Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Skip it, and then consider watching the last twenty minutes anyway, because they are the most interesting thing in the two later films and they are the only ending this character was ever going to get.

The first film not directed by Spielberg, with James Mangold taking over. It opens on a long 1944 sequence with Ford digitally de-aged, which is technically impressive, goes on far too long, and starts the film by pretending the thing it is about has not happened. What it is about is age. Indy is sixty-nine, teaching to an empty lecture hall, divorced, sleeping in a chair, and being retired against his will by a university that no longer wants him. 1969 is the year of the moon landing, and the film is pointed about a man whose idea of adventure has been replaced by engineers.

The middle is a conventional chase after a device of Archimedes, with Mads Mikkelsen as a Nazi scientist now working for NASA, which is the sharpest idea in the script and is under-used. It runs two and a half hours and does not need to.

Then the ending commits to something no blockbuster of this size does. Faced with the chance to stay in the past he has spent his life studying, Indy wants to take it, and he says so plainly, and he has to be physically prevented. A hero who would rather not come back is a real and sad idea, and the film earns the quiet scene that follows it.