Harrison Ford’s swashbuckling archaeologist Indiana Jones is, famously, an iconic figure born out of nostalgia — and he’s been kept alive by it too. Back in 1981, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg’s affection for the Saturday-morning adventure serials of their youth shone through the cliff-hanging derring-do of the character’s first outing in Raiders of the Lost Ark. More than forty years later, much of the pleasure to be found in Ford’s fifth and final outing as Indy lies in the film’s revival of its audience’s fond memories of his daredevil hero’s previous exploits.
With James Mangold taking Spielberg’s seat in the director’s chair, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny kicks off, appropriately, by taking us back in time, back in fact to the latter stages of World War Two. Yes, after the franchise’s dalliance with Soviet foes in 2008’s disappointing Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Nazis are once again the bad guys.
