How amazing America was between WWII and the Moon Landing one would have to write a new version of America the Beautiful to tell. Moral and technological triumph in war and peace, freedom and equality for more and more people, a country prospering while raising a generation that would not know strife—no Great Depression, no World War—except in welcome forms, endeavoring to conquer space.

Obviously, this is not how things turned out, paradise did not descend to earth. Progress stalled or went in reverse, everything from political assassinations to race riots shocked Americans out of their preternatural confidence, and we have been living with domestic conflicts ever since, with few moments of unity in face of common enemies.

This gave rise to a “betrayed revolution” ideology among progressives and the left more generally. More and more people got into the habit of calling the men who fought the Nazis Nazis. There is no more piety toward that great American achievement—only the accusation of white supremacy or systemic racism. This was sold to American teenagers in 2014 as Captain America: The Winter Soldier, with the Nazis secretly running the government. Now, some version of that is also the ideology of Indiana Jones 5: The Dial of Destiny.

Indiana Jones’s Retirement Party

It’s a sad thing to see Indiana Jones’s rugged manliness reduced to misery, regret, and the position of a punching bag for yet another silly female character deus ex machina. But this is what’s necessary to make liberals happy, ruining whatever is left of the cinema that brought Americans together. The movie’s price tag is about $300 million, so it’s going to be a financial catastrophe, too, not just a moral one, but that too is considered acceptable so long as latter-day moralism triumphs. So here is how this is accomplished in terms of the story.

First, Dial of Destiny gives us another Nazi adventure set at the end of WWII, recalling The Lost Ark and The Last Crusade. We see a de-aged Harrison Ford in a sequence that ends up with a chase on top of a train—it looks like a computer game imitation of Spielberg (this is the first Indy directed by someone else, namely James Mangold). Maybe we’ll have Indy games in the future. Maybe people will like this reminder of the 1980s, but I was not happy to see Ford reduced to a digital ghost. At any rate, the important thing is that Indy no longer has anything to do with Christianity. He starts looking to save the Spear of Longinus from Nazis, which points to the Crucifixion, but it turns out that it’s a fake and instead, what matters is the dial of Archimedes. Jews are replaced by Greeks in the Indiana Jones mythology, since our elites are no longer Christian.

Next, we cut to 1969, the Moon Landing. Indy is an old tired man, sad, alone, miserable. The camera insists on his ugly, flabby naked body. His young neighbors wake him up with their rock music and despise him. His students don’t care about his anthropological course. His colleagues give him a retirement party and soon enough they’re murdered, by Nazis working secretly in the government, with the complicity of the CIA or some other deep state agency. We see the wife is divorcing him; we later learn, it’s because his son died in war, presumably Vietnam—Indy told the boy not to sign up.

America is all about the future, and Indy is the past. In a fun set piece, he gallops through a ticker-tape parade (remember the America that gave heroes parades?) and a subway tunnel on horseback, chased by motorbikes and cars. But turning from obvious metaphors to ideology, Indy is replaced by a young woman, Helen, daughter of his old archaeological friend Basil, but the film suggests you should think of her as a goddess to worship. At some point, she tells a teenaged street urchin to fly a plane and it turns out he can just do it! She’s also a polymath, easily holds Indy in contempt, and you soon learn why. She’s an international woman of mystery, a real Jane Bond: A gambler, seducer of Mediterranean potentates, involved with organized crime, and she also finds time to beat men up left and right, indoors and outdoors, on solid ground or leaping between cars during chases. She’s played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, co-screenwriter on the latest James Bond movie, in which the British hero was killed after being reduced to sacrificing for women, after being cut down to size by women.

Why does Indy need replacing? Nazism. Or toxic masculinity, I guess we call it now. I had this strange thought when I saw him in the early Nazi-era scene go through a train full of Nazis impersonating Nazis to get through. The Nazis can’t tell the difference, so Indy’s ruse works. But surely neither can liberals! If that’s subtle, think of the motivations that drive the plot. Our villain is a Nazi that becomes an American scientist and eventually takes men to the moon (think of Wernher von Braun); he’s not interested in the conquest of space, but of time, he wants to return to the past, replace Hitler and win the war for the Nazis, or for himself. It turns out Indy also, stuck in the past, wants to stay there (the Roman siege of Syracuse, this is a time-traveling movie, sadly enough). Men and war, they’re all the same—women are needed to rule them.

Heroes Taken to Therapy

Finally, Indy does not realize he needs therapy, but he does—as the movie shows us, he now has a life not worth living. Above all, his problem is that he thinks he’s in charge and that he’s a hard-charging kind of guy. In the 1960s, this is a delusion. Dial of Destiny is a movie in which small boys get giant fighters killed with ease, so Indy isn’t really necessary, he’s more along for the ride than anything else; it’s really about him making his peace with mortality. At points, admittedly, it seems like Indy and his antagonist are fighting, matching wits and power, the stuff boys and perhaps men too want to see, but then everyone is teleported into the ancient past. The two men suddenly collapse morally, they don’t know how to do much of anything anymore, they are cut down to size.

The goddess decides Indy’s fate. He wants to stay in the past, she pleads with him, orders him, cajoles him, and when he won’t listen, she coldcocks him, being both wiser and stronger, fate embodied. She makes the rules, she somehow knows what you’re supposed to do about history, she has her way. Back to the future, in 1969, she reassured the convalescing ex-hero: “You’re meant to be here, Indy.” She brings back the wife he was separated from, as well as other friends. She is, as a goddess, providential, to those who obey her. There’s a place for Indy in the world she rules, if he doesn’t step out of line. He’s old and tired anyway, so he obeys. This is meant to serve as a happy ending.

Of course, the story is odd. For the first 90 minutes or so, Helen’s portrayed as callous, conniving, and arrogant. These are all considered enviable characteristics among liberal elites. To seem transgressive, she says she only believes in cash, not in anything magical or spiritual, like Indy. The apotheosis only happens in the last hour (this is a tedious movie at two hours and a half, about half an hour longer than the average of the previous four Indiana Jones adventures). The difference between the two parts of the movie is easily understood—first she humiliates Indy and replaces him, then, once she’s in charge, she spares him. This makes it one of the most perfect images of elite feminism in our pop culture.

Structurally, the movie alternates set pieces with scenes of dialogue that are supposed to show character depth, as well as give the audience reprieve and flatter their cleverness by puzzle-solving. There is no concern for plausibility nor is there any art to the emotions aroused by the story—they derive from a feminist ideology and a therapeutic moralism. The writers tried hard, but they are mediocre. The best they achieve is a scene in which the goddess exults over her very clever escape from imprisonment and Indy complains to her indignantly that his friend was just murdered, so no gloating. But throughout the movie, their motivations and emotions are strangely discordant—strange because she is supposed to be the new and improved Indy, yet they have so little in common—and it is only by fully emasculating Indy that a kind of harmony is achieved. Once he is crippled and convalescing, she becomes very solicitous and feminine.

When I was younger, I heard a saying from women trying their hand at wit, that Ginger Rogers could do everything Fred Astaire could, but also do it backwards and in heels. It struck me then that for such a claim to superiority, it’s remarkably bitter, envious. Later, I realized the practical implication: Ginger should replace Fred. It’s not so much about resentment as about revenge; it’s less an observation than a plan to destroy something beautiful. The two cannot dance together, feminists will not live with the patriarchy, but on the other hand have every expectation to thrive at its expense.

Now, it’s happened to Indy, as to James Bond, as to other fictional heroes. The last survivor is Tom Cruise, but give the studios time. I recommend you skip Indiana Jones—it’s a complete betrayal of the character, offering death in the guise of reconciliation with mortality… Go instead and see the Mission: Impossible extravaganza.