Harrison Ford Returns as Indiana Jones

 


 "It's not the years honey, it's the mileage." This is what Indiana Jones said to Marion Ravenwood in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) after she tells him, "You're not the man I knew ten years ago." And this sentiment that age is just a state of mind couldn't ring more true as Harrison Ford, 80 is set to reprise the iconic role next summer in what will truly be Indiana Jones's last crusade.

“It’s full of adventure, full of laughs, full of real emotion. And it’s complex and it’s sneaky,” Harrison Ford tells Empire. Stepping back into the world of Indy was no mean feat. “The shooting of it was tough and long and arduous,” he says. “But I’m very happy with the film that we have.” That's the word on the street from Ford who aims to bring back the same level of ambition that he brought to the role in the beginning to service the people who go to see his movies who he sees as "his customers, not fans."

 


Directed this time by James Mangold, with Steven Spielberg still onboard in a key capacity serving as producer, Mangold is looking to make this last entry in the franchise about a hero at sunset. "It became really important to me to figure out how to make this a movie about a hero at sunset,” Mangold said. “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 your 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.”



With all this talk about bringing Indy to an end you might be thinking, wait didn't they already do that? Jones did marry his iconic love interest from Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) in Karen Allen's Marion Ravenwood at the end of the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) after all. However, this ending was not only for fans but for Ford alike not a satisfactory ending to the character's journey. As Ford puts it:


 

“I just thought it would be nice to see one where Indiana Jones was at the end of his journey,” Ford explains. “If a script came along that I felt gave me a way to extend the character.”


                 



And so we will see Jones at the end of his journey in an adventure to take place in a 1960s setting with some of the action occurring in New York City as indicated by the beautiful artwork cover courtesy of Empire. This time period makes for rich material for an Indiana Jones tale as the period if full of political intrigue with a treasure trove of cinematic triumphs that came out in the Golden Age of Hollywood including one of the very inspirations behind the creation of Indiana Jones: Bond, James Bond. So is it possible Jones will run into his father... in the form of Sean Connery's James Bond? Wackier things have happened lately. And for those doubting Harrison Ford's ability to deliver a punch and don the fedora once more I leave you with this classic Indiana Jones quote: "It's not the years, honey. It's the mileage." 


 




 




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