From the opening Second World War-set flashback prologue to the time-traveling Second Punic War-set finale, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny takes place across three separate historical eras. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny sends the aging archeologist on one last globetrotting adventure to keep Archimedes’ ancient time machine out of the hands of the nefarious Nazis who want to use it to regain control of the world. The film’s epic two-and-a-half-hour runtime takes audiences across three separate eras of history.
Dr. Jones spent his whole life studying history, so it was poetic for Indy’s final adventure to culminate in him becoming a part of history. The movie opens in the past, around the same time as the original trilogy, before jumping ahead to an older Indy on the brink of retirement. Then, in its wildly unexpected climactic set-piece, it whisks Indy through a time portal in the sky and sends him hundreds of years into the past, which seriously complicates the Indiana Jones movie timeline. But which specific historical eras does Dial of Destiny visit?
Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny’s Prologue
1944
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny opens in 1944, during the last days of World War II, with a de-aged Harrison Ford playing original trilogy-era Indy. In this opening flashback, Indy and his archeological colleague Basil Shaw infiltrate a castle in the French Alps to retrieve the Lance of Longinus. They end up aboard a train full of stolen treasures. The Nazis are hoping to use the Lance to maintain their world domination, but it turns out to be a fake.
While the Lance turns out to be fake, the operation isn’t a complete failure, because they uncover a piece of Archimedes’ Dial – an ancient time-traveling device – that turns out to be all too real. Indy and Basil manage to escape from the train with the Dial in hand, setting up the main MacGuffin of the movie. At this point in the war, the Nazis were beginning to accept defeat, which is why Jürgen Voller was so desperate to find a magical artifact that could prolong their reign.
Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny’s Present-Day Timeline
1969
The “present day,” as far as Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is concerned, is 1969. After the WWII-set opening flashback, the movie jumps forward 25 years. Indy is working as a professor of archeology at Hunter College in New York City and he’s about to retire from academia altogether. The movie provides plenty of historical context for its 1969 setting. As the Vietnam War rages on, the Apollo 11 mission has just landed on the Moon, so the country is torn between people celebrating scientific innovation and people condemning unjust warfare.
Director James Mangold makes compelling use of his historical backdrop, both visually and dramatically. The big second-act chase sequence across the city takes Indy through a parade celebrating the Moon landing and a protest condemning the war in Vietnam. One of the most heartbreaking scenes in the film reveals that Indy’s son Mutt Williams was killed in action during his military service in Vietnam. The grief over Mutt’s death led to Indy’s separation from his wife Marion.
Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny’s Siege Of Syracuse
212 BC
In the climactic sequence of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Voller uses the Dial to go back in time. He initially plans to travel back to 1939 and assassinate Adolf Hitler so he can redo World War II to suit his own vision of the Third Reich. However, they’re actually whisked back to 212 BC and arrive in the Hellenistic city of Syracuse. Their plane is shot down when it’s mistaken for a dragon. The Siege of Syracuse saw the Romans seize control of the entire island of Sicily.
As it turns out, Archimedes rigged the Dial so that anyone who discovered it would be automatically taken back to the Siege of Syracuse to help fend off the Romans. At the end of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Indy wants his goddaughter Helena to just leave him in the past, so he can die experiencing the history he spent his life studying. But she refuses to accept that and knocks him out so she can bring him back to 1969 with her.
