
If adventure had a name … you’d know it would be Indiana Jones.
The character, created by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg on a beach after Spielberg bemoaned the fact that he’d never get to make a James Bond movie (or so the story goes), has endured five feature films, a television series and a ton of spin-off material (you must have read at least one of the novels or played one of the videogames – right?) And now, with “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” (in theaters now), Harrison Ford is hanging up his dusty fedora and beat-up leather jacket, we thought it might be time to use the Dial and take a look at the film franchise as a whole. What are Indy’s most memorable quests and what should best be left in some creaky catacomb?

5. “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” (2023)
Indy’s latest (and last) adventure is unfortunately his worst. Steven Spielberg stepped aside and instead handed the character over to James Mangold, the journeyman director behind “Walk the Line” and “Logan.” That might have made sense on paper, but the results are nearly disastrous. The year is 1969 and Indy is a grumpy old man, living in Manhattan and yelling at his neighbors to stop blasting the Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour.” He gets embroiled in a new mystery on the eve of his retirement, when a woman from his past (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) emerges and a globe-trotting hunt begins. What they’re after (and what the doodad is supposed to do) is largely a mystery, not because that was the intent but because the narrative is such a confusing muddle. Mads Mikkelsen is excellent, of course, as a Nazi who worked on the space race and is now searching for a piece of ancient tech that could rewrite history. But he’s sadly not given much to do. Even the trappings of the 1960’s setting is jettisoned in favor of the old “tromp around the jungle” standbys. (Imagine if it’d actually concerned itself the Nazi influence on the space race? Now that would have been cool.) Alas, throughout the movie you’ll long for Spielberg’s hand on the wheel.

4. “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” (2008)
Set in the 1950’s and riffing on cheap sci-fi movies of the period, the film might have ended up being Indiana Jones vs. aliens in the 1950’s, but eventually screenwriter David Koepp landed on “inter-dimensional” beings instead of aliens. Instead of Nazis, Indy is up against evil Russians, led by Cate Blanchett as a Soviet psychic (whose psychic powers never really help or advance the plot), on the hunt for a mythical crystal skull somewhere in South America. It’s most fun in the first half, with Indy dealing with greasers (including his son Mutt played by Shia LaBeouf), and the scene at a nuclear test site that gave rise to a new way of saying “Jump the Shark.” (And the car chase through Yale is one of the all-time set pieces.) The jungle stuff is less satisfying, although Karen Allen’s return as Marion Ravenwood (Mutt’s mother) was fun. It’s pretty bad, but there’s enough spirit to get you through the computer-generated monkeys and multiple waterfalls.

3. “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” (1989)

2. “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” (1984)

1. “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981)