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About an hour into Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the world’s most active archeologist, a little less active of late, is reunited with a friendly face from his past. Dr. Jones, played by Harrison Ford in what he insists will be his final turn in the fedora, is on the run and headed overseas in search of a rare, allegedly supernatural artifact. You know, typical Indiana Jones shit. Can the professor count on a one-time partner in temple-plundering? Are the Raiders boys back together? Afraid not. That old friend is now too old for such mischief; at this late stage in life, he’d rather leave the heroics to the kids. The reunion is short-lived, a quick and bittersweet hit of nostalgia.
Indy, of course, soldiers on. The Nazis are back, you see — a predicament that should sound familiar to any fan of this franchise, not to mention anyone current on the state of American politics. Jones has to saddle up again, aching joints be damned, to take them down. But should he? Watching Ford, now officially an octogenarian, amble back into some semblance of action, you have to wonder if that old friend had the right idea. Let someone else save the world! Indy needs a drink. Lord knows he’s earned one.
Even those with an undying affection for Steven Spielberg’s whip-cracking academic, star of four previous exercises in globe-trotting precarity, might grant that this one last adventure could be one adventure too many. Ford was already out of his running-and-jumping prime in the last sequel, 2008’s widely maligned Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Fifteen years later, director James Mangold, taking over for Spielberg, has no choice but to build the whole movie around an acknowledgement that Indiana Jones is, to paraphrase another Eighties action hero, too old for this shit.
Indy is the last iconic role left for Ford to reprise during this chapter of his career. (At least if one assumes that he won’t be going on the lam as an elderly Dr. Richard Kimble or giving us a grizzled Jack Ryan.) His legacy tour included previous stops in a galaxy far, far away and the cyberpunk future. There was something rather affecting about his performances in those movies. Maybe it was the surprise of seeing the star, often so crotchety in public persona (he’s been playing the part of a grumpy old man since he was a grumpy young man), warmly pass the torch. Ford brought a relaxed gravitas to The Force Awakens and Blade Runner 2049, playing mentor to a younger generation of heroes — which may be why Dial of Destiny follows suit, pairing him with Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s wisecracking goddaughter.
So why was it poignant to see the actor suit up again for those late sequels and a little sadder somehow to see him do the same here? It could be that Ford, at 80, is simply pushing the limits of his credibility as an action hero in a way he wasn’t five or seven years ago. (No shame there; it happens to every Hollywood cowboy eventually.) But the difference arguably has more to do with the nature of Indiana Jones as a character. For all their occasional fisticuffs and gun fights, neither Han Solo nor Rick Deckard are quite as deeply defined by pure physical activity — the veritable Olympics of environmental obstacles Indy made a career out of vaulting.
To even call Jones a character, in the traditional sense, is arguably misleading. Spielberg and George Lucas conceived of him more as a body in perpetual motion — the adventure-serial spirit incarnate, the human equivalent of a cliffhanger. So much of the fun of the Indiana Jones movies, so much of their excitement and humor, lies in seeing Jones constantly dumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. His ideals are wrapped up in the sheer lengths he’s willing to go to realize them: the boulder he’ll outrun, the punches he’ll lean into, the speeding truck he’ll scramble over and under.
Ford simply can’t credibly perform those kinds of feats anymore, even with stunt doubles on hand to fortify the illusion. It would be strange if he could at his age! For better or worse, Dial of Destiny embraces this reality instead of trying to disguise it. The adventure commences with a shot of the professor shirtless in his apartment — a stark, vanity-free acknowledgement of how Ford’s physique has changed over the years. Jones, when we catch up with him in the late 1960s, is on the cusp of retirement from academia, a subplot that emphasizes the valedictory nature of the larger story. Ford, during the press cycle, underscored that part of the reason he agreed to do Dial was that it promised to not only accept his age but also make it central to the dramatic arc of the movie and its vision of Jones. Should we have expected anything less than an Old Man Indy movie from the director of Logan?
Yet Mangold is boxed in by Ford’s normal, natural limitations as a movie star of a certain age. They necessitate a different kind of Indiana Jones vehicle, pokier and less kinetic. While Spielberg moved fluidly from set piece to set piece, defining Indy largely through action (even Crystal Skull has a rollercoaster momentum), Dial of Destiny often struggles to meet even the most generous fan’s expected quota of derring-do. One of the only sustained bursts of action, a tuk tuk pursuit through the streets of Tangier, seems blocked and shot to minimize Ford’s exertion; we’re a long way from the famed truck chase of Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s telling that the closest Dial can come to a vintage Indy sequence is the cold open, a flashback that features Ford’s digitally deaged mug pasted, by all appearances, on the body of someone capable of moving like he could 40 years ago.
If there’s anything resonant about this creaky approximation of a classic Indiana Jones adventure, it’s the way it serves as a sobering reminder that everyone gets old. If it can happen to a towering paragon of Hollywood masculinity, to a hero of our collective dreams, it can (and will) happen to you, too. Dial of Destiny is after something much different than what the new Mission: Impossible movie will offer in a few weeks: It lays bare the diminished mobility — and by extension, the mortality — of an aging action star, rather than stubbornly defying it. It’s a summer blockbuster about how history leaves even its legends behind as they shuffle toward oblivion.
Whether anyone wants that out of an Indiana Jones movie is another question. This series once stood outside of time — a reliable source of old-fashioned entertainment, bridging the blockbuster era of the 1980s to an earlier age of propulsive spectacle. Through the enduring involvement of its star, now past the point where his age can go unaddressed, it’s become something impossibly freighted by time’s passage: a meditation on getting older. Ford brings about as much dignity as he can to a character it would have been more dignified to leave offscreen, unblemished by the harsh reality of what he can no longer do. Behind the actor’s weathered star power, you can see the image of a Hollywood machine that refuses to ever let anything go, or to let any beloved character ride permanently into the sunset.
