The Good:
* The train sequence at the beginning was very well done.
* Indy telling those damn kids to turn down that music!
* Voller is the best villain in the series since Raiders of the Lost Ark.
* Sallah and his grandkids! People clapped and cheered for them!
* Indy's students!
* The CIA/NSA being shown as enablers of Nazis is a nice touch, though it got a big "Huh?" from the audience, and my oldest nephew.
* Indy's cover being blown when the Nazis notice the bullet hole (front and back) and blood stain on the German uniform he's wearing.
* A lot on Nazis get punched!
John Fugelsang made this pithy observation:
You’ve seen Indiana Jones fight Nazis before - but until now, you’ve never heard him called “woke” for doing it.
The Not-So-Good:
* Some of the sequences dragged on and on. The golf cart chase in Tangier was monotonous.
* The part with the horse was done much better in True Lies.
* The female lead was the second worst in the whole series. I get that she wasn't supposed to be likeable (she's kinda like Edmund Blackadder: smug, conniving and not nearly as smart as she thinks she is), but when a Nazi spy and a KGB assassin are more likeable than Indy's latest foil, you're doing something wrong.
* Why bother with mentioning the moon landing at all? It wasn't the only thing going on in 1969.
* The film was a good 20 minutes too long.
* Why is Indy living in a dump? Back then, college professors earned decent money, since Republicans hadn't started attacking education yet (the following year, one of Reagan's henchmen announced that higher learning should be de-funded since the last thing America needs is an educated proletariat).
The WTF?:
* I had joked elsewhere that they'd probably explain the absence of Mutt by mentioning that he was killed in Vietnam (it's set in 1969, after all). When Indy explains how Mutt joined the service and got killed, I snickered because I immediately thought of the fate of Douglas Niedermeyer in Animal House :
Needless to say, I got a lot of dirty looks.
*Archimedes. Syracuse. Time travel done well for a change, though Voller must have the dumbest pilots in the Luftwaffe.
In all, it was a well-made movie and it shows that unlike The Mouse's other properties, the makers of this film put some genuine effort into it. It was sad at the end, even though Indy and Marion have a happy ending. It reminded me of a concert I attended four years ago when the bands on the bill were just shells of their glorious selves because so many members had died or retired or were on their last legs. Still, they played and sang their hearts out and made it a point NOT to take the easy route of just breezing through the hits. I admire them for that.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is the Royal Affair Tour of post-Lucas Lucasfilm. In the words of Joe Bob Briggs:
Check it out!
