Age has caught up with Harrison Ford and his alter ego, Indiana Jones, and it is this very reason that made the 80-year-old actor pick up his fedora and whip one last time, in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
“I’d always wanted to round out the story with seeing him towards the end of his career, towards the end of his life even,” said actor Ford as a matter of fact in a press conference that Geek Culture attended.
Since his debut in 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, legendary archaeologist Dr. Henry Walton “Indiana” Jones, Jr., otherwise known as Indy, has enthralled audiences, from finding the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders, retrieving the Sankara stones in Temple of Doom (1984), saving his father with the Holy Grail in Last Crusade (1989), and taking back the skull of Akator in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), the character has longed been associated with Ford, even with TV’s The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992–1996), which saw three actors take on the role across three eras and Ford making one appearance.
Call it a retirement gift if you must, because Dial of Destiny will be the last time fans will see Ford crack the whip on the big screen, on one last adventure in finding Archimedes’ dial, also known as the Antikythera mechanism, and taking them back from the Nazis who are keen to change the events of history.
As always, Ford’s interest in the script has never been about the artifact, but the journey of a man, and what the end might look like.
“And we had a very good script that Jim [James Mangold] and his co-writers came up with, and that was the encouragement to continue with the project. I was very excited when I read the script that Jim and the Butterworth Brothers had come up with so there was no barrier to telling another chapter of his story for me. I was ambitious for it.”
And since it has been 15 years since the last entry, the Indy that fans will see is very different – older, grumpier and in an entirely new stage of life. While Indy’s biggest enemies and weaknesses in previous movies were poisonous snakes, Nazis and greed, the one he’s currently facing isn’t something anyone can defeat.
“I think Indiana Jones’ strengths are various. And we’ve demonstrated his strengths over the course of four movies. Now we’re entering into a new phase of his life. And we’re seeing him after the absence of 15 years,” explained Ford.
“He’s aged somewhat. He’s retiring. We meet him on the last day of his retirement from academic life, which has not been inspiring for him. So I think we meet him at a point where he’s at a low that we have not seen before. But I think it, dramatically, it works really well because, at that moment, we’re also introducing Phoebe [Waller-Bridge] as the character that really stimulates the plot that’s going on. So I suppose his weakness is the ravages of time.”
Phoebe Waller-Bridge, of Fleabag fame, plays Indy’s god-daughter Helena Shaw and no, her father isn’t, as many fans predicted, Indy’s old friend, Marcus Brody. In Dial of Destiny, she meets up with Indy after years of separation to enquire about the other half of Archimedes’ dial that drove her dad crazy. Indy is naturally hesitant but Helena isn’t taking no for an answer. Thus begins their adventure across Morocco and Greece – as well as their relationship where the two don’t frequently see eye to eye.
“I think she’s the right person to come into his life at this time because it feels like he’s in a little bit of an emotional cul-de-sac. And I also think he’s now living in a time where the focus has shifted. People are looking to the future. People are looking to the moon. And there’s isn’t as much passion for what he is passionate about,” shared Waller-Bridge about Helena’s impact in Indy’s life.
“And so, when she comes in, not only does she bring a breeze of, like, joy from his past, and this past relationship he had with her father and the joy of that. She brings a passion for archaeology. She brings a passion for adventure, and I think that lights him up again.”
She adds, “And I think she does learn that being vulnerable is kind of important. And I think there’s a moment at the end where she opens up, and she reveals that she cares about Indy, and that he’s important to her and that forges a new relationship for her. Whether or not they continue, with their friendship, which I believe they do, she’s forever changed by that act. And I loved that that happens cross-generationally. I think it’s a really important and beautiful story to tell.”
Despite their shared passion for archaeology, Helena and Indy are different. While Indy steals or acquires relics to put them into museums and educate others, Helena commodifies these artefacts and makes money off them by selling them in the black market. Helena is also far much reckless and lacks the awareness that Indy possesses, but for what she lacks, she makes up for it with an everlasting sense of joy, confidence and determination to not let anything get in her way and her ambitions.
“Jim said to me quite early on that Barbara Stanwyck came to mind for him in the writing of the character and that, as I said before, is a blessing and curse to hear that, but she’s also an idol of mine. She has such a light touch in her performances, particularly in The Lady Eve where she has a moral ambiguity as well and there’s something so fresh and charming about her, even though she’s morally questionable around the time,” explained Waller-Bridge.
“But also, there was something very modern about the way that she communicated and performed and I think that was something that really inspired me in this because she did have to feel like a modern woman in terms of where she is a breath of fresh air. Helena, she isn’t someone that we’ve seen before with this kind of fierce independence and she’s carved this place out in the world for herself, and she refuses to need anybody else and that essence seems to be captured in every single performance that Barbara Stanwyck ever gave. And so, I sort of clung to that throughout.”
And given that this is the final Indiana Jones movie, it is only fitting that the film brings back the only villain that Indy is known for fighting – Nazis. And no one knows it better than acclaimed Danish actor, Mads Mikkelsen, who despite having had appearances in the James Bond and Star Wars franchises, now claims that Indiana Jones has long been the only franchise he saw growing up.
“It’s not my first franchise but it’s the first one I grew up with. I’ve been lying in all the other interviews – when I did Bond and Star Wars – I always said I saw them but I didn’t. I grew up with this one and I remember my brother and I, we might have been cheap, we rented the film together with five other films and we ended up watching Indiana Jones five times and not the other ones,” confessed a laughing Mikkelsen.
“It is true to say that this shaped our generation. I have plenty of friends who are specifically directors who started out because of that one film. So obviously, sitting there as a kid and just wanted to be him, or up there and not wanting to be an actor at all, it is an enormous honour to be, 42 years later, part of this world.”
Mikkelsen’s Nazi, Jürgen Voller, is a scientist and mathematician keen on getting Archimedes’ dial back in his hands once more, and despite a lengthy acting career, this marks his first time playing a Nazi. And yes, playing a member of one of the most evil organisations in the world comes with its own challenge in trying to understand and empathise with a character’s wants and motivation, but Mikkelsen had the script to thank.
“It’s in the story. It’s in the script. It’s on the page somewhere, and so, it’s up to Jim, and I, and my fellow actors to find the parameters of the character,” explained Mikkelsen. “This is my first Nazi, so that makes a difference. I try to find what’s humanizing them to a degree. If I cannot relate to what they dream about, I’ll replace that with something else that I can dream about because this character has passion. And if I don’t understand that, I’ll just have to replace that passion with something else.”
There are also several firsts for the franchise, created by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, for a film meant to be the final with Ford. This is the first movie distributed by Disney, instead of Paramount, after the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney. Lucas, who wrote or jointly wrote the first four films, is also not involved in the film, even as a producer. Meanwhile, Spielberg also handed the directorial reins to franchise newcomer, James Mangold, who knows he has big shoes to fill.
“The greatest challenge and I think the centre of my job, is to make sure that the movie has heart and to bring humanity into what is a large-scale film. There is no reason that a large-scale film shouldn’t have humanity. There shouldn’t be, really, this world in which we go like, ‘Oh, those are the movies where there’s people and problems and emotional penetration of the human condition and these are movies where we just get our head knocked about and money spent, thrown at us as they bought all these visual effects,” explained Mangold.
With Dial of Destiny, Mangold wanted equal part spectacle and a story that centred humanity and its conditions. This challenge was far more apparent to the director who also faced challenges in managing logistics, stunts and marrying footage to make it look like it was in one place when really, it was shot at different locations.
“There should be, or at least in my position, the goal of going, ‘Can we do both? Can we have spectacle and a big-screen adventure, but also have the eccentricities and wonderful contradictions of the human condition also inside that thing?’ and that is, more than anything, the real challenge for me because amid all the technology, and infrastructure, and scale of the crew, and the size of everything, you have to protect this kind of bubble at the centre where it can’t be planned in a storyboard and it can’t be done on a computer,” continued Mangold.
“That has to happen organically through play with these wonderful folks, and the others in the cast, and myself dancing, and with the script and seeing what happens. It feels like something we haven’t seen before, or something human, or even magical, another kind of special effect, which is just an honest human moment.”
Thankfully, Mangold has had success in making the final movie for a popular character. 2017’s Logan is easily recognised as one of the greatest superhero movies ever made and it (then) marked Hugh Jackman’s farewell to the character Wolverine after playing the role for 17 years.
In some ways, Mangold feels that Logan and Dial of Destiny are similar, in that they are connected by the idea of someone taking one last adventure. In Logan, Mangold took it literally and ended Logan with the hero eventually meeting his demise, but no, that’s where their similarities end.
“One reason I said that is ’cause in both cases of Logan and this movie, what I’m trying to figure out is what is the story that we could tell that is unique to this film, this moment, these two hours? And in Logan, I knew we were making the last one, but it was a character who had spent almost all of his life tortured, a kind of Frankenstein living in a world where his choices were to be a weapon or to somehow try and hide himself from everybody and so, death seemed, in a way, to be a kind of salvation for him. The way we tried to write it and stage it was for the last 30 seconds of his life were probably the best 30 seconds of his life,” said Mangold.
“That was not part of this movie. One of the most beautiful aspects of all the Indiana Jones films and I think led by Harrison’s performance all these years, is his humor, charm, a kind of screwball adventure, a love of golden age films. I had a star who was in his 70s, so it’s clear that we can’t deny reality, as Harrison has said, Indy’s older. So we had to focus on what that is, and to me that’s a question that doesn’t get asked very often – ‘What is it to be someone who’s led such a dynamic life, who’s seen so much conquered and won and survived adversity and odds, but then life descends in kind of normalcy and the world moves on, and those adventures aren’t presenting themselves anymore or you’re not even necessarily ready for them?’”
Mangold added, “Those questions can sound grim but they also are the first chapter in a story about a guy who goes on one last ride. That to me all seemed really interesting and the opposite strategy, in a way. Although the externals are the same with Logan, which was that this is about his awakening and about a character coming out of a slumber, having been, kind of, numbed by the way the world has maybe passed him by.”
Ford could not agree more. The actor has played and said his farewell to numerous iconic roles in the last decade, including Han Solo in Star Wars and Rick Deckard in Blade Runner, and while not many of them received good farewells, Ford can proudly say that Indy’s farewell is a well-deserved one.
“It doesn’t feel different, but it feels good because of the shape of this goodbye. It feels good to me because I feel that we’ve made a really satisfying film for the audience. We’ve taken our concern, our interest in the character, and tried to shape a story that would bring this character back into their lives with an interesting story. And I think given the people that we’ve involved in the character and nature of the story that Jim has created for us, it’s a splendid goodbye,” said Ford.
“What I’ve learned over the years is simply, I have come to know this character. The character means to me what he means to the audience. I’m obliged to only give my best in the story that I want to tell. When it’s received with the warmth and the generosity that Indiana Jones has over this period of time, it’s – to me – an incredible generosity to me and I take it personally. It means a great deal to me that people like what we’ve done. And I hope they will appreciate this contribution.”
Don’t judge a book by its cover, for behind all this makeup, is a geek just like you. To simply put it, superheroes, Star Wars, Harry Potter and all things gore and creepy makes this girly girl swoon.
Natalie
