The Indiana Jones franchise returned for one last huzzah in 2023, something that a decade ago would have seemed like the most unlikely movie sequel to ever be made. However, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
brought Harrison Ford
back as the adventuring archaeologist for a final mission to track down an impossible artifact and discover powers beyond comprehension. Despite the best efforts of everyone involved, the movie failed to spark at the box office, and disappointed with many of its reviews.
For director James Mangold
, the reaction to the movie was unfair, and he still believes that audiences just failed to appreciate the story being told, and had different expectations for the franchise. He told Deadline recently:
“You have a wonderful, brilliant actor who’s in his eighties. So I’m making a movie about this guy in his eighties, but his audience on one other level doesn’t want to confront their hero at that age. And I am like, I’m good with it. We made the movie. But the question is, how would anything have made the audience happy with that, other than having to start over again with a new guy?“
Mangold also had his own reasons for being extremely happy to be taking over the franchise as the only other director to touch Indy’s adventures apart from Steven Spielberg – nice company to be in at any point. He continued to note that in a way, the audience reactions to the movie hurt him, as this was a character and story that he grew up admiring. He added:
“And then here come lifelong heroes from my childhood into my life going, ‘We have something for you to work on.’ It was a joyous experience, but it hurt in the sense that I really love Harrison and I wanted audiences to love him as he was and to accept that that’s part of what the movie has to say—that things come to an end, that’s part of life.“
Indiana Jones Has Hung Up His Fedora…at Least on the Big Screen
All good things come to an end, and there are many franchises and iconic characters created in the late 1970s and 1980s that have come to the end of their run. While some have managed to find new success with belated sequels, once an actor who originally played a role when they were a fit young man turns into an octogenarian, then the idea of them indefinitely continuing in an action movie role becomes less and less believable.
In Dial of Destiny, the one thing that Mangold did right was not to try and tell a story about Indy that was set around the same time as The Last Crusade, or even Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Instead, the action (all but the opening sequence) was set in the late 1960s, pushing the character’s age closer to that of Ford. While this worked for some fans, Mangold’s words ring true and some fans just don’t want to think of their action hero idols growing old.
Related
Indiana Jones: The Best Action Scenes, Ranked
Indiana Jones is a franchise known for action scenes, so here are the most exciting moments from the franchise’s forty-two years of history.
However, for those who do still want a younger Indy in their lives, but don’t want another actor in the role, the new video game Indiana Jones and the Great Circle may be just the thing to provide what they are looking for. The game is set in 1937, and delivers a brand-new adventure worthy of the best of the original trilogy of movies, with the likeness of Ford’s younger Indy to boot. Although Indy’s adventures on screen are clearly over for now, there are other avenues to be explored in the future.
- Release Date
-
June 30, 2023