‘Destiny’ Comes for Indiana Jones

Welcome back to across the movie all presented by BullWork Plus. I’m your host, Sunny Bunch Culture Editor of The BullWork. I’m joined as always by Elizabeth Rosenberg of the Washington Post Peter Suiterman of Reason Magazine. Peter. How are you today?

I’m swell.

I am happy to be talking about movies with friends on July fourth weekend.

July fourth weekend up first stop in controversy and controversies. Turner Classic movies is saved, kinda, following outrage that Warner Brothers discovery Hancho David Zaslav and his bean counters have decided to gut the beloved movie channel in order to save a few pennies, including there was an emergency call with Stephen Spielberg Gorsese and Paul Thomas Anderson, exciting times, the Avengers of Auteurs. WVD backed down slightly, altering layoff plans a little, and bringing the directors on board as advisors who will help with programming. As as somebody as a wag joked on Twitter, they they fired the employees and brought in the senior citizen volunteers to run the place. It’s it’s really it’s the economy and microcosm.

Fans of the channel breathe the muted sigh of relief one imagines that this is not the end of potential cuts for the network given WVD’s complete inability to understand the value of HBO and the desire to mush up reality crap with prestige TV. One would be forgiven for being a little bit skeptical that Zazalov and his team have, you know, like, seen the light on this. The corporate song and dance here is hiding a deeper problem, however. And that’s this. Does Turner classic movies actually look like in the age of streaming?

I I ask because it’s not really clear to me that the service works solely as a well curated streaming service. We have services like that. We have the criterion channel. Right? We have Movie.

Those those kind of come to mind. And those serve a similar purpose, again, very well curated. They they provide an effort to give context and background to these films as you’re watching them. But they’re also doing something slightly different than TCM. And and they’re doing something slightly different because TCM as a television channel serves an important function, TCM is not important solely for the curation.

It also matters because the simple fact of the matter is that it shows one movie at a specified time and only that movie at that specified time which creates a sort of shared experience. Streaming, even well curated streaming is fundamentally anarchic in nature. TCM is great because it’s authoritarian. This is a descriptive entirely descriptive. I’m not I’m not saying that,

you know, the people definitely not picking a fight with anyone on this podcast.

I’m not saying that the people at Turner Classic movies are Nazi dictators. A debate. But I’m just saying it is the the function is different. You will watch this. At this time, you will watch the introduction.

We will do this all together, we will use the TCM party hashtag. Like, it’s it’s different. Curation matters, but it matters less than it used to anyone can put together a list of great movies from authoritative sources and find most of them online in one format or another via varying legal means. TCM’s difference was the way in which it created order from chaos by giving people a shared experience. I think.

Maybe I’m wrong on this. Alyssa, is there a way to recreate this idea, this ideal in the age of streaming?

Probably not online, but in person, sure. Right? I mean, we’re all devotees of, yeah, like, our local Alamo draft. Houses. And one of the things that they do is they program older movies, and you very actively opt into those.

You have to buy a ticket and go to a theater. Or even, you know, even in the pre roll before it starts the ads, you know. The one of the things that makes going to the Alamo really pleasurable is instead of being, you know, bombarded with half an hour of ads. It’s actually worth it to go there and see them offer either some, you know, serious or some very snarky commentary on sort of the genre or the, you know, the star elite actor. Or, you know, the franchise that you’re about to sit down and watch.

And so, you know, I I do not think that there is anything that’s gonna sort force the synchronicity of experience that linear cable curation does in the era of streaming. I think that kind of thing will survive in person for, you know, people who want to do it.

Well, yes. I mean, look. We we have repertory houses. Right? We we always have those.

We we will have those hopefully forever fingers crossed. And we have great places like draft House, which

You say that at, like, next year, we’re gonna see a wave of repertoire house closures just because Don’t

use that evil on me. We keep on me. Don’t do that. But the you know, again, there’s a difference between that and Turner classic movies, which is providing a nationwide community of film lovers and people who are, you know, edge like, really, it is an educational resource in a in a way. Right.

If you want to learn about the history of film, Turner Classic movies remains, frankly, is a great way to do it. But Peter, when you look at the the levels of cable penetration. Right? Cable is has lost fifty percent of it its penetration over the last decade. It’s probably gonna lose another fifty percent of that over the following decade.

People are cutting the cord. They’re they’re moving to services like Max and and everything else. I don’t quite see how that TCM model works in this in this environment.

Yeah. Even if you save TCM, TCM is going to dwindle as a force as an influence in the movie watching community. I I think it’s inevitable. It’s just a question of how long it takes. And in some ways, that’s unfortunate, in another way, you know, I think that it’s not necessarily gonna be the death of cinema for GCN to go away here.

I I will say that as much as I love the idea of TCM, I almost never watch it. I certainly have never, like, participated in you know, a hashtag watch party or anything like that. Every now and then, you know, I’ve sort of come across oh, this is on and like I’ll kind of keep watching something. But it’s honestly it’s probably been years since I’ve done that in part because I don’t channel surf anymore. There’s that doesn’t that’s not even something that I do.

I think that that’s now in, you know, just a a much less common behavior if only because fewer people have cable bundles. And so I agree with Alyssa. The way that this is going to survive is as a live experience. And when Alyssa and I were both at our local Alamo draft house yesterday, to see Indiana Jones. It was actually it was heartening and impressive to me to see how much of the pre roll of the trailers were actually built around Alamo, like, letting you know and showcasing the old movies that they were gonna be playing over the next couple of months.

This is clearly like a good business proposition for them. They are building a community, they are catering to fans, and there’s also something to be said about, oh, sure. It’s not national, except kind of it is because many of these movies do, in fact, play at Almos all over the country. It’s local, and that makes you more connected and more engaged because it’s an actual place that you go with other people from your town, even if you don’t know who they are, Right? The shared experience is is much more intense in person than it’s sitting on your couch at home tweeting along with, you know, whatever TCMs replay of Casablanca or Lawrence of Arabia.

And I think that that that sort of thing is going to become more popular over the next at least the next several years, we’re just seeing a boom in live events in general and in people wanting to have live in person crowd experiences after the pandemic And so while I don’t think that it fully replaces TCM as a force in the world. That’s not my argument. It’s not a one for one transfer. But it is going to be a new and and different way to have a lot of those experiences. In addition, I don’t think it’s totally impossible to replicate something TCM like on a streamer.

It is absolutely technologically possible to say we are only gonna allow streaming movie to be played at a certain time or within a certain set of hours on a particular evening. And in fact, A twenty four has done this a number of times with their movies where some number of weeks after the theatrical release, they will designate one single night where you can purchase an online ticket for something like twenty dollars usually. And then you can watch that movie anytime between, you know, something like eight PM at midnight. I did this with x, and it was great. Right?

It was like, oh, this is the only time I I couldn’t make it to the theater. But I I I am gonna be home on that night, so I just first ticket was able to watch that movie. And that is something that can be done. Any and the criterion channel could do it. They could have criterion, Fridays, or whatever the heck you wanna call it.

And say, this is the movie that we’re gonna program and we’re gonna put some useful information. We’re gonna have an introduction taped by somebody. Right? It’s not impossible to imagine It’s just then a question of whether viewers would actually wanna engage with that. And, again, I think the the thing is that TCM is going to have less and less viewer engage no matter how much effort our, you know, dream team of Avengers directors here.

I actually do wanna see the Spielberg Skorsese Pete Anderson Avengers trilogy. Now that you mentioned it, like, that’s who they should bring in for the Kang Dynasty here or whatever it becomes. But like, it’s gonna go away or it’s gonna dwindle at least. It’s gonna become a lesser force no matter what. And I think part of the job of people like us who care about this sort of thing is to say, well, look, What can we preserve from from this?

Not by trying to keep the old thing pristine and in its exact form, but by trying to keep the idea of it. And trying to keep what is valuable and keep keep the the shared experience and the education and the the fact that people like doing this sort of thing together and building relationships around movies. And frankly, a linear television channel might build a relationship with movies, but it’s not gonna build a relationship with people in the way that some of these other types of experience as well.

Could I make one suggestion for a network or a streamer that wants to try this? Someone should really steal from the way that Shonda Rimes has built sort of enthusiasm and viewership for Her linear TV shows. And what they should do is a channel or network should line up a big name with these movies who promises to, like, do a Twitter lie like a Twitter spaces or some sort of event, like, immediately afterwards.

Ideally like a trio of podcast hosts, would you say?

I mean, potentially that. But also, like, I would get, you know, there are all of these directors who are obsessed with film history. And people who are referencing other movies in their work. Right? I mean, you know, I would watch anyone involved in the Johnwick movies commenting on, like, an earlier generation of action movies.

Right? I, you know

Chad Stahalske on Jackie Chan. Like, yes. I’m I I wanna watch not one movie. I wanna watch the freaking festival all weekend and, like, forget the rest of my life.

Exactly. But, you know, it’s it’s a lower commitment way for sort of, you know, famous people to do a live event. It supports cinema. It, you know, it would they would be incredibly buzzy. I mean, it’s again, it’s a shame that Twitter has become sort of, you know, cluster technically and otherwise because that this would be sort of the perfect place to do this.

But like, I know that, you know, the, like, the Stevens spielberg’s and like PT Anderson’s of the world probably don’t have a lot familiarity with like how Rimes has cultivated fan culture for Grey’s Anatomy and scandal. But, you know, she has been making linear TV shows at a period of tremendous decline in linear TV by in part by building a live community around. Yeah. Right? It’s like, you know, and part of it was that she was programming stuff that was very cliffhangery and, you know, sort of, spoiler oriented.

But also, she had the stars show live tweeting along with the episodes. Right? I mean, she is she would be a very smart model for people to use to sort of stage

these events. And in some ways that works better for for TV — Right.

—

which is something that you can’t have seen before. Right? By definition, it is unfolding for the first time. At at the same time, I do think there’s there’s ways to to manage that for movies, and it’s not like it’s not like TCM had giant ratings. It did not have, you know, big bang theory or even frankly of Thrones, later seasons, level ratings, like, at its peak.

It was never a gigantic thing. I like I would think it was a a huge shame if TCM went off the air. Like that would be not something that I would relish at all. At the same time, I I think we can we can figure out ways to build community around film, to educate people, to curate, and to program. And TCM is not the only vehicle or even necessarily the most important vehicle.

I learned about movies by watching movies rented from my local video store. Ron DeSantis kinda watch them on a thirteen inch screen by myself in most cases. And then eventually, with my college roommate and and friends, But like, it wasn’t wasn’t a programmed experience for me. It was something that I just picked through and figured out how to do. And I think that’s actually true for a lot of cinephiles.

Is that they they are self taught and that that is still possible, especially in the streaming age.

Yeah. Alyssa, you’re talking about TV, which again, I think is is different. And this one reason why, you know, I think we all agree that the weekly model of release is better for TV than the binge models because it allows for things like that. Or special events. You’re talking about special events, you know, having a director on to talk about a movie or on social media to talk about a movie.

You know, there was a streaming channel that did this. Pretty successfully during the pandemic, a shudder with their Joe Bob Briggs, drive in theater thing. Right? Lots of people sit there and watch the tweet along. That has kind of declined as the my understanding at least is that that the ratings on that have declined as the the pandemic has ended and people have gotten back out there.

It was a thing to get get together and do. But again, I still think that, you know, neither of these really gets at the value proposition of turner classic movies, which is, again, it was just like, here’s a thing to watch watch this thing. And that’s it. I I don’t know. I just think there’s something that is lost in the ship from TV to streaming that is very hard to replace.

And I I I think the world is probably worse off for it. I don’t have a solution here.

It’s a Sunny loves a top down authoritarian model of almost anything, frankly, in which in which the people who know what’s going on tell everybody else what they gotta do. That’s that’s the lesson here. Right?

No. That is I I believe strongly in keeping and and it is

We’re saying the same thing.

I think it’s important to tell people what to watch. Because if you don’t, if you give them too much freedom, you have chaos. And that’s what we’re seeing now. And chaos is bad. Chaos is bad for everyone.

Will just throw in one way that this could change is that I think the next generation of streaming innovation is gonna be in these fast streamers. Which are ad supported linear streamers, and it’s not impossible to imagine a TCM like service springing up in a in a fast boom. Yes. You might have to have more ads throughout the the films. There might be sort of complications that way.

But Linear TV, and linear programming is not gonna go away in the maybe eventually, but not in the very near future of, say, the next three to five years. And in fact, the streaming world may end up with more of it rather than less.

Yeah. I don’t know. I’m I find it all kind of bummer. Alright. Exit question.

Do we need a benevolent god king TV channel to tell us what to watch? Less we devolve into a state of animalistic anarchy. Peter.

So, obviously, no. Unless it’s run by you, Sonny.

Yes.

In which case, I would have to vote for it,

You’re the only authoritarian dictator I would willingly subject myself to. And a state of nature designed by Peter is the only one I would live in as well.

If chosen by the people, I will serve. Also if not chosen by the people I will serve because that’s what a benevolent God King dictator does. Alright. Make sure to swing by ATMA for our bonus episode on Friday and which we’ll be discussing The New Republic’s little slightly odd list of best political movies. And now on to the main event.

Indiana Jones and the dial of Destiny, spoilers ahead. So if you’re worried about that sort of thing, log off now, don’t come yelling to me about spoilers. I’m telling you, right now, there’s gonna be some spoilers. They’ve done a very good job of not spoiling this movie in the in the ads. So I’m gonna wanna wanna give you give you a chance to hit the pause button, jump out of the shower, throw on a towel, run over to your phone, hit stop.

Alright. Dial of destiny opens with Indie, fighting Nazis. It’s his best mode, and also trying to save artifacts from destruction, his second best mode. He’s there to grab the spear of destiny from a group of Nazis, but he finds something better. Arcomedi’s Dial of Destiny.

It’s got a Greek game. I’m not gonna even try to pronounce it. The dial is said to measure when rifts in time will occur, allowing the user to travel backward or forward through time. The dial saved, the Nazis are defeated. We cut back to Indy.

In his late seventies, early eighties, lonely in an unkempt apartment all by himself. His son, dead, his wife, gone. He’s about to retire. The Spark finally comes back into his eyes when his god daughter, Helena, is played by Phoebe Waller Bridge, shows up to inquire about the dial we saw earlier. She wants to track down both halves of it.

Not to put it in as amusing. I’m not to use it to change the past. He just wants to sell it, pay off for debts. Hi, Jinks ensue. Nazis reappear.

And before you know it, Indy’s on another grand adventure, possibly his last. One is tempted to ask why this movie exists precisely. We’ve already done this we’ve already done almost this exact movie before the tired indie sort of thing, the man out of place and out of time. Where he kinda sorta passes his fedora on to the next generation of swashbuckling young talent. But that was before Disney bought Lucasfilm, which means that Disney needs to their own brand management stamp on it.

They gotta they gotta fix it for them. Make it make it all good. If you wanna understand why this movie exists in all of its two point five hour bloated, awful running time. You just need to think about what’s missing from the opening shot of this film, the very opening shot. And that’s the Paramount Mountains.

Think back to how the previous four Indie movies opened. Right? You got the Paramount logo on the screen and then it dissolves into a mountain or mountain like object on the screen. Right? So in the first one, there’s a South American peak that replaces the Paramount Mountain in second one, it’s an engraving on a Gong, a southwestern butte in the third one, and a go for hill in the fourth.

Prairie dog hill, whatever. This movie has no such dissolve. There can’t be any such dissolve because the whole point of this movie is for Disney to stake its claim on the character. The opening title card is given to Lucasfilm and Disney. Paramount gets an association with credit after that.

I don’t mean to harp on this. I I just wanted really drive home the fact that what I’m saying here is that Indiana Jones and the dial of dusting has no reason to exist. Other than Disney’s very naked desire to harness its intellectual property. Its corporate management masquerading as film like product rather than the insanely entertaining brainchild of America’s two great pop filmmakers from the latter half of the American century. This is a hollow product created by hollow men.

Here’s the thing. I don’t hate it. Exactly. I don’t. I don’t hate it because Ford is charming.

While the bridge is excellent as the sidekick in training, She’s got that sort of charmingly, smarty, British squint and shrug thing going on. I love it. Antonio Banderas has an extended guest role. Matt Nicholson is find villain as always. But again, the whole thing is just a slog.

It’s a movie that has no reason to exist beyond the prerogatives of its corporate overlords. At least with Spielberg and Lucas were in charge, it felt like they were doing something big and bold and fun. James Mangold’s direction is competent and workmen like, but that is not what I go to an Indiana Jones movie for. I don’t know, Peter, what did you make of this movie?

I really wanted to like this too, and I really did not. And I frankly think that you have oversold its virtues. This movie is just not good, and it’s not good in a very particular way. So I think you can argue that there are at most two Indiana Jones films that work all the way through as full coherent movies. So the obviously, raiders of the Lost Dark is one of the great blockbusters of, like, in cinematic history, and it is a movie.

Yes. It’s an absolutely perfect film. I happen to see it at the Alamo. Just a few months ago on the big screen for the first time, and it holds up just incredibly well. It is perfectly pay every single little bit in that movie Bulwark, all the action sequences, all the gags, the gore at the end.

There’s just not a moment where you’re not like, yes. That’s is delightful. You’re always just utterly delighted by that movie by Harrison Ford, by Spielberg, by Spielberg, by every little bit of every thing. And then it all comes together in the end. And then you get to a movie like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

And I think you can argue that that movie doesn’t really work in totality as a movie. And yet, the movie still has an absolutely insane number of really incredibly memorable and great and delightful bits. And you can remember all of these little sequences from the movie, all of the these little lines, these shots. Right? So there’s the there’s the gross out dinner at the palace.

Right? There’s this that incredibly excessively elaborate opening set piece in the jazz club, you know, with the diamond and the antidote and the spitting table and all of that. There’s the the pulling out of the heart. Right? All of these moments that just like, wow.

Totally seared into your memory and you’re just completely engaged and locked into the film because the bits totally work. And that’s true total in the third and even in the fourth film, less so in the fourth film, I think. But there are a lot of good bits in the fourth film. You know, you may not like the movie. You can argue that it’s a bad movie.

Fine. Fair enough. I think it’s a little bit underrated but it’s not great. But we still remember nuke the fridge because nuke the fridge is an absolutely bonkers insane kind of sequence that Spielberg just pulls off like with incredible panache. It is ridiculous But it kinda works on screen as a thing that you’re like, you can’t tear your your eyes away.

You’re totally with it even if you’re also groaning at absurdity of it. And the problem with dial of destiny isn’t just that it’s a bad movie that’s too long, that ends with a completely stupid pulpy b movie plot device that doesn’t belong in an Indiana Jones film or any kind of movie like this. It’s that none of the bits work. At every single moment in this movie, I wanted something memorable, something hooky, something to laugh at, something to amused at, a little action gag that showed some wit or creativity. And at every single moment in this movie, I was fed dull competence.

That doesn’t look too bad. Oh, you know, Harrison Ford, he is charming on screen even when he’s not really doing very much. Oh, I guess they’re going underwater now. That’ll be different. There wasn’t like, there’s just nothing there.

That screams like you will remember this. You have to. None of the Bulwark. And I can I can take an Indiana or Jones movie where the whole thing kind of is a mess but I can’t take an Indiana Jones movie where the Indiana Jones stuff, the snark, the sort of roguish it is kind of playfulness? And also, frankly, mean spiritedness of it.

Right? Where the the banter, where the gore, where the like, what I can’t take a movie where none of those things, where none of those elements delight me. And there wasn’t single mo moment of creative delight in this film. It was there because it needed to be there, and they didn’t wanna make it too terrible, so they hired a actually a a talented and competent director who has made a bunch of movies that I do like to put this one together, but it just doesn’t have it doesn’t have the spark at all. And Indiana Jones even Harrison Ford honestly seemed a little bit tired to me.

Not bad because Harrison Ford at his worst is still pretty great. But the whole thing felt tired. And it just it just didn’t work on any level for me.

Can I just highlight one difference between the the first three movies in particular in this one that I think gets to your point? The two scenes I wanna compare are the scene in this movie where India and Helena are talking at a bar, and it’s just a big exposition dump. And we’re

So many exposition

works in

this industry. We’re just

we’re just finding things out here, and the two of them are talking Compare that to the banquet scene in Temple of Doom, which is an exposition dump yes, but it’s also interspersed with comic moments as a short round and the female lead whose name whose character name, I forget, are looking at the horrifying food things that are brought out The camera’s constantly moving around. It’s a swirl of motion. And here it’s just a very basic one shot. Two shot. One shot.

Two shot. And I like, I’m sorry. This is unfair to James Mangold, but James Mangold is not Steven Spielberg. And that is that is

very unfortunate for him.

That is a

And for us.

It’s a problem. It’s alyssa, it’s a problem, and I’m I’m I wish this movie were better.

Can we talk about the ending of this movie for a minute? Because when I got home and, you know, put my son to bed, I told my husband how this movie ends. Right? I was like, Indiana is a bunch of nazis, go back in time and they meet archimedes. And he’s he was just like, you are messing with me.

That at did not happen like refused to believe it. And I had sort of blocked out the end of Indiana Jones thinking of the crystal skull from my mind because, like, it’s aliens. It’s ridiculous. But this felt just kind of unusually dumb even by the sort of silly standards of these movies for me, and I’m trying to figure out if that’s like a mistaken reaction. If, you know, I mean, to be fair, this is, you know, a movie who serious involves like, you know, dead people being reanimated by, you know, magical goblets and having their faces melted and stuff, but like, this just felt so dumb to me.

Am I am I alone in finding this uniquely ridiculous?

No. No. I don’t think so because I I think the other the other movies have a well, I don’t know. I mean, I I I would argue I would argue that the other the other movies have a more thematic relevance within within the movie themselves. Right?

So like in the first one, Indiana Jones begins the film by literally worshiping a Golden Idol And then at the end of the film, he is averting his eyes from the power of the one true god. Right? Like, there’s like an idea there that kind of makes the whole thing work. And in this one, it is you could you could make the argument that, look, it’s about it’s about the sadness of the passage of time and getting older and, you know, you wanna go back into ass, not even to correct mistakes, just to just to flee the present. And I could I could kind of see that, but the problem is the plot device is just dumb.

I’m sorry. The the, like, rift in space time that they fly through that are only archimedes, twenty five hundred years ago was able to figure out with his — He was

so good. — ancient Greek math.

It’s it’s math, sonny.

I mean, it’s like it’s like oh, yeah. The bathtub guy figured out the magic of traveling through time. Sure. Why not? I like, I’m the whole thing was ridiculous.

Yeah. And and in a weird way, the only thing that works about that final sequence for me is Mads Mickelson’s acting when his character realizes that, like, oh, they have screwed up and they are not in fact going back to nineteen thirty nine. Like, they’re just sort of Oh my god, what have I done? Expression is both a nice piece of totally wordless like, you know, dialogue free acting. And the only appropriate response to time to time travel, especially when you go where you don’t intend to go.

Right? And that is the only thing that works about that sort of loud and noisy sequence. But the second part of this that did not land for me. And here’s where I differ from you, Sunny.

I

did not feel like Helena really worked as a character. In part because her character is written is so unpleasant in the beginning and you know, the scene from the trailer, it’s like, you stole it, then you stole it, then I saw it. It’s called capitalism, is such terrible dumb writing and is like clearly meant to be sort of witty and clever but instead makes her sound stupid. Like sort of stupid and self justifying in a way that doesn’t get you anywhere. And you know, as a plot device, it’s like, my father went bonkers, you weren’t a very good Godfather, and therefore I traffic and stolen antiquities.

You know, I just I think, like, Phoebe Walleridge is a good actress. She does a good job with this material, but I felt like the material was calibrated. Poorly. You know, there were some rumors that the dial Ron DeSantis was gonna like reset the timeline and she was gonna be the new adventurer. And if this movie was intended as a handoff, it does not feel like it works as that to me.

You can contrast her its capitalism remark with a couple of similar remarks from some of the spider people in the most recent spider verse. Right? The You’ve got the the London punk guy watching the building fall into going to metaphor for capitalism. And it’s great. Right?

It’s not The problem here isn’t that anti capitalist kind snarky jokes. Right? Or the this is the museum full of stuff the British stole from us. Yeah. You know, right?

Like, it’s not that that sort of, like, frankly progressive humor is like does can’t work, it’s that it has to support the character

—

Right.

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rather than I don’t know what that was doing in this particular movie where like, weirdly ahistorical. No one talked like that back then. Fine. In some ways, but also even if you forget the historical work on this of it, like, What were we supposed to take from this? And my sense was they brought on Waller Bridge because she’s good at making you like characters who who are not fundamentally likable in the way that Hollywood likes to make their protagonists likable.

And if you go back and you watch raiders. Now, something that I never picked up on when I was twelve is how ridiculously awful Indiana Jones is. He is a freaking jerk. He is a boar. He is selfish.

And also kind of any all the stuff he does doesn’t really work. It’s amazing. In the end, the the Nazis are just killed by God and, you know, Indy’s like whole thing. It’s just like don’t watch. Right?

And yet, Harrison Ford makes you fall in love with that. Like, he is the most charming. I think I have ever seen a human being be, which is it’s it’s just an amazing feat of movie star acting of like, I’m gonna be awful. In every moment in this movie and you’re gonna love me. And, totally worked and that’s why there’s an E and E and A Jones movie forty two years later and Phoebe Waller Bridge is very good and she can’t quite pull that off.

Yeah. I still didn’t mind her, but I also liked I also like Shia labeouf in Kingdom of the Crystal skull. I mean, it is very Wow.

The beef. Sunny. I I retract my You can be God King of the movies.

This is I

that no longer you no longer have my vote. No.

He’s he’s he’s good at that. He’s good at most things because he’s a good actor. But I mean, like, again, like his the elimination of his character here really feels like, again, somebody somebody in corporate management was like, We cannot have Shia labeouf be the face of this franchise, so kill him off screen. Then that’ll give Indie motivation or something. Make sad, at least we want a sad indie.

Right? That’s what we that’s what everybody wants. Everybody wants a sad depressed Indiana Jones, that’s what we’re all looking for.

Clearly a corporate decision, but also one that the fans I mean, the fans did not like Shayla Buff in that movie. And I I think it’s it would have been very difficult to once again try to build the franchise around him. Given the negativity of the response to the last one.

Yeah. Well, I mean, the the the simple fact of the matter, this is that this franchise doesn’t Bulwark. Harrison Ford is the only reason this franchise works from start to finish. I mean, I like, he’s And

he’s a billion years old.

Right?

I mean, there’s a there’s a reason that this movie like all of the action is vehicle chases because he can be in a vehicle without having to do anything. That or it’s like, you know, the scene where he’s like sort of hanging there, the rock ledge. And even Helen is like, what are you doing? The answer is really like, I’m old. I’m just I’m old.

Yeah. This is hard.

I’m in pain. I’m in pain because I’m No. I would say that I mean, the other the other comparison point that I would make for for these last two Indie movies, in particular, and the original, the raiders of the Lost Arc, is that, you know, look at the truck chase out of the desert when they have the arc and Indy’s trying to get it back. And compare that to either the car chase through the jungle of Kingdom of the crystal skull or the car chase through the the streets of I don’t Morocco, wherever they are. In this movie, all, every single one of the, like, interior car shop has this terrible green screen, you know, effect on the outside.

So we can it it’s it’s clear that nobody’s actually driving anywhere. But then you cut to the outside and you can see the cars going through the streets, then you cut back inside and it’s clearly fake. That is not the case of raiders of the Lost Dark. It’s totally different. And I I really think part of it is they just didn’t want to put Harrison Ford in speeding automobiles anymore.

He can’t do the things that he did. He was it’s not like he was a young man when he made raiders of the Lost Dark. He’s forty in that movie. I mean, like he’s or thirty eight or thirty nine or something. I mean, like, you know, I couldn’t do that now.

I don’t wanna I don’t wanna do that. That’s my age.

And he famously at that time of his career did all of his own stunts, like, to the point where not just did all of them. When directors would be like, we can have a stunt guy do this, he’d be like, nah. No. Yeah. I mean, like, go jump across cars himself.

He can’t do that anymore. And, like, I don’t know. The it it all just looks there there’s this weird commitment to everything looking phony that did not exist in the first ones. And I’m not talking about the special effects because special effects always age and look weird after the fact. Right?

I’m not talking about the faces melting at the end of raiders of the last arc. I’m just talking about like normal walk and talk or like driving action scenes. There there’s a reality there that is completely absent from both Kingdom and the crystal skull and dial of destiny. And it’s it’s a problem. It’s a it’s it’s a real you know, I feel like we are really sliding backwards in our special effects work.

But the good news is this movie costs like three hundred thirty million dollars. So you could see it all on screen. You could see it all up there. All the expensive effects work.

And I would add that it’s a bummer that per movie with so many, like, vehicle chase scenes that it doesn’t look more compelling since James Mangold made Ford were Ferrari, which is an excellent, fast vehicle movie.

Yeah. But I get the again, I get the sense they were using actual cars more than they were here. I don’t know. I don’t know, but it doesn’t work. Alright.

So what do we think? Thumbs up or thumbs down on Indiana Jones on the dial of Destiny, Peter.

Sadly, a thumbs down. Alyssa.

Thumbs down. It’s so long and so not good.

Thumbs down. And I really do wanna highlight the fact that, again, this is a hundred and fifty four minutes long with credits, something like that. You know, the first the first and third and fourth Indiana Jones movies are right about two hours. I think Lasker’s say it’s a little longer at two hours and ten, two hours fifteen minutes, something like that. But this movie is so long and it doesn’t need to be that long.

It is like And I should never come out of an Indiana Jones movie saying, God, that was real slog. And I felt very slog like, in this movie. So the thumbs down just for pacing reasons if nothing else. Alright. That is it for this week’s episode.

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