What did you guys think?!
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Dial of Destiny was terrible for several reasons:
- It was depressing. We’re revisiting a beloved character. We want him to have a happy life. We’ve seen him earn his happily ever after several times. Instead we find out that he’s worn out, lonely, and depressed.
This was a terrible way to treat the character. The only acceptable life for indy is to find him happy, and still adventuring.
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It was boooooring. Tons of mediocre action scenes that has zero emotional weight for the audience. I literally dozed off for a minute or two during the opening chase scene.
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It had no humor, no interesting dialogue, and an incredibly thin plot.
I’d have rewritten it so that the movie starts in the past, where Indy finds half the Dial of Destiny. Then we jump to present day (well, present day for Indy anyway). We find Indy still adventuring at 80 years old. He’s out in the Arctic or something with his wife, and together they dig up the other half of the Dial of Destiny.
Indy doesn’t know what the Dial does, but he gets it working, and suddenly he is ripped back in time. He’s in his younger self’s body!
But oh no! He’s jumped back to a moment where he was in the middle of great peril!
Now we see young Indy running and fighting for his life while trying to protect the Dial, his only way home.
He’s cornered! Out of time! He activates the Dial again! … And finds himself in … The Temple of Doom!
… And the rest of the movie could have us taking a tour of indy’s life, revisiting our favorite scenes only different because now Indy has the upper hand because he knows about every twist and turn and double-cross before it happens.
He bounces from adventure to adventure as he tries to fix the dial.
Maybe he has to jump back and forth to make sure the timeline plays out the way it should.
Yadda yadda yadda …
The movie ends with Indy returning to the “present”, and finding his wife where he left her.
She tells him how much she loves adventuring with him, and how sad she is that their adventuring days are almost over.
Indy says he’s not quite sure about that, and from his satchel he pulls out … the Holy Grail.
Well, I appreciate your write-up. Seeing reviews like this was why I wanted to talk it.
My thoughts on the opening were that it was nice to have traditional pacing back for an action movie. I thought the horse motorcycle chase scene was incredibly original for the format.
It sounds to me like anything they put out would’ve been bad for you, including your own plot. Your plot doesn’t really have that much in the way of an antagonist or conflict. You could argue a man vs environment plot point but there’s always someone working behind the scenes in these films.
I am not quite sure how you can have an Indiana Jones movie where he isn’t beat up. That’s kinda what he does. Anything else wouldn’t be Indiana Jones but to not acknowledge the age would’ve completely taken away from the ending when he wants to finally live in his history.
Which one?
The one in theaters right now.
It was better than Crystal Skull but still a weak entry. I didn’t like the overuse of CG because unlike the classic Indy films or Mission Impossible films or James Bond films the action feels real even though you know it’s staged. In this movie (and most current action films) it feels fake and because of it less thrilling. I realize Ford was nearly 80 when making this film and couldn’t do most of these stunts, so they should have tailored the stunts around a character his age and not relied on a younger stunt double and CG’d his face on him.
I also didn’t like the kid in the film. It felt too much like they were trying for another Shortround.
While I liked the concept of the film the last 20 min or so felt so weird. And then skipping to him in his apartment felt like the filmmakers said, “Shit. We backed ourselves into a corner. How do we get out of this?”
So a lot to dislike, some things to like, but they should have stopped at Last Crusade.
I felt the same way about the CGI but when it is memory sequences I am willing to give them the CGI as a flashback. I wish they hadn’t started out with it though. Definitely better than Crystal Skull in almost all ways.