Although the Indiana Jones movies aren’t lacking in supporters by any means, the film series is certainly no stranger to polarizing responses. Arguably the best example of this is Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; while there are those who will defend the 2008 movie, critical reception among the fanbase was unquestionably mixed, with many feeling it wasn’t at the same level of quality as the original trilogy. James Mangold, the director and co-writer behind Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, is among those people, and he’s shared his big issue with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
If you’ve been following the news surrounding Dial of Destiny, you know that the 2023 new movie release opens with a World War II-set action sequence featuring a de-aged Harrison Ford, while the movie’s main story takes place in 1969. As Mangold explained to Variety, this sequence serves as a nice contrast to his main complaint with how Indy was depicted in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, namely that it, as the outlet put it, “barely acknowledges that Indy is not only older but has aged out of the 1930s and ’40s era that he’s meant to embody.” In the filmmaker’s words:
What’s so beautiful about the best of the ‘Indiana Jones’ movies is that thematically they know what they’re about. I didn’t feel like I knew what ‘Crystal Skull’ was about. He’s living in a world that has overtaken him — a world that has found new heroes in John Glenn or Elvis Presley. No one in the film is really thinking about the past; everyone’s focused on the future.
Taking place in 1957, 19 years after the events of The Last Crusade, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull did spend a little bit of time bringing up distrust in American society in the midst of the Red Scare, and Harrison Ford’s character does mention to Ray Winstone’s Mac at the beginning of the movie that getting out of their predicament will be harder in part because of their age. But in James Mangold’s mind, the fourth movie didn’t take enough advantage of its ’50s setting and shining a full light on Indy is struggling with changing times. He made sure to avoid that issue when putting Dial of Destiny together.
This is perhaps best exemplified by Indiana Jones taking issue with the U.S. government recruiting Nazis to help with overtaking the Soviets in the space race, including Mads Mikkelsen’s Jürgen Voller, who’s part of the Apollo Moon Landing program. We’ll see Voller and Indy first cross paths in 1944, with the former working to prevent the latter from obtaining the Dial of Destiny, officially known as the Antikythera. Then in 1969, Voller will attempt to find the artifact again and use it to alter time and change the world as he sees fit.
As for whether or not Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is an improvement over Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, opinion is obviously subjective, the former movie currently ranks at 62% among critics on Rotten Tomatoes, while the latter ranks at 77%, though with a 53% Audience Score. So the fifth movie might not be every fan’s cup of tea, though we’ll have a better idea of its overall reception among the masses when it’s released on June 30. Until then, stream the first four movies, as well as the TV series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, can be streamed with a Disney+ subscription.
