There’s a tender moment in Raiders of the Lost Ark, when Karen Allen’s Marion says Indiana Jones is not the man that she knew 10 years ago.
“It’s not the years, honey, it’s the mileage,” quips back Harrison Ford’s Indy.
Ford turned 38 while filming Raiders of the Lost Ark back in 1981 when director Steven Spielberg and creator George Lucas fired us back to the old-fashioned swashbuckler of the 1930s and 40s.
Forty two years later, he returns for a fifth and final outing, declaring that he’s calling time on his whip-cracking, artefact-hunting archaeologist.
Ford, 80, wanted to go out with a tale where, maybe, the years and the mileage are showing.
“I was ambitious for a story that featured a reality in the characters,” he tells The National when we meet at the Cannes Film Festival where Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny has just had its premiere.
“And that reality is most specifically the presence of age. And I wanted it to be about that because that’s what I’m about right now. And that moves me and … it stimulates my imagination and it’s what I’m about at that stage. We investigate that in various ways occasionally in a movie, but we don’t do it in a popular film that much.”
That’s certainly true – Hollywood heroes are either youthful or indestructible, in the mould of Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible spy Ethan Hunt.
But Indiana Jones has always been different. Famously fearful of snakes, he started out shrouded in a vulnerability that, until Bruce Willis’ Die Hard cop John McClane, wasn’t seen in the eighties action heroes played by the likes of Stallone and Schwarzenegger. He even had daddy issues, as 1989’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade showed with his tetchy relationship to his father, played by Sean Connery.
In Dial of Destiny, time has finally caught up with him. It’s 1969. Man is about to land on the Moon. Indy, though, lives alone, in a noisy New York apartment plastered with photos from the past. After a prologue where we see Indy in his prime, thanks to a digitally de-aged Ford, he’s rudely woken from his slumber by hippie neighbours blasting out The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour.
Stagnant and sedentary, it’s a perfect way to reintroduce Indy, says incoming director James Mangold.
“He’s thinking ‘I can’t do that kind of quest any more. Because a) my body can’t handle it. And b) the world doesn’t present me with those opportunities any more',” he says. “I don’t think Indy has stopped caring and wanting to learn about the world. But … the world has changed. People are thinking about other things.”
Taking over the reins of the franchise from Spielberg, Mangold already has experience in this particular field. Logan, his 2017 film set on the fringes of the X-Men universe, dealt with an ageing Wolverine, played by Hugh Jackman.
Whoever was directing, Ford simply wanted to show Indy’s failings.
“He’s a flawed human being. Just like most of us to a degree. I hope that you will feel that he has developed from film to film … there was some kernel of wisdom or joy or virtue that he had that we carry on to the next film,” he says.
“But it’s a tenuous connection for us. We don’t wake up the same every day. We have good days and bad days. He’s having a series of bad days. I mean, he’s waking up in a lazy-boy armchair with an empty glass in his hand.”
What gets him out of his funk is a visit from his goddaughter Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), who is searching for something called the Antikythera, also known as Archimedes’ Dial, which can track rips in the very fabric of time. No damsel in distress, the mercenary Helena isn’t exactly pure of heart.
“These kids are growing up in a world without a moral compass to a degree and this young character, this character that Phoebe plays, is the articulation of that reality,” says Ford. “The relationship between her character and my character is – aside from Karen Allen – one of the deepest relationships the series has created.”
What about the villains?
“There’s only one good guy in Indiana Jones!” says American actor Boyd Holbrook. “I mean, it’s him and people who are usually after him.”
Indeed, from Ronald Lacey’s Nazi agent in Raiders of the Lost Ark to Amrish Puri’s Thuggee Priest Mola Ram in the 1984 follow-up Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom to Cate Blanchett's severe Soviet in 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, they’ve always been memorable.
This time, Jones comes up against ex-Nazi scientist Jurgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), who has escaped his fascist past and is living in the US under the name Dr Schmidt.
“He’s a scientist, he’s a passionate man of mathematics,” explains Danish star Mikkelsen. “The ideology plays second fiddle. But if you can combine the two, it’s a great day.”
Despite Mikkelsen’s remarkable record of starring in major Hollywood franchises (Star Wars, Fantastic Beasts …, the MCU and James Bond), he had goosebumps when he first met Ford.
“We had a costume fitting. I went out and he came out of his trailer – hat, whip, jacket. I was meeting Indiana Jones instead of Harrison. That was it! Standing there, grumpy, what am I doing here? With the whip. I was smiling all over my face,” he recalls.
Joining Mikkelsen’s Voller is Alabama thug Klaber, played by Holbrook, as they pursue Indy, Helena and her teenage sidekick Teddy (Ethann Isidore) through Morocco and Greece in search of the dial.
Holbrook, who featured in the Mangold-directed Logan, didn’t want to play the character as German, as originally written. Playing him as an American gave Klaber another dimension, the actor felt.
“What is he doing? Well, obviously, no one wants him. Society doesn’t want him. He’s just fallen in with these terrible people because they’re the only ones that will have him.”
While Kingdom of the Crystal Skull left many critics cold, reviews were mixed-to-positive for Dial of Destiny. How it will fare at the box office will largely be down to how it connects with younger audiences.
Half-Brazilian, half-Mauritian newcomer Isidore, 16, who plays Teddy, believes his generation will seek it out.
“My friends and I grew up with Indiana Jones,” he says. “And I used to watch these movies almost every weekend with my parents.”
Studio backers Disney will hope he’s not alone; the film is currently eyeing a $60-70 million opening in the US this week, although it’ll need to do well to beat Crystal Skull’s franchise-best $790 million worldwide box office.
Certainly, viewers are not spared action. From the 1944-set prologue on a speeding train, the film has more than enough chases – subways in New York, tuk-tuks in Tangier, underwater wrecks in the Med – to keep people satisfied.
Recreating the aesthetics of an Indy movie impressively, Mangold calls it the “chance of a lifetime” to work with Spielberg, who remains an executive producer.
And Ford – how does he feel now he’s hanging up that fedora?
“I have had the very good fortune of working with the old school,” he says. “But the story of my career is about how much there is to learn … and how many great teachers are out there.”
Spoken like a wise old Indy.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is out now
