MovieChat Forums > Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) Discussion > There Are Two Kinds of People on the Dia...

There Are Two Kinds of People on the Dial of Destiny Board...


...those who have seen the movie and enjoyed it, and those who have not, and are panning it out of dislike for Disney.

I'll be honest, I'm not a fan of Disney at all. I dislike what the company stands for of late, and don't watch much of what they make. I went to see Dial of Destiny not knowing it was made by Disney, and expecting something lousy because of the word of mouth from people like those here besmirching the film. I was pleasantly surprised by how great the film is.

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It's not great. Movie has many flaws. It's too long. It's a cacophony of CGI car crashes and shootings. The characters are boring except for Indy and maybe the main villain.

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The action sequences are poorly edited and rushed. You can overdo cgi but I wouldn’t even call that the problem. They just aren’t thought out all that well, not horrible but in a franchise like this we have higher expectations.

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Go back and watch Raiders of the Lost Ark and Temple of Doom.

Look at the sets, the stunts, the real vehicles. That is actual movie magic. Green screen and people pretending to talk to tennis balls on sticks isn't.

Sure, there are some composite shots in both that look crappy, maybe two or three between the two films. Nothing is perfect.

CGI is good for matte and for space, but that is it. Anything else looks weightless and moves wrong.

Mad Max Fury Road is a great example of how to still make an awesome movie in "modern" times. Real cars built by craftsmen, real stunts, real chases, and only absolutely minimal CGI.

Also, the OP is shilling for this movie.

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You really ought to stop accusing people defending the movie of being shills. It's lazy and it's wrong. The idea that Disney gives a damn about this forum is comical.

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That's exactly what a shill would say.

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That's exactly what a troll would say.

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We could ALL be bots. Who would know? He he.

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'Mad Max - Fury Road' was cat-shit out of a dog's arse

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Care to tell us why?

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Empty, soulless, miscast, and meandering (created solely to give gravitas to 'Beyond Thunderdome')

...and (suspiciously) loved by most (who likely hadn't seen a Mad Max movie prior)

The cinematic embodiment of a 'naked emperor' (and little else)

A silly movie (for a likewise audience)

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Mad Max has always been "silly" (smegma crazies anyone?) and I'd like you to elaborate on the miscasting comment because we might not be in disagreement there, and I have seen every MM film including Thunder dome (TD maybe once) and love the first two. It was as good of a MM film as you could ever have got in 2015 and one of the few half decent films I have seen in the last 10 years especially because of the stuff I mentioned previously.

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Genuine question: do people actually not like CGI, or is that just some trendy way to sound authentically old-school?

Never mind this film but anyone who had watched Mutt tarzaning through the jungle with dozens of CGI monkeys in Crystal Skull would understand the problems. And you don't have to be "old school" to appreciate that.

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If they had been real monkeys for example I don't think it'd have really added *that* much to the experience.

I think the point kind of the inverse:-

If it had been real moneys, there'd have been just a few of them. But
the fact that they were CGI meant that they could copy / paste fill the screen with them which made it look fake.

So maybe not CGI in itself which is the issue (I mean look at the Planet of the Apes remake - CGI and amazing) but people not being able to constrain themselves with what they can produce.

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Yeah, CGI is just a tool. It can be used right or wrong. More often wrong.

What usually gives away CGI is that real animals don't act through complex shots. The same goes to human stunts. They feel fake just because there's no way many shots could have achieved by traditional means in front of camera.

Also, CGI often feels cartoon, because it obeys the laws of cartoon physics. Living things or objects don't seem to have enough mass. No matter how natural looking and photorealistic CGI is, "live action" movies have started to feel and resemble animated movies because all of this.

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I was having this discussion yesterday while watching Independence Day (1996) with my oldest son and mentioned how much I like practical effects so much better.

CGI still suffers from a variant of the uncanny valley. No matter how photo realistic they are, there's still something not quite right about them that our subconscious mind can pick up - even if we can't specifically point it out and identify it.

With practical effects, I may be able to tell the explosions are on miniatures, but they still look like real explosions. The same with the cars flying through the air and crashing to the ground.

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This is a great question and I wish I could give a definitive answer, if only for my own sanity.

I'd have to say that the more outside of real nature, the more acceptable CGI is to me. Space battles, The Hulk, laser blasts, and the like are more acceptable, because my lifetime of real world experiences has nothing to compare them to. But explosions and fire are something I'm intimately familiar with.

I read a piece once about how the flames and/or fireball of a CGI explosion has an iterative nature that's not found in nature. Real world flame still too complex to render in CGI exactly as it would be in reality, so it's created to be "close enough" that it can withstand the immediate eye test.

This is one of those things like CRT monitor 60Hz flicker back in the day. It bothers some, but not all. In the case of CGI, I wouldn't say it necessarily affects me like the old CRT monitors, but it's just not as satisfying.

The best analogy I think I could make is artificial sweetener. Sure it's sweet, but you know it's not natural sugar. And if you consume it enough to become accustomed to it, then you find yourself not liking the natural sugar anymore.

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Like most things it depends on how and when it's used, but if you're asking a "genuine question" you can be a little less insulting than implying people only have a certain opinion because it's trendy.

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I think it is a great tool but I can’t stand its use in most movies. Ideally the tech should allow the moviemaker to render some special effects that look more realistic than was previously possible with practical effects. But the opposite has happened. It has lead to action scenes in movies that don’t look realistic at all. They start looking cartoonish. Obviously for animated movies this isn’t an issue and for some scenes in a superhero or scifi movie it is perfectly appropriate but the overuse of it makes watching a movie look like playing a video game.

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CGI is overused, inferior to practical effects, and often looks like a video game. It's particularly bad when depicting the movements of animals and aircraft.

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My wife wanted to see it and we went today.
The Good:
Harrison Ford is good.
The chase sequences are good in points.
The opening sequence was fine
The locations were great (until the third act).


The Bad:
Indiana Jones was not needed in the movie. He had no impact on the plot outside the opening scene. He's a side character in this.
The mugging from Phoebe Waller-Bridge as she played Helena. She was unlikeable until the strange flip in her character's behavior at the end.
The odd setup of the badguys. They do this CIA angle which is pretty useless. Then the whole idea of going back to Nazis again was fine in the beginning, but it became really dumb by the third act.
The Indy murder plot. It was so contrived that they completely forgot about it by the end.

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The "strange flip" in Helena's character at the end was already more than hinted at earlier in the film. She goes back for Indy when he's being attacked by eels in the submerged shipwreck.

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They should have made the entire movie just Helena being attacked by eels.

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Only after the red shirt's line was cut. Face it, it didn't work.

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Right, because no one who has watched it could possibly dislike it, seeing how it's this untouchable flawless masterpiece and all.

You are truly an idiot.

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He is a shill, started about the time I migrated here right after IMDB boards shutdown. He used to only comment on Disney shows, and only give rave reviews. I called him out quite a few times after checking his history. So now he comments on other shows too, occasionally give Disney negative reviews AFTER the theater run long finished.

Like this post I think he was just trying to get people to watch it.

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You realize anyone can check my posting history and see how wrong you are, don't you?

I don't care if anyone watches it or not. I post here to engage in conversation about film. I enjoyed this movie, so I'm writing about why. I really don't know why you think I have any particular love for Disney's films, nor do I ever remember you "calling me out" on anything like that. You're free to believe what you want, but again, it's funny that of all the studios/filmmakers you'd choose to associate me with, you've chosen perhaps my least favorite studio.

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Past comments are hard to find, so I only found what I could find quickly.

Here is to jolt your memory:https://moviechat.org/tt9140554/Loki/60efc78c7b9a9f0d41c4cb06/Oxymoron?reply=60f3bebe5385ca158b95475f

https://moviechat.org/tt9376612/Shang-Chi-and-the-Legend-of-the-Ten-Rings/61387d60efdca94661078bdd/can-t-trust-imdb-ratings-user-reviews-are-being-deleted?reply=6138b0adefdca94661078ca6

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I guess that's how forgettable you are?

But seriously-- this board is full of people like you. Go look at some of the other Disney boards and see people calling me a racist MAGA-person for disliking Disney films. It's like no one can accept that a person can like or dislike a film despite politics anymore.

Yeah, I dislike Disney the company and what they stand for, but I enjoy some of the films they make. I'm not going to deny myself the joy of watching a good movie to make some sort of political statement that no one will care about and will accomplish nothing.

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If there have been so many people calling you a shill, I am sure you won't remember someone like me.

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Far as I know, you're the only one. Mostly I get called whatever the opposite is because I'm so anti-Disney.

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Yeah, right!

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You actually think I'm a paid Disney employee going deep undercover to chat every day about movies, and bash all sorts of Disney films, just to occasionally post on a board like this saying I enjoyed Dial of Destiny? Would you say you are generally a conspiracy theorist? I'm more of an Occam's Razor kind of guy myself.

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Most of the things people are saying against this movie applied to the Willow series, but not this. However, since Willow is a less well known movie and hardly anyone watched the series anyway, why would they bother wasting their time making videos about a show that won't get many clicks and not make them much money? Indy and Star Wars are were the big money is. So, they went on safari for this movie and bagged the big prize.

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Not sure why you feel the need to insult me for my opinion on film, but this is the internet, so I'm not surprised. Nor am I surprised you misinterpreted my post as you did, for it provides you with a reason to hurl an insult.

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There's nothing to misinterpret - you literally said there are two types of people on these boards... people who have seen the movie and enjoyed it, and people who haven't and are bashing it.

This is an idiotic statement, and directly implies that no one who has actually seen the film is honestly disliking it here. You made the idiotic statement, so a comment calling you an idiot isn't exactly out of the question, is it?

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It was a joke about how no one here seems to want to offer an honest or nuanced opinion. It's either "I loved it!" or "I hated it because of the part where *insert thing that does not happen in the film*"

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Plenty of people are offering specific criticisms - ironically it's your post which has removed all nuance and attempted to divide people into two specific categories. It's basically just a classic "if you dislike this you must be a troll/hater/misogynist" cope which we have seen time and time again from Disney apologists.

Your post was certainly a joke, just not in the way you're attempting to spin it now.

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The only divisive person is you. You're lobbing insults and attempting to spark up some sort of argument.

You're also layering some entirely different thing onto all of this. Nowhere have I called anyone a troll, hater, misogynist, or anything else, nor am I defending Disney against anything.

You failed to get the obvious joke, and now you're defensive about that on top of everything else.

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Right, you're not defending Disney against anything... except everyone who disliked the movie, by "jokingly" (heaviest quotes imaginable) claiming they didn't watch it.

Which is exactly in the same wheelhouse as those who try to downplay critical comments by lumping people into the troll/hater/misogynist category. But hey yeah, you didn't directly use those words so it's totally a different thing.

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I put one on your other other post.

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Ive seen it, I love Disney movies, and still thought this was mediocre at best.

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Then you are on the wrong board. Here you are only allowed to pretend to have seen it and hated it, or actually watched it and loved it. Take your nuanced opinions to Letterboxd.

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The incels with a hard-on for Kathleen Kennedy are even worse on social media and youtube. You can tell those that are regurgitating what they say from those who've actually seen it. Like the comments about a "female Indy" replacing him.

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A Woman should never have been put in charge of a movie production company founded by a Man that made masculine movie franchises.

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I've seen it and thought it sucked. You're a moron.

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What a bold use of a logical fallacy!

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The correct term is sarcasm.

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The film was a mixed bag for me, but the opening train sequence was the best part, the climax at the Siege of Syracuse with Archimedes, Indy himself, Teddy, Sallah, and the villains were OK because they're Nazis and Indy lives to bash Nazis, but the reasoning for the main villain was stupid, and I liked the ending with Marion back, Indy has the Dial of Destiny as a prize for his museum, and a memento from the siege. What I didn't care for were the chases, both the parade/horse/subway and the one with those silly little vehicles, as well as, above all, the detestable Helena Shaw. I couldn't stand her, and she looks far too posh to be likeable.

What I'll say is that I was enjoying it at first, but then it plodded down into the main plot, and it was just OK, but I noticed that as the action in the past with the Romans and Archimedes and his men reacting to the aircraft from the future happened, I liked that part the most, it really looked like a hectic and interesting battle. I was in conflict with Helena at the end though, because Indy wanted to stay in the past (which he loves) but she was against it as he was dying, and, I hate to admit, he would've changed the past. But when they got back and Indy woke up to everything he wished, I felt happy for him and loved the cameo by Karen Allen, and Teddy was there, and Sallah and his kids, all in New York, and it's the sort of feel-good ending that people go to the movies for, and it sort of makes you forget (mostly forget) the awkwardly plotted stuff before, but I liked the last frame where the hat is hanging on a clothes line only to be yanked off for more adventure.

In all, Dial of Destiny does not get anywhere near the classic trilogy, but it IS neck and neck for Crystal Skull. I'm just trying to figure out if Helena Shaw is more or less annoying than Mutt, Ray Winstone's double-agent or John Hurt's eccentric guy, but what might swing it is: no aliens, or trans-dimensional whatsits.

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Posts like this are the reason I come to MC. Thanks for the in depth comment.

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I come for the racism, homophobia and misogyny.

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