For a relatively non-spoiler review, skip down to after After…

Well, what a wild ride that was and as the above sub-title reveals, I'm not talking about the experience of actually seeing the fifth Indiana Jones movie. That's tomorrow evening. I am referring to the non-stop info-drop over 18 months; day after day of gloomy punditry, fake leaks, real leaks, photos and details of the filming and internet blogs criticising the filmmakers, some written before a frame of the movie actually existed… ("No Spielberg, no Lucas, no way!") The breezy counter to this argument is summed up in just two words, 'Crystal' and 'Skull'. If that truly woeful sequel to the world class trilogy of Indy's first adventures was dredged up by the original creators, then a change is as good as… Even Spielberg admits to being brow beaten into helming a film he clearly had no real faith in. There was a comically nuked fridge, interdimensional aliens (not real outer space ones!), and a less physically capable leading man despite the whip swinging and Lucas's fanciful over reach of frankly embarrassing ideas (Mutt vine swinging, geez), ideas best relegated to actual B-movie status, the same B-movies that Indiana Jones was originally conceived from. The principal hero of the 80s is in fact (like Star Wars) an amalgamation of all the serials the creators enjoyed as kids, blended together utilising modern special effects and the dizzying mise-en-scene skill of a director who was at the peak of his game in that decade.

Because of the colossal size of Dial of Destiny's production (at just shy of $300 million which means before it turns a profit it has to make $900 million at the box office) it could not be successfully kept under wraps. Unverifiable and highly suspicious reports of a disastrous test screening – which may have been trolls working overtime to derail the project – suggested details that seemed, frankly, all too believable given what Disney has done to its roster of heroes inherited from that other Lucasfilm franchise. The mere idea that Phoebe Waller-Bridge's character takes Indy's place in all of his greatest past moments via the time travel device, the Dial of Destiny, is so ludicrous, I could not conceive even the most unhinged executive willing to fund the beloved character's utter debasement. I'm not a great fan of Kathleen Kennedy's female-centric reimagining of Star Wars (it's not the female I object to, just the lack of character) and the in-house, mouse-house ideology agenda seemingly driving the company. This agenda would be a fine and positive thing for the world but for two aspects: one, not every project has to be so pointedly laced with aspects of 'the message' if that aspect derails or overpowers the film it's featured in and two, people are not exactly flocking to see Disney's recent output and the most famous movie studio of them all is in real trouble. There were some reports of parents simply choosing not to expose their offspring to LGBTQIA ingredients fearing how to explain them to their young children. In fifty years, Disney may be looked upon as being ahead of the curve but presumably more important than anything else to Disney is money. And the company is haemorrhaging the stuff. Even its once mighty Pixar is licking its wounds over Elemental. If I compared the once heroic and hopeful young pilot Luke to the abrasive, cynical and uninvolved Skywalker in The Last Jedi, the idea of a young woman taking over Indy's past life doesn't sound that far-fetched. I'm anxious to lay the test screening leaks to rest, if indeed they were trolls and not well-meaning Indiana Jones fans.**

I welcome and support weak or strong, well-rounded characters of both sexes. It's their unearned perfection and Mary-Sueness*** (didn't her grandfather captain Liverpool in the 80s?) and the subsequent tamping down and snuffing out of any well-known male characters' agency, effectiveness and status that rankles. Do men have to be belittled for women to shine? Why can't we all shine? Whatever the cinema holds for me tomorrow evening, I know I'm in good directorial hands. Mangold is a class act but then Spielberg's not exactly a slouch. Maybe an aged Indiana Jones (a hero principally known for his physical prowess) is just too much of a stumbling block even for Spielberg and Lucas. Ford is a self-confessed 'physical actor' and pushing 80 as he was during the filming of Dial of Destiny, despite his clearly impressive physical capabilities, perhaps he really is too old for this shit.

Forty-two years ago, in 1981, Raiders of the Lost Ark came out of nowhere, something now unfortunately impossible given the proliferation and ease of information sharing globally. Spielberg was smarting from the less than stellar box office or critical acclaim that greeted 1941, his misjudged World War II comedy. He then decided he wanted the challenge of being seen to be  fiscally responsible and so became accepting of less than perfect takes because they were good enough to move on to the next set up. Not only did he achieve his goal coming in under budget and way under schedule, both director and exec/writer George Lucas had negotiated a once-in-a-lifetime deal that gave the two 'creators' unprecedented control over their creation and ways of profiting from it. I was lucky enough to be at the press screening of Raiders in Cardiff attended by co-star John Rhys-Davies (Gimli from Lord of the Rings). He told us some wonderful and wicked stories about the shoot which forty-two years on I still feel the need to keep secret. But Raiders blew our socks off. There was a mis-step in the initial marketing. Check out the original poster that featured a stern Harrison Ford and little else. On re-release they changed the marketing and now Indiana is smiling as he cracks his whip. This movie is fun! Best of all is the film's Polish poster (always a source of great entertainment at Outsider…) No, me neither.

Then a gear change which, alas, has not weathered well given recent accelerated social justice awareness. It's been reported that both Lucas and Spielberg were in turmoil romantically speaking at the time of production so it's no surprise there's a scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where someone gets their literal heart plucked from their chest… It's very hard to regard the 1984 sequel as racism-free. The poor Indians (of your actual India) eat bugs while their children are enslaved. They need the great white adventurer (ho hum) to reclaim the magic stones that allow them to live contented lives. Today this is a difficult concept to fully endorse. Temple of Doom alluded to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang which was a stretch but while there was no actual child catcher in Pankot Palace's underground catacombs, the children were certainly present as slave labour. Famed New York film critic Pauline Kael surprisingly enthused over Temple of Doom. Kael gleaned something in the film that rose above the easily dismissible.

"The subject of a movie can be momentum. It has often been the true—even if not fully acknowledged—subject of movies. In Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, it's not merely acknowledged, it's gloried in. The picture has an exuberant, hurtling-along spirit. Spielberg tried ki­netic comic-strip routines in his 1941 and couldn't quite make them work; here comparable routines come off just about perfectly."

In today's climate, it's a hard film to really endorse let alone adore. Given that caveat, there are scenes in it that are just an absolute blast. It's Indiana Jones directed in the spirit of Chuck Jones. And there is an argument that there are more classic Indy moments in Temple of Doom than the other two despite how hard some critics came down on the more dodgy elements of the narrative. It's also deliciously absurd that a large container of water, once tipped up and emptied, would result in a torrent of water to menace our heroes when in reality it would have soaked into the surrounding ground in seconds rather that chase after Indy's cohorts with the force of a pressurised tsunami over a minute and forty-five seconds. Credit to the filmmakers that this fact only occurred to me after internet prompting a full 39 years after the film's release.

So, 1989. A third (and final… ha! We wish,) Indiana Jones adventure, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I suspect the filmmakers went back to Nazis as villains for the simple reason that they were ever so easily convenient as shorthand for despicable and disposable fodder. There are many pleasures to be gained from Indy's third outing, not least the cautious and antagonistic father-son relationship brought to life by the late, great Sean Connery and Harrison Ford, who's fondly respectful towards and duly exasperated by his old man. While Hitler is replaced by Donovan, a Nazi stooge played by Julian Glover, the goals for both sides seem the same: Get the (artefact), the Holy Grail, because (great power) everlasting life awaits those who find the cup of Christ. The father-son relationship is the key to the success of Indy's third adventure.

Then there's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Uh… Right. Nothing to see here.

Before the main event, there was an advert – for insurance I think – that showed holidaymakers enjoying themselves by an open air swimming pool. An English summer scene then falls prey to darkening clouds followed by a downpour. Everyone scrambles to find cover including those in the swimming pool. Let that sink in. People in the swimming pool are trying hard to find cover to stop them getting wet. I thought that this was the most ridiculous and truly silliest thing I'd seen on screen all year. I had another thought. Would the next two and half hours find many ways to top it? Did I care? Well… if you go in expecting a car crash after all the speculation, tepid press, the Cannes Film Festival crowd's respectful but muted response, low Rotten Tomatoes ratings and trolling, you might be pleasantly surprised. The first thing to say is that we can safely pack the memory of Crystal Skull away, the slate wiped clean so to speak. The film pretends Crystal Skull had never happened. It would seem odd that while men have just walked on the moon, 12 years earlier at least four people knew of the existence of 'inter-dimensional' aliens, the surviving witnesses at the end of the previous film. Maybe they all felt it was right not to say anything to the rest of the world…

We start in gung-ho fashion with a seriously well executed de-aged Indiana Jones (given away only by the timbre of Ford's older voice) captured by the Nazis while he was looking for the Holy Lance, the weapon that spilled Christ's blood. Hitler, as we know from Raiders, "is a nut on the subject." Principal bad guy, Voller, has his hands on another artifact that has a piece missing. During a protracted chase sequence, Indy's pal Basil Shaw takes possession of the 'dial of destiny' (it has a proper Greek name but I don't think we care too much about that. Indiana Jones and the Antikythera Mechanism doesn't quite have that ring of pulpy cheesiness). Once this 25 minute section is over, we realise that's the last time we'll see Indiana Jones in his prime doing what he does best. I'm going to assume that it would have been prohibitively expensive to keep Ford young throughout the whole and as Ford wanted to lean in to his age and make getting older an issue as part of his farewell take on this iconic adventurer, then so be it. Cut to twenty-four years later. I was heartened that Mangold didn't feel the need to title this information. After a blast of the Beatles (a perfect indicator of its time), Indy wakes up and complains about the noise. We have early indications that Indiana is in a bad place. It's not just the mileage and the years, it's also the break-up of his marriage and the fate of his son, all neatly conveyed in the odd close up and summing up by Indiana himself. Someone astutely mentioned that Indiana Jones has to be a real character in this outing instead of the semi-invincible action hero he used to be. We are in New York, 1969 celebrating the Apollo astronauts who have returned from their first walk on the Moon. To cut a long and meandering story short, Shaw's daughter Helena turns up, tricks Indy into giving her the Dial that was driving his pal mad and out for profit she takes it away to auction it off narrowly escaping a trio of Nazis headed by Voller. There follows much globe-trotting, many chases (perhaps one too many?) and many evil deeds perpetrated by the bad guys. But it's a fun ride to be had. Any more would act as spoilers. This is such a refreshing reset and a tactical ignoring of Crystal Skull that I can only be grateful. That said, I do understand those who are convinced that Disney or Kathleen Kennedy or Social Justice Warriors have destroyed Indiana Jones in order to keep up with times present. I just don't happen to agree with them in this instance.

Unimpressed with a carriage clock as a retirement present, Indy sits down for a drink at a bar and in walks Helena Shaw, his goddaughter he doesn't recognise. I have to say that the chemistry is in place from the start. Ford, while just as charismatic a performer as ever, always needs strong characters to team up with or to fight against. As does Indiana Jones. It's clear the two actors enjoyed each other during production. Helena is a worthy partner as written, a Hawksian women (a reference that might be lost on younger visitors, named after old time Hollywood director Howard Hawks), essentially an independent, tough-talking, somewhat cynical woman who has a material goal and will move mountains to achieve it. She's also more selfishly ruthless than most and thankfully doesn't conform to the regular 'side kick' stock character although she has one of her own. I find it hard to reconcile some of the more critical barbs aimed at Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Yes, she has an aristocratic lineage (she can't help that) and I was a bit miffed Derry Girls had to live in the shadow of her Fleabag series while the latter took the awards circuit by storm (mine are personal reasons for this frustration) but I found her performance in Destiny to be dry, capable, charismatic and as a foil for a curmudgeonly Indiana Jones, a terrific fit. The writer/actress must think these last few years she's been whisked away to another dimension. Fleabag, for those attuned to it, was funny, clever and touching and while I liked it, my wife couldn't get past the first episode… Acquired taste perhaps. But we both enjoyed her Killing Eve. To be thrust into the international mainstream movie world charged with co-writing Daniel Craig's swansong as Bond and then to get the co-starring role in another cultural giant's farewell… Well. These things can go to your head. Her rise was stellar. I suspect she got on very well with producer Kathleen Kennedy after being cast as a droid in Solo. Just a guess, you understand. Just read her Vanity Fair interview…**** This does take the wind out of a few naysaying sails out there but guess who was a massive fan of Fleabag? Drum roll… Harrison Ford! He asked Kennedy to get her on board.

'Every movie is only as good as its villain' is an old canard but Mads Mikkelsen plays the ruthless Nazi Voller with such relish, it's hard not to be totally entertained every time he's on screen. His highs when things are going well and his lows when things are going south – in one scene, both occur within minutes – are both perfectly judged moments. He has two utterly merciless soldiers at his disposal. Boyd Holbrook plays Klaber, Voller's sadistic right-hand man, quick to kill with only a nanosecond's thought. Then towering over him is seven foot tall and almost as wide, Olivier Richters as Hauke. Now it's no spoiler to say the henchmen always get it in the end but it gave me a little frisson that the smallest member of the cast gets to creatively despatch the largest. Helena has her own Short Round in the form of child-thief, Ethann Isidore as Teddy Kumar. Teddy, a prisoner, handcuffed to Hauke, is not in the best situation but how he turns things around is a small delight.

In the two flashbacks, we find Toby Jones as Basil Shaw, Helena's father, a friend of Indy's in days gone by, a bookish academic not at home running around on the top of train carriages in the dark being chased by Nazis. After Mike Myer's loving demolishment of 60s spy movies in the Austin Powers franchise, I cannot see the name 'Basil' without expecting the surname to be 'Exposition'. Shaw is determined to unlock the Dial's secrets and it's slowly robbing him of his sanity. Lovely to see Antonia Banderas in a small role as Renaldo and using the rule that something is not a spoiler if it's in the trailer, it's also fantastic to see John Rhys Davies returning as Sallah, Indy's Egyptian friend in the first and third of the series. I was a little taken aback that a mainstream critic suggested it was inappropriate that a Welsh actor was playing an Egyptian (?) but odd that they didn't get around to complaining that the Danish Mads Mikkelsen wasn't played by an honest-to-God German Nazi. I find this whole 'cast like for like' idea a little strange. I get it's a way to allow everyone to play and not discount anyone for roles but this was a legacy character already established. Did I read that Michael Sheen said recently that only Welsh actors should play Welsh parts? He actually said it was "hard to accept" non-Welsh actors playing Welsh characters. That's fine. An actor's job after all is to be convincing and if you don't get the accent right, to those in the know, they cannot be convincing.

Director James Mangold had a task on his hands that few film directors would envy. He had to live up to the work of Steven Spielberg in his prime and operate under the Disney banner with a back-breaking weight of expectation on his shoulders. I'm happy to say he is more than equal to the job. To be fair to Spielberg, it was extremely gracious of him to say after a screening at Disney "Damn, I thought I was the only one who knew how to make one of these." Mangold's action sequences are lively and urgent with things at stake that actually make you care. The naysayers, I suspect, might be making constant comparisons with the original trilogy, something Dial of Destiny simply cannot compete with. Or Disney may be failing and to prove that failure production-wide, Indiana Jones has to be brought down too. I have to admit that with all the negative buzz, I still wanted to like the film but I was agreeing a lot with the YouTube critics. I'm just pleased it entertained me and my party. It's only a movie, to quote Alfred Hitchcock. As a big tentpole blockbuster doing what it says on the tin, it delivers the goods. Look, it's not Citizen Kane but a significant step up on Kingdom of the Crystal Skull which remains the franchise's nadir for me.

I will mention one more thing. I attended the screening with my son and his girlfriend and we all barked out laughing at what might have been merely 15 frames at the tail end of a shot in the Tuk Tuk chase. Am pretty sure you'll know it when you (very briefly) see it. Have fun!

* https://www.gamesradar.com/indiana-jones-5-deaging-harrison-ford-dial-of-destiny/

** The following, surprisingly, is actually spoiler-free. The big reveal that leaked over a year ago was that via the time travel device, Phoebe Waller-Bridge's character was able to insert herself into Indiana Jones' most famous moments through time and become the new Indiana Jones. Who could possibly have thought that was a good idea? Allegedly Top Dog Bob Iger of Disney saw this and commanded a reshoot. This is not the ending of the film. The other 'revelations' were spot on and will not be revealed by me here. Director James Mangold, perhaps unwisely, took to his keyboard and struck back at the source of the information. Let's say it was a frank exchange of views. Mangold was protecting his movie. He flatly denied reshooting the ending. Unfortunately 91 year-old composer John Williams recently told a concert crowd that the ending was being reshot. Mangold countered with "He was mistaken." This was seen as a slight by some online movie commentators. Harrison Ford gave an interview in Spain where he simply said "We did a little work on the ending," which implies reshoots but Hollywood reshoots movies all the time. It's not a singular occurrence. The real surprise is how that purported original ending survived 10 seconds in the screenplay after it was shown to anyone connected to the project. It's too tempting to believe this was a Kathy Kennedy idea, so I won't. But, I ask you…

*** Mary Sue: (originally in fan fiction) a type of female character who is depicted as unrealistically lacking in flaws or weaknesses.

**** https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/06/phoebe-waller-bridge-on-her-surreal-journey-from-fleabag-to-indiana-jones