Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is the title of the fifth, and this time final, entry in the main Indiana Jones franchise. Just what the Dial of Destiny actually is has yet to be revealed, though jokes about an elderly Jones changing the TV channel aside, it might just be the object pictured at 00:50 seconds into the trailer that has been recently released. It’s an object framed by the aged hands of Indiana Jones himself, cradled lovingly in crepe linen, and given a place of pride hitting almost exactly in the middle of a trailer that’s less than two minutes long.
What this item means for the franchise, and whether this is the main quest artifact of the upcoming film, leaves lots of room for speculating about what its function serves in the main plot. It also means that the Indiana Jones series is starting to resemble the things it’s inspired, more than the other way around.
Types Of Artifacts in the Indiana Jones Franchise
Indiana Jones films are known for their artifacts. It’s kind of implied, in them being pulp-inspired movies about the adventures of an intrepid archaeologist who’s got a taste for dangerous women and even more dangerous situations. But Indiana Jones films also have tiers of artifacts — some even have three of them. What’s being discussed here is what the disc featured in the trailer is.
The artifacts in the movies that fall into the first tier are the objects that usually open the movies. These exist as the end point of a prior adventure that the audience is seeing the close of. This first tier includes the Chachapoyan idol Belloq steals in the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark; the urn of Nurhachi in the nightclub scene in Temple of Doom; and the Cross of Coronado that opened up Indy’s previous final adventure in Last Crusade.
The next level isn’t the Thing Itself, but the Thing That Aids in Finding the Thing Itself. Raiders of the Lost Ark is about finding the lost Ark of the Covenant, but before Indiana Jones can even think about boxing up the Ark, he has to find out where it’s buried. He only does this with the aid of Marion Ravenwood’s necklace, the Headpiece to the Staff of Ra. As Indy puts it while making a circle with his fingers: “Bronze piece, about this size, with a hole in it off center with a crystal. You know the one I mean?” This describes the thing that eventually points a primitive laser beam down on the Ark’s final resting place. Temple of Doom doesn’t have an equivalent piece to this, only a small scrap of a manuscript about Shiva, but Last Crusade has Henry Jones Sr.’s Grail diary. This object trades hands back forth until Indy comes face to face with an oblivious Adolf Hitler, who autographs the very thing his goose-stepping goons need to find the Grail itself. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull had a letter from Harold Oxley, but this is less important than finding Oxley himself, so it’s also negligible.
The last tier is the object itself. The Ark of the Covenant. The Sankara stones of Shiva. The Holy Grail of the King of kings. The Crystal Skull. And now, the Dial of Destiny finds its way onto that vaunted list. What it does and how the movie will treat it are the biggest questions ahead. Will it be treated with reverence like the Ark? Will it be lost again like the Sankara stones and the Grail? Or, like the Crystal Skull, will it be an object that gets tossed around like a football and swung like a club and all sorts of other actions that strip the item of the quality of reverence that the best Indiana Jones artifacts have?
Most importantly, which tier does the item seen in the trailer fit into? Indiana Jones’ aged hands tells eagle-eyed fans it’s probably not the item that finishes a prior adventure, but whether it’s the item itself, or simply the thing Indiana Jones uses to find the Dial is as yet unknown.
Chasing The Competition
When Raiders of the Lost Ark first hit, nobody quite new what to make of it. The film drew inspiration from old Duck Tales comics and pulp adventure serials of the 1930s, as well as a 1954 Charlton Heston movie called Secret of the Incas. Hollywood scrambled to catch up. Period pieces like High Road to China and Shanghai Surprise, as well as modern-set adventures like Romancing the Stone, came out one after the other in an attempt to chase that Lucasfilm success.
The late 1980s then saw studios attempt to riff on the Indiana Jones formula by going back to pulp comics. Starting with the 1989 Batman, the 1990s saw Dick Tracy, The Rocketeer, The Shadow, and The Phantom all aimed for that 1930s flavor before closing out the decade with obvious Indy riff The Mummy in 1999. Video games also copied the formula starting with Tomb Raider, subbing in a female lead and going for the alien plot way earlier. The industry perfected the formula with Uncharted, which went straight for Jones’ Nazi-infested, jungle-set jugular.
With the inevitability of time, however, Indiana Jones began to resemble what it’s inspired more than it leads the pack anymore. 2008 saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, both films about aging heroes called into service later in life and reconnecting with sons they barely knew. The Mummy franchise had not only caught up to its competition — whatever else one might say about the third Mummy entry, it has the better father-son subplot of the two films. Brendan Fraser gives a far more heartfelt performance than Ford, who would go on to do the absentee father schtick in all his legacy sequels (The Force Awakens and Blade Runner 2049). And now the games that copied Indiana Jones are leading the way, not just playing catch-up anymore. As a matter of fact, the device in the trailer looks more like the cipher disc from Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception than anything else.
If it is only a cipher disk, it’s an odd object to put at the center of the first trailer. And if it is, if it’s indeed only the object Indiana Jones uses to find the main artifact, it would mean the franchise is now fully copying Uncharted instead of the other way around — or, to quote from another Lucasfilm series, the apprentice has become the master. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny has been rumored to have a time travel-plot based on tons of speculation about screenshots of not only the de-aged Jones himself, but location shots featuring Roman centurions with Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Ford seen among them. Time travel wouldn’t be out of line for a series that has validated almost every world religion and a belief in Ancient Aliens, but it has to be handled carefully.
And so does whatever the Dial of Destiny turns out to be. Mishandled, it’s another Crystal Skull, a goofy beachball that literally gets tossed back and forth between the good and bad guys throughout the movie. Treated well, it will be life-changing and awe-inspiring for Jones — and, like the Ark and the Grail before it, a treasure for the ages.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny will answer all when it releases June 30th, 2023.