Surprise: Indiana Jones 'Dial of Destiny' Is a Pro-America, Non-Woke Good Ride
For those afraid that Disney might mess up another movie franchise by inserting wokeness into it, you can breathe a sigh of relief.
“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” — co-produced by Walt Disney Pictures, Paramount Pictures and Lucasfilm — is just a good, rip-roaring time at the theater.
The film opens in 1969 just after American astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins completed their successful Apollo 11 mission to the moon.
It was certainly a high point in U.S. and world history.
There are plenty of American flags on display as the astronauts are celebrated with a ticker tape parade in New York City, where Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) finds himself as he’s being chased by a Nazi villain left over from World War II and his henchmen.
I couldn’t help thinking of Indy at this point in his life as akin to Rick from “Casablanca,” who was representative of America itself in the early 1940s before the U.S. entry into the war: world-weary and just trying to cope with his own challenges.
But deep down, Indy, like Rick, can’t stay on the sidelines when the freedom of his country and the world are at stake thanks to the Nazis.
In Indy’s final adventure, Nazi Jürgen Voller (played by Mads Mikkelsen) seeks to acquire the “Dial of Destiny” created by ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes in order to travel back in time through a portal back to 1939 in order to “fix” the mistakes Adolf Hitler made in World War II.
This time, Voller plans for the Nazis to win.
So we’ve got some major stakes at play in the story.
Indy, much as in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “The Last Crusade,” aims to thwart the Nazis, with the help of his new sidekick — and, at times, foe — Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge).
And that is as much as I’ll say about the plot, and all I have revealed can pretty much be gleaned from the trailer.
Movie critics gave “Dial of Destiny” lukewarm reviews following its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May.
According to Rotten Tomatoes, film reviewers gave it a 68 percent score, while audiences turned in a far more favorable 88 percent overall.
CinemaScore audience participants rated the film as a B-plus.
I’d give it an A-minus and rank it third behind the original “Raiders” and “The Last Crusade” but ahead of “Temple of Doom” and “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” which was truly an awful movie.
In fact, it was probably the bad taste left in moviegoers’ mouths by “Crystal Skull” — along with concern that Disney would go woke with “Dial of Destiny” that kept the movie from crossing the $100 million threshold for its opening weekend.
Nonetheless, it did earn the top spot at the box office, taking in a projected $82 million domestically through the long Fourth of July holiday, according to Box Office Mojo. Its tally worldwide is $152 million.
By comparison, “Crystal Skull” took in just over $100 million in its opening weekend domestically in 2008, which would be about $140 million in today’s dollars.
Don’t listen to the movie critics and the naysayers.
“Dial of Destiny” is a good old-fashioned, non-woke, fun time at the theater.
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