Third And Hopefully Final Thoughts On Indiana Jones And The Dire Dial Of Destiny

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Third And Hopefully Final Thoughts On Indiana Jones And The Dire Dial Of Destiny Moving away from seeing my contested thinking of Wombat (Phoebe Waller Bridge’s Helene Shaw) as the worst companion in the Indy franchise, is the Archimedes Dial the most pointless invention ever invented? Spoilers The Dial isn't a time machine, but a kind of mechanical clockwork compass that accurately predicts the location of wormholes through time, and possibly space. You ask the dial for directions to where and when you want to go and it shows the coordinates for the next available wormhole for making the journey. The only wormhole we see is thousands of miles in the sky in 1969, so obviously if anyone found the dial before the 20th century and airplanes the wormhole would be unreachable anyway. The Nazis want to go from 1969 back to 1939, and even dress up in full regalia ready for their triumphal arrival in pre-war Berlin. As they discover too late, causing Indie his only smile in the whole film, the calculations Archimedes made on creating the devise don't allow for continental drift which the great man had no concept of. On this, the dial should take the user anywhere, including Dinosaur times or ten minutes ago. It actually takes them right back to Archimedes, the very man who invented the dial. . This seems quite a coincidence, until the Greek boffin reveals in virtually his only line, that the gismo was only ever going to come back to him. It is predetermined to find its way home. WHAT? He makes the unit, hides it, and waits for it to come back like a boomerang and that is all. He never time travels himself. He just waits for someone to come from the future but never bothers learning from them what things are like then. Indy tells Helene not to give Archie their copy of the gizmo as he has to think of it and make his own, but that will need to be very quick as Archimedes died at that very siege, so he has at best a few days to create or finalize his time machine doohickey. The second one has come back to 1969, presumably kept by Teddy and Wombat who will figure out how to adjust it and use it to travel all over time for their own wacky adventures. Indy settles on staying in Syracuse until Wombat spoils his dream. WHY? Yes, he is seeing the history he loves, but he is already mortally wounded by a bullet to the lung that should by rights have killed him already, having been dragged from dusty cave, over a wet airport tarmac, onto a plane, bumped through a storm and a wormhole, engaged in a shootout, and dumped on desert sand in a smokey battle zone and in an era pre-medicine. It's also an area of utter carnage, with the full slaughter of war still going on round him, hardly a golden age for migrating to unless Indy is literally suicidal. Wombat stops him with a magic punch from fear that Indy will change history, but that is surely changed anyway with all the strange metals and the watch recovered from the crashed plane, plus the numerous Romans killed by the Nazis indiscriminately and pointlessly opening fire on them. Also, if every wormhole leads only to Syracuse barely AD won't it just bring the escape plane back there instead of letting it go back to 1969 anyway? - the continental drift factor becomes irrelevant - Archimedes just wants to see who brings his message in a bottle back to him. Indy hates modern times, clearly. We join him in 1969 as the moon landings coverage unfolds and he has fallen asleep watching H R Pufinstuf instead of the news. His hippy neighbours are listening to the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour. No one cares for now, though it was the time I woke up excitedly to a sense of being in history - My dad let me stay up aged 8 to watch the first Moon landing, and I remember the Vietnam coverage unfolding too. Indy avoiding Nam stories I can understand given Mutt has died there, but the rest would be exciting to see. Also, for all his 'it belongs in a museum' mantra ranting, Indy has stuffed his half of the dial in a school cupboard, and not told anyone about it even after he has quit the job. If not for Helene's greed it would still be there now. Magical Mystery Tour is the wrong song for the film. It ought to be Hawkwind's Silver Machine about a time machine that only goes sideways Youtube Arthur Chappell