Indiana Jones, Take Five*
*As I chose this title, I couldn’t resist using Dave Brubeck's jazz classic, "Take Five," composed
by saxophonist Paul Desmond, on the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s Time Out album (1959).
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative. However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, though better options may be on the horizon. (Note: Anything in bold blue [some may look near purple] is a link to something more in the review.)
Here’s the trailer:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge its size;
activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy). To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
What Happens: We begin in 1944 when Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford)*—disguised as a German soldier—and his Oxford colleague Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) are trying to retrieve the Lance of Longinus (supposedly the spear a Roman soldier used to piece the side of crucified Jesus Christ to show he was already dead) which Nazi soldiers had in a train headed for Berlin along with other ancient artifacts, possibly with supernatural properties for Hitler’s delight. Both Jones and Shaw are captured separately, but Jones escapes, jumps onto the Nazi train, frees Shaw, and, finding the Lance is a fake they instead take a truly valuable object, half of Archimedes’ Dial, a device which—in the plot of this movie—can show the location of cosmic wormholes, allowing time travel. (This is based on an actual ancient true analogue computer, the Antikythera mechanism, used to predict astronomical positions and eclipses; however, in this new narrative famed mathematician/inventor Archimedes found the device to be so dangerously-powerful he broke it in 2, hid both halves, but somehow this part ended up being found, taken by the Nazis.) German astrophysicist Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen),**also on the train, knows the Lance is a fake but is excited about the Dial, confronts Jones and Shaw, they all end up in a dangerous trek atop the train cars, dodging low tunnels, until Jones and Shaw take a deep dive into a river just before Allied forces bomb the train and the bridge; they survive the fall, walk away with their portion of the Dial; Jones entrusts to Shaw, who then has a life-long-obsession both with finding the other half of the device as well as destroying it because of the dangers it represents (we see in a flashback how he was about to smash the part he had, instead gave it to Indiana for destruction, though Jones merely hid it in a college storeroom).
*For these scenes Ford’s face and voice were put through an expensive computer-based-de-aging-process to take 40 years off his appearance, described a bit further in the final section of this review.
**In a link in this review's next section it’s noted Voller is somewhat modeled on German scientist Wernher von Braun, a leading designer of the V-2 rocket, a guided missile used in 1944 by Nazis to kill thousands of military and civilians in London and other European cities, yet von Braun and other German scientists/engineers were brought to the U.S. after WW II to develop the American space program, leading me to think of Tom Lehrer’ caustic, satirical song, "Wernher von Braun" (album That Was the Year That Was, 1965), where this man doesn’t care whom he works for/what he does.
The rest of the story's in 1969 where Jones has (why unknown to us) left his job as Associate Dean (seen briefly at the end of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull [Steven Spielberg, 2008]) at (fictional) Marshall College (Bedford, CT) to relocate to Hunter College, an actual unit of the City University of New York.* As we shift to this story’s present, Jones is on the verge of retirement (as bored as his students are, even when he’s lecturing about the innovative weapons devised by Archimedes to stall the Roman invasion of Syracuse, Sicily in 213-212 BC), saddened by the death of his son (a major character in … Skull), Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf), in Vietnam, who seemingly enlisted as a rebuke to his father and the resulting separation-pending-divorce from wife Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), whom he had married in 1957 (also seen at ... Skull's conclusion).
While Jones’ life has become a slog, NYC is about to have a major parade in celebration of the returning Apollo 11 astronauts from their journey to the moon, a feat made possible by Voller, who now works for NASA as “Dr. Schmidt.” Jones’ life is perked up, though, by his long-unseen-goddaughter, archeologist Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), Basil’s daughter, who wants to continue Dad’s obsession with the Dial, so Indiana takes her to its hiding place only to be confronted by Voller, his thugs, and CIA agents working with him, not knowing the real reason he wants to use the Dial—to go back to 1939 where he can kill Hitler, take command of the Reich, win the war, and impose his twisted vision on the world. After a grand chase through NYC streets, ultimately Helena makes off with the Dial, Indiana’s aided by his old friend Sallah (John Rhys-Davies)—now a city cab driver after Jones helped him and his family immigrate—followed by Indiana learning Helena’s actually an antiquities smuggler/black-market-auctioneer (possibly in retaliation to how much Dad devoted to his profession instead of her), so he’s off for Tangier to thwart her illegal sale of the Dial.
*From late August 1972 to late December 1973 I was an audiovisual administrator at another CUNY campus, Queens College, maybe ventured over to Manhattan sometimes to Hunter. Wherever Jones may have gone in the City after his retirement I never ran into him (nor did I encounter 2 of Queens’ most famous men, Archie Bunker and Donald Trump—I can only wish the latter were as fictional as the others, although his actions seem more unreal than reasonable for much of the time).
He’s successful, but Voller and his thugs show up again, grab the Dial, and we’re away on another chase with Jones, Helena, and her teen accomplice, Teddy Kumar (Ethann Isidore), after Voller, but there’s also the need to avoid a group of local Moroccan bad guys who are after Helena for other reasons. Ultimately, the CIA troops stop Voller but are killed so he gets away with the Dial, leading Jones’ small team to follow them to Greece (due to notes from Basil about where the other half of the Dial might be buried offshore). Jones and Helena go on a deep dive with Indy’s old friend, Renaldo (Antonio Banderas), find a useful item which steers them to Archimedes’ grave in Sicily, but Voller’s gang catches up, kills Renaldo, follows the Jones group once again. Ultimately, they all end up at the grave where the other half of the Dial resides in the coffin; Voller wounds Jones, reconnects the Dial's parts, heads off in his small plane with Jones and Helena as captives (Teddy steals another small plane, follows them), but when he uses the Dial to locate a time-fissure he doesn’t realize the Dial’s not compensating for continental drift over the centuries so when they all come out of the wormhole they’re not in 1939 Germany but at the 212 BC Siege of Syracuse. ⇒The battling armies bring down Voller’s plane, killing everyone on board (Indiana and Helena parachuted out), Teddy lands safely. Jones’ group is taken to Archimedes (Nasser Memarzia) where they learn the Dial was intended only to bring travelers to his era for his own interest. The time fissure’s collapsing so the 21st-century folks need to leave fast in Teddy’s plane, but Indiana wants to stay, feeling he has nothing to live for back in the future. So, Helena knocks him out; when he wakes up in his NYC apartment, Helena and Teddy are there, but so is Marion, who’s ready to reconcile (encouraged by Helena, who seems to have abandoned her anti-archeological-ways in pursuit of a higher calling).⇐
So What? Yes, I know, if I’m actually going to see a movie in a theater for a change the big news last weekend was the debut of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (Christopher McQuarte), Tom Cruise’s latest blockbuster (pulled in $83.8 million domestically [U.S.-Canada], $239.4 globally in less than a week)—just as I’m sure Barbie (Greta Gerwig) and Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan) will be the big-ticket-items as they both open on July 21, 2023, but even though such offerings are the headlines of moviedom I’m still being cautious about COVID-19, so I prefer to wait a bit for the initial crowds to ease off, with the occasional opportunity to also see something recent on streaming, as with Asteroid City (Wes Anderson), out a couple of months now (still playing in several theaters, yet I prefer streaming when I can), intended for my review in the Two Guys posting next week. So, with all that in mind, my wife, Nina, and I were recently off to an early weekday matinee of … Destiny where we shared a theatre with about a dozen other patrons (I’m sure the … Dead Reckoning Part One auditoriums were considerably fuller) for the finale in this well-known-action-adventure-series (although in Variety’s recent-ranking of The 50 Best Action Movies of All Time only Raiders of the Lost Ark [Spielberg, 1981] from this series was noted [came in at #4; the James Bond series got 3 listings while Mission Impossible has 2, all are lower than Raiders …]).
Along that line, The Hollywood Reporter has ranked the 5 Indiana Jones movies with Raiders of the Lost Ark at #1, followed by Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Spielberg, 1989) at #2, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Spielberg, 1984) at #3, … Destiny at #4, and …Crystal Skull at #5 (this site provided to me by my good friend/film critic-mentor Barry Caine [although if he ever got the chance to edit my posts they’d probably be a tenth of what they usually are, because he prefers brevity as do most of the folks I know who admit attempting to read my reviews, then get worn out or just give up; sorry, but that's me]); I go along with their top pick, but for me #2 is … Destiny, then … Crusade #3, … Skull #4, … Doom #5 (Nina agrees with this order, plus she was somewhat put off by the level of violence in this last one, as were many in the industry leading to the modification of the PG rating to PG-13 for such movies). If you’re interested in seeing … Destiny—or already have, but would appreciate additional background on it—you might enjoy this video (10:00 [ads interrupt at 2:24, 5:02]) along with this one (10:01 [ad interrupts at 7:25]); further, director/co-screenwriter Mangold (writing with Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, David Koepp) shares his thoughts on major decisions about this movie and then his concerns about taking over from Spielberg.
However, if you really want to dive deep into Indy info you should consult this site (10:32 [ads interrupt at 5:14, 7:12]) where the author not only gives you a history of Henry Jones Sr. (Sean Connery) and Jr. (Ford, before changing his name to Indiana to honor their dog when he was growing up) but also cites many historical events which will work their way into the movie series (the only limitation here is that this site was constructed before … Destiny was released so the additional ancient and current inclusions are missing from this otherwise-remarkable-timeline). Now, with such massive backstory to consider (or ignore if you’re just interested in the present chapter of this archeology-based-series), what’s my essential response to Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (#5 in my ratings of these titles)? While none of these stories are cinematic masterpieces—except for their technical expertise, truly award-worthy—they all are very lively in presentation, stocked with commendable characters, and ultimately are grounded in aspects of history/well-known-legends so they may even provide something for your consideration of further research into what inspired them.
… Destiny’s no different in that it offers all of the above plus recognizable connections to the previous episodes (Indy on horseback, even in a NYC subway; graphic illustrations on maps showing the progress of planes or boats; the marvelous end scene, copied from Raiders … where this time it’s Indy asking Marion where he can kiss her that doesn’t hurt) along with those marvelous chase scenes so your eyes/brain can be stimulated just like with your body if you get to experience the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland (which Nina and I have done quite a few times). If this kind of movie doesn’t match your tastes, I can’t imagine why you’ve even bothered to read this far,* but if you do like this sort of action-cinema then I’d certainly recommend seeing … Destiny, either now in a theater or, if you’re patient, when it inevitably comes to streaming on Disney+. (Besides, there are not to be any more Indiana Jones adventures, so take this roller-coaster-ride while you can before they shut it down, along with others in the group even if just to refresh yourself on what came before—I’m glad I did that over the past few days because except for Raiders … I doubt I’ve seen any of them again after they first came out, so it was quite useful to put it back into chronological-context.)
*Some may wonder why Disney even went forward with this tale of Indy in his older age (admitting how his life’s taken a physical toll on his body), but when this series started Lucasfilm (now owned by Disney) signed a contract with Paramount Pictures for 5 movies, so this fulfills their requirement.
Bottom Line Final Comments: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny has been out for a bit over 2 weeks now, taking in $145.4 million in domestic theaters, $302.4 million worldwide, but that’s considered a flop by some measures in that it cost a reported $300 million to produce (maybe as high as $400 million), plus marketing/distribution costs easily half of that. The previous entries in this franchise—all directed by Steven Spielberg, original story concepts from George Lucas—were considerably more financially successful (although the current one will likely play for awhile, bringing in additional cash so check back at this extensively-informative-site in a few months to see what the final tally might be), with Raiders of the Lost Ark (often found renamed as Indiana Jones and the Raiders …) budgeted at $18 million with global gross of $389.9 million; Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom budgeted at $28 million, grossed $333.1 million; Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade budgeted at $48 million, grossed $474.2 million; and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull budgeted at $185 million, grossed $790.6 million (although about $100 million of the current movie’s budget went to the de-aging process on Harrison Ford [5:34] for the 1944 scenes [now, if those high-tech-technicians could invent some process to take actual years off of our lives instead of just wrinkles and hair color from our faces, we’d really have something worthwhile]).
The CCAL response has become less supportive over the years as well with ... the Dial of Destiny getting 68% positive reviews from Rotten Tomatoes, 58% average score from Metacritic, while Raiders ... got RT 93%, MC 85%; ... Doom got RT 77%, MC 57%; ... Crusade got RT 84%, MC 65%; ... Skull got RT 77%, MC 65%, with all of these (except the MC 57% for … Doom) being better that the critical responses to … Destiny. If you’d like to catch up on any (or all) of the previous Indiana Jones adventures you can (hopefully) turn to JustWatch to find streaming options for ... Raiders, ... Doom, ... Crusade, and ... Skull, where you’ll find all of them are available for free to Disney+ subscribers (as well as for people using some other platforms), while most can be rented for $3.79 at Amazon Prime Video (and a couple of those other platforms) or $3.99 at Apple TV+ (and other platforms), except for … Crusade is $3.99 on Amazon, Apple, Vudu, along with various others.
HOWEVER, as a Disney+ subscriber I tried all last weekend to access this cluster via my Roku box but never was able to connect to any of the icons except the trailer for … Destiny (although I could access them all on the Disney+ Web site [?], but didn’t want to deal with the hassle of hooking up a laptop to the TV), so I finally gave up, went to Amazon Prime Video, had no trouble in going the cheap rental route. (On Monday when I had more free time I contacted Customer Support for my LG TV, in an attempt to link the “smart” aspect of the device to LG Disney+ options; after 2 hours of attempts with 2 different helpers I finally got Disney+ into my LG streaming which also fixed the Roku problem [?]; I’ll never understand tech procedures if I live to be 100. [As further proof of that, as I was finishing writing this review I somehow managed to lose the file, which ultimately was retrieved but it only had the What Happens aspects so I had to spend some extra hours rewriting So What? material; maybe I've added a few years in early days of this crazy week, so I need Ford's de-aging!])
As I’ve noted before, I’d put … Destiny at #2 of the 5 and feel it’s an exciting, well-paced adventure that I’d encourage seeing, especially if you realize these movies are inspired by the weekly action serials produced largely for a weekend-matinee-kids-audience of the 1930s-‘40s, which had such a positive impact on the very young George Lucas, so they’re really more about form than content, although they've managed (so far) to win 7 Oscars (mostly in technical categories where they also got several other nominations, but Raiders … was a contender for Best Picture, Best Director). However, if you’re a dedicated Indy fan you can further consult that aforementioned Indiana Jones site for the long list of novels, children’s books, comic books, TV series, video games, and other connections to this swashbuckling archeologist. For now, though, I’ll just leave with my usual tactic of a review-ending-Musical Metaphor which this time will simply be the famed John Williams Indiana Jones theme music (named “The Raider’s March”) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rk cuzafbUc (15:38) with end-credits-versions from all 5 Indy movies, so listen to the subtle variations on this music if you don’t choose to immerse yourself in the much-larger-variations of the narratives.
SHORT TAKES
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
Some options for your consideration: (1) All the TV shows and movies impacted by the Actors' Strike (this site will be updated as situations change); (2) SAG-AFTRA strike FAQ; (3) Future of the acting profession may be at stake; (4) Actors and producers disagree over the rejected contract offer: (5) Netflix cuts down on password sharing, adds nearly 6 million subscribers.
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