davidehrlich’s review published on Letterboxd:
It goes without saying that James Mangold is no Steven Spielberg, just as it would be wildly unfair to hold any Hollywood director to that standard. On the contrary, there’s something kind of admirable about the fact that Mangold found the chutzpah to close the book on the Bearded One’s signature franchise. What he didn’t find was a compelling reason to re-open that book in the first place.
Not only is “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” an almost complete waste of time, it’s also a belabored reminder that some relics are better left where and when they belong. If only any previous entries in this series had taken great pains to point that out.
Back to Mangold for a moment: It’s important to note that the failure of his latest movie has much less to do with his talents as a filmmaker than it does with the time at which he’s been asked to apply them. Mangold is as worthy an heir to Spielberg’s crown as anyone working at the studio level today, and the most electric setpieces in “The Dial of Destiny” — all of which are crammed into the opening 45 minutes — display the same charismatic flair and competence behind the camera that helped the vastly underrated likes of “Knight + Day” to punch so high above its weight class. No, the biggest (or at least most evident) difference between Spielberg and Mangold is that one of them would never have been forced to make anything this stale, and one of them probably wasn’t given any other choice.
Of course, that’s partially Spielberg’s fault. Or yours. Arriving at a major inflection point in movie fan economics, “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” immediately became synonymous with the sacrilegious treatment of beloved Hollywood franchises. That 2008 fiasco made its fair share of Mutt Williams-sized mistakes, but the reflexive outcry over “nuking the fridge” overshadowed a deliriously well-directed thrill ride that dared to reconcile the contradictory impulses that had defined Indiana Jones from the start: family and adventure.
In a clumsy preview of what “The Last Jedi” would do so masterfully a few years later, “Crystal Skull” had the courage to inflict meaningful change upon an iconic character, and the blowback was so intense that the most successful filmmaker in Hollywood history was too scared to ever pick up the fedora again. And why should he? That movie left its hero with the happiness that he’d never admitted he’d always wanted. “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” rips it away from him and gives him virtually nothing of value in return.