Spin-Off: Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny is A Nostalgia Trip That Knows Its Way Back

Time has finally caught up with Indiana Jones. Previously, each of the four films in his franchise featured a young man’s excursions into the past. The first three – Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Temple of Doom (1984), The Last Crusade (1989) – were either set in, or began, further and further back in time, digging into the archaeologist’s history with the same flourish with which he excavated antiquities. Former acquaintances made appearances – his dad, his old professor buddy, his mentor’s daughter – to contextualise his present. It’s only now, in Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny, the beginning of which is soundtracked by the insistent ticking of a watch, that a man tasked with protecting history finally gets to reconcile his place in it.

The passage of time hangs heavy over the film. A digitally de-aged Indiana (Harrison Ford) pops up in the prologue, an action sequence set in 1944. He looks younger, but the effect isn’t quite convincing. The octogenarian actor’s years seep into the gruff weariness of his voice, the hesitant stoop of his walk. His gait is a dead giveaway, a persistent reminder of the gulf between fiction and reality, an inability to cheat time with technology. When the film cuts to 1969, the ticking sound recurs. Only this time, it’s to the sight of Indy, now a crotchety old man, being rudely awakened by his neighbours’ loud music.

The years have not been kind to the professor. He and his wife, Marion (Karen Allen) have separated, an old photo of her on his fridge his only memento of her. She’s young in the image, a moment forever frozen in time. Indy’s become the man his father was, “the professor students hope they don't get”, as he described him in The Last Crusade. While his students once shut their eyes to reveal flirtatious messages to him scrawled on their eyelids, they now do so in tired frustration at his staid teaching methods. Television broadcasts announce the moon landings – mankind’s conquering of a new frontier contrasts with Indy’s vehement grasp on the past as a profession. At his retirement party, he receives a clock as a gift, a visual reminder of all the years that have slipped by, all the regrets that have accumulated. When his goddaughter Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) shows up asking him to help her find the Dial of Archimedes – an ancient instrument that would allow them to time travel – she frames it as one last, grand adventure.

It isn’t long before Indy and Helena are being pursued by Nazis led by Jurgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), also hoping to turn back the clock and win World War II. The recurrence of Nazis as a franchise villain – they were the antagonists in Raiders, here they are again – points to the circularity of time, and history’s tendency to repeat itself with disappointing regularity, given how the re-emergence of the far-right hasn’t limited itself to the screen.

It's only fitting that Indy, whose life’s work is the painstaking preservation of history, sets off on a mission to be the keeper of time itself. The movie dangles his life’s failures in front of him before tantalizing him with the question of “what if?” What would he do if he could go back in time? Fix his marriage? Prevent his son from enlisting in the Vietnam War? The current crop of movies attempting to reckon with the past succumb to its embrace instead, relying on the comforting familiarity of nostalgia bait and endless cameos. And, for a moment, it seems like Dial of Destiny, might be heading there too. The film, however, subverts this by centering a man so wounded by his past, he’d rather be anywhere else. When Indy seeks refuge in another part of the history, it’s framed as a cowardly act, a cheap exit strategy from a man who’s always stood his ground before. You can’t undo the mistakes of the past, the movie points out, only how you let them shape you as you move forward. That’s not to say Dial of Destiny isn’t a nostalgia trip, only that it’s capable of finding its way back.

There’s a genuinely affecting moment towards the end – a seductive move from Raiders of the Lost Ark reworked, this time with a sentimental touch – but director James Mangold doesn’t let it give Dial of Destiny the sense of finality he lent his superhero outing Logan (2017). Instead, the film keeps going, its final image indicating that Indy isn’t quite ready to hang up his (iconic) hat just yet. Age might have caught up with him, but he isn’t about to slow down just yet. In the age of franchise saturation, however, it might be nice for Indiana Jones, and its titular hero to take a break. Give it time.