How The Beatles inspired a major Harrison Ford movie: “It’s pretty iconic music”
Some things are better off left untouched, and looking at what happened when Harrison Ford reprised the role on both occasions after a lengthy absence, a very strong argument can be made that Indiana Jones should have continued to exist as a trilogy and nothing more.
The final scene of Last Crusade quite literally ends with the iconic hero riding off into the sunset, but the call of the almighty dollar sings louder than everything else in Hollywood. Ford played the intrepid adventurer three times within an eight-year span following Raiders of the Lost Ark, but then the franchise’s sense of urgency slowed to a complete crawl.
After countless failed attempts and abandoned screenplays, Indy finally returned to the big screen in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which made a fortune at the box office because it marked the long-awaited return of one of cinema’s most legendary protagonists, but ended up being consigned to the history books as one of the most divisive big budget blockbusters that have ever been made.
Opting to mine the Lucasfilm back catalogue for all that it was worth, Disney’s acquisition of George Lucas’ outfit saw a fifth outing placed into development, which eventually limped into cinemas in 2023 as Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. It had taken 34 years to make two Indy movies are previously churning out three in eight, but it wasn’t worth it in the end.
While Dial of Destiny was an upgrade from Crystal Skull, it failed to take off amongst the ticket-buying public and is estimated to have plunged the Mouse House $100million into the red on account of its humungous budget. Director James Mangold was a decent enough replacement for Steven Spielberg and did an OK job of replicating the saga’s signature style, but it was a bridge too far for Indy in terms of underlining his enduring appeal.
At the start of the film, the recently-retired professor is living a lonely existence on his own in a New York City apartment, with his wife Marion Ravenwood having filed for divorce and left him, while his son Mutt Williams was killed in World War II. At the height of the hippie and counterculture movements, Ford’s protagonist was a man out of time in 1969, displayed on-screen when he starts banging on the door of his neighbours for blasting The Beatles’ ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ at full volume.
It came at great expense to the production, but as Ford explained to Deadline, acquiring the music was key to conveying just how far society was in danger of leaving Indy behind. “The reason I was sitting in the char with my back to the cameras with an empty glass in my hand, it’s a sign, we know what that means,” he explained. “And then the rock and roll music. Well, they paid $1 million for that rock and roll music. It’s pretty iconic music that brought us right back to that space.”
Immersing the viewer in the music that defined an era and outlining just how out of touch Indy was with the culture, Mangold even revealed that one of his tongue-in-cheek titles for the film was Indiana Jones and the Magical Mystery tour, which he conceded “was never going to work because we’d have to clear that with The Beatles at an expense beyond all imagination.” If it cost a million dollars just for the song, then he was smart to ditch that pursuit.
