Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is the fifth outing in the series led by Harrison Ford and doesn’t have Steven Spielberg in the directing chair for our grumpy adventurer, but instead got James Mangold, of Logan, Ford v Ferrari, Walk the Line and more.

Taking on a continuing or potentially ending franchise (which let’s be real is never gonna happen with a popular ‘property’ like this) is never an easy task for any director.
But Indiana Jones 5 fumbles the bag in many ways that are hard to wrap around your head.

Fundamentally, it does have a big screenplay problem that not even Phoebe Waller Bridge’s quippy Helena can save. Rather than giving us a story about these two or focusing on Ford as the elderly protagonist, the MacGuffin object everyone is chasing after takes over the film in a not-so-great way.
Often the movie seems it could care less if there’s no actual interesting conflict happening between the characters.
They escape in Scooby-Doo-like fashion and solve riddles without any process, solely waiting for the audience to clap for cheer-worthy moments and cameos.

The opening action scene with a de-aged Harrison Ford is probably the best sequence in the movie, even if it ends with a very unfortunate mistimed beat. There are a few issues with eyelines in some scenes but other than that it’s fairly solid and I guess not affected by the lackluster writing yet.

Mads Mikkelson’s is alright and Boyd Holbrook is quite one-noted.

It might be enough for popcorn entertainment but it is way closer to Kingdom of the Crystal Skull than the Original Trilogy.