Besides, everything is smaller and cheaper than it was in the original trilogy. Will you succeed in confronting the military might of the Third Reich in 1936? We can all get behind it. But will you take on a single scientist and his interchangeable silent minions in the year 1969? It’s just not a big deal. Mangold and his team dutifully pull off the action sequences, but it’s often hard to figure out what’s going on or why, and there’s a lack of surprising, uproarious moments that make you stand up and cheer, despite John Williams’ best efforts. Raising the classic theme. Take an early chase in New York, for example. It’s set during a tape-tape show of the three astronauts who were on the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, so you can imagine the high gins Spielberg might have cooked up: some slapstick with Buzz Aldrin, or a giant papier-mâché moon rolling down Fifth Avenue like the boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark. But Mangold and his team do so little with the show that you wonder why they bothered to organize it.
The same applies to the scenes where Indy comes face to face with some snake-like snakes, and when he finds his way to the tomb of Archimedes. The jokes and the levity and levity just aren’t there, so instead of a cheerful send-off to our lovable hero, we get a depressing reminder of just how lively his past adventures were. Given that the screenplay is credited to four writers — Mangold, David Koepp, Geese, and John Henry Butterworth — couldn’t they have at least thought of something cool for Indy to do with his whip?
★★ ☆☆☆
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny It was released on June 30 in the United Kingdom and the United States
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