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“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” is somehow both never boring and never really entertaining. It walks a line of modest interest in what’s going to happen next thanks to equal parts innovative story beats and the foundation of nostalgia that everyone brings to the theater. It’s an alternating series of frustrating choices, promising beats, and general goodwill for a legendary actor donning one of the most famous hats in movie history yet again. It should be better. It could have been worse. Both can be true. In an era of extreme online critical opinion, “The Dial of Destiny” is a hard movie to truly hate, which is nice. It’s also an Indiana Jones movie that's difficult to truly love, which makes this massive fan of the original trilogy a little sad.

The unsettling mix of good and bad starts in the first sequence, a flashback to the final days of World War II that features Indy ( Harrison Ford ) and a colleague named Basil Shaw ( Toby Jones ) trying to reclaim some of the historical artifacts being stolen by the fleeing Nazis. Jones looks normal, of course, but Ford here is an uncanny valley occupant, a figure of de-aged CGI that never looks quite human. He doesn't move or even sound quite right. It’s the first but not the last time in “The Dial of Destiny” in which it feels like you can’t really get your hands on what you’re watching. It sets up a standard of over-used effects that are the film’s greatest flaw. We’re watching Indiana Jones at the end of World War II, but the effects are distracting instead of enhancing.

It's a shame, too, because the structure of the prologue is solid. Indy escapes capture from a Nazi played by Thomas Kretschmann , but the important introduction here is that of a Nazi astrophysicist named Jurgen Voller (a de-aged Mads Mikkelsen ), who discovers that, while looking for something called the Lance of Longinus, the Nazis have stumbled upon half of the Antikythera, or Archimedes’ Dial. Based on a real Ancient Greek item that could reportedly predict astronomical positions for decades, the dial is given the magical Indy franchise treatment in ways that I won’t spoil other than to say it’s not as explicitly religious as items like the Ark of the Covenant of The Holy Grail other than, as Voller says, it almost makes its owner God.

After a cleverly staged sequence involving anti-aircraft fire and dozens of dead Nazis, “The Dial of Destiny” jumps to 1969. An elderly Indiana Jones is retiring from Hunter College, unsure of what comes next in part because he’s separated from Marion after the death of their son Mutt in the Vietnam War. The best thing about “The Dial of Destiny” starts here in the emotional undercurrents in Harrison Ford’s performance. He could have lazily walked through playing Indy again, but he very clearly asked where this man would be emotionally at this point in his life. Ford’s dramatic choices, especially in the film's back half, can be remarkable, reminding one how good he can be with the right material. His work here made me truly hope that he gets a brilliant drama again in his career, the kind he made more often in the ‘80s.

But back to the action/adventure stuff. Before he can put his retirement gift away, Indy is whisked off on an adventure with Helena Shaw ( Phoebe Waller-Bridge ), the daughter of Basil and goddaughter of Indy. It turns out that Basil became obsessed with the dial after their encounter with it a quarter-century ago, and Indy told him he would destroy the half of the dial they found. Of course, Indiana Jones doesn’t destroy historical artifacts. As they’re getting the dial from the storeroom, they’re attacked by Voller and his goons, leading to a horse chase through the subway during a parade. It’s a cluttered, awkward action sequence with power that’s purely nostalgic—an iconic hero riding a horse through a parade being thrown for someone else.

Before you know it, everyone is in Tangier, where Helena wants to sell her half of the dial, and the film injects its final major character into the action with a sidekick named Teddy ( Ethann Isidore ). From here, “The Dial of Destiny” becomes a traditional Indy chase movie with Jones and his team trying to stay ahead of the bad guys while leading them to what they’re trying to uncover.

James Mangold has delivered on “old-man hero action” before with the excellent “ Logan ,” but he gets lost on the journey here, unable to stage action sequences in a way that’s anywhere near as engaging as how Steven Spielberg does the same. Yes, we’re in a different era. CGI is more prevalent. But that doesn’t excuse clunky, awkward, incoherent action choreography. Look at films like “ John Wick: Chapter 4 ” or a little sequel that’s coming out in a few weeks that I’m not really supposed to talk about—even with the CGI enhancements, you know where the characters are at almost all times, what they’re trying to accomplish, and what stands in their way. 

That basic action structure often falls apart in “The Dial of Destiny.” There’s a car chase scene through Tangier that’s incredibly frustrating, a blur of activity that should work on paper but has no weight and no real stakes. A later scene in a shipwreck that should be claustrophobic is similarly clunky in terms of basic composition. I know not everyone can be Spielberg, but the simple framing of action sequences in “ Raiders of the Lost Ark ” and even “ Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade ” is gone here, replaced by sequences that cost so much that they somehow elevated the budget to $300 million. I wished early and often to see this movie's $100 million version.

“The Dial of Destiny” works much better when it’s less worried about spending that massive budget. When Indy and Helena get to actual treasure-hunting, and John Williams ’ all-timer theme kicks in again, the movie clicks. And, without spoiling, it ends with a series of events and ideas that I wish had been foregrounded more in the 130 minutes that preceded it. Ultimately, “The Dial of Destiny” is about a man who wants to control history being thwarted by a man who wants to appreciate it but has arguably allowed himself to get stuck in it through regret or inaction. There’s a powerful emotional center here, but it comes too late to have the impact it could have with a stronger script. One senses that this script was sanded down so many times by producers and rewrites that it lost some of the rough edges it needed to work.

Spielberg reportedly gave Mangold some advice when he passed the whip to the director, telling him , “It’s a movie that’s a trailer from beginning to end—always be moving.” Sure. Trailers are rarely boring. But they’re never as entertaining as a great movie.

In theaters now.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Film credits.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, language and smoking.

154 minutes

Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones

Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Helena Shaw

Antonio Banderas as Renaldo

John Rhys-Davies as Sallah

Toby Jones as Basil Shaw

Boyd Holbrook as Klaber

Ethann Isidore as Teddy Kumar

Mads Mikkelsen as Dr. Jürgen Voller

Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood

Thomas Kretschmann as Colonel Weber

• James Mangold

Writer (based on characters created by)

• George Lucas
• Philip Kaufman
• David Koepp
• Jez Butterworth
• John-Henry Butterworth

Cinematographer

• Phedon Papamichael
• Michael McCusker
• Dirk Westervelt
• Andrew Buckland
• John Williams

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'Dial of Destiny': Harrison Ford's final 'Indiana Jones' plays it safe raiding past films

Harrison Ford ’s iconic whip-cracking archaeologist literally rode off into the sunset with his dad in the closing moments of 1989’s “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.” So how do you wrap up what is actually the last adventure and somehow live up to an all-time great movie ending?

Therein lies the greatest struggle of “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” (★★★ out of four; rated PG-13; in theaters Friday). Director James Mangold ("Logan") takes over from Steven Spielberg in this fifth and final outing, following 2008’s underwhelming “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.” Ford still wears the character’s signature fedora like nobody’s business, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s new Helena Shaw brings refreshing vigor and roguish attitude to a throwback story that feels both wildly bizarre and way too safe.

“Destiny” feels most like a thrilling “Indiana Jones” ride at the beginning, an opening sequence set in 1944 as World War II is coming to an end and the hero’s up to old tricks: slugging Nazis, trying to rescue historical artifacts from Hitler’s goons and lucking his way through perilous predicaments – in this case, saving partner Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) from a train and absconding with the mythical Archimedes Dial.

The film then shifts to 1969, and an older Indy who's more likely to raid a liquor cabinet than a hidden tomb. His globetrotting days now behind him, Indy weathers personal problems and an uncertain future. On the same day he retires from teaching – and a parade celebrating the recent moon landing rolls through New York City – his estranged goddaughter Helena shows up asking about the dial, which supposedly can find fissures in time. Indy retrieves it from storage, and to his surprise, Helena steals it to sell to the highest bidder, though they’re not the only interested parties: Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), an extremely punchable former Nazi scientist working with the American space program, is an old nemesis who wants to use the dial to change history.

Is Harrison Ford really retiring Indy? He might role play at home: 'Not your business!'

Of course, Indy catches up with Helena, but they only have one half of the dial, sparking a race between good and bad guys that tends to drag over the film's two-and-a-half-hour running time, even when propelled by a fabulous John Williams score. The film misses the Spielbergian twinkle and lightness of previous episodes while borrowing from past treasures, from specific “Raiders of the Lost Ark” callbacks to a Tangier tuk tuk chase reminiscent of the “Temple of Doom” mine cart sequence. One left-field choice is the Archimedes Dial (based on the real-life Antikythera mechanism) as this movie's prize MacGuffin, which lacks the cultural significance of the Ark of the Covenant or Holy Grail but ties in nicely with the ticking clock of time for Indy (and the guy playing him).

At 80, Ford remains a top-notch action hero, and gives the aging adventurer more gravitas this go-round as Indy's hit a low point in his life. The actor even gets de-aged for the 1944 opening using special effects: It's effective most of the time, less so in the busier action bits.

'Indiana Jones': Ke Huy Quan, Harrrison Ford all smiles at 'Dial of Destiny' red carpet

More often, though, Indy feels like a supporting player next to Helena in his own story. “Destiny” creates a wonderfully conflicting duality between the twosome, as Helena reflects the Jones of “Temple of Doom” who’s all about “fortune and glory” while old Indy’s on his “it belongs in a museum!” kick. But Waller-Bridge plays her ambitions and evolving character so well that she pops off the screen in a more dynamic way. (I would absolutely watch a 1970s-set Helena Shaw Disney+ spinoff series and buy the action figures.)

Mikkelsen’s an obvious choice for a Nazi villain but more than does the job, while Antonio Banderas has a too-small role as Renaldo, an old Indy ally who helps the heroes on a deep dive into a Greek shipwreck. Familiar faces from past movies also make an appearance, including a welcome return by loyal pal Sallah (John Rhys-Davies).

“Dial of Destiny” is a solid Indiana Jones adventure that ultimately dodges the giant boulder of expectations. But as a franchise closer, it’s an anticlimactic affair that, while not a memorably rousing last crusade, at least bids Indy adieu in an emotionally satisfying fashion.

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Movie Reviews

'dial of destiny' proves indiana jones' days of derring-do aren't quite derring-done.

Bob Mondello

Harrison Ford — who's about to turn 81 — stars again as the intrepid archaeologist in this fifth (and possibly final) adventure. It's directed not by Steven Spielberg, but by James Mangold. Lucasfilm Ltd. hide caption

Harrison Ford — who's about to turn 81 — stars again as the intrepid archaeologist in this fifth (and possibly final) adventure. It's directed not by Steven Spielberg, but by James Mangold.

It's been 42 years since Raiders of the Lost Ark introduced audiences to a boulder-dodging, globe-trotting, bullwhip-snapping archaeologist played by Harrison Ford. The boulder was real back then (or at any rate, it was a practical effect made of wood, fiberglass and plastic).

Very little in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny , Indy's rousingly ridiculous fifth and possibly final adventure, is concrete and actual. And that includes, in the opening moments, its star.

Ford turns 81 next week, but as the film begins in Germany 1944, with the Third Reich in retreat, soldiers frantically loading plunder on a train, the audience is treated to a sight as gratifying and wish-fullfilling as it is impossible. A hostage with a sack over his head gets dragged before a Nazi officer and when the bag is removed, it's Indy looking so persuasively 40-something, you may suspect you're watching an outtake from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

A digitally de-aged Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Lucasfilm Ltd. hide caption

A digitally de-aged Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

Ford has been digitally de-aged through some rearrangement of pixels that qualifies as the most effective use yet of a technology that could theoretically let blockbusters hang in there forever with ageless original performers.

Happily, the filmmakers have a different sort of time travel in mind here. After establishing that Ford's days of derring-do aren't yet derring-done, they flash-forward a bit to 1969, where a creaky, cranky, older Indiana Jones is boring what appears to be his last class at Hunter College before retirement. Long-haired, tie-dyed and listening to the Rolling Stones, his students are awaiting the tickertape parade for astronauts returning from the moon, and his talk of ancient artifacts hasn't the remotest chance of distracting them.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Helena Jonathan Olley/Lucasfilm Ltd. hide caption

But a figure lurking in the back of the class is intrigued — Helena ( Phoebe Waller-Bridge ), the daughter of archeologist Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) who was with Indy back on that plunder train in 1944. Like her father before her, she's obsessed with the title gizmo — a device Archimedes fashioned in ancient Greece to exploit fissures in time — "a dial," says Helena "that could change the course of history."

Yeah, well, every adventure needs its MacGuffin. This one's also being sought by Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), who was also on that plunder train back in 1944, and plans to use it to fix the "mistakes" made by Hitler, and they're all soon zipping off to antiquity auctions in Tangier, shipwrecks in the Mediterranean, and ... well, shouldn't say too much about the rest.

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Director James Mangold, who knows something about bidding farewell to aging heroes — he helped Wolverine shuffle off to glory in Logan — finds ways to check off a lot of Indy touchstones in Dial of Destiny: booby-trapped caves that require problem-solving, airplane flights across maps to exotic locales, ancient relics with supernatural properties, endearing old pals (John Rhys Davies' Sallah, Karen Allen's Marion), and inexplicably underused new ones (Antonio Banderas' sea captain). Also tuk-tuk races, diminutive sidekicks (Ethann Isidore's Teddy) and critters (no snakes, but lots of snake-adjacents), and, of course, Nazis.

Mangold's action sequences may not have the lightness Steven Spielberg gave the ones in Indy's four previous adventures, but they're still madcap and decently exciting. And though in plot terms, the big climax feels ill-advised, the filmmaker clearly knows what he has: a hero beloved for being human in an era when so many film heroes are superhuman.

Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones Jonathan Olley/Lucasfilm Ltd. hide caption

Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones

So he lets Ford show us what the ravages of time have done to Indy — the aches and pains, the creases and sags, the bone-weariness of a hero who's given up too much including a marriage, and child — to follow artifacts where they've led him.

Then he gives us the thing Indy fans (and Harrison Ford fans) want, and in Dial of Destiny's final moments, he dials up the emotion.

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‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ Review: Turning Back the Clock

The gruff appeal of Harrison Ford, both de-aged and properly weathered, is the main draw in this generally silly entry in the long-running franchise.

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By Manohla Dargis

What makes Indy run? For years, the obvious answer was Steven Spielberg, who, starting in 1981 with “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” guided Harrison Ford’s hunky archaeologist, Dr. Henry Walton Jones Jr., in and out of gnarly escapades and ripped shirts in four box-office behemoths. By the time Spielberg directed Ford in their last outing, “ Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ” (2008), Indy was in his late 50s and fans were speculating that the character was immortal, even if the franchise itself had begun running on fumes.

As a longtime big Hollywood star and hitmaker, Ford had already achieved an immortality of a kind. Indy-ologists, though, were more focused on the eternal life that Indy might have been granted by the Holy Grail when he takes a healthy swig from it in his third outing, “The Last Crusade” (1989). It’s pretty clear from his newest venture, the overstuffed if not entirely charmless “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” that while Indy may not in fact be immortal, the brain trust overseeing this installment wishes he were. They haven’t simply brought the character back for another go, they have also given him a digital face-lift.

The face-lift is as weird and distracting as this kind of digital plastic surgery tends to be, though your mileage will vary as will your philosophical objections to the idea that Ford needed to be de-aged to draw an audience, even for a 42-year-old franchise that’s now older than most North American moviegoers. The results don’t have the spooky emptiness of uncanny-valley faces. That said, the altered Indy is cognitively dissonant; I kept wondering what they’d done to — or perhaps with — Ford. It turns out that when he wasn’t getting body doubled, he was on set hitting his marks before his face was sent out to be digitally refreshed.

The guy you’re familiar with eventually appears — with wrinkles and gray hair, though without a shirt or pants, huzzah — but first you need to get past the prolonged opener, which plays like a franchise highlight reel. These nods to the past are unsurprising for a series steeped in nostalgia. “Raiders” was created by Spielberg’s pal, George Lucas, who saw it as a homage to the serials that he’d loved as a kid. Lucas envisioned a hero along the lines of Humphrey Bogart in “Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” but with morals (more or less), while Spielberg was interested in making a Bond-style film without the hardware and gimmicks.

As soon as the younger Indy appears in “Dial of Destiny,” it’s clear that the nostalgic love for old Hollywood that defined and shaped the original film has been supplanted by an equally powerful nostalgia for the series itself. That helps explain why this movie finds Indy once again battling Nazis, who make conveniently disposable villains for a movie banking on international sales. After directing “Schindler’s List” (1993), Spielberg expressed reluctance to make Nazis “Saturday-matinee villains,” as he once put it . The team here, by contrast, knows no such hesitation, even if evoking Spielberg’s films inevitably raises comparisons that do no one any favors, particularly the franchise’s new director, James Mangold.

The movie opens in 1944 with Indy — wearing an enemy uniform as he did in “Raiders” — being held captive, a sack coyly obscuring his head while Nazi hordes scurry about. Once the sack comes off — ta-da! — the plot thickens with a mysterious antique (à la “Raiders”), nods to the Führer, the introduction of an Indy colleague (Toby Jones) and dastardly doings from a fanatic (Mads Mikkelsen, whose face has been similarly ironed out). There’s an explosion, a sprint to freedom, a zipping car, a zooming motorcycle (as in “The Last Crusade”) and a dash atop a moving train (ditto), a busy pileup that Mangold finesses with spatial coherency.

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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Archaeologist Indiana Jones races against time to retrieve a legendary artifact that can change the course of history. Archaeologist Indiana Jones races against time to retrieve a legendary artifact that can change the course of history. Archaeologist Indiana Jones races against time to retrieve a legendary artifact that can change the course of history.

• James Mangold
• Jez Butterworth
• John-Henry Butterworth
• David Koepp
• Harrison Ford
• Phoebe Waller-Bridge
• Antonio Banderas
• 1.7K User reviews
• 360 Critic reviews
• 58 Metascore
• 7 wins & 33 nominations total

Top cast 99+

• Indiana Jones

• Colonel Weber

• Young SS Officer
• Italian Ticket Seller
• (as Alfonso Rosario Mandia)

• Larry - Beat Poet Guy

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia In an interview with Stephen Colbert , Harrison Ford explained how the filmmakers digitally de-aged him for the flashback sequence: "They have this artificial intelligence program that can go through every foot of film that Lucasfilm owns. Because I did a bunch of movies for them, they have all this footage, including film that wasn't printed. So they can mine it from where the light is coming from, from the expression. I don't know how they do it. But that's my actual face. Then I put little dots on my face and I say the words and they make [it]. It's fantastic." At 80, he is the oldest actor to be de-aged in a movie, surpassing Al Pacino , who was 79 when he was de-aged in The Irishman (2019) .
• Goofs Indy identifies the half lion half eagle creature carved on Archimedes' tomb as a Phoenix. The creature is actually a griffin and bears little or no resemblance to a Phoenix.

Dr. Voller : You should have stayed in New York.

Indiana Jones : You should have stayed out of Poland.

• Crazy credits The Paramount Pictures logo appears normally, and does not fade into a mountain-shaped opening shot, the only film in the Indiana Jones films to do so. Instead, the Lucasfilm logo fades into a lock on a door in 1944 Germany.
• Alternate versions On the International prints of the film, the original variant of Disney's 100th anniversary logo (with 100 YEARS OF WONDER tagline) was shown as the first logo instead of tagline-less variant of the same logo.
• Connections Featured in AniMat's Crazy Cartoon Cast: Changing of the Bobs (2020)
• Soundtracks Lili Marleen Written by Hans Leip and Norbert Schultze

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'Indiana Jones' Stars Through The Years

• How long is Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny? Powered by Alexa
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• June 30, 2023 (United States)
• United States
• Official Disney (Australia)
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• Greek, Ancient (to 1453)
• Indiana Jones 5
• North Yorkshire Moors Railway, 12 Park Street, Pickering, North Yorkshire, England, UK (German railway scenes)
• Walt Disney Pictures
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• $294,700,000 (estimated)
• $174,480,468
• $60,368,101
• Jul 2, 2023
• $383,963,057

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 34 minutes
• Dolby Atmos
• D-Cinema 96kHz Dolby Surround 7.1
• Dolby Digital
• Dolby Surround 7.1
• 12-Track Digital Sound

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‘indiana jones and the dial of destiny’ review: harrison ford cracks the whip one last time in a final chapter short on both thrills and fun.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Mads Mikkelsen also star in James Mangold’s globe-hopping adventure about the quest for an ancient gadget able to locate fissures in time.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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What the new film — scripted by Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, David Koepp and Mangold, with the feel of something written by committee — does have is a sweet blast of pure nostalgia in the closing scene, a welcome reappearance foreshadowed with a couple visual clues early on. That heartening return is also suggested by a moment when Harrison Ford ’s Dr. Jones, yanked out of retirement after 10 years teaching at New York’s Hunter College, stops to reflect on the personal mistakes of his past. Which is pretty much the first time the movie pauses for breath, and it happens an hour and 20 minutes into the bloated 2½ hour run time.

Part of what dims the enjoyment of this concluding chapter is just how glaringly fake so much of it looks. Ford is digitally — and convincingly — de-aged in an opening sequence that finds him back among the Nazis at the end of World War II. Hitler has already fled to his bunker and Gestapo gold-diggers are preparing for defeat by loading up a plunder train full of priceless antiquities and various stolen loot.

Scurrying to save himself and rescue his professorial Brit pal Basil Shaw (Toby Jones), Indy ends up in a death match with a Third Reich heavy on top of the train as it speeds through a long mountain pass. But any adrenaline rush that extended set-piece might have generated is killed by the ugly distraction of some truly terrible CG backgrounds. The foundations of this series are in Spielberg’s overgrown-kid playfulness with practical effects. The more the films have come to rely on a digital paintbrush, the less hair-raising their adventures have become.

The bulk of the action takes place in 1969, when Indiana feels the strain even getting up out of his recliner (and Ford commendably shrugs off vanity, making no effort to hide his age). The unexpected return into his life of the late Basil’s daughter Helena ( Phoebe Waller-Bridge ), whom Indy hasn’t seen since her childhood, revives thoughts of Archimedes’ golden double-discus gizmo and whether its purported properties might actually work. Helena claims to have chosen the legendary doodad as the subject of her doctorate thesis.

The dial was split in half by its inventor to avoid it slipping into the wrong hands — or to help flesh out a laborious new installment requiring multiple destinations — so half of it sits in an archeological vault, courtesy of Dr. Jones, and the other half lies in parts unknown. But Helena isn’t the only one interested.

It also brings Nazi physicist Dr. Jürgen Voller ( Mads Mikkelsen ), who had a previous brush with Indy 25 years ago, out of hiding. He’s been living under an alias and working for the NASA space program, developing the technology that took the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. Turns out he changed his name but not his political persuasion, so going back in time would allow him to “correct” history.

Mangold goes from one set-piece to another without much connective tissue. They include a chase on horseback and motorcycle through the streets of Manhattan that crashes through an anti-Vietnam protest and an Apollo 11 “Welcome Home” ticker-tape parade before continuing in the subway tunnels. There’s also a frantic flight in Moroccan tuk tuks and a dive to the bottom of the sea off the coast of Greece to find a coded guide to Archimedes’ tomb. By that time, you’ll likely have given up following the contorted plot mechanics and just be zoning in and out with each new location.

Or maybe you’ll spend time wondering what drew third-billed Antonio Banderas to such an insignificant role as Renaldo, Indy’s old fisherman buddy, whose diving expertise provides a crucial assist while getting Indy into a tangle with a bunch of outsize CG eels so sloppily rendered that Disney can relax about any Little Mermaid sniping. Renaldo has a crew stacked with male models who have bodies that didn’t exist in the late ‘60s, which seems an intriguing detail, though he’s not around long enough to shed light on it.

Mikkelsen can be a fabulously debonair villain (see: Casino Royale ), but any interesting idiosyncrasies the character might have exhibited are drowned in convoluted plot. This calls for a larger-than-life bad guy, and he’s somehow smaller. Filling the plucky young sidekick spot, Isidore’s Teddy is, well, let’s just say he’s no Short Round and leave it at that.

This is a big, bombastic movie that goes through the motions but never finds much joy in the process, despite John Williams’ hard-working score continuously pushing our nostalgia buttons and trying to convince us we’re on a wild ride. Indy ignores the inevitable jokes about his age and proves he can still handle himself in a tight spot. But Ford often seems disengaged, as if he’s weighing up whether this will restore the tarnished luster to his iconic action hero or reveal that he’s past his expiration date. Both the actor and the audience get a raw deal with this empty exercise in brand redemption.

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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny review: Disney whips up a lively (final?) adventure

If Indiana Jones does hang up his hat, the fifth film is a surprisingly emotional, diverting, and satisfying conclusion.

Maureen Lee Lenker is a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly with over seven years of experience in the entertainment industry. An award-winning journalist, she's written for Turner Classic Movies, Ms. Magazine , The Hollywood Reporter , and more. She's worked at EW for six years covering film, TV, theater, music, and books. The author of EW's quarterly romance review column, "Hot Stuff," Maureen holds Master's degrees from both the University of Southern California and the University of Oxford. Her debut novel, It Happened One Fight , is now available. Follow her for all things related to classic Hollywood, musicals, the romance genre, and Bruce Springsteen.

It's not the years, it's the mileage… and in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, out June 30, the titular hero racks up plenty of thrilling miles in what is supposedly his farewell to the big screen.

We open on a younger Indy (a de-aged Harrison Ford in the best use of the often questionable technology to date) running for his life amidst the death throes of the Third Reich. Infiltrating a Nazi treasure trove, he and fellow academic/archaeologist Basil Shaw ( Toby Jones ) attempt to recover priceless historical artifacts from the retreating Nazis. On board a train, Indy encounters Jürgen Voller ( Mads Mikkelsen ), a Nazi mathematician intent on locating the Dial of Destiny, more formally known as Archimedes' antikythera, a cosmological device with potentially world-altering powers.

Flash forward to 1969 and the celebration of the moon landing in New York City. Indiana Jones is living alone. He mourns his son Mutt, who died in combat in the Vietnam War (an expedient end to the problematic specter of what to do about Shia LaBeouf 's existence within the franchise); he's separated from Marion ( Karen Allen ); and he's now preparing to retire from Hunter College where he's been a professor for over a decade.

His lonely life is interrupted by the arrival of Helena Shaw ( Phoebe Waller-Bridge ), his goddaughter, who is on the hunt for the antikythera with questionable motives. Helena's appearance and bid for the dial thrusts Indy into a new adventure where he must once again face off against Voller, who now goes by the name of Professor Schmitt, and stop his quest to return the Nazi regime to power.

Ford returns as Indy, but he's not merely a guy with a cool hat and a bullwhip with a few more lines on his face. Just as James Mangold did for Hugh Jackman's Wolverine in Logan , he presents an Indiana Jones weathered by life — a man who has spent decades chasing down ancient artifacts and fighting Nazis.

Indiana Jones has always been a world-weary guy, cynical and full of wise cracks in the face of danger, but here, he feels like he's finally earned it. Ford's soulful, craggy face is the cipher for the lifetime of adventure, physical pain, and loss that Indy has endured. There's humor in that, as when Indy lists off some of the more ridiculous things he has done while scaling a wall with Helena. But there's sadness too, in the friends he's lost and the tragedy he has faced.

Ford has always lent Indy a humanity and depth that is too often ignored in favor of celebrating his capacity for dry one-liners and his rugged good looks (both well-deserving of the praise they've received). Here, he gets to unleash the emotional side of Indy, his reverence for history and love for those he holds dear visibly weighing him down. In 1969, as humanity looks to the future, Indiana Jones, a man dedicated to protecting the past, is a man out of place in his own time. Ford's curmudgeonly restraint barely conceals the open wounds of his losses.

Dial of Destiny is often best in its moments of quiet resonance, but it doesn't leave enough breathing room to maximize the impact of Ford's performance. Instead, the film volleys from one action sequence to the next, whether it be a dangerous dive into deep ocean waters, a horse race through New York City streets and subways(!), or a perilous car chase through Tangiers. Mangold crafts these scenes with precision, building them to a fever pitch and then throttling the accelerator when it seems the scene has peaked. This makes the pacing wonky, and more scenes of introspective Indy would have been welcome in exchange for shaving a few minutes off the nonstop danger. But that doesn't make the sequences any less exciting or nerve-wracking, generating an old-school adventure energy reminiscent of the original trilogy.

Unlike the monkey swinging or the infamous nuclear explosion refrigerator nonsense of Crystal Skull, the action here also feels utterly believable. The physical toll it takes on an older Indy is palpable, the stakes higher because of the acknowledgement of his mortality. At his best, Indiana Jones has always been a hero that feels utterly human. Maybe a little smarter than the rest of us, but no less earthbound. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, when he takes a punch to the jaw, we feel it — and Dial remembers that Indy's greatest asset is his conspicuous humanity in the face of peril.

Waller-Bridge, who leaped from Fleabag 's critical acclaim to writing for James Bond and starring in an Indiana Jones flick, is a saucy, slippery foil to Ford. Where Marion was feisty and reckless, and Dr. Henry Jones ( Sean Connery) was persnickety and gruff, Helena is whimsical and brash. Her loyalties shift faster than sand in an hourglass, keeping Indiana Jones, and by extension, the audience, on their toes. Waller-Bridge has a winking sense of humor as a performer that imbues her natural ability to make the audience believe they're her confidantes while remaining delightfully unpredictable.

Mikkelsen, a prince of silver-tongued, elegant villainy, is under-used. Jürgen Voller lacks distinction as a villain, possessing neither the naked ambition of Belloq (Paul Freeman) from Raiders or the self-serving sycophancy of Walter Donovan (Julian Glover) in Last Crusade. While his goons are outright unhinged, Voller is chilled cardboard, a Nazi who lacks any personality besides his commitment to the ideals of Nazism. His villainy lacks teeth, but perhaps that's because the notion of bringing fascism back feels like a day-to-day occurrence in our world. He's not half so frightening as anything on the nightly news.

Dial of Destiny is 85 percent of a delightful return to form for the franchise and 15 percent absolutely ludicrous climax. We won't spoil the reveal, but suffice it to say it leans too heavily into a plot point that Marvel and DC have exhausted in recent years — and the temporal, geographical place it decides to take its climactic sequence is both outlandish and entirely too on-the-nose.

It's not that Indiana Jones hasn't always built its stories around fantastical ancient artifacts. (See: the Ark of the Covenant, the Sankara Stones, the Holy Grail, and, sigh, the Crystal Skull.) The antikythera is as good a McGuffin as any other (and it is based on a real scientific device from ancient Greece). But while the mystical, inexplicable power of objects like the Ark and the Grail have the capacity to shock and awe, the antikythera is merely a tool for a tired trope with a payoff that verges on tritely absurd.

One can understand the allegorical impulse of the storytelling device. This older, probably not wiser version of Indiana Jones is one who feels as much a relic as the artifacts he's dedicated his life to studying and preserving. It's hard to resist literalizing the metaphor in a story where the hero is made to feel like time has passed him by. But it doesn't land the way the filmmakers intended, instead undercutting Indy's reckoning with history and his place in it.

It's a testament to Ford's performance and the movie's overall effectiveness that this disappointing climax doesn't outweigh how much fun it all is. Much like the entries of the original trilogy, at its heart, Dial is a rip-roaring adventure that borrows more from the cinematic language of golden age swashbucklers than modern blockbusters.

In a sense, Indiana Jones has always been about nostalgia. Steven Spielberg and George Lucas set out to make movies that evoked the 1940s serials they loved growing up. That operates on two levels in Dial of Destiny, both in the film's historical setting and our own yen for the way the original movies made us feel.

Dial uses nostalgia as an appetizer, not a main course, and it's absolutely delicious for it. Nothing feels pandering, but rather each nod to the past is welcome in its measured distribution, as cozy and familiar as a favorite sweater or reconnecting with an old friend. Speaking of, Sallah ( John Rhys-Davis ) is back, but mainly as a vestige of the life Indy feels he's lost. Sallah too yearns for their shared past.

There are nods to our hero's well cataloged hatred of snakes, a cheeky reversal of the Raiders bringing a knife (or whip) to a gunfight, plenty of traveling by map, and a tear-jerking return to kissing where it doesn't hurt, all set to the core memory sounds of John Williams ' inimitable score (including a new theme for Helena!).

Much has been made of the fact that Dial will be Ford's last outing in the franchise. The movie has been billed as a send-off for Indiana Jones, but it doesn't feel definitive, particularly when the film's final shot makes a very decisive point about Ford/Indy hanging up the hat.

If it is indeed the last we'll see of Ford's Indiana Jones, it's a far more satisfying goodbye than where we last left him. But Dial makes one thing clear: whatever happens next, this franchise still has fresh skullduggery left to explore. Indiana Jones does not (and will never) belong in a museum. He's far too vital for that; his mileage, as a character and a pop culture icon, is infinite. Grade : B+

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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny reminds you how much Hollywood has changed

The new Indiana Jones movie hits different in the IP age.

by Alissa Wilkinson

In 1981’s Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark , the mercenary archaeologist René Belloq looks his friend-turned-foe Indiana Jones square in the eye and tells him the absolute truth. “Indiana,” he says, “we are simply passing through history.” They’re discussing the treasure they seek: the Ark of the Covenant, which might be just a valuable old artifact or might be the home of the Hebrew God, who knows. “This — this is history.”

Humans die. Civilizations pass away. Artifacts, however, remain. They tell us who we were, and who we still are.

History — the pursuit of it, the commodification of it, our universal fate to live inside of it — is Indiana Jones’s obsession, and that theme bleeds right off the screen and onto us. After all, Raiders was released 42 years ago, before I was born, and the fifth and final film (or so we’re told anyhow ), Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny , just premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, due to arrive in theaters this summer. Watch it at this moment in time, and you’re reminded that you, too, are passing through history. Those movie stars are looking a lot older.

This is a series preoccupied with time and its cousin, mortality, from the characters’ relentless pursuit of the ancient world’s secrets to the poignancy of Jones’s relationships. His adventures are frequently preceded by the revelation that someone or something in his life has died — a friend, a family member, a relationship. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade , released in 1989, makes the fact of death especially moving, with its plot point turning on immortality and the Holy Grail. More humorously, cobweb-draped skeletons are strewn liberally throughout the series, reminding us that other explorers and other civilizations have attempted what Indiana is trying to do. He’s just another in a string of adventurers, one who happens to be really good at throwing a punch.

Dial of Destiny feels like an emphatic period at the end of a very long sentence, a sequel making its own case against some future further resurrection — not unlike last year’s Cannes blockbuster premiere, Top Gun: Maverick , or 2021’s fourth installment of The Matrix . That’s not just because Harrison Ford is turning 81 this summer. It’s in the text; Dial of Destiny argues, explicitly, that you have to leave the past in the past, that the only way to ensure the world continues is to put one foot down and then another, moving into the future.

Ironic, yes, for a movie built on giant piles of nostalgia and made by a company that proudly spends most of its money nibbling its own tail . In fact, the entire Indiana Jones concept was nostalgia-driven even before the fedora made its big-screen debut. Harrison Ford’s whip-cracking adventurer descends from swashbuckling heroes of pulp stories and matinee serials that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg loved as kids; like that other franchise Ford launched, the Indy series is both original and pastiche, both contemporary-feeling and set in another time, another place, a world that’s far, far away.

Dial of Destiny is loaded with related ironies, though they’re mostly extratextual. On the screen, it’s fairly straightforward: a sentimental vehicle, one that hits familiar beats and tells familiar jokes, comfort food to make you feel like a kid again for a little while. The Indiana Jones movies , even the bad ones, have always been pretty fun to watch in a cartoon-movie kind of way, while also being aggressively just fine as films — I mean that with fond enthusiasm — and Dial of Destiny fits the bill perfectly.

This installment turns on pieces of a dial created by the Greek mathematician Archimedes, which, like most of the relics that pop up in Indy’s universe, may or may not bestow godlike powers on its wielder. Naturally, the Nazis want it, especially Hitler. So the film opens in 1944, with Indy (a de-aged Ford, though unfortunately nobody thought to sufficiently de-age his voice) fighting Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) to nab it while getting out of one of his signature high-octane scrapes via a familiar combo of costume changes, well-aimed punches, acrobatics, and dumb luck. Then we jump forward to 1969, to discover a very much not de-aged Indy collapsed into his armchair in front of the TV, shirtless and in boxers, snoozing and clutching the dregs of a beer. This is a movie about getting old, after all.

You can deduce the rest — old friends and new, tricks and turns, mysteries, maybe some time travel, the question of whether the magic is real. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is in this movie as Helena Shaw, Jones’s archaeologist goddaughter, and injects it with some much-needed joie de vivre. There are some fun chase scenes, though director James Mangold’s visual sense (richly demonstrated in previous films like Logan and Ford v Ferrari ) falls a little flat next to the memory of Steven Spielberg’s direction. But for the most part, it’s all here again. I don’t want to spoil your fun.

Yet a thread that’s run through the whole four-decade series, with heightened irony every time it comes up, is the battle between Indy — who firmly believes that history’s relics ought to be in a museum for everyone to enjoy — and fortune-seeking mercenaries or power-seeking Nazis, who want to privately acquire those artifacts for their own reasons. (Leaving the artifact where it is, perhaps even among its people, still doesn’t really seem to be an option.) It’s a mirror for the very real theft of artifacts throughout history by invading or colonizing forces, the taking of someone else’s culture for your own use or to assert your own dominance. That battle crops up again in this installment, with both mercenaries and Nazis on offer. Shaw, voicing a darker archaeological aim, wryly insists that thieving is just capitalism, and that cash is the only thing worth believing in; Voller’s aims are much darker.

It’s all very fitting in a movie about an archaeologist set in the midcentury. But you have to notice the weird Hollywood resonance. When Raiders first hit the big screen, it was always intended to be the first in a series, much like Lucas and Spielberg’s beloved childhood serials. (The pair in fact made their initial Indiana Jones deal with Paramount for five movies.) But while some bits (and chunks) of the 1980s films have aged pretty badly, they endure in part because they’re remixes that are alive with imagination and even whimsy, the product so clearly of some guys who wanted to play around with the kinds of stories they loved as children.

Now, in the IP era , remixing is a fraught endeavor. The gatekeepers, owners and fans alike, are often very cranky. The producers bank on more of the same, not the risk of a new idea. The artifacts belong to them , and they call the shots, and tell you when you can have access or not. (The evening Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny opened at Cannes, Disney — already infamously known for locking its animation away in a vault and burying the work of companies it acquires — announced it would start removing dozens of its own series from its streamers.) Rather than move into the future and support some new sandboxes, the Hollywood of today mostly maniacally rehashes what it’s already done. It envisions a future where what’s on offer is mostly what we’ve already had before.

In this I hear echoes of thinkers like Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer — two men who fled the Nazis, incidentally — who proposed the culture industry was giving people the illusion of choice, but only the freedom to choose what they said was on offer. You can have infinite variations on the same thing.

It’s a sentiment strangely echoed in Dial of Destiny . One night, Shaw is doing a card trick for some sailors, who are astounded that when they call out the seven of clubs, that’s what they pull out of the deck. But she shows Indy how she does it — by forcing the card on them, without them realizing. “I offer the feeling of choice, but I ultimately make you pick the one I want,” she explains, with a wry grin.

After 40 years and change, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny releases into a world where there’s more stuff than ever to watch, but somehow it feels like we have less choice, less chance of discovery. It is our moment in history — an artifact of what it was to be alive right now. When the historians of the future look back, I have to wonder what they’ll see, and thus who, in the end, they’ll think we really were.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and is playing in theaters worldwide.

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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny: Harrison Ford's last hurrah in iconic role tangles with Nazis, nostalgia and aging

For a pop series in which coveting treasure invariably leads to certain doom, the prospect of a fifth and supposedly final Indiana Jones movie – with a now 80-year-old Harrison Ford in the lead, and without Steven Spielberg behind the camera – may well constitute one cliffhanger too many; a last lunge for the Holy Grail that brings the whole temple crashing down.

Forty-two years after Raiders of the Lost Ark, the series has become as nostalgic for its own blockbuster heyday as its creator George Lucas once was for the serialised adventures of his childhood; the original film's seat-of-its-pants charm, roguish one-upmanship and spooky practical effects are now as talismanic as ancient relics.

It also means the franchise, now under the aegis of Disney, has backed itself into something of a creative corner.

Having tangled with atomic-age aliens in Spielberg's flawed-but-fascinating Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), our globe-trotting hero is back to doing what his current minders, at least, think he does best: punching Nazis. As the traitorous American villain once sneered at Indy, in 1989's cheerfully self-reflexive Raiders redux, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: "The Nazis? Is that the limit of your vision?"

Directed by James Mangold ( Ford v Ferrari ; Logan ), who has the unenviable task of stepping into Spielberg's sneakers (Spielberg and Lucas remain as executive producers), the Nazi-heavy Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is a sincerely mounted, often gripping action movie that also runs up against the limits of its own vision.

It's a film that wants to swing big, reckoning with an aging pulp hero out of his time, and questioning the perils of living for the past, but one whose ultimately tame execution – and, you might argue, very existence – serves to refute its thesis.

Without the playfulness of the old Paramount logo dissolve , the movie begins in gloomy media res, with Indy – played by a digitally de-aged Ford – deep behind German lines in 1944, just as the tide of the war is turning against the Nazis. He and his stuffy archaeologist colleague, Basil Shaw (Toby Jones), are trying to stop a train full of antiquities bound for Berlin (seems failing to nab both the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail hasn't dimmed the Führer's enthusiasm), when they stumble upon half of the Antikythera, an ancient dial rumoured to generate fissures in time, and run afoul of a Nazi commander, Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), determined to wield the mechanism for his own power.

"Whoever has it," Voller threatens, "will be God."

It's a long, muddy-looking sequence that, like too much of the movie's action, misses Spielberg's spatial dynamism and visual wit. But the film gathers some steam and personality in 1969, where we meet a now 70-year-old Indy, stuck in a cluttered New York apartment and snoozing on a recliner in front of psychedelic kids' show H.R. Pufnstuf, and about to be abruptly awoken by the downstairs neighbours blasting The Beatles. (The song: Magical Mystery Tour, of course.)

The crumpled professor is in the middle of a divorce and a thankless teaching job at Hunter College, where the bored, bubble-gum-popping students are more excited by the recent Moon landing than they are by ancient artefacts.

"Going to the Moon is like going to Reno," Indy grumbles, with every right of a guy who's seen extra-dimensional UFOs and Biblical phantasms.

The only person not looking to the future, it seems, is the now middle-aged Voller, who's been biding his time as a NASA physicist on the Apollo project, but whose real dream is to get his hands on the dial and turn back time, using his advanced knowledge to help the Nazis win the war.

Luckily, Indy's 30-something goddaughter, and Basil's kid, the spirited, whip-smart Helena Shaw (Fleabag's Phoebe Waller-Bridge), gets to it first. She's soon whisked the dial away to Tangier, where she's holding a black market antique auction alongside her teenage offsider, Teddy (a lively, if underused, Ethann Isidore).

With Indy joining them, it's an old-fashioned, international jaunt that takes our heroes across North Africa and into Europe by land and sea, with Voller and his goons – a moustachioed American stooge (Boyd Holbrook), presumably standing in for a contemporary Proud Boy – in hot pursuit.

Powered by Mangold's reliable craft and John Williams's typically baroque score, it all motors along at a pretty rousing clip, from an improbable horseback chase through a subway to a knockabout, Italian Job-inspired escape in tuktuks, with bugs, eels (the film's amusing variation on Indy's reptile phobia) and a salty Spanish sea captain (an all-too-brief Antonio Banderas) thrown in for good measure.

The lanky, mischievous Waller-Bridge is the animating spark for much of the adventure; as the mercenary, ethically dubious Helena, she's a ghost of Indy's own past, and the actor brings out a lovely, cross-generational rapport with Ford that occasionally evokes his double act with Sean Connery in The Last Crusade.

Her presence also suggests a scrambled moral complexity: In an era when Indy's old mantra, "It belongs in a museum," carries a whiff of institutional colonialism, who's to say Helena's black market capitalism is any less noble a pursuit?

Dial of Destiny is at its best when it tips its fedora towards these grey areas, when Mangold's sense of fraught American idealism – previously glimpsed in his intermittently compelling Ford v Ferrari – rises to the fore.

But while Mangold is a dependable action filmmaker with a steady command of the frame, the Indiana Jones films were never merely about great action; what he can't quite summon is the ineffable magic that the original films possessed, that strange alchemy that resulted from the synchronicity of – and sometimes, friction between – their creators.

Whether reanimating their movie-matinee childhoods in Raiders, pouring their post-divorce angst into the series' exhilarating 1984 highpoint, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, or teasing out daddy issues in The Last Crusade, Lucas and Spielberg brought a deeply personal vision to their populist escapades.

Even Crystal Skull, in which Lucas's loopy digital futurism clashed with Spielberg's late-career classicism, bore out a rich creative tension, yielding one of the series' most memorable images: The aging hero framed against the modern threat of a nuclear mushroom cloud (itself a direct line to Spielberg's 50s childhood, as seen in The Fabelmans ).

Put bluntly: No Spielberg, no Lucas – no Indiana Jones.

Dial of Destiny can't help but be a simulacrum of the series' past glories; even with its admirable attempts to wrestle with time and legacy, the film's lack of imagination undoes its ambition.

Given the wild possibilities afforded by this $295-million movie's magical time-travel MacGuffin – not to mention the digital de-aging toolkit at its disposal – the big climax plays it dispiritingly safe: catnip for history buffs, perhaps, but minus the nutty lunacy of the previous films' supernatural finales. (Imagine the perverse thrill of, say, seeing old Indy watch his youthful exploits serialised on screen in 1981. No such luck here.)

By the time the movie is quoting dialogue verbatim from Raiders, it's clear that it has nothing much to add to the legacy.

Through it all, it's possible to be moved by Ford, who continues to relish Indy like no other character in his 50-year stardom.

He's still capable of summoning that wry, crooked smile and schoolboy giddiness, but here, that cavalier spirit is tempered with a sense of time and loss. There's an incredibly touching moment, midway through the film, in which Indy opens up about his regret over a tragedy he wishes he could change, and Ford plays it with the kind of rare, unguarded tenderness that's escaped so many of his other legacy franchise roles in the last decade.

Dial of Destiny may not be the send-off that Indy deserves, but in those moments – and in the weight of Ford's presence – there's a flicker of the film it might have been.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is in cinemas now.

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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny First Reviews: 'Safe,' 'Wacky,' 'Empty,' Critics Say

"harrison ford's performance carries the movie" and more opinions from cannes film festival critics about the latest indiana jones adventure, in which ford revisits his role as the titular hero one last time..

TAGGED AS: Film , Lucasfilm , movie , Walt Disney Pictures

Exactly 15 years after the Cannes premiere of the previous installment, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny   just made its debut at the same film festival, and the first reviews have made their way online. This fifth movie in the franchise sees Harrison Ford return as the titular adventuring archaeologist, with many of his scenes set in the past using de-aging special effects.

Also along for the ride are Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Indy’s goddaughter and Antonio Banderas as a new ally, while John Rhys-Davies returns as Sallah, last seen in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade . James Mangold directs Dial of Destiny , taking over from Steven Spielberg, who helmed the first four Indiana Jones movies.

Here’s what critics are saying about Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny .

(Photo by Lucasfilm)

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Does it live up to expectations?

“It’s fun; it’s wacky; it works.” – Stephanie Bunbury, Deadline Hollywood Daily

“We all sat down to this movie hoping for a resurgence comparable to what JJ Abrams did with The Force Awakens, and if that didn’t exactly happen, it still gets up a storytelling gallop.” – Peter Bradshaw, Guardian

“James Mangold brings the character’s adventures to a satisfying close.” – James Mottram, South China Morning Post

“If this is the final Indiana Jones movie, as it most likely will be, it’s nice to see that they stuck the landing.” – Steve Pond, The Wrap

“Unfortunately, it ultimately feels like a counterfeit of priceless treasure: the shape and the gleam of it might be superficially convincing for a bit, but the shabbier craftsmanship gets all the more glaring the longer you look.” – Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph

“A belabored reminder that some relics are better left where and when they belong.” – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

“We have lived with worse.” – Donald Clarke, Irish Times

Where does it rank among the other Indiana Jones movies?

Ray Winstone, Shia LaBeouf, Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Photo by ©Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection)

“It’s an improvement on the execrable Crystal Skull .” – David Jenkins, Little White Lies

“This one has quite a bit of zip and fun and narrative ingenuity with all its MacGuffiny silliness that the last one really didn’t.” – Peter Bradshaw, Guardian

“ Dial of Destiny feels like an old-school Indy romp, more so than 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull , as it tries to capture the rollicking spirit of the originals.” – James Mottram, South China Morning Post

“ Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny may not be the finest film of the franchise, but it’s far from the worst.” – Matt Neglia, Next Best Picture

“Nobody with a brain in their heads will compare Dial of Destiny favorably to the first three films.” – Donald Clarke, Irish Times

“Four were enough.” – Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph

What are some other comparable movies?

National Treasure (2004) stars Diane Kruger, Nicolas Cage, and Justin Bartha (Photo by Touchstone/courtesy Everett Collection)

“There are big National Treasure vibes…take from that what you will.” – David Jenkins, Little White Lies

“It could give late-vintage Fast & Furious a very, very speedy run for its money when it comes to spectacular (and spectacularly ludicrous) SFX stunts.” – Stephanie Bunbury, Deadline Hollywood Daily

How is Harrison Ford’s return as Indiana Jones?

“Ford is beyond triumphant…his performance shines in the sense that the audience can feel the deeply emotional send-off he personally is giving his character in every quip, every punch, and every heartfelt adage that comes off his lips.” – Lex Briscuso, Slashfilm

“At 80 years old, Ford himself really gives it his all, even though the role initially requires him to look like he’d rather be anywhere else.” – Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph

“Now 80 years young, but carrying it off with humor and style and still nailing that reluctant crooked smile.” – Peter Bradshaw, Guardian

“He never loses either his scowl or his doggedness. He plays even the flimsiest scenes with conviction and dry humour. His performance carries the movie. Age cannot wither him in the slightest.” – Geoffrey Macnab, Independent

“Ford often seems disengaged, as if he’s weighing up whether this will restore the tarnished luster to his iconic action hero or reveal that he’s past his expiration date.” – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

What about Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s new character?

“She is gratifyingly badass.” – Stephanie Bunbury, Deadline Hollywood Daily

“Like Karen Allen’s Marion in the first film, a Howards Hawksian woman.” – John Nugent, Empire Magazine

“Phoebe Waller-Bridge has a tremendous co-star turn as Indy’s roguish goddaughter.” – Peter Bradshaw, Guardian

“Waller-Bridge has clearly been given the instruction to ‘just do Fleabag ’ but she’s operating without Fleabag -level material here, and her frequent attempts to juice up the clumsy gags with her trademark winking delivery tend to fall flat.” – Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph

“While Phoebe Waller-Bridge, of Fleabag fame, makes her saucy, spiky, and duplicitous in a cheeky way (she’s like the young Maggie Smith with a boatload of attitude), we never feel in our guts that Helena is a chip off the old Indy block.” – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

How are the movie’s villains?

Mads Mikkelsen (left) and Thomas Kretschmann (far right) in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (Photo by Lucasfilm Ltd.)

“As Jürgen Voller, Mads Mikkelsen is enjoyably hissable.” – John Nugent, Empire Magazine

“Mikkelsen, flanked by some heavies including Boyd Holbrook, is an excellent adversary.” – James Mottram, South China Morning Post

“He’s an infuriating villain, one that feels both menacing and overwhelming in his brutish intelligence — the kind of adversary it seems impossible to defeat, and thus the perfect final match for the one and only Indiana Jones.” – Lex Briscuso, Slashfilm

“Mikkelsen can be a fabulously debonair villain (see: Casino Royale ), but any interesting idiosyncrasies the character might have exhibited are drowned in convoluted plot. This calls for a larger-than-life bad guy, and he’s somehow smaller.” – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

“Mads Mikkelsen, with his lizard scowl and his shiny metallic hair, doesn’t play Voller as a realistic character. He’s a leering megalomaniac out of central casting.” – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

“Unfortunately, what we get is the pantomimic, hubristic, goose-stepping version of the Nazis.” – David Jenkins, Little White Lies

Are the action scenes worth the price of admission?

“The action is often very inventively staged. James Mangold, who has taken over directing duties from Steven Spielberg, sets a breakneck tempo.” – Geoffrey Macnab, Independent

“A bit involving a very heavy bomb is worthy of any movie this franchise has ever produced.” – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

“There are plenty of jolly chases, including a tuk-tuk vs classic Jag event in the narrow streets of Tangier.” – Peter Bradshaw, Guardian

Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (Photo by Jonathan Olley/Lucasfilm Ltd.)

“The action is generic and clunkily staged – for all the local detail in every individual shot of the heavily advertised tuk-tuk chase, it might as well be taking place on an endless conveyor belt.” – Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph

“Endless action sequences can become so flabbily overblown they lose any punch, but [Mangold] is never anything but brisk.” – Stephanie Bunbury, Deadline Hollywood Daily

“Like virtually all action sequences these days, this one suffers from the fact that visual effects can do pretty much anything, which tends to strip away any sense of surprise, novelty or even high stakes, no matter how frantic and extravagant things get.” – Steve Pond, The Wrap

“[They] utilize too much (far too much) of the era’s computer-generated imagery.” – Donald Clarke, Irish Times

Does it otherwise look good?

Boyd Holbrook in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (Photo by Lucasfilm Ltd.)

“The recreations of the 1960s vistas are gorgeous.” – Donald Clarke, Irish Times

“There’s no shot here, nor twist of choreography, that makes you marvel at the filmmaking mind that conceived it.” – Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph

“The climax of the film…looks washed out and sallow.” – Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair

Is the script satisfying?

Harrison Ford, Mads Mikkelsen, and Toby Jones in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (Photo by Lucasfilm Ltd.)

“The plot is hokum of the cheesiest hue, but the screenwriters know that hokum is the mulch in which this franchise germinates.” – Donald Clarke, Irish Times

“The screenplay does provide a few big laughs.” – Jo-Ann Titmarsh, London Evening Standard

“The screenplay sometimes seems like a mish-mash of elements from the older movies thrown together in scattergun fashion.” – Geoffrey Macnab, Independent

“The globe-trotting can occasionally feel a bit MacGuffin-by-numbers: we must find the thing, which leads us to the map, which will help find the other thing.” – John Nugent, Empire Magazine

“One can feel the four credited screenwriters grasping at inspiration and coming up short.” – Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair

“Considering that the screenplay is credited to four writers, couldn’t they at least have thought of something cool for Indy to do with his whip?” – Nicholas Barber, BBC.com

Does it lean too much on nostalgia?

Harrison Ford de-aged in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

“It contains lots of satisfying fan service, from old friends popping up, to familiar situations unfolding in different ways.” – Steve Pond, The Wrap

“Just hearing John Williams’ score, yet another variant on the heroics and theatrics of the original, makes anyone of a certain age feel that everything is momentarily right with the world.” – Stephanie Bunbury, Deadline Hollywood Daily

“This is an exercise in affectionate nostalgia.” – Geoffrey Macnab, Independent

“At least this film’s easy nostalgia has some meta-textual purpose behind it.” – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

“The film just about gets a passing grade for not going too heavy on the nostalgia-porn fan service.” – David Jenkins, Little White Lies

Is Steven Spielberg missed?

“The missing component is Steven Spielberg, for as talented as a director James Mangold is, he cannot measure up to the cinematic brilliance that Spielberg imbues into each of his projects.” – Matt Neglia, Next Best Picture

“James Mangold, tasked with living up to a fearsome legacy, is competent with an action set piece, but displays little of Spielberg’s nimble, inventive physics, or of Spielberg’s famous gift for conjuring awe.” – Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair

“It’s content to tick off everything you’ve seen in other Indiana Jones films already, but with little of Spielberg’s sparkle.” – Nicholas Barber, BBC.com

“The biggest (or at least most evident) difference between Spielberg and Mangold is that one of them would never have allowed himself to make anything this stale, and one of them probably wasn’t given any other choice.” – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

Are there any other major issues?

Phoebe Waller-Bridge in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (Photo by Lucasfilm Ltd.)

“As the film goes on, the focus on uninteresting puzzles becomes a bit tedious.” – Donald Clarke, Irish Times

“Tonally, the film wavers. It pulls in too many different directions at once.” – Geoffrey Macnab, Independent

“One problem is the title relic, a curio of Ancient Greek lore rumored to give its possessor the power of time travel… Dial of Destiny ’s digression from holiness, though, is less than inspiring.” – Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair

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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny Ending Explained: Does Indy Survive His Final Adventure?

We have top men working on it right now. top. men..

Let's make this simple: You want to know if there are any post- or mid-credits scenes in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny . The answer is there are not. The fifth and seemingly final Indiana Jones movie has no scenes after the credits start rolling.

Full spoilers follow for the film beyond this point!

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ends the saga of Dr. Henry Jones Jr. after 40 years of whip-cracking, relic-chasing adventures. But just how final is Indy’s last hurrah? Who lives and dies in this fifth installment of the Lucasfilm franchise?

We’re going to unpack everything that happened to Indy, his friends, and his enemies at the end of the James Mangold-directed film, so if you don’t want to be spoiled, take Indy’s advice to Marion at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark and “Don’t look at it! Keep your eyes shut!”

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny Ending Explained

Within the cavernous Ear of Dionysius in Sicily, Nazi scientist Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) and his henchmen succeed in acquiring both halves of Archimedes Dial, aka the Antikythera, from our heroes: Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford), his opportunistic goddaughter Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), and her clever teenage associate Teddy (Ethann Isidore).

Whereas most past Indy movie MacGuffins have been supernatural in nature, this one is the product of science, not mysticism. Deviating from the actual history of the artifact, Dial of Destiny depicts the ancient mechanism as being able to locate fissures in time and thus allow its user to travel into the past. It’s basically a time compass.

Voller believes the Allies didn’t win World War II; Adolf Hitler lost it because he made too many mistakes. Voller wants to use the power of Archimedes Dial to reverse the outcome of World War II. Armed with his knowledge of the Nazis’ strategic errors throughout the war and now possessing a completely assembled Dial, Voller plans to time-travel from August 1969 back to August 1939. There, he will kill Hitler and become Führer himself to ensure Nazi Germany wins World War II this time.

With a seemingly mortally wounded Indy as his captive, Voller and his goons board a bomber and don their Nazi uniforms. Indy notices something when Voller emerges in his Nazi officer uniform. He’s wearing the same watch that the remains of Archimedes was wearing when they discovered his tomb back in the Ear of Dionysius, a grave that also happened to bear carvings of a large bird with propellers. Such watches wouldn’t exist for many centuries to come.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny Gallery

Indy realizes that Voller factored continental drift into his coordinates for time travel – a geologic hypothesis that the mathematician and engineer Archimedes would not have known about at the time he built the Dial. That means the plane is headed to the wrong point in time but it’s too late to abort the mission.

Pursued by Teddy’s stolen small aircraft, the Nazi plane — which Helena has stowed away on — is pulled into the time fissure vortex and travels into the past. During this, Teddy is startled to find that the pilot whose plane he swiped had been asleep in the back the entire time. He’s now awake and freaking out as both planes sputter and spiral out of the vortex.

Indy was right. Voller’s coordinates were wildly off and they did not travel back to 1939. Instead, they have arrived at the Siege of Syracuse (213–212 BC), which just so happens to be a subject Indy taught at Hunter College in New York City. The Nazi bomber and Teddy’s plane fly over the Mediterranean where they witness Roman ships and soldiers laying siege to the Kingdom of Syracuse, which is protected by elaborate defense mechanisms engineered by their hometown boy, Archimedes. Archimedes (Nasser Memarzia) is present during the siege where we see he’s still building the Antikythera.

Voller is distraught at having failed, realizing he’s missed his chance to change history. Those on the ground think the Nazi bomber is a dragon and soon the aircraft sustains fatal engine damage from incoming bolts. Voller’s neo-Nazi henchman Klaber (Boyd Holbrook) rains gunfire down on the ancients but the plane is irrevocably damaged.

Helena tries to save Indy but ends up tussling with more henchmen, and she almost plummets to her doom out of the open bay doors. Helena gets the drop on Voller and shoots him, allowing her and Indy to leap from the doomed plane using the last parachute. Voller and Klaber are in the cockpit when the failing plane crashes into the shore, killing all on board.

We later see Archimedes and his students exploring the wreckage where they observe Voller’s burnt corpse. Archimedes takes Voller’s watch. They also discover the completed Antikythera among the wreckage, something Archimedes has yet to complete at this point in time. The eagle with propellers engraved on Archimedes’ tomb is a reference to the Nazi bomber.

We see a Roman soldier spot Indy and Helena’s parachute descending nearby and he proceeds to investigate…

Does Indiana Jones Die in Dial of Destiny?

Indy and Helena land and disentangle themselves from their parachute. Indy is bleeding from his gunshot wound and wants her to just let him die here in the past. Teddy lands his plane nearby. The vortex is closing fast and they only have minutes left before they can take off and try to return to 1969.

With his son Mutt dead (killed in action in Vietnam) and his marriage to Marion poised to end in divorce — not to mention he’s been wrongly accused of murder back in New York! — Indy is a broken old man with nothing left to live for, just as much an old relic as the artifacts he’s spent decades chasing. He wants to stay here in the past, to die in a period that’s always fascinated him and that he has long taught about. He can become part of history instead of just being a student and teacher of it. To paraphrase his Raiders adversary Belloq , Indy has only been passing through history but the Siege of Syracuse is history.

That inquisitive Roman soldier confronts them, ready to kill them both, but Archimedes and his students arrive and slay the Roman. Indy and Helena quickly deduce they are in the presence of the legend himself, with each of them geeking out in their own way.

Indy and Helena use their knowledge of ancient languages to speak with Archimedes, who carries with him the Dial from the wreckage and Voller’s watch. Indy makes his case to let him stay here in the past and help Archimedes, but Helena pleads with Indy that he’s not meant to be here but in 1969 with those who need and love him. She also warns him that if he stays he’ll alter the course of history. Finally, when appealing to his emotions no longer works Helena just knocks Indy out with a helluva punch. The screen cuts to black.

Indy wakes up in bed back in his apartment in New York City. His wounds have been bandaged and he’s in his pajamas. The Archimedes Dial lies nearby. Then Indy sees Helena. She did not sell the Antikythera after all, despite her intitial intentions, her character having grown less mercenary through her adventure and reconnection with her estranged godfather.

But Helena hasn’t been taking care of Indy on her own. The front door opens and in walks Marion (Karen Allen), who hasn’t been in the movie until now, carrying groceries. Indy can’t believe she’s back. They are joined by Teddy, Sallah (John Rhys-Davies), and his young grandchildren. Helena knows Indy and Marion need time alone so she takes everyone else out for ice cream.

Indy and Marion haven’t spoken to each other in some time. The death of their son in Vietnam fractured them, with each dealing with their grief in ways that drove them apart. Indy is broken, literally and figuratively, but his last adventure in Dial of Destiny has provided him with a chance at redemption and renewal. Marion heard he was back, but Indy being back has a double meaning. Is he back to being the man he once was, back to the world of the living?

What plays out next between them is a callback to a memorable scene between them in Raiders of the Lost Ark. In the original version of the “it’s not the years, it’s the mileage” scene , Marion asks him where it doesn’t hurt and he points to his elbow, forehead, eyebrow, and then finally his lips, each touch followed by a tender kiss from Marion. But instead of physical wounds this time it’s emotional wounds and it’s Indy comforting Marion with a kiss to her elbow, forehead, eyebrow, and then finally her lips.

The film cuts to Helena and friends leaving the walk-up and venturing off into the city for ice cream when the camera rises up to the fire escape outside the open window of Indy’s apartment. His iconic fedora is pinned to a clothesline. As the shot irises out on the hat, Indy’s hand shoots out the window and snatches it off the line as the classic John Williams theme song kicks in and the end credits roll.

Indiana Jones’ globe-trotting adventures may be behind him but his spirit has been restored and he’s healed the rift with the love of his life, Marion. Indy has realized that it’s time to embrace the present and look to the future instead of dwelling in the past.

Indiana Jones Movies in Chronological Order

Does Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny Have a Post-Credits Scene?

As noted above, Indiana Jones 5 doesn't have any scenes to wait for after the credits. You of course can still stick around and watch the credits, but this approach is in keeping with the prior four Indy films. Certainly, that's not surprising considering Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade were all made in the 1980s. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was made in 2008, which was right around the time post-credits scenes started to become a thing (Iron Man came out that same year), but they were by no means a regular occurrence for Hollywood blockbusters at the time.

For more whip-cracking coverage of Dr. Jones’ final ride, read IGN’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny review , discover what Harrison Ford and his Dial of Destiny castmates say are the greatest moments in the Indiana Jones franchise , find out why Ke Huy Quan’s Short Round isn’t in the film , or dig in on Indiana Jones' Story So Far .

Note: This story was originally posted on June 29, 2023. It was updated with the latest information on June 30, 2023.

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'Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny' PEOPLE REVIEW: Indy's Last Hurrah Starts Slow, Finishes Strong

Harrison Ford's fifth adventure in the franchise costars Phoebe Waller-Bridge

Tom Gliatto reviews the latest TV and movie releases for PEOPLE Magazine. He also writes many of the magazine's celebrity tributes. 

© Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

Admirably stoic and unfussy, Harrison Ford has played Indiana Jones for more than 40 years—running, riding, jumping and tumbling this way and that, up and down as the physically challenging role demanded. If he hadn’t been a Hollywood star he could have been a  battle-scarred Norse legend—Beowulf with a fedora. 

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the fifth and final film in this astonishingly successful franchise, starts with a long, clunky and somewhat dull prologue that’s also a bit of a bait-and-switch. We’re back in World War II Europe: Young Indy (Ford, de-aged with great skill) has been captured by the Nazis and foiled in his attempt to keep Hitler from getting hold of a legendary artifact, the Lance of Longinus. But there’s a second object of antiquity in play, a device that could upend world history (no one in an Indiana Jones movie is ever itching to discover something as insignificant as a  painting from Picasso’s lost "purple" phase). Created by the Greek mathematician Archimedes, this mythical doohickey is a dial with wheels as meticulously engineered as those in a modern watch. It would have required an enormous Swatch band!

At any rate, Indy escapes, and the dial becomes the engine of a 2 hour, 20-plus minute film that alternately ambles and races to its conclusion, with John Williams’s brassy theme blaring out from time to time like a strategically administered dose of Viagra. 

The story jumps forward to 1969. Indie is now more rumpled and taciturn than ever, living in a messy, ugly Manhattan apartment that could have been rented to Richard Dreyfuss in an old Neil Simon rom-com. He’s still having to contend with that Greek thingie: His goddaughter Helena (Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge) wants to find it and make a fortune. So off they go!

Waller-Bridge is a brilliant talent, but she’s wrong here — she lacks the right cynical brassiness. It’s like casting Emma Thompson when you need Barbara Stanwyck. Okay, sure, that actress died in 1990, but who’s to say that digital magic and Archimedes’ genius couldn’t resurrect her? Meanwhile, the movie squanders Antonio Banderas in a tiny role and under-utilizes Mads Mikkelsen in a bigger one: Voller, Indy’s Nazi rival for the disc. Then again, Mikkelsen doesn’t necessarily have the hammy vitality to capitalize on a role like this. His performances tend to be immaculately precise, as if the emotions were measured by pipette.

The movie delivers some satisfying if unsurprising action sequences — the customary boobytrapped tomb — before suddenly springing to thrilling life in its concluding third. There have been grumblings online that this final twist, which is both crazy and inspired, isn't too far off from shark-jumping, but that’s scarcely fair: Let's not forget that Raiders of the Lost Ark reconfigured the Ark of the Covenant as a nuclear device.

Even as time itself spins on its invisible axis, Ford always seems completely sane. That may have been key to this whole franchise. Imagine if it had starred Jack Nicholson. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is now playing in theaters.

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Indiana jones and the last crusade, common sense media reviewers.

Thrilling third Indy actioner focuses on hunt for Grail.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Ingenuity, teamwork, and trying to do the right th

Some of Indy's choices/actions may raise eyebrows,

The cast is made up of mostly White men. Elsa is t

Hand-to-hand combat, action-filled chases (boats,

Indy flirts with Elsa. They force kisses on each o

Language includes "damn," "hell," "my God," and "J

Nothing in the movie, but there's plenty of Indy m

A character lights a cigarette. Main characters oc

Parents need to know that Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is the third movie centered on the globe-trotting adventurer played by Harrison Ford. Expect lots of hand-to-hand combat, action-filled chases, and gun fights. Main characters are in near-constant peril -- one is shot point-blank and almost bleeds…

Positive Messages

Ingenuity, teamwork, and trying to do the right thing are ultimately rewarded, though some of Indy's methods are iffy. Courage and standing up for yourself are strong themes. The power of a father-son relationship is explored and emphasized. Additional themes include integrity and perseverance.

Positive Role Models

Some of Indy's choices/actions may raise eyebrows, but he's brave, resourceful, loyal, and smart. Henry wasn't the best father to young Indiana, but he proves how much he genuinely cares for his son. Elsa is brave and smart, but she's also manipulative. Marcus is a loyal friend, if lovably inept.

Diverse Representations

The cast is made up of mostly White men. Elsa is the token woman -- she's brave and smart, but she's also manipulative, hypersexualized, and ( potential spoiler alert ) she dies by film's end. Middle Eastern stereotypes abound: Men in fez hats with mustaches chase after Indy with revolvers and a machine gun. Chaotic bazaar scenes paint Middle Eastern cities as backward, using Middle Eastern men and hijab-clad women as scenery. Guerrilla terrorists/cultists wear keffiyeh, shoot assault rifles, and are led by a man who calls himself "a messenger of god" as he dies. A man in a turban is gruesomely beheaded, his head rolling across a room. Brief scenes of a clichéd disabled villain (he uses a cane).

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Hand-to-hand combat, action-filled chases (boats, planes, tanks, more), beatings, and gun fights. Indy uses a whip and guns. (Potential spoiler alerts !) Henry is shot and almost bleeds to death. Minor characters are killed in fairly gruesome ways, including beheading. Threat of fire and drowning. Lots of peril. A character falls into piles of writhing snakes and is attacked by a lion (no injuries). Hundreds of rats swarm over human skeletons and around living people, getting in their hair, etc. A boat explodes and sinks. A father slaps his son on the cheek for "blasphemy." Nonconsensual kisses are planted between adults who wind up having (consensual) sex. At one point, other characters briefly think a main character has died. A villain meets his end in a scene that could disturb younger viewers (he ages extremely rapidly and briefly becomes a desiccated, mummy-like being before disintegrating).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Indy flirts with Elsa. They force kisses on each other -- it's portrayed as OK behavior and turns into consensual sex (kissing/embracing as the scene ends). A father and son banter about having slept with the same woman (played for humor).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Language includes "damn," "hell," "my God," and "Jesus Christ" (as an exclamation).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Nothing in the movie, but there's plenty of Indy merchandise available.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

A character lights a cigarette. Main characters occasionally drink champagne and cocktails.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is the third movie centered on the globe-trotting adventurer played by Harrison Ford . Expect lots of hand-to-hand combat, action-filled chases, and gun fights. Main characters are in near-constant peril -- one is shot point-blank and almost bleeds to death. Minor characters are killed in somewhat gruesome ways, including beheading, and the villain meets his end in a fairly disturbing scene. There's some kissing and banter, and it's heavily implied that a father and son have slept with the same woman (played for humor). Language includes "damn," "hell," "my God," and "Jesus Christ" (as an exclamation), and portrayals of women and Middle Easterners are stereotypical. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (22)
• Kids say (111)

Based on 22 parent reviews

Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade Movie Review By Logan Strohl

Best and most family-friendly of the series., what's the story.

At the start of INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE, it's 1912, and young Indiana Jones ( River Phoenix ) risks his life to save Coronado's Cross. But his father, Henry ( Sean Connery ), isn't impressed. A jump to 1938 finds Indy ( Harrison Ford ) discovering that his father has vanished while searching for the coveted Holy Grail. So Indy sets off for Venice, where he's followed by a secret brotherhood that's dedicated to maintaining the secret of the Grail. Indy finds his father, but a run-in with Nazis leads to a whole new set of problems. Can father and son save one of the world's most precious relics from Hitler's minions?

Is It Any Good?

The chemistry between Ford and Connery is fun to watch in this entertaining if imperfect adventure. Both actors have impeccable timing and are obviously enjoying themselves in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade , with Connery's character a worthy companion and foil to Indy. Since father and son have a past, you care about their relationship, though their banter about their sexual exploits with the same woman could have been left on the cutting room floor. The film shows its age in its generic depictions of Middle Easterners as cultish, machine-gun wielding men wearing fez hats, keffiyeh, and turbans. But if you can overlook these cringier moments, The Last Crusade retains the exciting Indy magic of swashbuckling adventure that's made the franchise so memorable.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about what Indiana Jones stands for and how he shows that in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade . Why does he break the rules? Is it OK in certain situations? If he and the Nazis both want the same thing -- the Holy Grail -- and stop at nothing to get it, what separates them? Where's the line between good and evil?

What are the effects of the frequent use of cartoonishly evil Nazis in action movies? Does it trivialize or obscure their real atrocities, especially during the Holocaust?

How does Last Crusade compare to Indy's other adventures? Which one do you like best?

How do the characters in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade demonstrate courage and integrity ? What about perseverance and teamwork ? Why are these important character strengths ?

Movie Details

• In theaters : May 24, 1989
• On DVD or streaming : October 26, 1999
• Cast : Harrison Ford , John Rhys-Davies , Sean Connery
• Director : Steven Spielberg
• Studio : Paramount Pictures
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Topics : Adventures , History
• Character Strengths : Courage , Integrity , Perseverance , Teamwork
• Run time : 128 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : violence
• Last updated : August 10, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

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Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade Reviews

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade closed the decade in style.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 7, 2023

An awfully good and deliciously watchable popcorn movie, made by probably the single most reliable director of popcorn movies in the history of American cinema, when he was still pretty close to the peak of his powers.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 5, 2023

While the first instalment is a visceral and unexpectedly violent adventure, "The Last Crusade" is a gentler experience, more concerned with softening Indy's character through his relationship with his father. Full review in Spanish.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 1, 2023

[It's] a rip-snorting, action-packed adventure. It is fun. It is exhilarating. It has all the elements you want -- the hero, the trustworthy friends, the villains, the father's love, the damsel, the action, the cliffhangers, the prize.

Full Review | May 9, 2023

As I watched it, I felt a real delight, because recent Hollywood escapist movies have become too jaded and cynical, and they have lost the feeling that you can stumble over astounding adventures just by going on a hike with your Scout troop.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 1, 2023

If Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were never born, the world would be a little less exciting.

Full Review | May 1, 2023

Of the three Jones films, The Last Crusade may well become the sentimental favorite, the Indiana to end them all.

All concerned say that this is the end of Indiana Jones the end the series that began with Raiders of the Lost Ark. I'm not buying it. This thing looks as if it was almost as much fun to make as it was arduous.

It's impossible to recapture the joy and wonder of seeing a superlative picture like Raiders for the first time, but to his credit Spielberg comes very close.

River Phoenix, meanwhile, has a few marvelous moments as the adolescent Indiana Jones in the film's fabulous 16-minute prologue.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 1, 2023

I think this last installment in the popular series, made with the same care, conviction and energy as the first, but orchestrating the elements of a delicious formula at a still higher level of sophistication, may well be the best of his best.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | May 1, 2023

Excesses notwithstanding, The Last Crusade’s debits are far outweighed by its credits. Chief among them is the film’s riveting 16-minute opening sequence, which serves as a combination prologue/prequel to the entire series.

It's a shame that Spielberg and Ford say this is going to be the last Indiana Jones. There's so much life in this, the third installment, it could fuel several more.

You suspect this movie Is going to be a great deal of fun from the very beginning, when River Phoenix, as the young Indiana Jones, snatches a jeweled cross from grave robbers and flees with it.

People who like action for its own sake will think this movie's great. As for people who think there should be something more than action -- that it should signify or symbolize or say something -- they'll think it's great, too.

You could play the cynic and say it is an outrageous piece of audience manipulation. Or, you could say that it is a thrilling exercise in pure cinema. Why not the latter?

verall it’s a cunning expertly made film that proves itself a lavish entertainment. Its mixture of blithe silliness and heart-racing action makes keeping up with the Jones a joyful and exhilarating experience.

The repartee between Ford and Connery provides a nice balance to Spielberg's magically choreographed action. The actors make it all look so easy and are obviously enjoying the verbal jousting.

One of the things that made Raiders such a delight was the way he was able to recapture the B-movie thrills of the old-time serials in A-movie style, and The Last Crusade accomplishes that as well, as its two-hours-plus speed by in a breathless rush.

With [Last Crusade], Steven Spielberg has regained the inspired sense of humor that made Raiders of the Lost Ark such fun. He demonstrates convincingly that he has no peer among directors today when it comes to the humorous approach to action-adventure.

Indiana Jones: The Complete 5 Movie Adventure Collection [Blu-ray +... › Customer reviews

Customer reviews.

Indiana Jones: The Complete 5 Movie Adventure Collection [Blu-ray + Digital] - Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Temple of Doom, The Last Crusade, The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull and The Dial of Destiny

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

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