Karen Allen on the disappointment surrounding ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’
In addition to being the swansong for one of cinema’s most iconic heroes that ended up going down in a ball of box office flames, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny occupies the bizarre position of being a legacy sequel, which also retcons the legacy sequel that immediately preceded it.
It’s impossible to argue that Kingdom of the Crystal Skull made a shitload of money from cinemas – numbers Dial of Destiny would kill for in retrospect – but Steven Spielberg’s long-awaited reunion with star Harrison Ford ended up becoming one of the most divisive blockbusters in recent memory.
Foregoing the old-school practical effects integral to the original trilogy in favour of bland and unconvincing CGI, Shia LaBeouf was drafted in as Indy’s surprise son Mutt Williams and got to swing around on some vines with a troupe of poorly-rendered monkeys in a cringe-inducing scene, while Karen Allen’s Marion Ravenwood was welcomed back into the fold and ended up marrying the love of her life in the heart-warming finale.
In an effort to distance itself from its poorly-received predecessor, Spielberg’s replacement director, James Mangold, opted to have Mutt killed during World War II and instigated a bitter split from Marion that left them on the cusp of divorce. To be fair, nobody was going to miss LaBeouf, but casting his premiere love interest to the side left a bad taste in the mouths of many fans.
As it turns out, that extended through to Allen as well, who was convinced from the earliest stages of development that she’d get another meaty role to sink her teeth into as Indy’s put-upon spouse. “When Steven was still going to direct the film, I didn’t have the opportunity to read any of those scripts,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “Although I know that Marion was much more involved in the story at that juncture.”
Crystal Skull scribe David Koepp was tasked to crack the script for a fifth Indiana Jones flick, but he was eventually replaced by Jonathan Kasdan, who was himself rumoured to have been jettisoned in favour of Dan Fogelman. When Mangold came aboard, he ended up bringing in his Ford v Ferrari screenwriters Jez and John-Henry Butterworth, with the trio ultimately sharing credit with Koepp for Dial of Destiny.
Somewhere along the line, though, Marion was almost completely excised from the screenplay, leaving Allen crushed. “The next thing I knew, I was reading a script that told the story, and of course, I was disappointed,” she admitted. “I had thought that I would be majorly a part of the film, and that was just not the direction they decided to go.”
She did at least get a cameo in the final scene to reassure audiences that a post-time travel Indy wouldn’t be cursed to die alone as a bitter and broken old man, which is something. Not that it mattered in the grand scheme of things when one of the industry’s most famous franchises surprisingly bombed at the final hurdle, leaving Disney and Lucasfilm over $100m in the red to send the legendary adventurer out with a weak puff of smoke.
