One of the first films I saw on VHS was Raiders of the Lost Ark. In fact, I think that Raiders may have been the very first film that I ever saw on VHS. Ever since that day, I became a huge Indiana Jones fan. The films, the games, the TV show, the theme park attractions and anything else. If it has Indy in it, I want to see it. Indy’s fifth and final big-screen outing, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny has been a long time coming. But was it worth the wait?

Okay so, there will be big SPOILERS in this one. I kind of have to as I really wanted to see how the finished film compared to the leaked scripts and rumours from a while back. I will be covering the main story of this film in detail and giving away massive plot points that you may not want to know about yet. Please do not read after this point as the SPOILERS will be quite substantial. You have been warned.

The film starts with a classic Indiana Jones movie prelude, with Indy on one of his adventures. You know all the de-ageing of Harrison Ford? This is that bit. It is 1944 and World War II is all but over. Berlin has fallen and Hitler has gone into hiding. The Nazis are rounding up all of the artefacts they have stolen and they capture Indy who has found the Lance of Longinus with his colleague Basil Shaw (Toby Jones). Indy escapes while Basil is taken as a prisoner on a Nazi train, along with the Lance of Longinus.

Indy sets out on a rescue mission to save Basil and get the Lance back. On board the train, Basil learns that the Lance of Longinus is a fake and we get introduced to Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), who has in his possession, half of the Archimedes’ Dial. Indy saves Basil, kicks Jürgen’s arse and escapes with the Archimedes’ Dial.

Cut to ‘present day’ (as in present day of when the film takes place), summer 1969. Indy is having some trouble with his noisy neighbours. He’s separated from Marion and is only just hanging on to his job as a teacher of archaeology. Still working as a professor at Hunter College, New York. Sitting in on one of his classes is Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), Basil’s daughter and Indy’s goddaughter (who he’s not seen for years and doesn’t recognise). Nobody cares about archaeology anymore, it’s all about the Apollo 11 astronauts. As nobody is interested in his teachings, Indy is forced into retirement.

Drowning his sorrows in a nearby bar, Helena approaches Indy and tells him who she is. Helena is an archaeologist herself and has been studying the Archimedes’s Dial after her father died and after years of his own research. Helena wants to find the other half of the Archimedes’ Dial and asks Indy to help her. They both go to the college’s storeroom where Indy has hidden the half of the Archimedes’ Dial that he and Basil retrieved in 1944 and reveals that when complete, the dial is capable of locating fissures in time.

Indy and Helena are then chased by henchmen of Jürgen Voller (yes he’s back but using the name Dr Schmidt) who has been working with NASA on the Apollo 11 mission. Helena escapes with the dial while Indy is captured, but manages to escape and uses a parade for the Apollo 11 astronauts and its crowds as a means for a distraction and cover. Indy seeks help from a cab driver, some fella called Sallah (John Rhys-Davies). The old friends are back and Sallah tells Indy that Helena was arrested in Tangier, the year before, for selling goods on the black market. Helena was bailed out by a mobster’s son in Tangier, who just so happens to be holding a display for stolen artefacts. 2+2 are put together and it looks like Helena is planning on selling the Dial for this display.

Indy sets out for Tangier to stop his goddaughter. We get treated to another flashback where Basil wants to destroy the half of the dial that he and Indy retrieved in 1944. Basil gives Indy the dial but only if he promises to destroy it. Obviously, he didn’t. In Tangier Indy tracks Helena down and tries to stop her from selling the dial. Jürgen (still pretending to be Dr Schmidt) also turns up to claim what is ‘rightfully’ his, ‘stolen’ from him in 1944. After a bit of a ruckus, Jürgen/Dr Schmidt ends up with the dial and escapes to Greece. Indy and Helena reluctantly team up and go to Greece to stop Jürgen and get the dial back.

On board a boat, Indy tells Helena how his and Marion’s son, Mutt died in the Vietnam War and that was the catalyst for him and Marion separating. In Greece, Indy meets with Renaldo (Antonio Banderas) a deep-sea diver who helps them to get the key to the second half of the Dial. Jürgen turns up and takes the key. After a bit of action, Indy gets the key back and he and Helena go to get the second half of the Dial in Archimedes’ tomb, in Sicily. Jürgen turns up (again), Helena escapes but Indy is captured and Jürgen takes the second half of the dial. Now with both halves of the Archimedes’ Dial in his possession, Jürgen says that he plans to fly a plane to a fissure in time and use it to go back to 1939, kill Hitler and stop him from leading the Nazis so that he can become a better leader and cause Germany to win the war.

Helena sneaks onboard Jürgen’s plane to save Indy, just as Jürgen finds the fissure in time. However, Indy points out that Archimedes wouldn’t have known about continental drift and that the fissure isn’t going to take them to 1939 as Jürgen thinks. As the plane flies through the fissure in time, they end up in the midst of the Siege of Syracuse 212 BC. Jürgen’s plane is bombarded by projectiles as the Romans fight to take the city of Syracuse. Indy and Helena parachute out just as the plane crashes, Jürgen and his men are killed.

Archimedes examines the plane crash and finds his fully working dial from the future. Indy, having been shot earlier, asks Helena to leave him to die in the past to be a part of history. Indy and Helena meet Archimedes and have a very interesting chat. Helena knocks Indy out and takes him back to 1969 using a plane her friend flew through the fissure in time. Indy wakes up, back in his apartment in New York, a bit worse for wear but alive. Marion (Karen Allen) turns up as she and Indy reconcile and re-enact the kiss/’where doesn’t it hurt’ scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Roll credits.

So then, is Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny as bad as a lot of people on social media would have you believe? The critical response it got after being shown at Cannes was not great. Still, this seems to depend on which news sources that you chose to believe. Some say it had a bad response, some say it had a standing ovation. When the early reviews came in ahead of its release, they were not exactly stellar. Some sites were reporting on how the film had the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score of the franchise and such. Many people are already damning the film without even seeing it. I’ve seen it and I liked it.

Is it up there with the highs of Raiders? No. Is it as divisive as Temple of Doom? very possibly. Is it as wonderful a sequel as Last Crusade was? No. Is it as ‘terrible’ as Crystal Skull? No. Oh and for the record, I liked Crystal Skull. I’m not one of those ‘this film ruined my childhood’ idiots. The Indy films have always been big B-movies, they were inspired by cheesy action serials of the 1930 and 40s. They are meant to be a bit silly. Yes, Dial of Destiny is a bit silly at times… but I still enjoyed it.

The opening 1944 flashback with the de-ageing of Harrison Ford is really well done. There are a couple of times where de-ageing is not great and I thought that he looked more like Liam Neeson than Harrison Ford. Those moments were few and far between though and the younger Indy in the opening is very convincing. If you didn’t know in advance that it was all done via CGI and de-ageing, you could think this was footage filmed by Steve Spielberg in the late ’80s. The opening intro goes on for a good 15 minutes too and it is really great.

Then we get to the ‘present day’ with older Indy and the introduction of Helena as his goddaughter. The dynamic between the two characters is great, the twists of the plot work well. Can she be trusted or not? Yup, I really thought that the two characters bounce off each other well. However, I didn’t think much of Phoebe Waller-Bridge. She just felt terribly miscast.

On the flip side to that, Mads Mikkelsen is amazing as the bad guy and is worth watching the film for alone. For every scene that he is in, you just can’t tear your eyes from the screen. It was great to see both John Rhys-Davies and Karen Allen come back too. They have very small parts but it works as a nice callback without feeling forced.

There are some great action sequences all through Dial of Destiny too. Snappy and funny dialogue. This very much felt like an Indiana Jones flick and I really enjoyed myself.

Now, I will address some of those rumours and script leaks. Yes, the film does involve time travel. However, some of the stories being spread claim that Indy goes back in time, several times and changes the events of the previous films. Nope. This is a 2 hour and 20-odd minute flick and time travel does not happen until the last 10 minutes. Indy goes back in time once and does not do anything to change the events of the previous films. Is the time travel aspect stupid? That’s for you to decide. Still, I think the idea of a box containing the ‘power of god’ is stupid. The idea of magic stones are also stupid. A cup that grants eternal life is stupid. Yes, even crystal alien skulls are stupid. Indy films have stupid MacGuffins in them, they are part of the franchise’s blood.

Indy dies at the end is another rumour I have read a few times. No he doesn’t. He gets shot, but he survives. Indy ends up back with Marion and (I presume), lives a happy life until his natural death. He gets a really nice send-off for his final outing and a happy end.

It has been said that Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Helena is set up and poised to take over as the ‘new Indy’. Nope. There is not even a hint of this anywhere in the film. In fact, there is a shot at the very end that shows Indy is not yet ready to hang up his hat. Even if we all know that this is the last outing for the character, the film does end hinting that he’s not done. Basically, pretty much every rumour attached to this film is utter bollocks.

Enough with the rumours. I had a great time watching Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and I felt like a 10 year old again. Seeing one of my cinematic heroes doing what he does best was fantastic. Harrison Ford still has it at 79 years old (when he filmed  this). His charm and charisma are still there. and he still very much felt like Indiana Jones. It may be a bit unbelievable at times (all Indy films are), but there is no ‘nuking the fridge’ with this film.

You’ll have your naysays that will cry that the films should’ve ended as a trilogy, with Indy, Henry, Sallah and Marcus riding off into the sunset at the end of Last Crusade. Believe me, I get it. I too think that was a beautiful finale. even so, I’m more than happy that we got this finale too. It is a great way to say goodbye to a real hero of the big screen. This is far from being the trainwreck people are desperately trying to make it out to be.