How Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny's Director Aimed To Avoid A Crystal Skull Misstep

"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" was poorly received upon its release in 2008, and while there are those who still go to bat for it, it's fair to say the movie does not come close to reaching the thrilling heights of either 1981's "Raiders of the Lost Ark" or 1989's "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade." Part of the reason "Crystal Skull" felt odd was because as the franchise aged along with star Harrison Ford, it naturally had to extend far past the 1930s setting of the first three films and stretch into the 1950s, and that specific milieu clashed with the pulpy, slam-bang vibes of the original trilogy.

The newest film, "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny," is moving the franchise even further along its timeline. But director James Mangold took note of what didn't work in "Crystal Skull" and seems determined to not repeat its mistake. In an interview with io9, he explained:

"The world goes through a period of modernism and suddenly Indiana Jones—that music, that look—isn't what the world is. [The world is] listening to Elvis Presley in the 'Crystal Skull' context and in ours to the Beatles [and] the Stones. So how do you convert? And these were the questions when I came on the movie I was thinking about: 'How do we make a movie that maintains what we love about Indy, but is aware that it may not be a perfect fit in this other time?' And that may be some of what they struggled with in the last picture—it's almost like someone showed up for a '40s picture but the movie's in the '50s. There's this kind of dissonance and what I thought is, 'We should make that dissonance a character of the film.'"

That's an effective description of why several aspects of "Crystal Skull" just feel ... off. Plus, that movie really suffers from Spielberg's longtime cinematographer, Janusz Kamiński, taking over for the late Douglas Slocombe, who shot all three of the original films and brought such a tremendously stylish quality to the aesthetic of what an Indy movie inherently is. Kamiński is great in his own way, but it's a tall order for anyone to try to mimic Slocombe's wonderfully distinct visuals. 

We'll soon find out how Mangold and his cinematographer, Phedon Papamichael, measure up in that regard, but in that io9 interview, Mangold spoke about his approach to "Dial of Destiny" and how he embraced the dissonance of Indiana Jones feeling like a man out of his own era:

"What I kind of envisioned when I came on was pretty simple. Which is that we give you a full-blast 'Indiana Jones' movie like you knew them in the first 25 minutes, right? Then, you fall off a cliff and you land in a kind of '70s picture with a 70-year-old Indiana Jones in modern New York City with a series of clear human struggles and problems. But then, the movie slowly climbs its way back. This 70-year-old will end up living through his own Indiana Jones adventure again, but the movie earns its way there with this character kind of coming out of a bit of a slumber."

"Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" arrives in theaters on June 30, 2023, but if you're in Los Angeles, /Film is hosting an early screening of the film in ScreenX, so come join us, won't you?