EPIC 2023 PREVIEW! EMPIRE JANUARY 2023

WORLD EXCLUSIVE
THE LEGEND RETURNS!

FIRST INTERVIEWS. FIRST IMAGES. HARRISON FORD GEARS UP FOR THE ULTIMATE ADVENTURE.

INDIANA JONES 5

ONE LAST QUEST

SINCE 1981, INDIANA JONES HAS BEEN THE WHIP-CRACKING, WISECRACKING ACTION HERO TO BEAT THEM ALL-BUT THE WORLD'S GREATEST ADVENTURER IS FINALLY READY TO HANG UP HIS HAT. AS STAR HARRISON FORD, DIRECTOR JAMES MANGOLD AND MORE REVEAL, IT'S GOING TO AN EMOTIONAL FAREWELL

WORDS NICK DE SEMLYEN

THE YEAR IS 1969.

A man named Harrison Ford, near the start of his professional life, is in Los Angeles. The 27-year-old has recently filmed a small role ('Arrested Student') in Zabriskie Point, a highly experimental Antonioni film which features slow-motion explosions set to Pink Floyd. That had been a peculiar experience. But nothing compared to what he is doing now. Staring at jawdropping images unfolding on a TV screen, having what feels like an out- of-body experience.

"It was very surreal," Ford tells Empire. "I remember very distinctly the men landing on the moon, because I was with Jacques Demy and Agnès Varda in Beverly Hills. Agnès refused to face the television because she was putting pictures in an album. And she refused to look at it because she believed it was all faked. And so that's my distinct personal memory of the moon landing."

Around Ford, America was changing, at seemingly the speed of a lunar lander. Troops were being dispatched to Vietnam. Jim Morrison had been arrested; copies of John Lennon's new album confiscated by police. Protests roiled around the nation, lamenting injustices. And yes, a 44,000 kg lump of metal was blasted into space, taking with it three Americans all the way to the surface of the moon: the Apollo 11 mission. It was an astonishing, wild, invigorating time to be alive.

Unless it wasn't.

The year is 1969. A man named Henry Jr, near the end of his professional life, is staring retirement in the face like it's a swaying cobra. After decades of quests mingled with academic lessons, in which he's dispensed mountains of textbooks and whipped his way through endless hair-raising scenarios, he's facing the grim truth: it's all over. Compounding matters, the country he loves is transforming around him. This old-fashioned hero is now a man out of time. He will not, it's safe to say, be going to see
Zabriskie Point.
But he has forgotten one thing. That if adventure has a name, it must be Indiana Jones.
And adventure isn't done with him yet.

In 1989's Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade, the fedora-wearing archaeologist rode off into the sunset. In 2008's Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, he loped down a wedding aisle. At the time, both seemed like a full stop at the end of one of the greatest, Most joyous cinematic sagas of all time. Yet Indy kept getting back up and dusting himself off. That, says producer Kathleen Kennedy, was down to its star just not being able to let the role go. "It was something Harrison very, very much wanted to do," she explains of the as-yet-untitled fifth instalment. "Steven [Spielberg] was kind of off and on about it. But we all felt that if we could conclude the series with one more movie, given the fact Harrison was so excited to try to do another one, we should do it."

Ford, speaking to Empire via Zoom from Montana, where he's currently shooting Yellowstone spin-off 1923, is a little more circumspect. "I didn't feel it was necessary to do another one," the 80-year-old says in his famous growl. "I just thought it would be nice to see one where Indiana Jones was at the end of his journey. If a script came along that I felt gave me a way to extend the character."

The quest began almost as soon as Crystal Skull hit cinemas. That movie, with its swinging monkeys and flying fridges, hadn't quite hit the spot for many fans. "You never set out to do anything except make a great movie," says Kennedy. "And sometimes you hit that perfectly, and sometimes you don't. In the case of 'Indy 4', I don't think there's any specific thing that any of us looked back on, except that we may not have had as strong a story as we wanted." For the wrap-up to the series, all were determined to come up with an emotional throughline that would bid adieu to Dr. Jones in high style. But it proved a time-consuming process. Years ticked away. And in what seemed to be a major blow, the two men who had created Indiana Jones in the first place stepped away. First went George Lucas, who sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012, and would no longer play a creative role in the series. ("George is in Chicago, raising children," says Ford. "We just talk about, you know, a possible Tuscan vacation".) Then went Steven Spielberg, who had directed all four previous films, but announced in early 2020 that he would not be shooting the fifth, though he would remain on board as producer.

Replacing Spielberg seemed as daunting as switching a Peruvian fertility idol with a bag of sand, and potentially as dangerous. They needed somebody with the chops to pull off an action- packed, non-stop spectacle, but who could also handle nimble comedy and rich character work. It was Ford who proposed the solution to Spielberg and Kennedy.

"They came to me as I was preparing to do Complete Unknown, with Timmy [Chalamet], a story about the folk scene and [Bob] Dylan," recalls the man they turned to, James Mangold. "We were all getting hit by Covid at the time, and it looked like the Dylan film was not going to happen. And so they came to me, that trio. At first, I was a little startled." As it happened, Mangold and Ford had become buddies over the years, having lunches together, discussing roles (the director talked to the star about a part in Ford V Ferrari), working together on 2020's Mangold- produced man-and-dog film The Call Of The Wild.

Clockwise from
top left: Keep up with the Jones! The
professor hits the street; Mads Mikkelsen as the villainous Voller, Mikkelsen with director James Mangold on set; Phoebe Waller-Bridge unleashes her inner action hero as Indy's goddaughter Helena.

Wild. And now, confronted by this most daunting of job offers, Mangold realised he knew what to do.

"It became really important to me to figure out how to make this a movie about a hero at sunset," he says. "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."

As with another James Mangold film, Logan, then, the new Indiana Jones movie will be all about its iconic hero ageing, grappling with his limits, wondering if there's anything left. A fact accentuated by everything around him. "No-one's ever felt older than being old in 1969," laughs Jez Butterworth, who, along with his brother John-Henry, wrote the screenplay with Mangold. "That's a really cruel time to be old. And that is what is so fun and playful about beginning the whole thing in the 40s - it makes it even more vertiginous when you suddenly cut to the future."

Because, yes, like The Last Crusade before it, this movie will take Indiana Jones forward by digging into his past.

There's nothing quite like an Indiana Jones prologue: essentially the ending of a spectacular blockbuster, casually unspooling before the really good stuff even begins. We've seen Indy dodging giant boulders, poisoned Champagne and a marauding rhino. Now, in a turbo-charged opening sequence, we will see Indy tangling with Nazis in a peril-packed castle. Except, the scene being set in 1944, it's Indy at 35 years old, with Ford playing the Raiders Of The Lost Ark-era adventurer via de-ageing tech.

"Now you can just put the character in a time-period you couldn't before. It's kind of amazing," marvels producer Frank Marshall. "My hope is that, although it will be talked about in terms of technology," adds Kathleen Kennedy, "you just watch it and go, 'Oh my God, they just found footage. This was a thing they shot 40 years ago.' We're dropping you into an adventure, something Indy is looking for, and instantly you have that feeling, I'm in an Indiana Jones movie.""

Indy's original Raiders outfit, complete with stitched-up bullet hole in the left jacket sleeve, was borrowed from its final resting place at

Skywalker Ranch and tried on by Ford, so replicas could be made for the '44 sequence. Te the astonishment of all, it fit perfectly. "I want his recipe book," laughs Marshall. "I think his proudest moment was when he fit in those pants." Says Mangold: "Harrison's as skinny and fit as he was in his thirties. He hasn't gained 30 lb. And we had a reserve of research materials -three movies of him to draw from and the original negative of all of them, shot from every angle to pull and build the model from. I think the results are pretty startling."

Technology has moved on since De Niro and Pacino were aged down for The Irishman three years ago, with ILM building software that would sift through reams of footage of young Ford, finding as precise a match as possible for the new shots. Ford admits to being taken aback when he sat down to watch the prologue recently. "This is the first time I've seen it where I believe it. It's a little spooky. I don't think I eve want to know how it works, but it works. Doesn't make me want to be young, though. I'm glad to have earned my age."

The whole pell-mell sequence ("From the bag on the head in the first scene, putting him in a tight spot is irresistible," grins Jez Butterworth) is designed to be vintage Indy,

a rip-roaring serial romp with the hero at full power. "I wanted the chance to dive into this kind of full-on George-and-Steven old picture and give the audience an adrenaline blast," says Mangold, who caught Raiders as a teenager at a mall in Middletown, New York. "And then we fall out, and you find yourself in 1969. So that the audience doesn't experience the change between the '40s and '60s as an intellectual conceit, but literally experiences the buccaneering spirit of those early days... and then the beginning of now."

Near the start of Raiders, as Henry Jones stood in a classroom explaining the Neolithic era ("I... T... H... I... C"), his pupils sat rapt. In 1969, he's still scrawling chalk across a board, but cuts a fustier figure. "In our lecture, all the women aren't going to be writing 'I love you' on their eyelids," says Mangold. "They're going to be blowing bubbles and looking out the window." The time-period, as Ford puts it, is "the water that the fish is out of. It is a time of pop culture. Of men on the moon. Music. Everything's changed. And not insignificantly, it is the end of his academic career, which leaves him open for other opportunities, or mischief."

Since marrying Marion Ravenwood, Indiana Jones has embraced- or tried to embrace - domesticity. He's initially reluctant, then, when that mischief arrives, in the form of Helena, played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

"She's a mystery and a wonder," enthuses the Fleabag star of her character, Indy's goddaughter. "Kathy was in London and asked to have dinner with me, and casually mentioned this. I immediately ordered ten bottles of wine. Then it was the fastest I've ever read a script; I came out of a sort of haze afterwards. I just couldn't believe how much fun I had and how moved I was by it. And then I had a Zoom and screamed, 'YES!' at them all."

Helena is not your average Indy sidekick. Mangold describes her as "slippery, charming, the girl next door, a grifter". Ford has a unique way of putting it: "She's a pioneer in ethical accounting." And John-Henry Butterworth says, "It's like those comedies from the '30s. Those Ben Hecht plays, where you get to write machine-gun dialogue for a character up against another character who's not giving an inch."

Mangold had a simple-but-not-simple note for Waller-Bridge: be Barbara Stanwyck. "I was like, 'Oh yeah, sure, I'll just do my Barbara Stanwyck.' IT'S AN IMPOSSIBLE FEAT!" laughs the actor. Specifically, she was pointed towards The Lady Eve, coincidentally a movie in which Stanwyck's con-artist character tangles with one of Indy's old foes: snakes.

Then, in a first for Waller-Bridge, she plunged into a shoot full of massive, frenetic action set-pieces, side by side with her indefatigable old-hand co-star. "Honestly, I just loved it," she beams. "When you're

Clockwise from top left: Still got it- Indiana shows the boat who's boss; Ultra- modern government agent Mason (Shaunette Renée Wilson); Voller's "lapdog" Klaber (Boyd Holbrook); Goddaughter and godfather join forces.

playing a character who throws herself on the back of a vehicle, there's no acting around that. You just have to bloody do it." Perhaps a new career as a stuntperson beckons? "I mean, it would have to be in films requiring a very gawky, awkward stuntperson," she laughs.

Despite Indiana Jones being in his seventies, the action is as delirious as ever. Where Crystal Skull shot mostly in the US, this production hit the road to shoot in places as far-flung as Sicily, Morocco and, uh, Glasgow. "If anyone in early meetings brought it up, I'd say, 'No Volumes, please!" says Mangold of rejecting the tech used by the likes of The Mandalorian to build worlds inside a studio. There are planes, trains, horses, trucks and in a first for an Indy movie- helicopters. We will head to crypts, bazaars, even underwater (watch out for sea snakes!). "Every type of vehicle. Every country. We have scenes that are recreating really iconic, giant events," teases producer Simon Emanuel.

The hero's age, Mangold says, was not a concern: he's forever been a reluctant participant in mayhem. "Indy never saw a shortcut he wouldn't take, even when he was young and capable. He wasn't like The Rock. He'd always duck a punch or dive behind something or happily take good luck. I always

thought him a little like Bugs Bunny." We ask Ford if that comparison was

discussed on set. "No... no," the star grizzles. "And wait 'til I find the sonofabitch. I'll talk to him about that. Bugs Bunny..." Then, after a beat: "Yeah, and he was Elmer Fudd."

The new movie has yet another throwback. Because, even though it unravels over two decades after the end of World War II, the director of Ford V Ferrari is bringing us, once again, Ford V Nazis.

"Nazis? Where?" says the star on Zoom, looking over his shoulder in mock fear. There are rumours online of time-travel being part of the plot and who knows what classified secrets await us? - but the reality is that former members of the Third Reich really were around in the US in the '60s, operating at the highest levels. "The simple fact is that the moon-landing programme was run by a bunch of ex-Nazis," says Jez Butterworth. "How 'ex' they are is the question. And it gets up Indy's nose... It's not just that the model of what a hero is has completely changed. It's not just that they're looking for something where there's nothing up

there - it's like Reno without the gambling, or whatever his line is. But the people that are behind it are, you know, his sworn enemies.

One of the inspirations for the film's big villain, Voller, was Wernher von Braun, Nazi aerospace engineer and co-creator of the V-2 missile; the Butterworths show Empire a photograph of von Braun next to JFK at Cap Canaveral. The writers used that jumping-off point to concoct a heady plot that weaves in a out of real American history; one major set-piece takes place at the New York parade thrown for the astronauts Ford once watched on TV.

"He's a man who would like to correct some of the mistakes of the past," says Mads Mikkelsen, who plays Voller. "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."

Also squaring off against Indy will be Klaber, played by Boyd Holbrook. "I'm a lapdog to Mads and a crazy one at that," he says. "They've just found the cleverest way to continue the story and keep that integral villain."

Caught between the two sides is Shaune Renée Wilson's Mason, an employee of a government agency who comes into Indy and

Helena's orbit. "Think about during the '60s, when the CIA and FBI were recruiting more Black people to get involved with undercover work, with the Black Panthers and all that stuff," says the actor, who happens to have starred in Marvel's Black Panther. "And it's like, 'Who is this old guy running around, throwing things, jumping off stuff? What am I dealing with here?""

At a time when people with Nazi leanings are once more in the headlines, one thing is for sure: it will be a joy to see Indiana Jones thwacking them again.

After hurtling around the globe (possibly via a tiny plane leaving a red line behind it on a map), contending with Covid and a traditional Harrison Ford injury (on Temple Of Doom, he put out his back riding an elephant; on this one, he tore a muscle throwing an air-punch), the shoot ended in February 2022. A wrap party, dubbed "The Last Brewsade', took place in Shoreditch. Then Mangold hunkered down to cut the film together. One major ally has been Steven Spielberg, on hand frequently to offer tips. "Steven said to me,

'It's a movie that's a trailer from beginning to end - always be moving."" Mangold recalls. Another has been legendary composer John Williams, whose score he has suggested might be his last ever, providing 'Indy 5' with, as Spielberg once put it to Empire, "120cc of pure Johnny Williams adrenaline". "I was very moved by his interpretation of the character," says Waller- Bridge of Williams' 'Helena's Theme', unveiled recently at a Hollywood Bowl concert. "I was expecting more of the darker shades, but the romance in that theme was so surprising and wonderful. When you hear a piece of music like that, you realise he's actually going to do a lot of the work for you."

One final grand caper for a character we've all grown up with, the fifth Indiana Jones film will be the first released in the Marvel Age, where superheroes are rife. Is there still a place for a creaky archaeologist who winces when he's hit, and has no tech outside of his Ever Ready Space Beam torch? Its creators believe its throwback thrills are the very reason it'll connect. "Like Top Gun: Maverick, I think it'll have really broad appeal," says Simon Emanuel. "Good old-fashioned fights and whip-cracking."
As for Harrison Ford, the man who started it
all way back in 1981, he pauses to think before he
reflects on the experience in an interview for
the very first time. "It's full of adventure, full of laughs, full of real emotion. And it's complex and it's sneaky," he says, "The shooting of it was tough and long and arduous. But I'm very happy with the film that we have." Whatever the odds, whatever the years,
whatever the mileage, a true hero always shoots
for the moon. Or whips for it.

The Fifth Indiana Jones Film Will Be In Cinemas From 30 June 2023.

Clockwise from left: Let's hope
there are no snakes; Klaber crashes a parade; Helena at work; Indy and Basil (Toby Jones) face down a shadowy foe.