‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’s Lame Ending Robs Its Hero of a Righteous Death

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny arrived on digital this morning, meaning if you missed the fifth (and flimsiest) installment of the Indiana Jones saga in theaters, you can now rent or buy it from your favorite VOD vendor. That also means that enough time has passed that we can delve into the Lucasfilm movie’s super bonkers and wildly unsatisfying ending.

**Spoilers for the end of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, now available to rent or buy on digital, ahead**

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ends with the bad guy, Nazi scientist Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) using Archimedes’ Dial to travel back in time to 1939 with the grand plan of killing Hitler so he — as in Voller — could lead the Third Reich to victory over the Allied Forces. However, Voller’s math is wrong because he doesn’t account for continental drift. So Voller, his soldiers, and a captured Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) and Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) find themselves dropped in the middle of the 212 BC Siege of Syracuse. That is, they travel back to ancient times when Archimedes was alive. After the bad guys are dealt with, an injured Indy wants to stay in the past and die. His goddaughter Helena knocks him out and takes him back through the time-travel fissure with her and her little Moroccan sidekick Teddy (Ethann Isidore). The final scene sees Indiana reunited with ex Marion (Karen Allen) in 1969 New York City in a scene that relies heavily on the audience’s nostaligia for Raiders of the Lost Ark.

I’m just going to say it: Indiana Jones should have been left to die in 212 BC. Indiana Jones is a character who has dedicated his life to hunting treasures of the ancient past. Allowing him to die in the midst of an ancient battle would be powerfully poetic. Indeed, the happiest Indy is in the entire film is when he realizes that he is witnessing real history. Helena’s decision to bring Indiana Jones back to 1969 — without his consent! — is as selfish as it is stupid. The coolest storytelling choice director James Mangold and his Dial of Destiny co-writers Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, and David Koepp could have made was letting Indiana Jones die happily. Instead, they shove nostalgia down our throats until we choke on it.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny opens in the heyday of the Indiana Jones franchise: World War II. Because several decades have passed since Harrison Ford first donned Indy’s fedora and cracked his bullwhip, Dial of Destiny uses deep fake tech to make its leading man look younger. The result is a mix of uncanny valley close ups and darkly lit, hard-to-follow action set pieces. The cold open exists to establish three things. One, Indy and Voller once duked it out over the mysterious Archimedes’s Dial. Two, Indy was besties with a whimsical Brit named Basil Shaw (Toby Jones), who is the father of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Helena. Third and finally, Indiana Jones isn’t a young man anymore.

When we cut to 1969, we learn that Indiana Jones is no longer a beloved professor moonlighting as an adventurer, but a bitter and lonely old man being forced into retirement. The arrival of his scheming goddaughter Helena puts Indy back into the saddle (literally — he rides a police horse through New York City’s subways) as an adventurer. We then follow our hero through a series of bloody action set pieces where multiple innocents wind up dead. We also learn that Indiana’s son Mutt (Shia LaBeouf) died in Vietnam and that this loss fractured his relationship with Marion.

By and large, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is a depressing backslide for a franchise that used to hum with excitement. 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of my favorite films ever made. It’s chock full of brilliantly staged action set pieces, remarkably human dialogue, and mystical wonder. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny captures just a faint echo of the original film’s charm. Worse, it’s obsessed with reminding the audience of what used to be and who Indiana once was.

The one singular moment of real audacity in the whole film is when the plane ferrying Voller, Indy, Helena, and a team of 1960s Nazis to 1930s Germany winds up in Ancient Syracuse. Bewildered Romans and Syracusans alike wonder if the plane is a dragon. The 20th century characters are stunned by the spectacle of ancient war engines embroiled in an all-out battle. It’s rather magical, and Harrison Ford plays it as such. For the first time in the entire film, Indiana Jones appears to be having a good time. He might be dying, but hey, he also got to meet Archimedes. For the archaeologist who battled Nazis to protect history, getting to spend his last moments in history is a gift. But then Helena knocks him out, robbing Indy of his agency, and forces him home to make nice with Marion.

Not only do I think Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny should have capped off the Indiana Jones saga by allowing Ford’s version of the character to die onscreen, but I think it would have been fitting for Indy to die on an ancient battlefield. Giving him a “happily ever after” with Marion is insultingly pat. Their marriage isn’t magically saved by the events of the film, nor is Indy rendered magically immortal. What? He’s just going to wait to die in his sleep during the Ford administration? That’s lame! HE SHOULD HAVE DIED IN ANCIENT SYRACUSE AND BEEN BURIED BY ARCHIMEDES. That would have been cool. That’s how Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny should have ended and that’s why I hate the fifth Indy film’s ending.

(Now, can someone at Lucasfilm greenlight a spin-off franchise about an adult Short Round, aka Oscar-winner and experienced stunt man Ke Huy Quan, stealing artifacts from museums to return them to their native people already? That’s the only Indy sequel I want to see at this point.)