hmm… what if it “calls up” a version of you in the past?
so Indy can’t travel through time, but can somehow communicate with his younger self?
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Like in Jumanji, you spin that you’ll encounter great difficulties.
Probably a sun dial to tell Indy it is time to retire.
Or to phone home, but Spielberg isn’t directing.
Maybe this gives us further clues:
The German title of Indy 5 is “Indiana Jones und der Ruf des Schicksals”, which translates to “Indiana Jones and the call of destiny”.
Sounds like a bad google translate job 
The trailer was pretty awesome, I hope they didn’t spoil the best bits (like the joke at the end)
The weird thing is: That is German. 
(But not a good title. It seems that translated titles in German have to be weird. Or horrible. Or both. Bad translators have established this in the past.)
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Yeah. It sounds utterly generic. While the original merely invoked the image of a rotary dial phone, in the German version Indy actually got the phone call 
.
But maybe the combination of dial and destiny is rather weird. Dial is a fairly technical term, implying some kind of apparatus. So the dial of destiny to me sounds like something that can control or manipulate destiny (the future). But that’s not a property of any ancient artifact, real or legendary, I’m aware of.
Also, from the synopsis on Wikipedia, the main plot seems to revolve around the Apollo program. So I wonder how “archaeology” will fit into that. The title might make some sense in that context, however.
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Fate of Atlantis’s Moon stone is the Dial of Destiny confirmed!
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SPOILER WARNING
No, seriously
So during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969 they discover a dial on the moon with the power to change destiny. A bunch of nazis led by Colonel Jorgen who fled to South America plan to steal it- because they want to change the outcome of WWII. Indy, who happens to be doing some graverobbing archeology there, overhears their plans to sabotage the Apollo 13 mission which is really only a cover for a secret mission to recover the dial for safekeeping in a secret US military warehouse. Colonel Jorgen had sent an engineer called Frank Wolff to infiltrate the Apollo mission, help sneak him on board where he kills the rest of the crew on their way back to earth with the dial. The two fake some technical issues resulting in a fatal accident with Wolff as the sole survivor and barely able to get back to earth, claiming the dial was lost in the accident (while in reality Jorgen took it with him in his escape pod). Unable to stop the ceremony that changes destiny -held in an Egyptian Pyramid- old Indy is captured by the nazis and during a fistfight gets sucked in a time vortex and ends up travelling repeatedly backwards several centuries to the past every couple of weeks. There he uses his archeologic knowledge to leave clues around the globe and across civilisations for his future self to warn about this disaster. Then the younger Indy in the now destiny-altered WWII past/future has to prevent all this from happening after deciphering the clues. He finds Colonel Jorgen during the war, severs the colonel’s hand and although he is not able to kill him this changes the outcome of the war just enough to stop the nazis from winning. Now the only thing Indy can do is to travel back to the future by applying the true meaning of archeology to himself: growing old. Back in the 1970 old Indy infiltrates the Apollo 13 mission himself (riding his horse through the tunnel to the launch site on Cape Canaveral) to stop Jorgen and Wolff. Holding his godchild at gunpoint, they force Indy to put his knowledge of Mayan and Egyptian civilisations to good use to enter and recover the dial from a booby-trapped pyramid on the moon that was build by the aliens from which the ancient earth civilisations descended. On the way back to earth, the final space fight ensues and Indy is victorious (as the colonel can’t use his prosthetic hand to shoot his gun).
After the fight in space there will be an inside joke where Indy uses the radio to say “ Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here… but uh…everything’s perfectly all right now. We’re fine. We’re all fine here now, thank you. How are you?”
In the epilogue, we see Indy standing before a museum with a wrapped package under his arm. He pauses, remembers his friends from old adventures. Then he turns back and when he steps down the stairs, the camera catches a glimpse of the dial under the wraps.
<fade, cue Raiders theme>
Admittedly this sounds better on paper than the plot of the 4th movie 
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Looking for news of the upcoming fifth installment, I found this very well done analysis of Crystal Skull:
Part I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky8adHn7eh8
Part II: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku1xxuyonUA
I particularly liked, above all, the focus on lack of characters motivation and struggle, relations and growth through the narrative arc.
And then it summarizes as: “Indy 4 is not so much an Indiana Jones movie but a movie with Indiana Jones.The movie didn’t manage to capture the essence of the franchise.”
Anyway this is the new trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgM1xdVck5Y 
Have you seen it?
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I think the same can be said about a lot of movie franchises these days.
Have not, will not. I’m still going to see the movie, but it’s not like I’m itching to see or learn more about it just now. But thanks for the reminder !
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I thought the first trailer contains enough spoilers as it is, so I am just busy forgetting what I saw by the time the movie is released. Definitely going to watch it - with zero expectations- and going to like it at some level, knowing it can never reach the height of the original three.
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Why do sequels have to be better (or at the same quality) than the original? Why isn’t it enough that they are good or entertaining movies? 
Make that good and entertaining and I’m with you .
Better is arguably hard, as any sequel not only would have to improve on what came before, but also overcome the nostalgia and bias of the audience.
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If I had to be brutally honest, I don’t have much appetite to watch this movie in a theater, after the senseless mess Disney did with Star Wars once they bought Lucasfilm. At this point I care mostly that they don’t vandalize original story and characters as they did with Star Wars. I’m quite interested, as usual, in the production process of the whole thing, so I’ve no problem with all kind of spoilers, trailers and news that come to my attention these days 
.
About time for a remake, then … 
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I am going to the cinema as if on a crusade, with high expectations, and with zero tolerance of failures this time.
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I saw “The Dial of Destiny”. Two times. There’s plenty of reviews about all its flaws. I’ll just update my personal ranking of the movies:
9/10 Raiders of the Lost Ark. Foundational, superb. Douglas Slocombe.
9/10 The Last Crusade. Exceptional cast, characters’ dynamics. Superb music.
8/10 Temple of Doom. Funny, dark, and accomplishes to be different.
7/10 The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Despite the different concept, there are many stories inside that are very well written and capture the essence and charme of the main character under a different and inexperienced light. One of the couple of series in my life I was thrilled to watch the next episode.
6/10 Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. A missed opportunity, still a movie with memorable passages, some inspiration, but it does not accomplish to be enjoyable as a whole. “Not an Indiana Jones movie, but a movie with Indiana Jones”.
3/10 The Dial of Destiny. Not an Indiana Jones movie, neither a movie with Indiana Jones. There is little to save and I will draw a veil over all its flaws. The memorable things are the hanging sequence and Thomas Kretschmann, who gives heart to his villain character enhancing suspension of disbelief to every sequence in which he is involved. The rest of the movie is way too tired and seems to be made and acted by people who don’t like or managed to understand the soul of the character and its movies. Depicting a hero in trouble, not understood in new times does not mean to annihilate the character’s soul. By doing that, there’s a high chance you can’t build an enthralling story involving him. There’s so much more soul and vivacity in the eye(s) of George Hall’s early 1990 Indy (from Chronicles, despite being way older and not doing any major action sequence), than in this late 1960 Indy from this movie. The economic effort spent on this production makes it even more evident how it does not lack funds, it lacks soul.