This weekend’s tumultuous events showed just how big a gamble the Chinese leader Xi Jinping took by partnering with Moscow.

Russian President Vladimir Putin survived the rebellion that Yevgeny Prigozhin and his private army unleashed on Saturday. Perhaps Putin’s hold on power was never in great peril. Yet whether the incident is perceived as a mark of Putin’s weakness or of his resilience, it painted a picture of a Russia in deep decline, where a warlord can march on Moscow practically unchallenged, and where political fortunes can be unpredictable and even volatile.

Such is the country on which Xi has pinned many of his foreign-policy ambitions. Xi seems to have embraced Putin as an invaluable partner in his quest to push back American global power and reshape the world order in Beijing’s favor. That choice was always a risky one. By sticking with Putin when he invaded Ukraine last year, Xi was effectively trading ties to Europe for a closer bond to Russia, as his stance galvanized the allied democracies against him. Xi made his decision in the service of grander plans: The two dictators would make history. “Change is coming that hasn’t happened in 100 years. And we’re driving this change together,” Xi told Putin during their summit in Moscow in March.

Watching the rebellion unfold in Russia, one might imagine that Xi now feels that he bet on the wrong guy. Putin looks like a leader with a fair share of problems at home that will limit his ability to project significant influence abroad, and the drawn-out conflict in Ukraine has exposed the weaknesses of the Russian military.

[Read: How China is using Vladimir Putin]

But Xi has remained unmoved. The war, the reaction of the West—nothing so far has dissuaded him from tightening his ties to Putin. And though it is not easy to know the true thinking in China’s opaque halls of power, the rebellion doesn’t appear likely to change his mind either. If anything, it may further convince Xi of Putin’s importance as a bulwark against a destabilized Russia on his northern border. In a statement, China’s Foreign Ministry noted that “as Russia’s friendly neighbor and comprehensive strategic partner of coordination for the new era, China supports Russia in maintaining national stability.” A headline in the Global Times, a news outlet run by the Chinese Communist Party, called the notion that Putin has been weakened “‘wishful thinking’ of the West.”

At the same time, if in fact Putin has been weakened, Xi could stand to gain. Certainly, Xi has benefited already from the leverage Putin’s isolation affords China over Russia: Having torched his ties to the West, Putin has little choice but to deepen Russia’s reliance on China’s diplomatic support and trade—even its currency. That arrangement suits Xi just fine. And if the Wagner coup has weakened Putin still further, Xi can exert yet more influence over Russia’s economy and policy. Xi could use this authority to secure sources of energy and other raw materials from American interference and press Moscow to align its policies with Chinese interests.

Xi’s next moves regarding Russia will say a lot about the trajectory of China’s foreign policy. Continuing to stand by Putin will signal that Xi’s desire to undermine the power of the West remains paramount in his approach to the world and overrides even some pressing concerns at home. With China’s economy staggering and in need of Western investment and technology, Beijing has theoretically been seeking to repair its relations with Europe. But doing so will not be possible unless Xi ditches or at least greatly alters his relationship with Putin. Last week, Chinese Premier Li Qiang toured Europe, talking up the importance of continued engagement, but the European Commission, rather than embracing this outreach, released an economic-security strategy that aims to protect Europe’s interests against threats posed by China. In throwing his weight behind Putin, Xi will continue to damage relations with countries that have the wealth and influence to bolster China’s economic development and global stature in favor of advancing a partnership with a man and a nation that may no longer possess the power to help Xi achieve his goals.  

[Read: Taiwan prepares to be invaded]

The emphasis placed on partnership with Russia indicates just how dramatically Xi has reoriented the priorities of the Chinese government. Development was the prime concern for four decades, which meant that ties to the wealthy West had to take precedence. Now Xi is fixated on security, and he apparently believes—evidence aside—that Putin can help provide that security. The choice is a fateful one, with potentially severe consequences for China. But the Chinese political system has transformed into a one-man dictatorship that will stay on the course Xi sets, come rebellions, disastrous wars, or who knows what else.  

Lessons remain for Xi to learn from Putin’s weekend travails. The rebellion reflected the strain placed on an authoritarian regime by an unpopular and protracted war. If Xi is watching closely, he might see in this episode a warning of the domestic political vulnerabilities that could arise from a military grab for Taiwan. A war for Taiwan, like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, could fail or prove long and costly—tempting rebellion, and making it another gamble for Xi to lose.

A common trope in the hero’s journey, if you consult Joseph Campbell’s work, is the “refusal of the call”—the moment when the protagonist declines the adventure ahead of them, upping the stakes for whatever comes next. But in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the latest installment of the Indiana Jones series, our familiar hero (played by the now-80-year-old Harrison Ford) is too jaded to bother with much of anything. Instead, shirtless on his easy chair and toting a glass of whiskey, he’s introduced fast asleep before he shuffles to his professorship at New York’s City College and accepts a cheesy retirement gift from his co-workers. “Thanks for putting up with me,” he mumbles, to a few scattered claps.

This is the fifth Indiana Jones film but the first in 15 years, following 2008’s Kingdom of the Crystal Skull—a movie that was itself happy to dispense gags about Ford’s increasing creakiness. Dial of Destiny knows it cannot retreat from its star’s advancing age, so it leans all the way in, spinning a yarn in which the whip-toting archeologist confronts—and eventually rebuffs—his perceived uselessness by going on one more quest around the world in search of an ancient doohickey. The film, directed by James Mangold, still has a streak of defiance, but it’s a gentle one, working to avoid the relative strangeness of Crystal Skull and instead give viewers exactly what they might expect.

Mangold is an incredibly reliable purveyor of blockbuster fare who can punch above his weight in almost any genre. His two comic-book movies, The Wolverine and Logan, were gritty and thoughtful works; he also makes an excellent noir (Cop Land), Western (3:10 to Yuma), romantic comedy (Kate & Leopold), and biopic (Walk the Line and Ford v Ferrari). Still, he’s given an impossible task here: jumping on board a series where every prior entry was made by Steven Spielberg, who practically redefined the adventure film in 1981 with the first Indy movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Spielberg always recognized that sequels should push against audience expectations as much as work to satisfy them. Although two of his four Indiana Jones entries (Temple of Doom and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) are deeply bizarre and sometimes outright hostile to their viewers, they’re very interesting and watchable works. Each reflects the director’s mindset at the time—the former was made after he went through a breakup, the latter as he confronted an encroaching digital revolution in cinema. Crystal Skull ended with Indiana Jones married to his erstwhile companion Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), and clearly, Spielberg saw nowhere else to take the character as he approached his dotage.

[Read: Hollywood doesn’t make movies like The Fugitive anymore]

Mangold doesn’t have a new angle either, instead taking Indiana down memory lane for his last hurrah. Yes, there’s personal hardship for the character to overcome: Along with his creaky bones, he’s once again estranged from Marion, having failed to assuage her grief when their son, Mutt (Shia LaBeouf), died in the Vietnam War. But Mangold figures the audience wants something familiar, so he brings a whole ensemble. Indiana quickly meets Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), his fast-talking goddaughter, who drags him on a chase across the globe in search of a Greek artifact supposedly connected to time travel. There’s even a plucky street urchin named Teddy (Ethann Isidore) along to help out, plus a cameo appearance by John Rhys-Davies as the garrulous excavator Sallah.

In pursuit, as is often the case with Indiana Jones, are a bunch of Nazis. Because the movie is set in the late ’60s, the Nazis are a little quieter about their beliefs—the lead villain, Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), is a rocket scientist recruited by NASA as part of Operation Paperclip. Still, their nefarious goals and love of ancient magical gear makes them fundamentally indistinguishable from the archenemies of Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, also known as the Indiana Jones movies that everyone can agree are good. And just in case viewers didn’t get the message, there’s a nostalgia-focused opening action sequence that sees a de-aged Harrison Ford fighting a bunch of Nazis during a World War II mission—a set piece that is technically competent but can’t avoid the hollow, rubbery uncanny valley of Indy’s CGI face.

Most of the film has Indy and his traveling companions and Nazis in pursuit of the magic relic, functioning like clockwork as the company hops to locales such as Morocco and Greece. But though Ford invests his performance with as much longing and nuance as he can, underlining Indiana’s increasing disconnection from the modern world, the movie is too busy to really plumb those themes, instead zipping along to the next action sequence lest anyone get bored.

The closing act of Dial of Destiny is also in the grand tradition of Indiana Jones movies, throwing a mixture of history, pseudoscience, and supernatural elements into the plot and abandoning the relatively grounded material that preceded it. Still, I was happiest then, bouncing in my seat as Indiana and his pals were confronted with a head-scratching metaphysical quandary, which contained a lot more than the hoary wisecracking of the film’s first two-thirds. I thus left Dial of Destiny vaguely satisfied that this presumably final entry at least didn’t do anything to truly pervert the character’s legacy. But that sense of safety cuts both ways: Yes, it’s hard to be mad at this movie, but it’s also hard to summon any other strong emotion. If Ford really wants to bring the character out of the barn again, there’s clearly little to stop him—but I hope Indy retires back to his easy chair after this, and is left truly alone.

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