When James Mangold’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny opens in theaters on June 30, leading man Harrison Ford will be 80 years old… and fast approaching 81 (his birthday is July 13). It will be impossible for the new Indiana Jones movie not to acknowledge the character’s age. Heck, in the first trailer for the film, and older Indy tells Sallah (Jonathan Rhys-Davies) “those days have come and gone.” And yet, the adventure will continue. However, in a new interview, Ford made it clear that while he’s definitely older, he doesn’t want to go out of the way to acknowledge it in the movie.
Ford was speaking with The Hollywood Reporter recently about his run of episodes in 1923, his work on the AppleTV+ show Shrinking, and his upcoming film projects… which include him joining the MCU as Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross in Anthony Mackie’s Captain America: New World Order. When the conversation swung to Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the actor started talking about the number of “old man” jokes that were worked into Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. But he revealed that he pushed to have them removed from the new script, explaining:
Yeah. In [Dial of Destiny] there were a lot of old jokes in the script. We took them all out. There is a moment where he observes himself in this situation and says, ‘What the fuck am I doing in here?’ But I hate what I call ‘talking about the story.’ I want to see circumstances in which the audience gets a chance to experience the story, not to be led through the nose with highlights pointed out to them. I’d rather create behavior that is the joke of age rather than talk about it.
Do you think we can trust Harrison Ford and his instincts for storytelling? Yeah, I think we can do that. He understands what works and what doesn’t in a screenplay, and has for decades. If it’s logical to joke about a character’s age, Ford likely would be up for it. But he’s correct that behavior in scenarios that lead to laughs are more effective than cheap punchlines meant to poke fun at an older actor.
We don’t want to see Indiana Jones being goofed on. We want to see him in action, like in this scene:
Harrison Ford goes on, in that THR interview, to defend The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, while simultaneously hyping audiences up for the work that they are doing in the new movie. Certainly the Super Bowl TV Spot that LucasFilm released contained plenty of amazon action shots, taking us into Indy’s past but also showcasing his current battle with Nazis as they race to… well, we don’t fully know what Indiana Jones is trying to accomplish in this upcoming movie. Here’s what we do know about Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, including co-stars, the director, and the movie’s release date. It’s getting closer, which is why we are getting more excited to see exactly what James Mangold has in store.
