"Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny"

It's going to be my lifelong curse that whenever I talk to people about Indiana Jones I have to say "but I actually like Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It's not a good movie, but..." And it's hard, perhaps even impossible, not to talk about Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny without talking about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, especially because, to my surprise, it's perhaps more of a sequel to Kingdom of the Crystal Skull than it is to any of the other films in the series. But Dial of Destiny, as the first (perhaps only) Indiana Jones film to be made after Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm, feels very much like "the fourth sequel" much as Crystal Skull was "the fourth prequel", i.e. Lucasfilm's return to their secondary property after making a bunch of controversial Star Wars films, with all the associated expectations. And the utter loathing people apparently feel towards the, in my opinion, at times meek but never especially objectionable Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was similarly reflected in the leadup towards Dial of Destiny and all the baggage that Lucasfilm has newly acquired with its 2015-2019 Star Wars project. There's even a similar time gap between the release of Revenge of the Sith (2005) and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) as there is between those of Rise of Skywalker (2019) and Dial of Destiny (2023), pandemic-related delays notwithstanding. I'm not a fan of the Star Wars prequels, nor of the sequels, despite, controversially, having a soft spot for about half of The Last Jedi. Yet in 2008 I was excited for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and I enjoyed it, and I still do. On the other hand, I was pretty nonplussed about Dial of Destiny. Despite the fact that I think he lost it a long time ago, not having Spielberg directing was one cause for concern, and I have to admit that the casting of Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who I see as a bit flavour-of-the-month the same way Shia LeBoeuf was in 2008, made me apprehensive. It was hard to get excited when I felt like I was just getting Indiana Jones fan fiction.

This is normally the point at which, unexpectedly, I might announce that, having gone to see Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny with m'colleague, I loved it. But I didn't. I thought Dial of Destiny was too long and often boring, with sloppy editing, low-energy direction in a number of moments, and a reluctance to get into its character work until the second half suggestive of Disney lacking confidence in the project and having either done reshoots or filmed additional material to increase the running time.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny isn't bad, per se. But it's not good. There are the ideas and the potential for a good film here, but it's all too slow and lacking in energy to be anything more than mediocre. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, whatever its faults, in my opinion doesn't drag. You might find it stupid and annoying, but I never find myself thinking "how long is this going to take?" There are multiple parts in Dial of Destiny when I found myself thinking "I'm bored", "this is taking too long" and "when's Marion going to show up?" (the first two  being much like I felt the first time I saw The Last Jedi, as it happens). If thirty minutes were edited out of this film and a number of shots tightened up to improve their pacing it would make a big difference, but I suspect that the problem is at a production level. At its heart the film should be driven by the relationship between Indy and Helena, but probably because of studio executive insistence on this, that and the other being inserted into the story, it struggles to do this clearly until probably an hour into the film. That doesn't mean they don't have early scenes together, because they do, but in those scenes she's presenting a false face to Indy to try to trick him into giving her what she wants, and thus the real relationship isn't established until significantly later.

This is the first point at which I've mentioned Indy himself, which is possibly because on this point I really don't have anything to complain about. Harrison Ford is (unsurprisingly) the best part of the film. He's obviously always enjoyed playing Indiana Jones - I suspect he brings a good deal of himself to the part, and feels comfortable in the role - and his age is no impediment to the strength of his performance; the screen lights up whenever he appears, which fortunately is most of the time despite what people feared about Helena stealing the show (which she doesn't). Kingdom of the Crystal Skull gave Indy a happy ending, perhaps a schmaltzy one, depending on your perspective. Indy found a son he never knew he had, reunited with Marion, and got married. Now it's 12 years later, Mutt's dead, he and Marion have separated again, and despite clearly not having lost his passion for archaeology Indy's been clearly nudged into retirement. Gone is the cozy post-middle-aged Indy of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, who lived in the same comfy house upstate as he did in Last Crusade and still worked on an old fashioned sandstone campus. Now he lives in a small apartment, puts whisky in his morning coffee, works at a dreary postmodern 60s Manhattan college and grouses at kids listening to the Beatles early in the morning. How did Indy end up here? It's explicable, of course, but feels very much like Dial of Destiny saying "this is what old man Indy should really have been like": not the leafy tenured existence of Crystal Skull but a man out of time clinging to the past. Crystal Skull certainly made some attempts to address this, particlarly with Indy juxtaposed to a mushroom cloud and being accused by paranoid FBI agents of being a Soviet turncoat, but this is more personal.

The problem with all this is that it all just takes far too long for this stuff to be addressed properly. It isn't until the sequence on the boat before the dive, probably well over an hour into the film, that Indy talks to Helena about Mutt and Marion, Marion herself doesn't show up until the very end, and a subplot about Indy's friendship with Helena's father gets somewhat dropped after a flashback about halfway through the film. Sallah comes back but this mostly feels like a nostalgic nod because he didn't get to appear in Crystal Skull. It all feels messy and competitive with different screenwriters bringing different ideas, or perhaps Disney executives mandating certain things be added. It feels doubly strange because the Mutt and Marion stuff wouldn't exist without Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and yet this almost feels, as I said above, like it's trying to respond to or even provide an alternative to Crystal Skull, to say "this is old man Indy done right". This film wouldn't exist without Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and yet it almost feels, perhaps fittingly given the plot, like it's intended to replace it.

The plot, like everything else, is a decent idea not fully realised by the screenplay, editing, action choreography, or some combination of these things. German physicist Jurgen Voller, played well but with wearying typecasting by the ever-reliable Mads Mikkelsen, wants to find the lost "Archimedes Dial" to identify a time fissure that will allow him to travel from 1969 to 1939 in order to kill Hitler such that a more competent leader might bring Germany to victory in the Second World War. It was very predictable that in an effort to appeal to the nostalgic that Indiana Jones would fight Nazis again, and by having a Werner von Braun type in that role the Moon Landing backdrop makes sense. My one issue with this is that all of the Moon Landing, Operation Paperclip and general Space Race, Cold War and Vietnam War stuff feels so perfunctory that it's almost not worth it being included, almost like the filmmakers wanted to do something with it but were scared of evoking the very overt 1950s dressing of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; as such, once the film extricates itself from Manhattan, it doesn't particularly feel like it's set in 1969 at all, instead being just another Indiana Jones adventure in which he fights Nazis for a good chunk of it, with Indy just happening to be old. That is, until it isn't, and it again becomes about Indy feeling old and like he screwed up his life, and Helena having to prove to him that he shouldn't just let himself die in 212 BC.

I will admit that the bizarre ending, in which the overconfident Voller brings himself, Indy, Helena and his men not to the eve of the Second World War but the middle of the Second Punic War, and in which Indy meets Archimedes himself, is refreshing for the sheer novelty value of getting to see a period of history very rarely realised in modern blockbuster cinema, even if there's a lot of uninteresting CGI. Voller's plan going disastrously awry and his realisation that he's made a terrible mistake are true to the series and satisfying to watch, and Mikkelsen plays the whole thing very well. I also like that (contrary to how a lot of people seem to be interpreting it online) the Archimedes Dial isn't itself a time machine and doesn't open up time portals or something, it just detects them, with an appealing element of predestination. I similarly appreciated that it wasn't another Biblical artefact, with this being playfully nodded to in the opening when both Indy and the Nazis are initially more concerned with the Spear of Longinus, which turns out to be fake.

But it all just takes so long, becomes so repetitive, especially with Indy and Helena twice having to steal a comically small vehicle to pursue or outrun Voller, and at times feels like it is taking place in indistinct CGI world, that I found myself never being effortlessly entertained. The opening de-aged sequence, which is about twenty minutes too long, seems to very much take place in the same video-game state as the much-disliked Jungle Cutter sequence from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Waller-Bridge is perfectly fine as Helena but it just takes too long for us to really get to know her and for her relationship with Indy to properly develop, and that's what it all comes back to. For a film that's all about moving forward, not getting lost in the past, not giving up and letting obsession or regret consume your life, it takes a hell of a long time to get there. And that's frustrating because, a bit like (some of) the Star Wars sequels, it feels like it could have so easily been better but that Disney, somewhat paradoxically, didn't have the confidence to make a good film and opted to make a mediocre one instead.

 

I'm prepared to change my mind upon rewatch, and rewatch I will, because this is, after all, an Indiana Jones film starring Harrison Ford, even if it is glorified fan fiction. But I'm almost inclined to say that "mediocre" is in some respects too high in terms of praise and that the film's editing and pacing issues are so egregious as to quite possibly ruin what could have otherwise been a perfectly good sequel. I was fine with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull being the last one. If you weren't, maybe this will be a more satisfying conclusion. If only it could have concluded about half an hour earlier.

Blade Runner 2049

Hot new feature! Instead of exerting the energy required to read the review, why not listen to me read it to you with limited enthusiasm instead?

He should have found a turtle.

A slow, pointless rehash of the slow, overanalysed original, in Blade Runner 2049 Ryan Gosling gets shot, stabbed, punched by Harrison Ford, blown up and forced to recite poetry, he makes out with a hologram, burns an innocent man's house down, drowns a woman in the back of a waterlogged car, wades through urban sprawl, junkyards, wastelands and two and a half hours of droning Hans Zimmer bombast, and eventually dies of sheer boredom and the odour of Harrison Ford's sweaty t-shirt.

Right, now that I've got the facetious version out of the way, let's get to the real review.

It's not a real sequel 'cause none
of these got squeezed out.

I have to admit that, despite natural cynicism, aspects of Blade Runner 2049's marketing campaign worked on me, particularly the teaser. Seeing our new protagonist, Ryan Gosling's Officer K, in an orange-tinted wasteland led me to imagine that we were going somewhere new in this far-removed sequel, perhaps to see something different. The full trailer impressed me less, as it seemed to be going down a dramatic route which didn't seem particularly unusual, but I was willing enough to see the film.

What if there's a big crowd on the bridge?

Probably the best compliment I can give to Blade Runner 2049 is that it feels like a strong sequel to a slightly different film. I rewatched Blade Runner a few days before seeing this, specifically the Final Cut, and having not watched the film in its entirety for probably ten years I was reminded most strongly of how abstract and dreamlike its tone is. The score by Vangelis is a major contributor to this, of course, but the cinematography, including long, lingering shots, and the performances, intentionally or otherwise, also create a haziness and distance which focus the viewer primarily on the ideas the film is contemplating, rather than a strong narrative, which the original notoriously lacks. As a result, I found myself feeling increasingly convinced that making an authentic-feeling sequel to Blade Runner was impossible, that the characters and setting did not and could not exist outside the boundaries of the text; the film accomplishes what it sets out to do, and is complete. That's not to say that the film is perfect; it is probably slower than necessary at points and arguably suffers from a seemingly-uninterested performance by Harrison Ford and a lack of onscreen chemistry between him and Sean Young, which makes the relationship between Deckard and Rachael less interesting than it might otherwise be. Nonetheless the excellent visuals and score and the performances of the replicant characters, particularly Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty, are very compelling.

Probably paid over $5,000,000
per minute he was in the film.

A good sequel preferably expands upon or investigates new possibilities suggested by the original, rather than simply rehashing what happened before, and it's to Blade Runner 2049's limited credit that Ryan Gosling's K is not simply hunting down a fresh batch of rogue replicants, perhaps with the assistance of Harrison Ford's Deckard. Rather, he is investigating a possibility of replicants becoming capable of natural reproduction, a situation which would threaten the humans' dominance over them while simultaneously resolving their new manufacturer's supply problems. Despite the fact that this is, ultimately, heavily related to Deckard and Rachel's story from the original, it is certainly a different direction. The extent to which we ought to give the film credit for avoiding this fairly obvious pitfall is, however, worth bearing in mind.

I heard that to prepare for the role he bred
a family of artificial humans and killed them all.

To the same extent, that direction itself is arguably less compelling than that of the original, in that while the 1982 film's topic of interest is fundamentally existential, Blade Runner 2049 is to a greater extent political, and while there is of course no bad time to warn of the potential technological advancement has to enslave us, or to create new slaves, I can't help but feel that this new film's concerns are ultimately more mundane than the first. This perhaps is appropriate given how much more grounded the sequel feels compared to the original, but also suffers in terms of the relative lack of attention it receives, as the idea of the abuse and suffering of the expendable replicants is only touched upon lightly until the concept of an underground replicant resistance is, in my view, clumsily inserted into the film in the final act. This left me, at least, thinking about the political ruminations of the film despite the fact that so much is devoted rather to the growing inner life of the protagonist, Officer K.

Not Emma Stone?

Ryan Gosling generally has a solid reputation and I feel like he was an appropriate casting choice for this role. K's story is certainly interesting, although I can't help but wonder how much it retreads that of both Rachael and Roy Batty in the original, particularly in his search for truth and meaning in his life. As such, probably the most engaging part I found to be the relationship between K, who is a replicant, and his hologram companion, Joi, to the extent that I started to think as I watched that a film about a relationship between two artificial life forms would make for a better film than a story about replicants being able to have babies. That being said, anti-replicant prejudice must be pretty bad if, in this world, even Ryan Gosling would need to purchase an electronic girlfriend.

At least banning plastic bags helped a bit.

K's character development is effective, as he transitions from a law enforcement killing machine to a man in fear for his life to one who is disappointed when his subconscious desire to be "special" is thwarted, to finally making a choice and acting to help others, although I'm not entirely convinced of how striking the resolution is. It's the steps in between which are arguably more memorable and perhaps not followed through to the extent that they could be. Are we really that surprised when K, a man of the law, decides to save Deckard from off-world torture so that he can be reunited with his lost daughter? For me, at least, it lacks the impact of Roy Batty's decision to save Deckard's life at the end of the original. Given that we only see K retire one replicant in the course of the entire film, the narrative appears to be drawn in morally simpler terms than the original, which ties back to the political angle of the plot. Despite the strength of Gosling's performance in particular, this made the film to me feel equal parts redundant and simplistic in light of the original. Perhaps I would perceive this differently if this was not a sequel, but it is. It's worth noting that K's serial number and his nickname, Joe, both evoke the protagonist of Kafka's The Trial, which arguably has more in common with the tone and atmosphere of the original Blade Runner than this sequel.

If this reminds you primarily of Fallout: New Vegas,
you need to read and watch more stuff.

The strengths of the film, beyond the performances, are primarily visual. Part of my homework for this film, besides watching the original, was watching two of Denis Villeneuve's recent works of apparent relevance: the 2016 sci-fi film Arrival, and the 2013 psychological thriller Enemy. This film is consistent with Villeneueve's strengths at creating atmosphere, suspense and a feeling of unease, although as I've said I think the atmosphere of the original is more fascinating. While I believe the film has been criticised for being too slow, I personally found it to be paced quite well, the lingering camerawork matching K's confusion and blunted emotional state. The film also takes us beyond the rain-swept LA to a protein farm, junkyard San Diego, snowbound Southern California, and atomic wasteland Vegas. In all honesty I feel as if these settings, particularly the Vegas one, deserved more use, and that the film ultimately spent too much time retreading the streets of LA and the Tyrell building in particular. I still don't believe they gel with the atmosphere of the original, but they're interesting enough on their own. The most dubious visual is probably the elaborate means used to depict Rachael in the film with the appearance of 1982 Sean Young. One could make the excuse that she's meant to look fake, but that doesn't really change the fact that she doesn't look like the real deal, and in the wake of this, Rogue One and the increasing number of films which try to reuse the likenesses of older or even dead actors I suspect we have a glut of trips down memory lane ahead of us.

"Who are we again? Am I a replicant?"

The film's soundtrack is adequate, but apart from a few moments in Vegas, for instance, I don't think Hans Zimmer brought too much to the plate. His trademark, now cliché, droning fits this film to a degree and is used with more flair than in other features, but it can't compare to the original's Vangelis compositions. It's noteworthy that the most musically memorable moment in the film is during the scene at the end featuring K lying down on the steps, during which Vangelis' 'Tears in Rain' track from the original plays, linking K with Roy Batty. This somewhat emphasises to me, however, the extent to which K simultaneously has to fulfil the roles from the original of Deckard, Rachael and Roy, exemplifying the dearth of well-developed original characters in the film.

"Two. Two. Four. And noodles."

As I've said, the performances are all strong, but new faces including Luv, Joshi and Mariette don't have much to do as characters despite each having a number of scenes. If anything I think Luv is overused, underwritten or both. Jared Leto's Wallace is effective in the two scenes in which he appears, but in my opinion was too openly evil as a character compared to the polite hollowness of Tyrell from the original. Dave Bautista gives a very different performance to how I'm used to seeing him, as Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy, and I could have seen more of him, and the character of Ana Steline was similarly well-realised as someone who appears to be a detective-story side character who takes on greater importance later. Edward James Olmos has a nice cameo as Gaff which perhaps reminds too much of the strength of the original film. Harrison Ford was, in my opinion, better in this than in another recent reprisal, The Force Awakens, but despite the greater range I felt he conveyed, nonetheless I didn't see him as Deckard, as he lacks the languor of the character as originally portrayed. Of course he might change over thirty years, but it'd be nice to see something of the original character still in there. It might be argued that his original performance was lacking, but as it suits the tone of the original, I missed it in this.

Part time.

Blade Runner has been criticised for its limited narrative, but I would argue that Blade Runner 2049 does too much to avert this. As I've said, the story seems to offer less room for meditation upon loftier subject matters, and given the strength of the visuals and some set pieces I'll discuss in a moment, it almost becomes a distraction. Certainly, by the time K found Deckard, and perhaps earlier, I felt that the iris of the narrative started to narrow more and more, taking the film in a direction which I thought risked becoming too formal and too structured in contrast to the best parts of the film when the stoic K stalks through the collapsing world around him.

I think she's in the film more than Ryan Gosling.

In this regard, another of the film's strengths are a number of visually or dramatically pleasing moments which stand out amid their surroundings. These include a scene in which Joi uses Mariette as a physical presence to allow her to be more intimate with K, and sequences in which K is obliged to take a baseline test to confirm his emotional detachment from his mission. It's noteworthy that while these serve K's characterisation, they seem like distant memories by the time the film leaves Las Vegas, at which it becomes a routine sequence of secret societies, interrogations, a climactic battle and an emotional departure. The final punch-up and drowning of Luv in Wallace's car is strikingly shot, but again pales somewhat compared to the confrontation between Deckard and Roy in the original, and it significantly shows how little characterisation Luv is afforded despite appearing in the film so much.

You wouldn't know he was a wrestler
if it wasn't for his tiny head.

It's probably worth pointing out as well that when the film focuses too greatly on its own plot, that plot shows limits. For instance, Joshi takes K completely at his word that he has eliminated the child, presumably simply because replicants are believed to not be able to lie. The question of why the child's records were doubled was not resolved as far as I could tell, although I may have missed something. It's not clear why Wallace needs to have Deckard sent to an off-world facility for further interrogation when he seems to be able to act with impunity on Earth. Furthermore, K simply states that Deckard will appear to have died in the car crash at the end even though there is no body. I was somewhat amused by the lines from Wallace which touch upon the "Deckard is a replicant" idea, implying that he was intended to couple with Rachael by nature or design, although it reminded me substantially of Alex Garland's 2015 film Ex Machina in which a character was manipulated in a highly similar manner. As I've said, the appearance of a replicant resistance movement also seemed trite and clumsily-included to me, an element out of place in the disaffected world of Blade Runner. Oh, and I guessed that the remains discovered at the beginning would be Rachael's bones almost as soon as they appeared. At least K turned out, in the end, to not be the child, which would have been much too neat and convenient. I appreciated that.

Rather than 'Joe', she should have started
calling him 'Special K'.

Perhaps my impression of Blade Runner 2049 has been excessively coloured by the original, but I think that comparisons are only fair when a film utilises not only cast and creative minds but even archive audio and footage from the earlier text. The fact is, Blade Runner 2049 is a very solid, nice-looking, well-performed, reasonably engaging science-fiction film, but I think it was always doomed in trying to be a sequel to the original. If anything it reminded me of how much I like the original, despite how flawed it is, and how much I'd appreciate a return to that kind of filmmaking. This shouldn't take away from the new film's strengths, and it probably merits a rewatch, but I can't help but feel like this piece, given its reheated elements and box office performance, is most strongly embodied by the duplicate Rachael who gets rejected and shot.

Thoughts about a Fifth Indiana Jones film and Geek Hypocrisy

So ever since Disney acquired Lucasfilm there's been a bit of a feeling that they might ultimately do something with Indiana Jones, which is unsurprising given that it's essentially Lucasfilm's secondary franchise. And by secondary I mean way secondary, which is natural considering that it's about a single character, but nonetheless it has a presence. If people think "Lucasfilm" they probably think "Star Wars and Indiana Jones." Y'know, in the event that they're the kind of people who even know what Lucasfilm is, and I honestly wouldn't be surprised these days if people thought Star Wars just manifested out of thin air one day in "the past." Because, as I'm so fond of suggesting, the overwhelming majority of "geek" pop-culture consumers are fatuous morons.

In any event the issue of another Indiana Jones film has raised its head. But of course people are saying they shouldn't do this that and the other with a fifth Indiana Jones. And as usual with people on the internet, most of what they're saying is stupid. Let's take a look:

"Harrison Ford's Too Old to play Indy now."

It's possible that he is. But if he is, why the hell are you all so excited about coming back to play Han Solo in the new Star Wars film? They're both action heroes who say wisecracks and fight people. Is Indy a more 'physical' performance than Han because Han's a pilot? Han's running around shooting people and stuff all the time in Star Wars. Sure, he doesn't have some of the massive punch-ups that Indy has, but a plot which wanted to deal with Indy now would surely, naturally, work around that. It's only a problem if you want the same old Indiana Jones template. I've got a crazy idea for you then - go watch one of the old Indy films on DVD! Holy shit! He's punching people and swinging on his whip and shit! Oh my god!

"Kingdom of the Crystal Skull sucked so a fifth Indy would as well."

For my own part I actually like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (although admittedly it could have been better) but I can't deny that a lot of people don't. Weirdly enough, a reasonable majority of critics thought it was a decent film, which shows that there's no accounting for taste. It also puts paid to the stupid myth that "Everyone hated Crystal Skull." Anyway, y'know what else everyone hated? The Star Wars prequel trilogy! And yet you're all getting pretty damn excited by Episode 7, aren't you? "Oh, but George Lucas isn't directing." Yeah, but, and I hate to break it to you, but he was still involved in development even if he's apparently not closely involved with production. "But the best Star Wars films are the ones he didn't direct, so some involvement is okay." Oh really? You are aware that Steven Spielberg has directed every single Indy film, not Lucas? "Err... errrm... aliens." Uh huh.

"They should reboot the franchise with that guy from Guardians of the Galaxy as Indy."

Jesus. Or maybe if they don't make another one with Harrison Ford they should just let the franchise die? The whole point of Indiana Jones (or at least a very large part of its point) was to pay tribute to 30s pulp adventure serials (or 50s B-Movies in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but most consumers are too ignorant for this idea to mean anything to them) and imagine what they would have been like if instead of providing escapism from the issues of the day (the rise of Fascism, the Cold War) or representing them obliquely through symbolism and analogy, they'd directly confronted those issues. The films use this method to subvert traditional hero narratives: note that as a general rule in the film Indy acts to save those close to him (Marion, his father, etc) not to "stop the Nazis" or what have you. None of that stuff means anything to anybody anymore. In the Twenty-First Century, Indy (as portrayed by another actor) would just be some cheesy action hero who beats up Nazis and swings on a whip. It'd be as irrelevant as it could possibly be.

Would I see a fifth Indiana Jones film? Absolutely, if Harrison Ford was Indy. If it's a reboot or a remake, not so much. Do I need a fifth Indy film? Not really. While it's possible to imagine the series "ending on a high note" as it were I kind of think it already did - not that Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is or is not a "high note" on its own  - but simply with that image of Indy walking off with Marion at the end of Crystal Skull while "The Raiders March" blared. I personally found it to be a nice ending. At the end of the day people need to face the facts: we're never going to get the Indy films that possibly should have been made in the Nineties and set during the Second World War. There's never a bad time to enjoy the films we've got rather than yearning for a franchise of inevitably questionable quality.

Just as a final aside: the fridge scene. Did everyone else fall asleep during this bit? Look at the image of him stumbling up the slope and being contrasted with the mushroom cloud. The point is, here's Indy, who could outfox Nazis, the worst history had to offer, all day long in his heyday, but now he's barely escaping being killed by a horrific weapon built by his own country. It's juxtaposing the hero, who could confront terrible evil, to a new world where's he's helplessly at the mercy of his own government. Did no one get this?