Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Viimeinen yritys herättää ikääntyvä Indiana Jones henkiin nojaa liiaksi ensimmäisten elokuvien menestykseen. Alkuperäisen näyttelijäkaartin toimimattomat, nostalgiset sivuroolit tuntuvat liian halvoilta, mutta eniten varmaan ärsytti koko tarinan yliampuvan epärealistinen juoni. Myönnän, että alkuperäisessä trilogiassakin on mystisiä elementtejä, mutta tässä ne menevät överiksi. Ensimmäisten kahdenkymmenen minuutin ajan tuntui CGI-nuorennuksen takia siltä, että katselen Napapiirin pikajunaa. Jos haluan katsoa överiä pelivideota, menen YouTubeen. Tulen unohtamaan tämän leffan ihan kuin unohdin edellisenkin, vaikka onkin paljon mukavampi katsoa Indyn taistelevan natseja (Mads Mikkelsen on parasta tässä elokuvassa) kuin venäläisiä vastaan. Kaikenlaisia virtuaalisia takaa-ajoja on nykyään joka toimintaelokuva täynnä. Koko ajan yhtä ja samaa… ne eivät vaan toimi ollenkaan niin hyvin kuin vaikka Viimeisessä ristiretkessä. (01.08.2023)

It’s fine that Disney is keeping old dads in mind, even though the mouse lost his shirt on this film. No, it’s not Logan with a whip. Mangold made a safe, old-fashioned movie along familiar lines that is already a bit long in the tooth in the action scenes and, hand on heart, is reminiscent of a conversation with an old man who’s telling you the same old war story for the five hundredth time,  a sure sign of encroaching senility. The pace and gradation fall off after the fine first third and the film thus needs a defibrillator in the form of nostalgia, which fortunately comes so forcefully in the final minutes that the whip regains its crack. And no, I don’t mean that beautiful crisp metaphor of a person who lives from/in the past, but rather that tender scene of two people who are probably hurting all over. I can relate to that! (11.02.2024)

I've had that famous John Williams tune playing in my head for about two hours now, and not because I enjoyed the fifth Indy so much, but rather because I'm in the mood to watch the first three episodes. I'll never watch the fifth one again, I'm almost certain of that. It’s not a completely bad movie, which could be said of the fourth, but it's just not “it”. The new Indy is carried by Harrison Ford and he's really trying his best, but he's just left on his own and he’s obstructed by everything else. The Fifth Indiana Jones film is visually bland and in some moments regularly repulsive, but mostly it has a boring story full of boring characters, and especially the bad guys are a bunch of uninteresting bums who are impossible to be scared of – Mads Mikkelsen is looking like he's about to start crying the whole time. Moreover, the treasure hunt itself leading up to the very weird (and slightly uglier) finale consists mostly of routine chases, because someone figured they couldn't have an 80-year-old Ford running around the set doing action shenanigans. James Mangold directs it all with no attempt at invention, and the result is at best a passable piece of craftsmanship somewhere on the level of National Treasure: Book of Secrets and a tiny bit above Uncharted, which is definitely not praise for this franchise. It lacks the style, the inventiveness and the evident joy that accompanied the first three films and, to some extent, the fourth. A product without soul. (28.06.2023)

The actors and John Williams’ musical motif are pleasing and Harrison Ford’s de-aging is great. The surprise in the climax is more acceptable than the nonsense with the aliens in the last instalment. But the ubiquitous digital, when even a tuk-tuk cruising the narrow Moroccan alleys is not real, is something that I DO NOT WANT in an Indiana Jones movie. Because I still love the films of the original trilogy for their inventive and honest filmmaking. This routine in which filmmakers don’t have to be creative in their craft because the CGI post-production does everything for them is the complete opposite of Spielberg’s original approach. And the potential of every scene suffers because of that. (14.08.2023)

The last quarter of an hour is the only passage where some nostalgia works, and if I were the narrator, I would be much more uncompromising in my completion of Dr. Jones's life's journey. I would have found it much more emotional and logical (connoisseurs know). The rest is inconsistent to say the least. The opening with the train when there's palpable CGI rushing at you from all sides, is not enjoyable, it makes you remember with sadness the train opening of The Last Crusade, where Spielberg didn't need computers (understandably) and it worked much better. The tediously long chase in Tangier again, given the long takes, looks as if the local streets are empty of cars and people and as long as airport runways, I didn't believe it for a second. And that's how it is with everything. It's just such a see-and-forget feel-good movie most of the time, about on the level of the overwrought fourth film. Otherwise, the much-criticized Phoebe Waller-Bridge was fine, she has such a mischievous charisma and is a great counterpoint to the curmudgeonly Harrison Ford, and actually entertained me the most out of the whole film. (01.09.2023)