Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny has officially made its first public appearance by way of the Cannes Film Festival, and things aren’t looking terribly hot for the legendary archaeologist’s swansong; a 50 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a score of 51 on Metacritic suggest that this could be the entry that overtakes Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as most Indy fans’ least favorite.
Of course, critics don’t always get things right (these are the same people who agreed that See How They Run is a better film than Inside, Men, and Renfield, after all), but there’s one glitch in this particular matrix that makes this early reception all the more dubious.
Shortly after Variety reported on Dial of Destiny‘s “lukewarm” five-minute standing ovation at Cannes, one Twitter user curiously pointed out how the publication’s coverage of Top Gun: Maverick also made note of a five-minute standing ovation at last year’s festival, but apparently Maverick‘s five minutes was “rapturous” rather than “lukewarm.”
Now, it’s entirely possible that decibel perception was coming into play here, but frankly, I don’t buy that for a second. For the last year or so, I’ve managed to convince myself that everyone putting Maverick on this nigh-untouchable pedestal is some practical joke that I missed the memo on, and this development has only solidified my suspicions.
So, in spite of early reviews and in light of some bizarre hypocrisy, we can perhaps conclude that Dial of Destiny is at least as good as Top Gun: Maverick; I don’t really know how I feel about such a kinetic statement, but if my storied love for Indiana Jones is similar to the world’s love for Maverick‘s uncomfortably verbose patriotism and the need to stroke Tom Cruise’s ego, I’ll probably have a win on my hands regardless.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny will release to theaters on June 30.