Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) and Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) have been captured by Nazis at the end of World War II.  They were in search of the Spear of Destiny, which proved to be a fake.  Instead, they stumbled upon the Antikythera Mechanism in the possession of Dr. Voller (Mads Mikkelsen).  The pair - mostly Indy - fight their way through a Nazi train and miraculously survive.

In 1969, Indy awoke to loud music from a young neighbor.  After getting dressed, he heads to Hunter College, where he teaches.  The students are mostly disinterested though one offers all the answers to any question he poses.  Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) was not a student, but rather the daughter of Basil Shaw.  She declares her interest in the Antikythera Mechanism and proposes that they go hunting for it.  As luck would have it, it is in a storage vault at Hunter College.  No sooner does she lay hands on it than murderous CIA agents arrive.  Helena flees, leaving Indy to deal with the CIA.  The CIA is in league with Dr. Voller, who became part of the US Space Program since the war.  Sallah (John Rhys-Davies), who moved to New York after the war to become a cab driver, provides Indy with his adventure gear and passport so he can chase after Helena.  He finds her in Morrocco, attempting to sell the Antikythera.  Instead, Voller arrives and absconds with it.  Now Indy, Helena, and Teddy (Ethann Isidore) must find the other part of the Antikythera before Voller does.

The movie is better than I expected, but not good.  Though spry for his age, Harrison Ford is no longer suited for this kind of role.  Helena is an inexplicable character.  Here she steals from Indy and has no concern that she has left him at the mercy of murders.  Despite being the daughter of a committed academic, she likes to sell antiquities to the highest bidder.  Then she is chased by her former fiance who intends to lop off her head.  Talk about a toxic relationship.  When half of her allies are murdered by Voller's goons, she is more thrilled about how she, Indy, and Teddy escaped.  It is hard to determine what her motivations are.  Teddy could have been eliminated altogether.  The idea that he learned to fly from a drunken pilot based on cardboard cutouts is ludicrous.  However, to have the epic motorcycle chasing plane scene, they needed a third character to fly the rescue plane.  Ugh.

Time travel?  Why'd it have to be time travel?  I hate time travel.  Yes, it turns out that Archimedes invented a time travel device, but it only allows roundtrips from current time to the Siege of Syracuse (216 BC) and back.  How in the hell did the Nazis manage to get their plane shot down by Roman siege weapons?  Seriously, why don't you gain some altitude?  No, we're going to skim back and forth 40 yards above the Roman ships until they shoot us down.  Behold the stupidity.

The special effects were disappointing.  Sometimes, the de-aging of Harrison Ford was great.  Most of the time, it looked off.  The chased through the tickertape parade looked particularly bad.  Doubtless it is much cheaper to computer animate a parade through New York City, but this is really a scene that should have been filmed via practical effects.  Heck, a lot of it should have been.  The boat full of eels was likewise unconvincing.  Too much green screen and not enough stuntmen.

The marital issues with Indy and Marion over Mutt's death in Vietnam was unnecessary background.  It just made for a depressing Indy.  Look, Indy is old, his son is dead, his wife has filed for divorce, his students are not interested in his class, his career is over with his retirement after class, he hands his retirement gift to a random guy on the street, and his god daughter is stealing from him.  It's no wonder that Indy wanted to get left behind to die with Archimedes at the end of the movie.  What have they done to Indiana Jones?

Mostly disappointing.  Watch one of the original three instead.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Rogue One opens on remote planet where Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen) is impressed back into Imperial Service by Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn).  Erso's wife is killed and young daughter flees.  Soon thereafter, Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker) arrives to takeover as young Jyn Erso's guardian.  Next we see Jyn (Felicity Jones), she is in an Imperial jail.  She is rescued by the Rebellion and used as a means of contacting Gerrera, who has broken with the more formal Rebels, and hopefully access to her missing father.  There is a rumor that he is working on a super weapon that could destroy a planet.

 

Jyn soon finds herself in the company of a ragtag group, most of whom are not rebels when she meets them but are by the movie's climactic battle.  There is Rebel Captain Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), reprogrammed Imperial Droid K-2SO (Alan Tudyk), blind force-user Chirrut, his machinegun-wielding partner Baze Malbus, and a defector Imperial Pilot named Bodhi Rook.  K-2SO was a bit too reminiscent of C3PO with his offering of odds (maybe that is something droids do), but in other respects I thought he was a great character.  Yes, the droid was the comic relief.

 

Though many characters from the original series return, this doesn't feel like a Star Wars movie.  It is much grittier.  Our Rebel heroes are more in the anti-hero vein and not in a charming way like Han Solo.  In a standard Star Wars movie, all these characters would be extras running around to get shot.  They do that here too but they have a lot more development before getting shot.  Speaking of those return characters, we see Mon Mothma, Bail Organa, Grand Moff Tarkin, Princess Leia, Red Leader, Gold Leader, and, of course, Darth Vader.  With Tarkin and Leia, CGI was used to change the face of the stand-in actor to look like Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher from A New Hope.  This was not as effective as one might have hoped.  There was something unsettling about the CGI faces.  They were wrong but it is hard to pin down exactly how they were wrong.

 

I think the heroes needed an alien, their Chewy.  Rather than species diversity, we had racial diversity.  There was a Mexican, a Pakistani, and a couple of Chinese.  With Star Wars names being ethnically neutral, I doubt this was accidental.  With Daisy Ridley as the lead character in the current run of trilogies, it seems a bit overkill to have another woman lead.  In fact, if not a single line was changed - except maybe some pronouns - the role of Jyn is written entirely non-gendered.  Put a male actor in there with the same lines and the same actions and it would make no difference.  Is that also intentional?

 

Overall, I enjoyed it.  Seeing the classic X-wings back in action was awesome.  I far prefer them to the new delicate split-engine model.  It was a better movie than The Force Awakens but it plays mostly as a prologue to A New Hope.  Thumbs up.  Get out to the theater and see it on the big screen.

Doctor Strange

A group of sorcerers led by Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen) invades a sacred library and steals pages from a book before fleeing into the streets of New York!  The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) pursues, killing about half the invaders.  Kaecilius escapes with the pages that contain a ritual that could destroy the world.

 

Next we meet Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), a brilliant neurosurgeon who seemingly brings an organ donor back to life!  He is an arrogant, self-centered jerk but nevertheless a magnificent surgeon with miraculously steady hands.  Then tragedy strikes.  In a car accident, his hands are mangled and, even after extensive reconstructive surgery, he has difficulty just writing his name.  Desperation takes him to Nepal and the Ancient One.  Though initially a skeptic, once convinced that there is magic, he studies voraciously and quickly becomes proficient in advanced sorcery.  He is soon embroiled in the conflict between the Ancient One and Kaecilius, proving to be the central figure in the final outcome.

 

In the mid credits scene, a bearded Thor discusses Loki and Odin with Doctor Strange.  Strange offers his help in finding Loki for the purpose of getting the Asgardians back to Asgard.  Unsurprisingly, Strange will appear in the forthcoming Thor: Ragnarok.  At the end of the credits, the villain of the next Doctor Strange movie reveals himself.

 

The movie has a very strong Inception feel to it with the mirrored cityscapes that fold upon themselves.  Though often humorous, this plays much more seriously than Ant-Man or Guardians of the Galaxy.  The magic system is solid and well made.  That the movie limited its forms was a good call.  Unlike Harry Potter, we aren't bombarded with all sorts of magic.  Basically, it comes down to magic gateways, invoking a mirror world, conjuring weapons or shields, and astral projection.  Each of these are shown enough times to make them all old hat by the end of the movie.  More spells can be added in later movies but I like that we stuck with some basic tricks for the first outing.

 

Yet again, Marvel has taken one of their lesser characters and created a great film.  When I was reading Marvel in the 80s, I read almost exclusively Fantastic Four and X-Men, both of which Marvel sold the movie rights.  Marvel has more than made do with the second and third string characters.  Thumbs way up for Doctor Strange!