All 5 Indiana Jones movies ranked from worst to best

4. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

The latest and final installment in the Indiana Jones series is all about Indy growing old, and it’s a big step up from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. What would being an old guy look like for an archeologist and adventurer like Indiana Jones? How would life have moved on around him?

Dial of Destiny asks these questions under the thoughtful direction of James Mangold, aided by Harrison Ford’s deep familiarity with the character. The movie kicks off with an action-packed fight on a runaway Nazi train, which gives the audience a big old dose of classic Indiana Jones nostalgia before launching us into the main story of the film. Sure, de-aging actors remains a little awkward, but Dial of Destiny makes one of the most admirable attempts at it we’ve yet seen.

From there we catch up with Indy when he’s in his 80s, and it’s immediately clear a lot has changed in his life since we last saw him in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. He and Marion Ravenwood are estranged, his students are way more interested in the moon landing than digging up dusty old relics, and his neighbors are waking him up with newfangled rock ‘n roll music. The movie really takes off once Indy’s goddaughter Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) shows up to trick him into giving her one half of Archimedes’ dial, which is said to locate rifts that allow time travel. Dial of Destiny avoids the mistakes made with Mutt by having Helena be just as interesting and well-developed as Indiana Jones himself, due in no small part to a magnetic performance by Waller-Bridge.

Many of the beats that follow feel familiar, such as the globe-spanning race with Nazis to secure a mystical artifact. But Dial of Destiny exercises an admirable amount of self-restraint when it comes to relying on nostalgia; it gives us lots of references, but often stops short of the obvious throwback line that would leave viewers groaning in embarrassment. And when the action hits, it really hits well. The tuk-tuk chase in the streets of Tangier is thrilling and funny by turns, the descent into a hidden tomb feels like classic Indiana Jones, and the ending time travel set piece is fantastic.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is the rare legacy movie that actually feels like it justifies its existence. There was never any way it was going to best anythihng from the original trilogy — those films are classics! — but it’s a surprisingly great finish to the series.

– Daniel