The Harisson Ford legacy character tour continues

Score: 4/5

What a better finale for Indiana Jones this movie is over the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Since 2015, Harrison Ford has been giving one final performance for his most legendary characters. It started with Han Solo in The Force Awakens. This continued with Rick Deckard in Blade Runner 2049. Now finally one last adventure with his other iconic franchise, the treasure-hunting professor Indiana Jones.

This movie is the only one of the five entries not directed by Steven Spielberg, instead the reins were handed to James Mangold, director of Logan and Ford v. Ferrari. For me, Mangold nailed the feeling of an Indiana Jones adventure. It’s fun, has action, and creates a unique dynamic for the core characters throughout the adventure.

The story is like the many entries before, focusing on a specific item that is considered more legend than real. For this movie, it’s the Dial of Archimedes, an item that is rumored to be a compass of sorts through time itself. Naturally, Nazis (led by Mads Mikkelsen’s Dr. Voller) want it to rule the world, so it’s up to Indiana Jones and his god-daughter Helena played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge to make sure this doesn’t happen. Along the journey with Indy and Helena is the boy Teddy played by Ethann Isidore. I enjoyed watching this trio as they went from adversaries to a team trying to save each other during this adventure. Waller-Bridge was excellent in this film and injected a great deal of humor into the film. For an eighty-year-old, Ford continues to carry the weight of this franchise on his now slightly more grumpy shoulders. His age also plays into the story and makes for a moving sequence towards the end of the film.

There is one topic I want to cover that is slightly spoiler-y but it’s in the trailers, so I think it’s fair game. The movie opens with a very long intro sequence set back in World War II. Using de-aging special effects, we get to see a young Harrison Ford in a thrilling action set piece. The action at times was a tad more on the video game-y side, but overall, it felt like I was watching lost footage of an old Indiana Jones movie that was never released. The de-aging technology is getting extremely impressive. There were still blemishes at times that felt a little off but never enough to take me out of the movie.

Outside of this, the adventure itself was classic Indiana Jones stuff, trying to thwart Nazis, solve ancient puzzles, and see some crazy supernatural stuff from the item they are all attempting to retrieve. After a lackluster fourth entry, I’m glad Harrison Ford had more go to send Indy off to the sunset because this one is vastly superior.