After months of speculation, the first trailer for the fifth Indiana Jones film, now titled Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, has dropped. The reaction has been predictably polarized, with film commentators ranging in their responses from happy to haughty, depending on one’s attitude to the 1960s setting and the arrival of a new sidekick in the guise of Phoebe Waller-Bridge to replace Shia LaBeouf’s Mutt Williams.
But perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the hype surrounding the film is the suggestion—once the province of bloggers, now the subject of widespread speculation—that the film’s plot will involve time travel. If true, the development represents a further move in the direction of science fiction that began with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in 2008, which famously invoked flying saucers and aliens.
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Is this the way forward for the franchise? Or should it return to its roots in the realm of supernatural MacGuffins and plot devices? We present the arguments for and against.
Indiana Jones: A Franchise Rooted In The Supernatural
Distributed by Paramount Pictures
Like it or not, supernatural goings-on are at the heart of what the first three Indiana Jones films did. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) revolved around the search for the Ark of the Covenant, and featured the release of deadly spirits from the Ark at its climax, while its sequel, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), saw Indy fall prey to black magic.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) returned to Christian iconography, with Indy seeking the Holy Grail, water from which has the ability to heal the sick, as shown in the film’s breathless final act, when Indy’s father Henry (Sean Connery) recovers from a bullet wound with the help of Grail water.
The second movie’s racism and white savior narrative notwithstanding, this trio of movies operated on J. B. S. Haldane’s famous principle that the universe is not only greater than we imagine but is greater than we can imagine. It asked searching questions about the nature of reality, the primacy of faith, and the transcendent nature of ancient wisdom. By and large, each film’s supernatural elements were present as undercurrents to be invoked in order to deliver dramatically satisfying climaxes. They did just that, offering a sense of mystique and wonder at each film’s conclusion without destroying the suspension of disbelief.
The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull strays from the formula
Paramount Pictures
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull represented a sort of halfway house between these supernatural roots and straight-up science fiction, with the antagonist, Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett), being a believer in pseudoscientific telepathy. But the MacGuffin—a skull made out of crystal, very loosely based on the real-life Mitchell-Hedges skull—is revealed at the film’s conclusion not to be a supernatural object at all, but the skull of an alien whose spacecraft landed on Earth in order to study its ancient civilizations. Once the skull is reunited with the alien, the spacecraft disappears into another dimension.
Strange as it may seem, but part of the reason that fan reaction to the film was so mixed was this denouement. Holy relics that were able to kill malefactors with a single touch were just as unbelievable as flying saucers, but in a more agreeable way - one more fitted, somehow, to the esthetics of an archeologist whose it’s-just-a-story-esque skepticism regarding shades and spirits is on show for most of the runtime of the first three movies. If The Dial of Destiny is pushing hard in the direction of SF instead, it remains to be seen how moviegoers will react.
Has the supernatural run its course?
All this said, it’s hard to know precisely where the franchise can go if it does continue its dalliance with the supernatural, simply because so much has been done. Such tropes as objects that can give armies unlimited strength, or others that bestow eternal life on the holders, are hard to live up to. Moreover, film fans have had more than two decades of other movies pumping out stories based on the same type of source material, not the least of which is The Librarian franchise, which takes its cues squarely from Indiana Jones, and also features items important to Christian belief, including the Holy Lance, the Ark of the Covenant, and the Holy Grail.
So maybe it is time to give the “things that go bump in the night” approach a rest after all. On June 30 next year, when The Dial of Destiny hits theaters, audiences will find out one way or another.
