In The Monkey's Paw (spoilers for a 100 years old horror classic, I guess), the protagonists, after the death of a loved one, use a cursed artifact to bring him back, only to find a shambling undead monstrosity knocking at their door.
Being a movie nerd in these days is a similar experience: the franchises you loved as a kid keep coming back, and for a while, maybe after a decent trailer, you are happy and optimistic... but then you see them and regret their return.
In fact, Hollywood just can't let a beloved series end at the right moment. Alien should have ended with Aliens, and it got a diarrhea of terrible sequels, prequels and spin-offs; Terminator with T2, and I've lost count of the reboots; Star Wars with Return of the Jedi, and it got the awful sequels (I'm giving the prequels a pass because they at least tried to tell an interesting story)...
... and, of course, Indiana Jones should have ended with The Last Crusade. It would have been an amazing trilogy (I have my issues with Temple of Doom but oh boys, is it looking better in retrospect), and now it has not one but two pointless sequels.
So, is this one better or worse than Skull? I'd say more or less on par: not terrible and unwatchable but clunky and mediocre.
Ford was my favorite actor as a kid ("Imagine being both Indy and Han Solo!"), and he gives it all here, but the sad truth is, he was already too old in Skull, and that was 15 years ago.
Mangold is a solid director but Indy movies live and die on the strength of their set-pieces, and he isn't prime Steven Spielberg. Then again, who is? Not even Spielberg himself nowadays, since the set-pieces in Skull already sucked.
Mangold keeps the camera too close so we do not get the geography of the action; his set-pieces are all momentum and no triumphant release. See the scene with the underwater relic and the eels, a cool premise which peters out into nothing. Also, the protagonists (especially Indy) rarely if ever do anything COOL to resolve the action - a crack of the whip, a last-second dive: they are just there, ping-ponging between different obstacles.
Story construction is bloated, with pointless characters (the governative agents, the Moroccan mobster), setups without payoffs ("continental drift") and endless tedious exposition: a scene with Waller-Bridge (moderately less annoying than I was expecting, but it was a low bar) smugly decrypting a tablet with a clue feels like the longest ten hours I've ever spent in a movie theater.
Here's a hint, scriptwriters: characters dealing with treasure hunt clues is only interesting if we, the audience, can also SEE the clue and GUESS the possible answer. Otherwise, it's like watching someone on the bus mumble as he does his Sudoku, and you can't even peek over his shoulder.
Dial of Destiny takes a weird turn in the last act and I sort of wish they had embraced the sheer cheesiness of it. I enjoyed a couple of scenes (the prologue is decent enough), but, if you absolutely need a good Indy sequel, play the old adventure game The Fate of Atlantis.
5/10.
