Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (Mangold, 2023)
It’s almost six months since I restarted Funerals & Snakes here at Substack and that means that many of the new releases I reviewed when they were in cinemas are now finding their way to some form of home entertainment.
Oppenheimer and Barbie are on home video in all formats (thank goodness), Killers of the Flower Moon (not Flowers of the killer Moon as I wrote on Friday!) is available as a premium digital rental but hasn’t shown up as physical media, and Asteroid City is now available in a decent Blu-ray edition.
But the latest Indiana Jones movie, The Dial of Destiny, isn’t on the shelf at your local JB Hi-Fi because Disney no longer supports physical media in Australia and New Zealand, in favour of their Disney+ streaming service.
I have the beautiful Spielberg-approved 4K UHD box set of all the Indiana Jones films but I might hesitate to spend over forty bucks on the latest film, especially as we already pay for Disney+, so maybe the strategy is the right one? But it does seem off that collectors can’t easily complete the set unless they import from overseas.
Anyway, I rewatched The Dial of Destiny on Saturday night, largely because K hadn’t seen it first time around, but also because I wanted to confirm my original thoughts.
Sure enough, I believe this is a film that is much misunderstood and much maligned. It’s a layered version of the beloved character and an excellent performance from Ford. It’s also very moving which you couldn’t really say about the original films:
There are moments in the film that I think are conscious reminders of other Ford performances from his heroic heyday. I think I saw nods to Polanski’s Frantic, certainly to The Fugitive, maybe even Air Force One. I don’t think Ford has been stretched enough as an actor during his monumental career. He and his directors have been able to rely on his screen charisma, his goofy magnetism and – in his youth – his physicality.
But here he looks like an actor who is determined to play the fullness of this character for the first and last time and he manages to be, at times, quite moving. I certainly had a tear in my eye at the end.
The action sequences in Dial of Destiny are at their best when they adhere to the original DNA of the series, those old Saturday morning serials that Lucas and Spielberg were inspired by. Physical rather than digital. Stuntmen rather than avatars.
The films have also always been love letters to British studio craftsmanship, those technicians who were able to turn any hunk of polystyrene into a Himalayan dive bar, an Alpine castle or an underground Hindu temple. I was pleased to see, then, that the interiors for Dial of Destiny were shot at Pinewood in England, where they belong.
Where to find Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Aotearoa, Australia, USA: Streaming on Disney+ or a digital purchase
UK: Digital purchase or physical media
