Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023, James Mangold)

Dial of Destiny opens with a very long prologue flashback to 1945, setting up Harrison Ford (a CGI-de-aged Ford) having Toby Jones as a best buddy in the forties during the war and running afoul of Nazi scientist Mads Mikkelsen. The flashback’s technically successful; de-aged Ford looks pretty good (the eyes are off, and the expressions are static), but the sequence itself is kind of pointless. It’s ostensibly to start on an action sequence with Ford, but it’s a tolerable action sequence. Director Mangold—the first and presumably last director to pick up Spielberg’s whip for a theatrical Indiana Jones—will do great action sequences later on, but this first one feels like a video game cutscene. And having a computer-generated lead certainly doesn’t do anything to dissuade that feeling.

But once they’ve established Ford and Jones know each other, Jones is obsessed with Archimedes’s Antikythera device, and Mikkelsen is also after the Antikythera, the flashback’s done its work, and it’s time to jump ahead twenty-four years. Ford’s already done the Indiana Jones legacy sequel, which turned canon on its head, and now they’re doing a second legacy sequel, but it’s also basically a legacy sequel (coming fifteen years after that entry). So we’ve got all sorts of first act establishing to do: Ford’s been a settled down college professor for ten years, happily married to Karen Allen for some of them, but after son Shia LeBeouf died off-screen in Vietnam—he enlisted to piss off Ford which fails some basic logic tests if you start doing the math on LaBeouf’s age, but whatever… he’s not back.

Instead, Dial of Destiny introduces Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Jones’s grown-up daughter, who’s also after the Antikythera. After her is Mikkelsen, who spent the post-war being coddled by the U.S. government so he could get them to the moon before the Russians. He’s got a Black woman CIA handler (Shaunette Renée Wilson, who brings more to it than the role deserves), a redneck henchman (Boyd Holbrook, who maybe shouldn’t have trusted Mangold it’d be a good part), and a giant (Olivier Richters) helping him in the quest. Dial pulls no Nazi punches—it’s a Disney movie, after all, and they’re fighting fascists in real-life these days—but it’s fairly tepid with the American race relations. Holbrook really doesn’t like Wilson because she’s Black (and a woman), but he can’t say anything because political correctness. Meanwhile, Mikkelsen isn’t the standard Indiana Jones Nazi… he’s even more invested in the ideology than most. Because Nazis, even removed from the mid-twentieth century, are really dangerous and shouldn’t be ignored or placated.

Waller-Bridge shows up in New York City for Ford’s retirement—which seems to have been decided after they filmed Ford giving a lecture on the morning of the Apollo 11 parade (he’s telling the kids what’s on their final, but he’s apparently leaving right after that class)—and asks for his help with the Antikythera. Only she’s not being super honest, and since it’s 1969, Ford can’t just Google her.

The adventure will take them to North Africa, then the Mediterranean, where they can pick up various sidekicks, and there will be time for cameos from the other movies. Though very limited cameos; the franchise put all its eggs in a LeBeouf-sized basket last time, after all. Waller-Bridge has her own Short Round (spoiler: no cameo from Ke Huy Quan, which is too bad) in Ethann Isidore. And then Ford brings in Antonio Banderas to help just when it seems like there’s no more room for supporting characters.

The film will have some big third act surprises regarding supporting cast introductions, but the second act is where Dial of Destiny’s gears work up their momentum. Turns out Mangold can direct character-paced action scenes (something entirely missing from the opening), and Waller-Bridge and Ford are fun together. Though when it’s them and Isidore trying to beat the Nazis to the treasure, it’s painfully obvious the franchise missed a big opportunity for Indiana Jones Family with Ford, Allen, and, well, LeBeouf, I guess. Thanks to Waller-Bridge, it still works out with Dial’s configuration, but it’d have been nice for the four screenwriters to come up with a less comprised story.

In all, it’s mostly a success. The technicals are all sturdy without being exemplary, with Phedon Papamichael’s photography being the easy standout. John Williams’s score isn’t bad. It isn’t particularly good, but it isn’t bad. Excellent costumes from Joanna Johnston, which compensate for Adam Stockhausen’s surprisingly pedestrian production design. Thank goodness Papamichael’s lighting it.

Once he gets to act the part instead of his CGI counterpart doing it, Ford has some good moments. It’s a rough part, mostly because he’s trying to incorporate so much hackneyed plotting from previous entries. Waller-Bridge is tabula rosa and can zoom past Ford, but she keeps pace with Ford thanks to her timing and Mangold’s direction. He maintains a steady clip at eighty years old (playing seventy), but there aren’t any Indiana Jones endless punch-outs this sequel. No Ben Burtt punches.

Mikkelsen’s great. Isidore’s fine. Banderas is fun. Holbrook’s a good piece of shit? Maybe don’t get typecast. And good little turn from Thomas Kretschmann in the prologue.

Dial of Destiny is too long, too digital, and too trepidatious.

But, otherwise, it’s aces.

The Predator (2018, Shane Black)

The Predator has a really short present action, which is both good and bad. Good because one wouldn’t want to see screenwriters Fred Dekker and director Black try for longer, bad because… well, it gets pretty dumb how fast things move along. Dekker and Black don’t do a good job with the expository speech (for a while, Olivia Munn gets all of it and deserves a prize of some kind for managing it, given how dumb the content gets) and they do a worse job with character development. They’re constantly forgetting details about their large ensemble cast, if they’re not forgetting about where their ensemble cast is in regards to the onscreen action. Black does a perfectly adequate—if utterly impersonal job—with a lot of the directing on a technical level, but he really has got zero feel for his large ensemble. Even though the story’s ostensibly about lead Boyd Holbrook (in a mostly likable performance) becoming a better dad to son Jacob Tremblay. Dekker and Black really want to pretend it matters; see, Tremblay is a kid with Asperger syndrome, which turns out to be real important since he’s the only person on the planet who can decode the Predator language and figure out what’s going on.

Though—again, Dekker and Black just make up whatever they need in a scene to keep it moving, logic be damned and double-damned—though at one point evil scientist Sterling K. Brown (who is distressingly bad) somehow knows about the internal politics of the Predator planet. Because it moves a scene along and pretends to have some kind of forward plot momentum. It turns out it’s all a bunch of hooey and the ending is a painful sequel setup, but it’s not as though the screenwriters have been successfully fooling the audience. There’s no good ending to The Predator because it’s a really stupid movie, full of mediocre action (Black’s got no ideas when it comes to his big surprise villain in the second half either and he really needs some ideas for it), and a bunch of occasionally good, usually tedious performances from actors who probably ought to have some serious conversations about why their agents made them do this movie.

Holbrook’s the lead. He’s this bad dad, bad husband (but not too bad) Army sniper who happens across a Predator attack and ships the helmet and a laser armband home to son Tremblay. Only not. He ships them to his P.O. Box and they get delivered after Holbrook defaults on the rental. So it’s seems like he’s gone for a while—however long it takes to send alien technology through customs from rural Mexico and then the post office to give up on him paying for his box—but he’s really only gone a few days because the evil government scientists have tracked him down, brought him back to the States, and are setting him up to be lobotomized or something to keep him quiet.

But then there’s Munn, who gets drafted to work for Brown and the evil government scientists because, in addition to being a world famous biologist, she once wrote the President she’d like to help with alien animals or some nonsense. Again, the character “detail” is just nonsense but nonsense Munn can bring some charm to in her delivery so it’s in. It’s usually fine with Munn; it’s bad when it’s from a charmless performance, which—to be fair—The Predator only has a few. Like Brown.

Remember before when I said the story outside the alien monster hunting people in what appears to be the Pacific Northwest because the movie’s just a rip-off of that godawful second Alien vs. Predator movie is about Holbrook getting to be a better dad. Not really. The closest Black comes to finding a story arc is Munn. She loses it after a while, but when she’s got the spotlight, even when the film’s wanting, it’s got its most potential. Holbrook’s a fine supporting guy, but he’s not a lead.

The rest of the cast… Trevante Rhodes give the film’s best performance. Keegan-Michael Key’s stunt-ish casting is fine. Thomas Jane’s is less so, mostly because Jane never gets the time to establish his character. The film forgets about Alfie Allen so much he could just as well be uncredited. Augusto Aguilera is fun; not good, not funny, but fun. Jake Busey’s kind of great in a small role, just because he brings so much professionalism to a project completely undeserving of it.

Tremblay’s kind of annoying as the kid, but only because the script also wants to pretend it’s about the little boy learning there are space aliens thing too.

There’s just not enough time for all the movies Black and Dekker try to pretend The Predator can be so instead they give up and do something entirely derivative, something often dumb, something to waste any of the good performances, something lazy.

The Predator is an exceptionally lazy, pointless motion picture.

And the music, by Henry Jackman, is bad.

Good CGI ultra-violence I guess? Though Black doesn’t know how to use it. Because apparently Predator movies are really hard to figure out how to make.

Logan (2017, James Mangold)

The strangest thing about Logan, at least in terms of the plotting, is how director Mangold is desperate to reference a film classic–one with a plot perfectly suited to what he’s purportedly trying to do with Logan–and he doesn’t follow it through. In any of the neat ways he could. Instead, he goes for obvious and superficial.

Mangold is not Logan’s worst enemy, however. He certainly doesn’t help matters, but the script–which he did cowrite–is the big problem. It’s entirely wrapped up in itself; Logan has a long list of contrivances (mostly with the ground situation but also with plot developments and revelations) and, for whatever reason, the script wants to get into all of them. And all the explanations are lame.

Even still, the film would be able to survive if it weren’t for a nightmare third act when the film tries to get away without a protagonist for a while. It’s called Logan, of course, so one would think it’d always be about Hugh Jackman’s aged mutant killing machine who just wants to chill out and live in hiding. He’s got a big secret to keep–one of the ground situation contrivances the film cops out on dealing with entirely–not just from the audience, but from his sidekicks too. See, in retirement from mutant killing machining, Jackman has become a limo driver. He works long hours and then goes home to Patrick Stewart and Stephen Merchant. Stewart’s sick and Merchant’s the live-in nurse and maid, basically. There’s more to it, but not enough. Because there’s never enough in Logan. Everything is supposed to be implied.

Jackman suffers the worst for all those implications. Mangold’s constantly letting other people take the scene in Logan, whether it’s Stewart (who doesn’t exactly steal the show, but only because the script fails him miserably too) or tough guy villain Boyd Holbrook or even pointless cameoing Eriq La Salle. The script demotes Jackman, Mangold does too.

Logan wants to be a lot of things. It wants to be a family bonding movie–not a family movie about bonding, but a movie about family bonding–it wants to be future commentary (Mangold’s weakly executed future setting is another of Logan’s many painfully obvious problems), it wants to be a tough action movie, it wants to be deep. It really, really, really, really wants to be deep. Mangold loves the symbolism here; sadly he can’t decide on how he wants to convey it, so it’s another thing Logan could’ve done and doesn’t.

Even so, Jackman and Stewart are showing up to do the work. They’re trying to deliver that really, really, really, really deep movie. Dafne Keen–as the young mutant Jackman and Stewart are protecting–is pretty good for most of the movie. When she runs into problems, it’s because the script veers into its crappiest.

It’s a lazy script. It’s a weak and lazy script; Mangold doesn’t have the chops to make it work. He’s never distracted, he’s never interested, he’s always detached, always professional. Logan completely lacks personality. The fight scenes are lame, especially when they should be great. Mangold’s got no rhythm to them. John Mathieson’s capably bland photography doesn’t help, neither does the editing–Michael McCusker and Dirk Westervelt are capably bland. Marco Beltrami’s score is one of his best and it too… bland. François Audouy’s production design–his vision of this mutant-free 2029–isn’t capably bland. It’s just weak.

Jackman’s got enough of a presence to get the film to the finish line. Unfortunately, there’s no one waiting there to finish the movie for him. And Stewart’s fun. Shame the script wasn’t there. Shame Mangold couldn’t bring it together. Logan wants to be anything but mediocre and it ends up being nothing but.