don’t believe in magic, but a few times in my life, I’ve seen things,’ glowers Indiana Jones in his latest adventure, Dial of Destiny. Magic of various kinds is embedded in the DNA of the Indiana Jones franchise. Without the alchemy of the perfect combination of character/ actor, idea/execution, it’s a series that so easily could’ve fallen by the wayside, instead of becoming an indelible movie landmark, a face carved into the Mount Rushmore of cinema history.
Created by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg for 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones is in some ways inseparable from the man who has played him for more than 40 years. The reluctant heroism. The cool-underpressure charisma. The intelligence, curiosity and resourcefulness that’s led to a career littered with treasures. In his 80s heyday (in films set between 1935 and 1938), Harrison Ford’s fedorasporting archeologist took on Nazis and cults, nabbing rare McGuffins, solving puzzles and evading boulders, before returning to take on Soviet agents and aliens in 2008’s Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (set in 1957). Despite stellar box office, it would take more than a fridge to protect that film from the nuclear assault mounted by critics.
A fifth instalment was soon mooted. Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm in 2012 made some form of new Indy content inevitable, although a fifth movie went through a protracted development journey - with Spielberg stepping down from directing duties and James Mangold (Cop Land, Logan, Le Mans ’66) taking the helm, before shooting would finally begin in the summer of 2021. The first miracle, after all this time, was actually getting Ford back in the hat and jacket, bullwhip in hand, for one last outing as one of his signature characters (in a career that’s not exactly had a shortage of them).
‘I always wanted to see a completion of the character,’ Ford tells in April 2023, at the end of a day on set playing Thaddeus ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross in upcoming MCU film . ‘I wanted to see [Indiana Jones] at a later stage of his life, when he’s beyond the youthful enthusiasm and capacity, and beset by age and [stifled by academia]. I wanted to see him engage on one more unexpected, is (mostly) set during 1969’s space race, at a time when Indy himself is around 70. And the film won’t shy away from that.
