I know the cycle of nostalgia very well; The way pop culture tends to trend every 20-30 years and bring back media content from that era to appeal to old fans. Also, I’ve been going to the movies most of my life, so I’ve seen the rise of remakes and the debates over how well (or not) they manage to appeal to long-time nostalgic fans while also capturing newcomers, per Plank. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is the latest film and brings the classic adventurer back to screens for what Lucasfilm claims is one last time.
I know the cycle of nostalgia very well; The way pop culture tends to trend every 20-30 years and bring back media content from that era to appeal to old fans. Also, I’ve been going to the movies most of my life, so I’ve seen the rise of remakes and the debates over how well (or not) they manage to appeal to long-time nostalgic fans while also capturing newcomers, per Plank. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is the latest film and brings the classic adventurer back to screens for what Lucasfilm claims is one last time.
This isn’t the first time the studio has made an Indiana Jones revival; In 2008, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was released, but it was not well received by fans. Dial of Destiny appears to be an attempt to end the franchise (or at least Harrison Ford’s time in the title role) on a high note. But I’m not here to judge if that’s the case because I’m actually a total newbie to the series (the theme song and Disney theme park attractions notwithstanding) and Dial of Destiny was the first Indiana Jones film that I’ve ever seen. So I can’t say if the film will satisfy longtime fans of the franchise, but I can offer a newcomer’s perspective. And as a newcomer, it really doesn’t feel like this movie was made for me.
The best I can say about this film is that it held my attention and I enjoyed Harrison Ford’s performance, although it didn’t make me think of an ‘iconic role’ and I felt like he probably wasn’t as sharp was part as it probably was in the previous parts. But unfortunately, apart from maybe the Nazi blow, there weren’t any particular highlights or big moments to mention. It’s not that there weren’t any big moments in the film – virtually all of them should evoke a reaction based on nostalgia for previous Indiana Jones films.
I don’t know what special meaning all of these moments have, but I’ve seen enough nostalgia-bait movies to know when a shot is set up for audience applause. The swell of the music and the sustained pauses when certain characters first appear and when certain lines or actions appear let me know to feel in awe of them, but since I have no background on these things the moments just seem easy noticeably awkward for a newcomer to the Indiana Jones series. It’s like an inside joke that you don’t get, but instead of even trying to explain it to you, your friends keep laughing and moving on.
The film explains what the viewer needs to know in order to follow the plot. However, for those new to Indiana Jones, there’s no reason to care about things that should really matter to us in order to be truly invested in the film’s story. Without giving too much away, there are moments in this film that are clearly designed to evoke strong emotions in the viewer – mainly in terms of mentions or appearances of various characters from previous installments – that the film doesn’t build on and doesn’t embrace The previously laid foundation is a sufficient structure.
There are things here that should hit you hard whether you’ve seen the other films or not, but the film doesn’t devote enough time to it or emphasize enough that it will stick in the minds of people who don’t know it remains. There is no such story, which is a problem, especially considering that it’s supposed to form the emotional core of the film. I imagine this might be confusing even for people who have seen the others, as the film not only assumes the audience has this history with certain previous characters, but often doesn’t even give them the meaning that they seem to have deserved (especially when it comes to a mentioned but unseen character in the film that I assumed only appeared outside of the film but was shocked to learn that in the past she was a had a very large presence). The film reminds audiences that these characters exist, but in some cases doesn’t really respect them.
Of course, none of this is unique to Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, but experiencing a legacy film from a franchise newcomer’s perspective showed me how other nostalgia-focused films can be for newcomers can fail. Maybe it’s because the filmmakers knew this would be Harrison Ford’s last appearance in the role and didn’t feel like attracting new fans, but while that may be a creative decision, it probably won’t be financially worth it.
I wouldn’t call Dial of Destiny inaccessible to those who haven’t seen the others; The plot should be fairly understandable to most people, Indy fans or not. But there really isn’t much effort in attracting newcomers to the franchise. This is an odd choice considering the last Indiana Jones movie came out 15 years ago, which means this movie could potentially introduce Indy to a whole new generation of people who the filmmakers don’t seem to care about. To be fair, that would probably be fine if the budget wasn’t astronomically high (as is the case with so many films these days). But too many movies these days take the easy way out with nostalgia and other nods. We’ve seen it quite a bit on DC and Marvel, and we even saw it to some extent on The Super Mario Bros. movie earlier this year, which consisted mostly of game references.
Bottom line, we need more nostalgic films like Top Gun: Maverick – which honors the legacy of the first film while telling a new story and engaging a new audience – and less like Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny.