At the beginning of the 5th and last Indian Jones movie, “Indiana Jones And The Dial of Destiny”, Indiana is back in the 1940s, once again fighting Nazis and through the use of amazing AI and CGI, he looks like he did in the original and best film of the series, released in 1981, “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. The action scenes at the beginning of this movie that occur mostly on a moving train, seem very similar to the action scenes in the first movie that involve moving vehicles. Most of this is very well done, but should have included some new ideas along the way, rather than action scenes that remind us of what we have seen before. While Raiders of the Lost Ark was one of the most groundbreaking movies ever produced, this 5th installment seems too much like the other 4 movies and nothing new. Considering that this is the last Indiana Jones movie, I would have expected some action scenes that have never been tried in any movie.
The other problems are the lack of continuity and some areas that are so illogical that you can drive a truck through them. There is a 12-year-old boy at the end of the movie, who is able to pilot a plane, after admitting he had never flown a plane before. There is a box containing another ancient clue at the bottom of the ocean that they are able to find – somehow, forgetting that there was no GPS in the year 1969 when the majority of this movie takes place. The “Dial of Destiny” is a time machine invented in the year 214 BC by Archimedes, and is somehow uncovered by the Nazis during World War II. The majority of this movie is about Indiana and his partner (the daughter of an archeologist friend of his Helena, played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge) trying to find the second half of this time machine – all the while being chased by a group of Nazis, led by Dr. Voller, played by Mads Mikkelsen.
Within the first half of this film, it was already obvious that the majority of this story will be all about Indiana Jones, Helena, and her 12-year-old friend Teddy, played by Ethann Isidore running from one chase scene to the next one. When you consider the money involved in this franchise, the fact that this is the last Indiana Jones film, and the fact that it has been 15 years since the last movie was released, all fans of this movie series will wonder why they did not take much more time writing and then re-writing a much better screenplay.
As with most stories involving time travel, the best of these was the Back to the Future movies, the story at the end of this movie started to get pretty ridiculous, especially how a group of people were able to fly into the past and then – somehow return to 1969. How this amazing feat was accomplished was not explained nearly enough.
It will be disappointing for many die-hard Indiana Jones fans to realize that the critics, mainly Rotten Tomatoes are giving this movie a low 67% rating – which is deserved. For a movie this important in the history of cinema, it is disappointing to see that the quality of this last installment was not nearly as good as it should have been. I recommend this movie for the most die-hard Indiana fans and for the rest of us looking for a great action movie, this one can be missed.
No comments:
Post a Comment