Harrison Ford may be in his 80s, but he and director James Mangold both knew killing off Indiana Jones wasn’t an option.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny took some risks with the iconic character at least in terms of how they presented him on-camera, digitally de-aging him through the use of artificial intelligence. And while the filmmakers took the story back to the 1940s and the bulk of the movie takes place in the late 1960s, one place they weren’t going to go was to the future – that is, the last days of Indiana Jones, refusing to kill off the character in what is Harrison Ford’s last outing as the bullwhip-snapping adventurer.
As Harrison Ford put it in a new video excerpt (made available via ComingSoon), “I never saw a version that had him die or stay in the past…I can imagine them…” And now we’re all wondering just how Ford pictures the death of Indiana Jones…
Adding to this, director James Mangold said, “I think we knew we didn’t want him to die…We all need heroes like him,” while co-writer Jez Butterworth stated, “He’s saved so much in these movies. To see him be the treasure that’s saved…it felt like it was right.”
These are all fine points all around. Really, what good would it have done to see Indiana Jones succumb to a snake bite or choke to death on a cup of warm prune juice? It seems like an “edgy” twist for franchises to kill off their major attractions – or at least remove them from the equation by leading citizens to believe they died – as happened with Batman in The Dark Knight Rises and James Bond in No Time to Die, but it has to have a purpose and not just be an out. But it doesn’t have to be a trend and the fact that the filmmakers knew they couldn’t get sucked into it is a relief, even if the movie itself may not have had much to lose judging by its reception…
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is currently available to purchase on Amazon Prime, Vudu, Apple TV, and Google Play. As for its Disney+ release, that has yet to be unveiled but one can certainly expect it by the end of 2023.
Do you think it would have been fitting to kill off Indiana Jones in Dial of Destiny or was it wise to avoid such a fate? Give us your thoughts!
Originally published at https://www.joblo.com/harrison-ford-says-there-was-never-a-chance-indiana-jones-would-die/
