Phoebe Waller-Bridge at the premiere of «Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny» in Cannes. Photo: WireImage
«I'm in for the money!» is a rather unsettling refrain from Helena Shaw, the character played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Doom. history, fluent in every language you can think of (as well as ancient cryptography).
But once she gets her hands on the titular relic—an instrument called the Antikythera, sometimes referred to as the oldest analog computer—what does she do? She heartlessly leaves her dejected godfather at the mercy of neo-Nazi thugs in New York and flies to Tangier to sell the thing to the highest bidder.
The film is not a disaster, but definitely a disappointment; the same applies to her character. The problem with Helena is not at all that she is played by Waller-Bridge — she is bright, sassy, energetic and beautiful in all the whirlwind actions, as impersonal as possible.
But the character's basic motivation fails her. Why go to all that effort to establish her brilliant mind when she just wants to set up an auction for some fez antique collectors? It's a pathetic way to waste the intellectual awe she could have contributed.
To be fair, you can see some copycat logic behind this, which speaks to the current predicament of getting Waller Bridge to create a useful presence in Hollywood. Three years ago, she landed a $60 million deal with Amazon that has so far gone nowhere. She turned down a planned collaboration with Donald Glover on the reboot of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, a new series now starring Maya Erskine instead. In terms of films, she voiced the witty droid L3-37 in Solo: A Star Wars Story. /uploads/2023/06/4d58f6a70286177056cbf6e4e73ad53c.jpg» />
Her performance in Indy feels less like setting a pattern than an exception to it: writing and producing for herself is more likely to occupy her time now than star in someone's megalithic blockbuster. In fact, people may be under the mistaken impression that Waller-Bridge put more effort into writing the script for The Dial of Destiny than she actually did — the four writers mentioned are Jez and John-Henry Butterworth, David Koepp, and director James Mangold. . . But you can be sure she dabbled in some undocumented dialogue polish and so on.
Collectively, they clearly decided that Helena needed some of that Trash—to be cynical and worldly, a bit of a troublemaker, rather than arrogant pants power forever. Clever in theory, this approach could have worked better if her lines were a little bit edgier, or if they made her a real con artist like Barbara Stanwyck in Lady Eve (who still has a heart). Instead, her main task, done with a touch of flair, is simply to rattle off all the painstaking exposition — on science and history — that would turn into nonsense if Harrison Ford were burdened with it.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Doom
It's certainly not Waller-Bridge's fault that the film's silliness prevents her performance from truly being everything you hope for. She looks alive and frolics through it. But it feels like a missed opportunity for her in a role that isn't all that far off: maybe her own writing skills should have been brought in sooner or more extensively to iron out the issues?
Next on her to-do list is believed to be writing and producing the new Tomb Raider series being prepared by Amazon. Obviously, the pleasure of deep-sea diving for ancient artifacts, dropping heavyweights from planes, and racing rickshaws around Tangier must have caught on to some degree.
If that doesn't make her a star in something special, being more of a one-off entertainment than a statement of intent, The Dial of Destiny definitely points PWB to an exorbitant treasure hunt both on and off screen. You just hope her once-in-a-generation talents don't get buried too long under mountains of gold.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny comes out in the UK on June 28 and in the US on June 30
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