When the trailer for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was released a little more than a year ago, I wrote that it gave me a bad feeling:

I get that Harrison Ford is 80 and can’t really do these stunts anymore but this is the franchise that gave us the truck chase, one of the greatest actions sequences ever filmed. I’m not getting that from this clip. I’m getting more of a Transformers vibe…

I still love Raiders and always will but what are the odds they can bring it to that level one more time? Maybe that’s just too much to hope for but I’d really love to be wrong.

I didn’t go to see the film in the theater but I did finally rent in over the Christmas break. I would sum up the experience by saying it was better than I expected but also not great in ways that probably can’t be fixed in the year 2023. If you haven’t seen it, here’s your warning that there are spoilers below.

On the plus side, the film is a big improvement from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull which struck me as a forgettable CGI extravaganza where it constantly feels as if we’re watching a video game. There are no physical stakes to anything in a movie where Jones’ son can swing through the jungle on vines like Spider-Man.

Dial of Destiny really dials down that sort of thing from 11 to maybe an 8. So you still have a couple of long car chases but they’ve made some effort to leave you with the sense that gravity still exists in this world, at least some of the time. And that’s a good thing because Indiana Jones was never supposed to be a literal superhero.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a long way off from best action scenes in Raiders. Even an opening scene on a train, which may be the best set piece in the film, feels a bit too much like something we’ve seen in several other movies before this.

The other thing this film has going for it is a pretty good villain played by Mads Mikkelsen (he was the bad guy in Casino Royale). Mikkelsen’s character isn’t terribly complicated but he does come across as smart and ruthless. His sidekicks feel more like cartoon characters which doesn’t help but Mikkelsen himself feels like a genuine threat and a good foil for Indy.

And then there are the problems. They are problems that bother you a bit as you’re watching and, at least in my case, keep nagging at your afterwards. For starters, the story we’re telling here is Indiana Jones in the late 1960s. He has become a grumpy old man on the verge of retirement who is separated from Marion (the love of his life) and about to get divorced. Look, I get why they used this as a starting point because it gives them somewhere to go with the story but personally it’s a bit too much. No one goes to see an Indiana Jones movie to see a grumpy old man shouting at kids for playing the Beatles too loud. No one wants to see Indiana Jones and the Sad Retirement Party, but that’s what we get in the first half hour of this film.

Eventually Indy does get some of his mojo back and that is fun to watch but there’s another problem. We’re introduced to a secondary character who at times feels like she is auditioning to take over the franchise. Phoebe Waller-Bridge plays Helena Shaw, Indy’s goddaughter. And I can simplify her story pretty succinctly. She’s Han Solo without the charisma.

What I mean is, her story arc is that she’s a wild child who enters the story as an adult lying and stealing from Indiana Jones. She then repeatedly leaves him in tough situations where he is wanted for murder and in danger from thugs. In short, she’s only in it for herself and for the money. I think there’s even a line about paying off debts.

By the end of the film she’s come around enough that she races off to rescue Indy and in fact does so. I don’t think Waller-Bridge lacks any acting chops but the Helena Shaw character really needed another pass in the script. Frankly, she’s a bit of a ass and arrogant to boot. Han Solo had his rough spots to be sure, but his overconfidence was often played for laughs. And, at times, he really did seem fairly tough and brave. He certainly wasn’t running away from Luke Skywalker and locking the door behind him. But the equivalent happens about three times in this movie. Helena Shaw just seems like a jerk and, again, this is not what anyone wanted to see in an Indiana Jones movie. Frankly, for a lot of this movie I was wishing she’s get hit by a bus. I guess that’s a reaction to the character but it’s not one that makes me like the movie.

The best that can be said about this is that the writers didn’t literally murder Indy (like they did to Han Solo) and they didn’t completely change him into a cynic (like they did to Luke Skywalker). In fact, he gets a shot at a happy ending, which feels like the right tone, though the way it happens feels completely unearned. It’s as if having spent most of the movie beating Indy down they decided to hand him a participation trophy to keep the audience happy.

So is it worth watching? It’s not as terrible as I feared and there are some nice moments along the way. Harrison Ford brought his A game even if the material was a more of a B minus overall.