INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY Director Explains Why Harrison Ford Is So Great as Indiana Jones
Harrison Ford always delivers such a fun performance when he plays Indiana Jones! The guy is just so damn good as this character, and it’s why no one will ever be able to replace him. There’s only one Indiana Jones, and that’s Ford.
I’m very excited about Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. This is his final movie! It’s crazy! I just hope that director James Mangold delivers a film that gives this iconic character an awesome and heroic send off. During a recent interview with THR, Mangold talked about working with Ford and shared his thoughts on what makes Ford an amazing actor in these films and how he was surprised by it:
"There's so much more than just the truth of the performance but also tailoring it to the frame and knowing what's going to work. What I thought was most refreshing was — and I can't say I found this surprising because his body of work represents this so fully — is you sense he's working every moment to undermine the bulls**t of the scene. He looks for ways to make it more like life, mess up the false moments and to take the piss out of his own character. He's got this great sense of how to be a hero and how to undermine the tropes of heroism at the same time."
You can totally see that throughout all of the Indiana Jones movies that have been made, and that’s what makes the character so damn lovable! It must’ve been so cool for Mangold and the rest of the crews who have worked with Ford over the course of his career to see him at work bringing this character to life.
While talking about what makes this iteration of the character so different and one thing he wanted to showcase in this movie was how the world has changed around the legendary archeologist. He previously said:
“The first three Indiana Jones movies took place in roughly the same period. They all easily fit with the serialized, theatrical, almost screwball-action style of the movies that were being released in the period they’re set in. The challenge for [director Steven Spielberg] on [Crystal Skull], and for me on this one, is: How do you move forward into new decades where the world is no longer seen in such clear demarcations of black and white and good and evil? Where the whole concept of raiding tombs and fighting over relics is looked at in a different way? It’s not about changing the story but allowing the character to experience how the world has changed around him.”
With the film being set in 1969, James says that it gives the story a chance to explore more of how soldiers of fortune like Indiana Jones are not entirely looked at as heroes anymore. Mangold went on to talk about the grey area of the era, saying:
“And our perception of politics is more gray. Who’s a villain? Who are we working with? Who are we fighting against? Proxy wars, all of that. It’s not as simple as the era around World War II. What happens to a hero built for a black-and-white world, when he finds himself in one that is gray? It’s a problem that produces humor, produces contradictions, produces adjustments that this character’s going have to make.”
In the film, we learn that the moon-landing program was run by a bunch of ex-Nazis and that gets under Jones’ skin. He’s a man out of time, and it’s explained that: “It’s not just that the model of what a hero is has completely changed. It’s not just that they’re looking for something where there’s nothing up there – it’s like Reno without the gambling, or whatever his line is. But the people that are behind it are, you know, his sworn enemies.”
The film comes from producer Steven Spielberg, and it also stars Mads Mikkelsen (Another Round), Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag), Boyd Holbrook (Logan), Shaunette Renée Wilson (The Resident), and Thomas Kretschmann (Avengers: Age Of Ultron).
The film will open in theaters on June 30, 2023.