He’ll be just a few weeks shy of 81 when Indiana Jones 5 rolls into theaters next year. Yet, to hear Ford and Mangold tell it, that’s the advantage that makes a fifth and final Indy adventure worth following. “I just thought it would be nice to see one where Indiana Jones was at the end of his journey,” Ford recently told Empire magazine while promoting the film. “If a script came along that I felt gave me a way to extend the character.” His new director agreed, later adding, “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. To me, whatever you 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.” In this vein, perhaps the biggest warm up for Indy was co-writing and directing Logan, a hard R-rated character study of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine persona that, indeed, provided a poignant sunset for the character in 2017. Closing the book on Logan was difficult, but at least the checkered onscreen legacy of the X-Men gave him room to play. That space is arguably nothing though when compared to the generally adored Indiana Jones iconography that goes all the way back to Steven Spielberg’s seminal Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). But Mangold is more than a director-for-hire and clearly thinks he has something to say about helping Ford steer Indy toward a fitting conclusion. The new film also has a lot of attention for a cast that includes Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Mads Mikkelsen, Antonio Banderas, Boyd Holbrook, and Shaunette Renée Wilson. John Rhys-Davies’ fan favorite, Sallah, is also expected to make a return. But will Indy find peace in the film’s late 1960s setting? We’ll find out when Indiana Jones 5 opens on June 30, 2023.
