Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Reader's Guide

The story picks up in 1969, twelve years after Jones's adventure in Peru, with Jones retiring from Hunter College in New York and separated from Marion after their son Mutt's death in Vietnam. His goddaughter Helena, an antiquities smuggler, takes the half of the Dial that Jones had kept since 1944 to sell it, and Voller, helped by the CIA, steals it at her auction in Tangier. The central MacGuffin is Archimedes' Dial, the Antikythera mechanism, which in the film reveals time fissures that allow time travel.

The chase runs from Tangier to Greece, where Jones and Helena dive to the Antikythera wreck for directions to the Dial's other half, and to Sicily, where they find Archimedes' tomb in the Ear of Dionysius cavern. Key sequences include an escape through the Apollo 11 moon landing parade in New York, a tuk-tuk chase through Tangier, and a flight through a time fissure that lands the group at the Siege of Syracuse in 214 BC instead of 1939.

Did You Know?

• The Antikythera Mechanism depicted in the film is based on a real archaeological discovery found in a shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera.
• The film opens near the end of World War II, in 1944, with a de-aged Harrison Ford; Anthony Ingruber served as the on-set body double for the young Jones.
• The 1969 story is set during the Space Race, with Voller working for NASA under the name "Dr. Schmidt".