Indiana Jones y el dial del destino

Indiana Jones y el dial del destino es, hasta cierto punto, una película hecha de manera tan segura y moderna que la despoja de todo el atractivo, la originalidad, el físico y la audacia creativa que nos encantaron de las tres primeras entregas. Y desafortunadamente, incluso la magia de la aventura prácticamente ha desaparecido. Cuatro guionistas se enumeran en los créditos, y la disparidad es evidente en el resultado. Y todavía parece que fue escrito por inteligencia artificial. De hecho, aparentemente tiene todos los elementos de una película de Indiana Jones que legítimamente debería tener, pero se siente más como una imitación fabricada de Indiana Jones que como su verdadera aventura final. ¿Es peor o mejor que El reino de la calavera de cristal? Difícil de decir. En algo es mejor, en algo es peor. En cualquier caso, esta película ni siquiera ha visto la calidad de la trilogía original desde ese tren digital. (27.06.2023)

Los actores y el tema musical de John Williams te encantarán. Harrison Ford está maravillosamente rejuvenecido. La sorpresa del final es más aceptable que la tontería anterior con los extraterrestres. Pero lo digital omnipresente, cuando ni siquiera el tuk-tuk que recorre las estrechas calles marroquíes es real, es lo que realmente NO quiero que sea parte de Indiana Jones. Porque me gusta desde la primera trilogía por su trabajo cinematográfico creativo y honesto. Y esta forma rutinaria, en la que los cineastas no tienen que ser creativos en cuanto a su trabajo de cineastas porque la postproducción CGI lo hace todo por ellos, es todo lo contrario del enfoque original de Spielberg. Y el potencial de cada escena sufre por eso. (14.08.2023)

The last quarter of an hour is the only passage where some nostalgia works, and if I were the narrator, I would be much more uncompromising in my completion of Dr. Jones's life's journey. I would have found it much more emotional and logical (connoisseurs know). The rest is inconsistent to say the least. The opening with the train when there's palpable CGI rushing at you from all sides, is not enjoyable, it makes you remember with sadness the train opening of The Last Crusade, where Spielberg didn't need computers (understandably) and it worked much better. The tediously long chase in Tangier again, given the long takes, looks as if the local streets are empty of cars and people and as long as airport runways, I didn't believe it for a second. And that's how it is with everything. It's just such a see-and-forget feel-good movie most of the time, about on the level of the overwrought fourth film. Otherwise, the much-criticized Phoebe Waller-Bridge was fine, she has such a mischievous charisma and is a great counterpoint to the curmudgeonly Harrison Ford, and actually entertained me the most out of the whole film. (01.09.2023)

It’s fine that Disney is keeping old dads in mind, even though the mouse lost his shirt on this film. No, it’s not Logan with a whip. Mangold made a safe, old-fashioned movie along familiar lines that is already a bit long in the tooth in the action scenes and, hand on heart, is reminiscent of a conversation with an old man who’s telling you the same old war story for the five hundredth time,  a sure sign of encroaching senility. The pace and gradation fall off after the fine first third and the film thus needs a defibrillator in the form of nostalgia, which fortunately comes so forcefully in the final minutes that the whip regains its crack. And no, I don’t mean that beautiful crisp metaphor of a person who lives from/in the past, but rather that tender scene of two people who are probably hurting all over. I can relate to that! (11.02.2024)

I've had that famous John Williams tune playing in my head for about two hours now, and not because I enjoyed the fifth Indy so much, but rather because I'm in the mood to watch the first three episodes. I'll never watch the fifth one again, I'm almost certain of that. It’s not a completely bad movie, which could be said of the fourth, but it's just not “it”. The new Indy is carried by Harrison Ford and he's really trying his best, but he's just left on his own and he’s obstructed by everything else. The Fifth Indiana Jones film is visually bland and in some moments regularly repulsive, but mostly it has a boring story full of boring characters, and especially the bad guys are a bunch of uninteresting bums who are impossible to be scared of – Mads Mikkelsen is looking like he's about to start crying the whole time. Moreover, the treasure hunt itself leading up to the very weird (and slightly uglier) finale consists mostly of routine chases, because someone figured they couldn't have an 80-year-old Ford running around the set doing action shenanigans. James Mangold directs it all with no attempt at invention, and the result is at best a passable piece of craftsmanship somewhere on the level of National Treasure: Book of Secrets and a tiny bit above Uncharted, which is definitely not praise for this franchise. It lacks the style, the inventiveness and the evident joy that accompanied the first three films and, to some extent, the fourth. A product without soul. (28.06.2023)