“Indiana Jones and the Wheel of Destiny” in the cinema: Farewell – culture

The world probably wouldn’t have ended either if there hadn’t been a fifth “Indiana Jones” film. But now it’s really nice that it’s coming to the cinema. This is mainly because Harrison Ford is here at the proud age of 80 puts on the famous adventurer’s hat again, as the most distant of all archaeologists from the library.

As part of the German premiere, Ford said he really wanted to make this film. And not to prove that he could still ride like a young man. But to show what an (admittedly quite fit) 80-year-old looks like in the saddle. Once, right at the beginning, Ford even shows himself topless.

But not in the Tom Cruise style, who, at just 60 years old, is still trying to pretend that at least he can’t age. But really eighty-year-old topless. Skin and muscles sagging compared to 1981, when he first played Indiana Jones. Of course, Ford still looks fantastic for its age. And he shows us younger people, who are bombarded with news about empty pension funds and a lack of nursing staff on a daily basis, that perhaps old age doesn’t just have to be terrible.

The old professor complains to the young neighbors who listen to “The Beatles” too loud

Steven Spielberg directed the first four films. He was initially intended for “The Wheel of Destiny”. But then he canceled the project in order to be able to work on other subjects in the remaining time. He, too, is now in his mid-70s and knows that he will only be able to make a limited number of films. Spielberg was replaced by James Mangold, who had his big break in Hollywood with the Johnny Cash biopic “Walk the Line”, and who proves to be a veritable Spielberg heir here.

It is difficult to understand exactly why so many critics in Cannes complained so much about the quality of this film at the world premiere in May. Perhaps they were angry that they, too, have aged significantly since the last part. “The Wheel of Destiny” is of course not a reinvention of the series. But Indiana Jones fans are almost more conservative than Star Wars fans anyway, and the film has all the elements of the adventure saga that made it so popular in the 1980s. At the beginning it even starts with the young Indiana Jones from back then.

The film picks up just before the end of World War II, when Indy and a friend are trying to snatch treasure from the Nazis in France. Harrison Ford also plays the role in this opening sequence. Hollywood now has plenty of “de-aging” software for such cases. This makes many artificially rejuvenated stars look rather sinister, currently for example Samuel L. Jackson in the series “Secret Invasion”. But the technology works a bit better in this film, because they fed the program with really every film snippet that was ever shot that Ford recorded as Indy in the eighties, including all the scenes that weren’t even in the finished films came.

After a daring action sequence on the roof of a moving Nazi train while the Allies are already flying across the country in the sky, the film jumps to the year 1969. Now you see the hero old and unretouched. Prof. Jones is about to retire from the university and lives in a small apartment in New York.

He operates devotedly as grumpy old man and bangs on the door of the young neighbors who are way too loud beatles hear. The teenagers, who have no idea what adventures this man has already had, what dangers he has escaped from, roll their eyes with a smile: the grandpa next door again. New York is celebrating the return of the astronauts from the first moon landing with a big parade these days. Adventures no longer only take place on earth, but in space – and Indiana Jones is an old man in a new time.

But he’s soon thrown out of retirement when the daughter of his old friend, with whom he defied the Nazis at the time, shows up: Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) is young and smart and would make a good new Indiana Jones herself. But on this mission she needs the support of the original again. As the title suggests, it is about the “Wheel of Destiny”, a mysterious construction attributed to the great Archimedes. You can use it to travel through time. The villain Dr. Voller, played by Mads Mikkelsen with full Hollywood Nazi commitment. Voller would like to travel back to the “Reich”, namely to Munich, to the Prinzregentenplatz, to a certain Herr Hitler, in order to reverse the miserable outcome of the Second World War for the Nazis.

Of course, today’s filmmakers have very different technical options at their disposal than when Steven Spielberg and his buddy George Lucas brought the first Indy stories to the cinema. But the new film is always at its best when it uses computer effects as subtly as possible.

A marvelization of “Indiana Jones” would have been a pity, enough US blockbusters are already drowning in pixel mush. Luckily, there’s plenty of old-school adventure flair, narrow alley chases on tuk-tuk rickshaws and dark catacombs with all sorts of disgusting critters. The journey takes Indy and his companion Helena halfway around the world and finally back in time – but not to Herr Hitler.

The most beautiful scene of the film comes without any action fanfare. She ends up playing back at home in old Indiana Jones’ New York apartment. And this time, it looks like he really can hang up his adventurer’s hat forever, with dignity and in peace. Farewell, Indy.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, USA 2023 – Director: James Mangold. Camera: Phedon Papamichael. Starring: Harrison Ford, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Mads Mikkelsen, Antonio Banderas, Karen Allen, John Rhys-Davis. Disney, 154 minutes. Theatrical release: June 29, 2023.