‘Indiana Jones’: Fading Magic in a Secular Age

As the fifth installment of a fabled franchise, and still starring its iconic leading man (Harrison Ford, now 80), Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny didn’t have to do much to be a crowd-pleaser. Despite an eerie de-aged “Young Indy” sequence I could have done without (more on that later), and a few too many repetitive chase sequences, the film is both rollicking fun and surprisingly reflective.

Directed by Ford v. Ferrari’s James Mangold (taking over from Steven Spielberg, who helmed the first four Indy films), Dial of Destiny gives fans plenty of one-liners, big action set pieces, and a characteristically magnetic performance by Ford. But watching the film—and considering it within the context of the four-decade-spanning franchise—I also wonder if a lasting legacy of Indiana Jones is as a chronicle of disenchantment and faith’s gradual erosion in a secular, technological age. [Some spoilers follow.]

From Face-Melting Holiness to Time-Traveling Science

Think about the central “artifacts” in each of the five Indiana Jones films. The first three (each set in the 1930s) are supernatural and unapologetically “magic.” In Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), the Ark of the Covenant is the sought-after relic. In the face-melting climax, the wrath of God is poured out on the Nazis who dare to trifle with it. In the “prequel” Temple of Doom (1984), pagan supernatural elements abound: magical Sankara Stones, voodoo, the Black Sleep of Kali Ma, and so forth. And in 1989’s Last Crusade, the franchise returns to Judeo-Christian relics with the Holy Grail taking center stage. Once again, supernatural elements proliferate: ancient knights, miraculous healings, walking on air (Indy’s “leap of faith”), and more Nazi face melting.

These first three films, which are at home in the fantasy genre as much as action-adventure, embrace an enchanted world where science cannot account for all wonders. But this starts to change with the fourth film (Crystal Skull), which veers into science-fiction. Its “supernatural” elements are explicable via alien technologies (rather than the workings of holy angels or demonic forces). The fifth film continues this trajectory away from Judeo-Christian supernaturalism, instead diving deeper into sci-fi with the “magic” of time travel explained via Archimedes’s convoluted ancient math (involving geographically located “fissures in time”).

Interestingly, Dial’s opening train sequence nods to Indy’s Judeo-Christian history. Indy and his archeologist friend Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) are pursuing the Lance of Longinus—the relic sword which purportedly pierced Christ’s side. The sequence is a callback to the opening train scene in Last Crusade, in which “young Indiana Jones” River Phoenix tries to obtain the Cross of Coronado. Later in Dial’s opening sequence (set in Germany, 1944), de-aged Indy has an interesting back-and-forth with Basil, in which he challenges his friend’s belief in what seems supernatural. “But you can’t prove it!” Indy asserts to his friend. “Proving it is what makes it science!”

Yet by his own admission later in Dial, Indy admits some things are unprovable: “I don’t believe in magic, but a few times in my life I’ve seen things, things I can’t explain.” It’s a line that echoes his memorable exchange with Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliott) in Raiders, when he says, “I don’t believe in magic, a lot of superstitious hocus pocus. . . You’re talking about the boogeyman.”

Indy keeps saying he “doesn’t believe in magic,” yet he’s drawn to mysteries he can’t explain, and he’s experienced the supernatural first hand. In this way he’s a perfect proxy for many in the post-Christian West, who insist on having “moved on” from the relics of supernatural faith—even as they’re haunted by unexplained moments when secularism’s “immanent frame” (to use Charles Taylor’s term) feels punctured by signals from (or pointers to) transcendent realms.

Indy keeps saying he ‘doesn’t believe in magic,’ yet he’s drawn to mysteries he can’t explain and has experienced the supernatural first hand. In this way he’s a perfect proxy for many in the post-Christian West.

With a life spanning the mid-twentieth century, Indiana Jones is a man in a transitional moment in history. He’s pulled between the faith tradition of his father and the science of the future; between a passing enchanted age and a rising secular modernity.

Perhaps this is part of why the latter two Indiana Jones films feel less engrossing than the earlier three. Replacing supernatural miracles with the “miracle” of science and technology is invariably a letdown. Arthur C. Clarke’s famous “third law” (“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”) is intriguing as dramatic fodder of filmmakers like Christopher Nolan, but it leaves us with a hollow sense of a closed universe where the highest awe is in response to technological progress.

When Technological ‘Magic’ Feels Empty

Which brings me to my least favorite part of Dial of Destiny: the “magic” technology of bringing a 30-something Harrison Ford back to life for a 25-minute opening action sequence. In a way this is fitting, because the ancient technology at the film’s center (the Antikythera mechanism or “Archimedes’s Dial”) allows the movie’s characters to go back in time. And that’s what the opening sequence does too. It’s technology transporting audiences back in time, to the 1980s Ford we so fondly remember. For a film that ends up making much of Indiana Jones’s aging and old-man regrets, the opening illusion of his youth is a well-intentioned attempt at a poignant juxtaposition.

Except that it’s disturbing and doesn’t really work. De-aging technology has come a long way, but it’s hardly “indistinguishable from magic.” The spry, wrinkle-free face of 30-something, artificially rendered Ford doesn’t quite mesh with his world-weary, 80-year-old voice. Unlike the practical effects which characterized the first Indiana Jones films, the AI-assisted technologies that mimic a younger Ford don’t quite accomplish the illusion. We are too aware of the artifice.

Unlike the practical effects which characterized the first Indiana Jones films, the AI-assisted technologies that mimic a younger Ford don’t quite accomplish the illusion.

And yet this groundbreaking sequence likely foreshadows an AI future where the visages (and eventually, the voices) of iconic actors are regularly slapped onto computer-generated doubles, with vast possibilities for “acting” well beyond the actor’s death. In some ways this possibility is the greatest bogeyman of all in Dial of Destiny. The reverent fear of Indy’s “Don’t look Marion, keep your eyes shut!” (Raiders) and the ill-advised quest for immortality in Last Crusade have now given way to technologies which blatantly assume God-like powers and pitch a form of digital immortality. Scary stuff.

Thankfully, by the end of Dial of Destiny, Indy himself doesn’t buy into it.

Family Is the Greatest Adventure

Central to the character of Indiana Jones is the tension between the duties of family/home and the archeological treasures that beckon him to exotic locales, rife with insidious temptations (for power, greed, immortality, and more).

Perhaps the scene that best encapsulates it is Last Crusade’s climax when Indiana hangs precariously over an abyss, held only with one hand held by his father (Sean Connery), while he strains with the other for the just-out-of-reach Grail. Henry Jones Sr. looks at “Junior” with tenderness but says with firmness: “Let it go, Indiana.” It’s the voice of a loving father calling his son to wisely embrace the humble way over the aggrandizing way: family commitments over “fortune and glory.”

There’s a parallel moment in the climax of Dial of Destiny. Indiana is torn between the ultimate archaeological prize—his literally becoming part of ancient history—and his family and life back home. With the help of his no-punches-pulled goddaughter, Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), Indy ends up taking the same path he did at the end of Last Crusade—that is, the family path.

When we first see “old man” Indy in 1969 New York, we see him sad, alone, and self-destructive (pouring whiskey into his morning coffee and raging against his hippie neighbors). But in the film’s final moments we see him reconciled with his wife, Marion (in a lovely callback to Raiders), and dwelling peacefully in his apartment as a father figure to Helena and a grandfather figure to Teddy (Ethann Isidore). Even longtime buddy Sallah (John Rhys-Davies) appears in the final scene (himself with grandkids in tow, off to get ice cream), as if to underscore that Indy’s next adventure will be settling into the role of family man.

Whether or not Indiana Jones comes to “believe in magic” and rediscover faith in his final years, we don’t know. But it seems he’s at least discovered the “magic” of ordinary, mortal, closer-to-home life—infused with love, rooted in community, and at peace with the vulnerabilities of life lived in time.