Harrison Ford’s latest film as Indiana Jones, which opens June 29 in Portuguese theaters, “is a splendid farewell” to the character who accompanied the actor for 42 years, the industry veteran said at a conference in Los Angeles .
“I always wanted to end this story by showing him at the end of his career and even his life,” said Harrison Ford, at the “Indiana Jones and the Marker of Destiny” launch conference.
“We had an excellent script and that was the stimulus to continue with the project,” said the now 80-year-old actor. “There were no barriers to telling another chapter of this story. It was something I aspired to.”
Written by Jezz Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, David Koepp and James Mangold, who also directed, the script places the adventurer Indiana Jones fifteen years after the fourth film in a downward phase of his career and life.
“He got older and we found him on the day of his academic retirement, which was not inspiring for him,” Harrison Ford described. “We are seeing it at a low point like we have never seen it,” he stressed. “His weakness of him is the ravages of time.”
It is at this bad moment that Helena Shaw (played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge) seems to turn Indiana Jones’s life upside down. The young woman’s fiery wit, “that she doesn’t think before she jumps,” as the actress described it, provides an unlikely dynamic with jaded archaeologist Indiana Jones.
The film has all the spice of the saga, with fast-paced chase scenes and last-second rescues, and a Nazi villain who dreams of taking back the Third Reich, Jürgen Voller (played by Mads Mikkelsen.
“I feel like it’s good for the shape of this goodbye,” Harrison Ford said. “I feel like we made a very audience-satisfying movie,” he continued, calling the story “interesting” in Indiana Jones’s last great journey.
“Given the people we involved and the nature of the story, Jim [Mangold] created for us, it’s a wonderful goodbye,” Ford said.
For Mangold, making this film was a dream come true, “a glorious opportunity” given to someone who grew up watching the saga’s early adventures.
The director wanted to do more than just a big-budget action movie. “The biggest challenge was making sure that the movie had heart and that these incredible people had the space to bring humanity into a large-scale movie,” he said.
“Can we do it both ways? Have spectacle and adventure and also the eccentricities and contradictions of the human condition?” he continued. In his opinion, it was achieved and this fifth title in the series “seems like something we haven’t seen before.”
Mangold addressed the obvious issue of the age of Harrison Ford, who is no longer the intrepid young archaeologist who appeared on the big screen as “Indy” in 1981.
“We have a 70-something star and we can’t deny reality. He’s older,” he said.
“What is it like to be someone who has had such a dynamic life, who has seen and achieved so much and survived adversity, and then you go back to normal and the world moves on, and those adventures don’t come anymore?” Mangold stated . as starting point.
“These questions may seem merciless, but they are the first chapter of a story about a man who embarks on one last journey.”
“Indiana Jones and the Marker of Fate” opens Thursday, June 29 in theaters. It is a Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures production.
Source: TSF
