Harrison Ford says Indiana Jones has reached “the end of his journey”
Indiana Jones actor Harrison Ford has said that the upcoming fifth film in the franchise will see the bad-guy-busting archaeologist at the “end of his journey”. The currently untitled film is in production and will open in cinemas sometime in 2023. Ford, now 80, will reprise the role for the last time.
The fifth Indiana Jones film is directed by James Mangold, who worked on Ford v Ferrari and the critically lauded X-Men spin-off, Logan. During a conversation with Empire, the director confirmed that the film would be a “sunset” story for the iconic action hero. Much like Logan, the upcoming feature is set to serve as the final chapter in Indy’s story, one that began way back in 1981 with Raiders of The Lost Arc.
Mangold explained that the character’s age would be a central aspect of the narrative, not just a source of jokes, as was the case in The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull: “It became really important to me to figure out how to make this a movie about a hero at sunset.[…] The issues I brought up about Indy’s age were not things I thought were being addressed in the material being developed at the time. There were ‘old’ jokes, but the material itself wasn’t about it.”
The director continued: “To me, whatever your greatest liability, you should fly straight towards that. If you try to pretend it’s not there, you end up getting slings and arrows the whole way.”
Harrison Ford has since expressed his enthusiasm for George Lucas and Phillip Kauffman’s script: “I just thought it would be nice to see one where Indiana Jones was at the end of his journey. If a script came along that I felt gave me a way to extend the character.”
The fifth Indiana Jones film, reports suggest, will take place in the 1960s. The first film in the franchise was set in 1936, while the second film, The Temple Of Doom, jumped back a year to 1935. The third film in the original trilogy was set in 1938, and the first reboot, Kingdom of The Crystal Skull, was set in 1957. The ’60s setting, therefore, makes a good deal of sense.
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