Indiana Jones And The … Wait, What Is 'The Dial of Destiny’? - Vanity Fair

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Harrison Ford returns as the whip-cracking archaeologist, de-aged and still fighting Nazis. But what artifact is he hunting?

By Anthony Breznican

December 1, 2022

First off: Indiana Jones doesn't believe in magic?

That's what Harrison Ford's character says in the new teaser for the fifth movie, but after raiding the lost Ark of the Covenant, surviving the Temple of Doom, finding the Holy Grail during The Last Crusade, and encountering aliens in the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, how is there any doubt left? That's some hardcore skepticism, Dr. Jones.

We now know the full title of next summer's film is Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny, but what relic does that actually reference? It's unclear, but there are a few possibilities. We actually glimpse something that is clearly an ancient mechanism in the trailer. But what does it do, and what inspired it?

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Thematically, the trailer sets up a theme about the melancholy of memory, looking back on the past as it grows more distant, and yearning to go back. The trailer begins with John Rhys-Davies' Sallah discussing the things he misses. "I miss waking up in the morning, wondering what wonderful adventure the new day will bring us."

Jones channels Don Henley: Those days are gone forever, you should just let 'em go, but Sallah insists: “Perhaps not.”

Could this movie, which Ford has said will be his last in the series, wrap up Indiana Jones' legacy by allowing the character to have not just one more go-round, but a permanent portal back to yesteryear? Crystal Skull rankled some by adding sci-fi to the franchise, but maybe time travel is a better fit. What is “destiny," after all, but the inescapable future? A device that modulates that might just turn back the clock.

That would explain why the Nazis want it. We see them in the trailer, and we also see a de-aged Ford in their clutches, in what seems to be a flashback. But what if these evildoers are seeking a way to reverse the past, change the outcome of World War II, and pave over history with a new, much more sinister destiny? This is just speculation, but that's why they call it a “teaser.”

The Indiana Jones movies have always drawn inspiration from actual legends or history. Even the crystal skulls are real objects.

Google “Dial of Destiny” before today and the lone hit is a 1911 novel by Frederic Luther Koontz. But there seems to be no connection. Koontz's book, now long out of print, is a medical and legal thriller. So, scratch that story off the list of inspirations.

The actual object in the trailer bears some loose resemblance to the Antikythera mechanism, an unusual array of bronze discs and gears that was recovered from an ancient Greek shipwreck off the coast of that island in 1901. It was on the sea floor for thousands of years before that, and has been dated to the Hellenistic period between 323 B.C. and 31 B.C.

Notice that at least part of the new Indiana Jones film takes place undersea. But the “dial” we glimpse is in near pristine condition compared to the real-life one. A recreation of what the mechanism may have looked like before its centuries below the waves is fairly close to the one we see in the teaser.

The actual Antikythera mechanism has been called the world's “first computer,” and leading theories speculate that it was used to track the course of the sun, moon and planets, keeping track of lunar and solar eclipses. The relic is badly corroded and in fragments, according to the journal Nature, which nonetheless describes it as a “model of the cosmos.”

As curious as the actual object is, the fictional one surely has other features built in.