The newest Indy wasn't nearly as bad as the LeBeef fridge Indy movie.
so ..
I have watched the very mediocre
Indiana Jones and the Dial Of Destiny -
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1462764/reference/
1. it wasn't anywhere near as insultingly bad as IJ4. Like, not on the same planet.
2. it is still a bad film.
the production is vaguely close to what IJ1 was, the photography is decent, but isn't used with anywhere near the mastery of IJ1, which is still a visual masterpiece.
The plot is also decent; there is a good McGuffin that has reasonable powers, and tied to it there is a pretty solid villain - played very competently by Mads
Mikklesen. Not a perfect character, because he becomes better as time goes on, while you'd generally want your villains to be villainous from scene 1. I love the
"Nazi who wants to kill Hitler" twist.
The character of .. whatever her name is .. the granddaughter? of Indiana, is super fucking annoying. Rather than being a "Girl Boss" character, i think the faults
are that, she's constantly fucking smirking, she can't keep a tone, can't deliver a line that both believable and consistent, goes from fraternal to treasonous and back
in the blink of an eye, and on top of that is just fucking ugly.
To be 100% honest, i found the kid to be even worse, but at least he's only marginally in the film.
3. Indiana Jones is a shit character in this film.
Harrison Ford actually did a much better job here than in that monstruosity which is IJ4 - probably, because he watched IJ4 and got shocked back into giving a shit
about his acting - but the "old version of a character known for being athletic and dashing" is just not fun.
There's also quite a few, badly done attempts at playing a gag of "whoops Indiana, you're not young anymore" that are meant to be fun, and they are *not* fun, and it really
stings when they come onscreen.
But it's also true that there's some decent scenes in here, just not used effectively.
4. i think the film would have been better if the introduction was placed in the middle.
See, if you START by showing us old, retired Indiana working in a boring desk job at the university, then when we are shown the train sequence, it kinda explains WHY
we need to put up with the uncanny-valley digital deaging of Indiana; it's because we're shown something we know is not part of the NOW in the story, but has relevance
AND we need to know that it happened when he was younger.
5. the action scenes were confusing and not well done - not a small crime in a Indiana Jones film.
I did however like the CIA girl, and the nazi goons were really good as faceless-nazi-goons.
This along with a thousand little changes would have made for a vastly superior film, but at least it hasn't got alien skulls and bomb-proof refrigerators.
Crystal Skull:
3.5/10
Dial Of Destiny: eh,
5/10. Probably 4.5/10 because it pains me that Indiana Jones can have fallen so far, if they had used brand new character it would have been a 5-5.5/10