James Mangold has expressed that he’s clearly not a fan of cinematic multiverses.
While the filmmaker has helmed several sequels, including Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023), Logan (2017) and The Wolverine (2013), he likely won’t be looking to direct an installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is known for its “multi-movie universe-building.”
“I don’t do multiverses,” Mangold recently told Rolling Stone when asked if audiences could expect to see Joaquin Phoenix’s Johnny Cash return in the upcoming Bob Dylan biopic starring Timothée Chalamet. Mangold previously directed Phoenix’s Oscar-nominated performance in 2005’s Walk the Line.
“I love Joaquin, but he’s not 30, or whatever Johnny was at this moment. They’re both young people in that moment in life,” Mangold explained. “It’s weird that I’ve even worked in the world of IP entertainment because I don’t like multi-movie universe-building. I think it’s the enemy of storytelling. The death of storytelling. It’s more interesting to people the way the Legos connect than the way the story works in front of us.”
He continued, “For me, the goal becomes, always, ‘What is unique about this film, and these characters?’ Not making you think about some other movie or some Easter egg or something else, which is all an intellectual act, not an emotional act. You want the movie to work on an emotional level.”
It’s not uncommon for franchises to include Easter eggs related to other movies to capture the audience’s attention, or to include character crossovers — think of 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, which featured all three versions of the superhero from Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire.
Though Mangold won’t be dabbling with the multiverse anytime soon, that doesn’t mean he won’t be helming more franchise sequels. He is set to direct Lucasfilm’s upcoming feature Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi.
No matter Harrison Ford’s age, he’s still outrunning boulders and cracking his whip.
After visiting O’Brien’s podcast earlier this week, a viral clip from “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” resurfaced recently, featuring the host joking with Harrison Ford about the actor playing Indiana Jones when he’s 80 years old.
The joke turned somewhat true as Ford recently appeared in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” just weeks before turning 81. O’Brien quipped that at 80, Ford could do movies where the treasures are brought to him.
— Matthew “Movies” Thomason (@ResDolph) July 6, 2023
Ford laughed, and O’Brien suggested the title for an “Indiana Jones” film with an 80-year-old Ford: “Indiana Jones and the Comfortable Bed.”
“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” marks Ford’s final appearance as the iconic archaeologist. However, the 81-year-old actor has no plans to retire from acting. Ford has recently joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the film “Captain America: Brave New World” and has other projects lined up, including the Apple TV+ comedy series “Shrinking” and the Paramount+ drama series “1923.”
When asked about retirement last month, Ford expressed: “I don’t. I don’t do well when I don’t have work. I love to work. I love to feel useful. It’s my Jones. I want to be helpful.”
For Ford, acting is more than a job; it’s a passion that he intends to continue pursuing, adding: “The intensity and the intimacy of collaboration. It’s the combined ambition somehow forged from words on a page. I don’t plan what I want to do in a scene. I don’t feel obliged to do anything. I’m naturally affected by things that I work on.”
Audiences can watch Ford reprise his role as the adventurer in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” now playing in theatres nationwide.
When it was announced that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny would be the final Indiana Jones film, a lot of folks took that to mean Indy was going to kick the bucket in the film. It probably didn’t hurt that the film was directed by James Mangold, who previously made Logan, which didn’t end too happily for old Wolverine. (Maybe that’s why the film has underperformed at the box office? People don’t want to see Indiana Jones die?)
But no, Indy survives Dial of Destiny. And in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, Ford says they barely ever discussed the possibility that Indy could die because “the script came out, and it didn’t have Indiana Jones dying.”
Ford did reveal that he did discuss Indy’s death later on with Mangold, who told him he didn’t want to be the guy who killed Indiana Jones.
“I think it’s a good choice to leave him in the condition we see him at the end of the film,” Ford added. “Most of his problems have been solved, dealt with. He’s back to the form that we like to see him in, I think. And I think it’s a wonderful last scene… I really like it.”
Mangold himself told EW that for him “there really is no attraction to just getting thousands of people in a theater and hitting them in a head with a hammer… Death is not an ending.” He explained that Logan was a very different story, and that movie needed that ending because it gave a “beautiful irony” to the character’s overall story.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is in theaters now.
Nostalgia emanated across the red carpet of the LA premiere of “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” on Wednesday night as leading lad Harrison Ford and his former co-star Ke Huy Quan embraced each other in a surprise reunion.
Quan, 51, who recently won an Oscar earlier this year after a long Hollywood hiatus, surprised Ford, 80, at the premiere as the two affectionately hugged each other.
The “Everything Everywhere All at Once” star initially catapulted to stardom in 1984’s “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” as a pre-teen alongside the adventurous archeologist, playing the character Short Round.
While speaking with ET at the star-studded premiere of Goerge Lucas’ final film of the beloved franchise, Quan had glowing words for Ford, describing him as a “gracious man, such a humble man.”
“And the reason why I love acting so much is because of him, because of that experience that we had on ‘Temple of Doom‘,” he continued. “So, here we are so many years later.”
Ford was present for a pivotal moment in Quan’s career earlier this year when he awarded the cast of A24’s “Everything Everywhere All at Once” with Best Picture at the 2023 Oscars.
“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” swings into theatres on June 30.
Harrison Ford makes his fifth and final appearance as swashbuckling archeologist Indiana Jones in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”.
In a new interview with Esquire, the actor — who turns 81 in July — explains why his insistence on displaying his character’s age onscreen led him to clash with members of the movie’s stunt team.
“I wanted an ambitious movie to be the last one,” Ford said. “And I don’t mean that we didn’t make ambitious movies before — they were ambitious in many different ways. But not necessarily as ambitious with the character as I wanted the last one to be.”
Arguably one of the most ambitious scenes in “Dial of Destiny” features Indy riding a horse in NYC, in the midst of a ticker-tape parade celebrating the 1969 moon landing.
As Ford recalled, as he finished filming, he suddenly found himself surrounded by “stunt guys” helping to dismount the horse.
“I thought, ‘What the f**k?’ Like I was being attacked by gropers,” Ford quipped.
“I look down and there’s three stunt guys there making sure I didn’t fall off the stirrup,” Ford recalled. “They said, ‘Oh, we were just afraid because we thought, you know, and bah bah bah bah.’ And I said, ‘Leave me the f**k alone… Leave me alone, I’m an old man getting off a horse and I want it to look like that!”’
Nearly fifteen years since Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and we’ve finally gotten our first glimpse of Harrison Ford back in action as Indy in the trailer for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Also starring Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Mads Mikkelsen, and Antonio Banderas, the fifth film had already been announced and teased, but the last week’s trailer premiere marked the first proper glimpse fans got of the film – as well as its title.
In keeping with tradition – the fifth Indiana Jones film follows previous naming conventions, and has a subtitle: like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Temple of Doom, and TheLast Crusade. As we learned from last week’s trailer, the subtitle for Indy five is The Dial of Destiny – a mysterious-sounding title that seems to hint at the film’s possible plot, or at least its MacGuffin. But even with a trailer’s worth of footage to dissect, the question remains – what exactly is the Dial of Destiny?
The bad news is, there’s no concrete answer quite yet. Given just how famous the Indiana Jones franchise is, most specific plot details (or at least, major spoilers) tend to be held under lock and key. That being said, though, between behind-the-scenes footage, trailer clips, and quotes from cast and crew, there are a few educated guesses that can be made as to what the Dial of Destiny is, and how it could be involved with the plot of Indiana Jones.
Luckily for us, there’s an established precedent among the Indiana Jone franchise: the films don’t just invent artifacts for him to find. All of the previous entries in the franchise have featured historical artifacts and items that really existed (or at least, are speculated to have existed) – the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Grail, and the faux mesoamerican Crystal Skulls are all MacGuffins based on items of interest to actual archeologists.
As such, it’s worth speculating that the so-called Dial of Destiny could be an item that already existed – or at the very least, is an item that is speculated to have existed, and that could hold significance in existing mythologies and cultures. When it comes to which mythology that might come from though, it’s anyone’s guess, though we do have on major clue – the dial itself.
Admittedly there isn’t 100% confirmation that the above item in question is the titular Dial of Destiny, it would certainly be a coincidence if the film’s first trailer featured Indiana Jones reverently clutching more than one dial-shaped item. So, assuming that the circular object in the trailer *is* the dial, that gives us a closer idea of what it might be based on. The item itself feature a series of what look like interlocking mechanical pieces and circular shapes engraved with lines and markings that seem to be representative of constellations.
Though there are certainly plenty of historically significant sundials, an item that feels like the most likely candidate as the inspiration is the fabled Greek Antikythera Mechanism. The impressive piece of machinery has been referred to as the “first computer”, and was speculated to have been used to predict eclipses and track planetary movements: purposes that would’ve helped ancient Greeks keep track of time.
The other major element to consider when speculating about the Dial of Destiny is the Dial’s role in the film’s plot – especially if rumors are true that time travel could play a significant role in the film. We know for sure that we’ll be seeing young Indy again – and though allegedly the de-aged Harrison Ford footage is just being used for the opening sequence, there’s still heavy speculation that time travel will feature in Indy 5.
Also adding fuel to the fire of the time travel theory and how it could help discern what the Dial of Destiny is was a recent quote from Mads Mikkelsen. In an interview with Empire, Mikkelsen shared exclusive details about his character Voller: “He’s a man who would like to correct some of the mistakes of the past. There is something that could make the world a much better place to live in. He would love to get his hands on it. Indiana Jones wants to get his hands on it as well. And so, we have a story.”
Between a dial that looks like the Ancient Greek way to keep track of time, a villain desperate to get his hands on the dial to correct the mistakes of his past, and heavy speculation that the plot could involve time travel, my best bet as of right now is that the Dial of Destiny is a modern interpretation of the Antikythera Mechanism that could allow Indy and the others to travel back in time. Of course, though, this is all just speculation – the only way to truly find out the secrets of the Dial of Destiny is to catch Indiana Jones 5 when it hits theaters next year.
