Bringing back Indiana Jones in the 2020s is a potentially risky business. When your hero is trafficking in pillaged artefacts, can he really claim they belong in a museum any more? Shouldn’t he be returning the golden idol to its Peruvian tomb, before slotting the poison darts back in their silos and heaving the boulder back up its launch ramp?
In his first adventure in 15 years, which had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday night, Harrison Ford’s Dr Henry Jones dodges these ideological pitfalls as nimbly as he does the actual pitfall ones. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is every inch a replica of the standard Indy experience, with subterranean booby-trapped dungeons, an escape from a Nazi fortress, a chase through a North African bazaar, and an ever-so-slightly irritating younger sidekick (in this case Teddy, played by the 16-year-old French newcomer Ethann Isidore).
Unfortunately, though, it ultimately feels like a counterfeit of priceless treasure: the shape and the gleam of it might be superficially convincing for a bit, but the shabbier craftsmanship gets all the more glaring the longer you look.