2023-05-19 17:20:06
Dhe question that arises after “Indiana Jones and the Wheel of Destiny” is whether a guy like Mr. Jones still fits into our time. After all, in the course of his career he has already hunted down the Israelite Ark of the Covenant, the crystal skull of the Incas and the Holy Grail. To his advantage, it must be said that he does not sell his finds at the next Christie’s auction, but tries to preserve them for the general public. It is not known where Professor Jones’ finds are stored today, but one can assume that they are in an American museum. This is cultural appropriation of the highest degree and actually no longer acceptable.
In the fifth part of the film series, Indy is after the “Wheel of Destiny”. That’s the whispery title Disney gave to an invention that scientists like Dr. Jones actually call it the “Mechanism of Antikythera”. The device really exists. It was found in 1900 by divers off the same Greek island in a shipwreck, dates from the first century AD and shows astronomical-calendrical connections with the help of gears and dials; such complex computers are otherwise only known again from the beginning of modern times 15 centuries later.
Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is after this thing. The daughter of an old Jones colleague (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) is after the thing. The good old Indy Nazis (Mads Mikkelsen and Thomas Kretschmann) are after the thing. The FBI is after the thing, but is quickly left behind.
Phoebe Waller-Breidge and Harrison Ford
Quelle: Jonathan Olley / Lucasfilm Ltd.
One could now spoil the fun of anyone who is interested and tell them that the Antikythera Mechanism is on display in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. Yes, everyone would reply in unison, but the find from the wreck is not complete! And they’re all after the missing part like the devil after the poor souls, because the completed instrument is said to have other than calendar powers. We just mysteriously throw the term “cracks in the time and space continuum” into the debate.
The year is 1969. Dr. Jones – fictitious date of birth July 1, 1899 – has just retired from his New York university, and at the next intersection he hands the watch he loves to a passer-by. The Beatles roar from the apartment next door, much to Professor Jones’ displeasure.
1969 is a practical year, because on the one hand archaeologists were still allowed to bring home cultural objects from foreign latitudes without any concerns about political correctness, on the other hand the aged Indy can be introduced in this way, and finally director James Mangold can film a wild chase in the middle of the confetti parade for the Apollo Host 11 lunar heroes.
The train tracking must not be missing
Before that, there was another pursuit on the roof of a train. Spielberg and Indiana films always have a move, and the series stays true to that tradition; afterwards, tuk-tuks race through Tangier. However, because of these action sequences, Indiana should not have been activated for the fifth time in 40 years, they are standard at best.
The villains don’t offer much new either, although Mads Mikkelsen’s bespectacled Dr. Schmidt, admittedly, pursues an interesting goal and is reminiscent of Wernher von Braun, who built rockets first for the Nazis and then for NASA and to whom America owes much for having won the race to the moon. Only the continental drift of the past centuries has Dr. Schmidt not included. Let’s leave this puzzle here.
Well, Indiana Jones was never just a man’s story. He always had female companions (except in the third part with his “father” Sean Connery): Karen Allen, Kate Capshaw, Cate Blanchett. This time Phoebe Waller-Bridge is at his side, actress and screenwriter, among other things for the series “Fleabag” and the last and the next Bond. She plays the daughter of old Indiana pal Professor Shaw and, with her W. Somerset Maugham Britishness, represents an extremely valuable blood refresher.
It’s full circle for Professor Jones
Harrison Ford is and will always be Harrison Ford. He continues to be good with the whip and his fear of snakes is returning in a new form. In a flashback, he’s rejuvenated by the computer, but soon he’s no longer denying his age (well, he’s rejuvenated from 80 to 70). After the relative failure of the fourth part (which also premiered at Cannes), Wheel of Destiny is a satisfying ending for the character he will be forever identified with, and it also comes full circle for Indy’s personal story and the three of them Generations that grew up with this figure.
Hollywood studios have learned over the past two decades that not only do they have an obligation to maximize profits for their shareholders, they also have a duty of sorts to their audiences. Not only do they have to give him sequels, but they have to put effort into their sequels, not just ride the horse to shame until it collapses, as has long been done.
Mads Mikkelsen as a Wernher von Braun blend
Quelle: Jonathan Olley / Lucasfilm Ltd.
Brands such as “Indiana Jones” or “Star Wars” are valuable capital that needs to be looked after. Netflix, for example, is painfully aware of this, as it is a newcomer and does not have such capital. Indy, part five has been a half-dozen years in the making by at least that many screenwriters, and the delays — from the pandemic to Spielberg’s retirement from directing — have probably served him well.
The last third
We don’t know who credited the last third of the film – one suspects it could be the British Butterworth brothers, who are 20 years younger than the Indiana team of origin – but it’s mostly that last third, that will be remembered in the Indiana universe.
This brings us closer to the most fun part of Indiana Jones 5 (thanks to Disney for defying the mundane sequel counting and inventing decent titles). It’s also the hardest chapter, of course, because it’s riddled with spoilers.
Perhaps instead we should talk a little about Archimedes, the ancient Greek mathematician whom the film credits with inventing the Mechanism of Antikythera, generously ignoring the two centuries that separated them. But we’re in extreme myth territory, that of the ancient Greeks and that of the ancient professor of archeology, and when Indiana Jones interrupted him in performing a mathematical proof, Archimedes didn’t snarl at the visitor, “Don’t disturb my circles!” The rest is, as they say, legend.
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