Released June 30, 2023 (US market)
Directed by James Mangold
No spoilers, at least as far as I can tell!
The fifth ... ugh ... I want to say the fourth installment, because the one the world numbers as four is so bad it should be retconned from existence, but...the fifth installment of the Indiana Jones series has hit theaters. It's been a long hard road for Dr. Jones, called by some the world’s worst archaeologist. Let's start this review in the meta space.
The movie is in in boats, chases in aircraft. There are cave crawls. There are traps and clever hidden mechanisms and of course Spielberg-esque squicky wildlife moments. There are double-crosses, and treasures, and of course Nazis (we hate these guys). So on the surface, well done then. But that's not the whole story, because the unnamable 4th episode sort of had those too.
One thing I was worried about was the 'de-aged' Indy shots that were visible before release, but that worry eased. That technology was used to film the prologue scenes, which take place (in the Indy timeline) at the end of World War II. The remainder of the film's 'present day' is 1969, just after the Apollo 11 moon landings. And they really do lean into Indy being old, with all the snark and jokes that entails. He is a grouchy old guy, and they milk that for humor. I guess that is also what makes this franchise installment feel 'paint by numbers' or 'tired checklist' - Indy is old enough that it feels even more forced when he gets into these life-threatening adrenaline situations, especially when he comes out of them without spraining anything or otherwise injuring himself (other than when, you know, he gets shot or something). His ability to deck opponents with one meatily-SFX-ed right cross to the jaw has seemingly not faded, which doesn't help the dissonance.
I actually enjoyed the movie, mostly because ep. 4 had set my expectations so low that this one was a relief, if not a delight. Also, the cast is great - in addition to the usuals, Phoebe Waller-Bridge holds down the distaff front, and she is much more in the Karen Allen mold of Indy Women than the Kate Capshaw mold - also a relief.
I'm not going to get into the plot. You can find countless writeups about that on the internet if you care. All that's relevant really is: 1969 Indy has an adventure based around an object and situation encountered by 1945 Indy, and throughout the movie tries to deal with being old and all that entails, although the lack of actual physical consequences for that other than being slightly slower and bitching a lot rob the movie of some charm that it might have otherwise claimed.
But all in all - if they had to wrap up the Indy franchise (or the Indy cycle of it, before he is relegated to an occasional character or even a digital cameo) then this was a worthy - well, okay, decent closure. Note - they didn't really indicate they were passing any torches here, which was a good choice - the movie feels like it's about Indy, not about the franchise.
As of July 19th, the film has done poorly enough (hilariously, $300 million is 'poorly enough') that some columnists are comparing it to John Carter: Warlord of Mars in the sense of 'biggest disaster for Disney since...' This is likely related to how expensive it was to make; there have been quotes along the lines of 'most expensive production ever filmed' although with the industry's penchant for both hyperbole and desultory research I don't know how much faith to place in them. But either way, folks seem to think that the film would need several hundred million more at the box office to break even (again, though, that's a term whose meaning varies wildly as soon as Hollywood enters the chat).
A final note for those of you who need SOME CRUMB of plot information, that won't spoil anything - the 'Dial of Destiny' is in fact the Antikythera Mechanism. There's your archaeology nod for this installment! (Digging up Harrison Ford and sticking the hat on him and putting him in the museum of cinema doesn't count).