall Cinema next to my son, watching Indy don his iconic fedora and sling his whip — just as I had done 34 years ago when I took in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusadeat the former-Sandpoint Cinema 4 West.

That feeling of temporal whiplash also permeates Dial of Destiny, literally and figuratively, as it opens with what’s essentially an in-universe flashback to the final days of World War II, featuring a digitally de-aged Harrison Ford.

Much has been said about the practice of artificially reducing an actor’s age using CGI — including by rogerebert.com, which called the effects “distracting instead of enhancing” — but I beg to differ. So much of the Indiana Jones canon requires a suspension of disbelief that taking in a slightly gauzy rendition of our hero minus the facial evidence of his 81 years seems hardly tough to ask of audiences.

Rather, it simply felt good to see Jones kicking Nazis’ asses six ways from Sonntag and coming away with nary a scratch.

All that was merely a prologue, however, for the main action of the film, which opens on Jones as a boozy, heartbroken divorcee sweating in his underwear in a dingy New York apartment on the day he is to retire from teaching archeology on July 20, 1969 — the same date of the moon landing.

This Indy is very much aged. Everything sags, everything hurts and everything sucks, including his young hippie neighbors who are whooping it up to celebrate “Moon Day.” The 1969 version of our favorite swashbuckling professor/artifact hunter couldn’t care less. 

His mind is on the loss of his son (Shia LaBeouf, in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) during the war; the subsequent breakdown of his marriage to Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Crystal Skull); and, upon arriving at his half-full lecture hall, the irrelevance of his own past and the past in general to his bored students. (Insult to injury: His colleagues give him a clock at his halfhearted retirement “party” after class is canceled to watch the lunar landing.) 

Truly, we find Indiana Jones at his lowest ebb.

All that changes after he ducks into a neighborhood bar for a couple-five whiskeys — after giving the “gift” clock to a passing homeless guy — and an attractive young woman pulls up a stool next to him.

After some gruff and grumbly preamble, Jones finds out he’s talking to his long-lost goddaughter, Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), with whose father Basil (Toby Jones) Indy opened the film whooping Nazis and ending up with a mysterious artifact that turns out to be the titular “Dial of Destiny” — a.k.a., the real-life “Antikythera Mechanism.”

By way of a quick history primer, sponge divers in Greece hauled up the Antikythera Mechanism (really just part of a larger device) from the wreck of a massive Roman ship in 1901, and specialists have been puzzling over its construction and purpose ever since. 

Basically, it’s regarded as the earliest analog computer, likely constructed in the second century B.C.E. and, suggested by some — including this movie — to have been the work of no less than the great inventor Archimedes. Guesses as to its use are varied, but all the experts tend to agree that it represents some kind of super-advanced ancient calendar or clock.

In Dial of Destiny, it certainly serves that function — and much, much more (no spoilers here).

Long story short, Helena wants Indy’s help in tracking down the pieces of the mechanism to unravel its secrets, make her famous and fulfill the mission that drove her dad insane.

If only it were that simple.

Of course, Jones agrees and they’re off on a rollicking, globe-trotting adventure featuring some old friends, including lovable Egyptian digger Sallah (John Rhys-Davies); new friends, like deep-sea diver Renaldo (Antonio Banderas); and an excellent new enemy, Nazi scientist-turned-American aerospace pioneer Dr. Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen).

Is Dial of Destiny the greatest tale ever told? No. Is it even the best Indiana Jones movie? No. (Though I’d rank it third behind Raiders and Crusade). Is it the quintessence of a summertime blockbuster and one of the best ways to turn back the clock with a younger generation? Absolutely.