The upcoming fifth “Indiana Jones” film will mark the return of the character after a 15-year absence.
That’s almost as long as the 19-year gap between 1989’s third film “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” and 2008’s fourth film “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”.
Of course, there’s a portion of the audience out there that would rather forget ‘Crystal Skull’ exists. Despite a positive critical reception at the time and a box-office gross of over $790 million worldwide, it’s now fairly widely regarded as the weakest adventure of Dr. Henry Jones Jr. (Harrison Ford).
Recently Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy was asked by Empire Magazine the question of why ‘Crystal Skull’ wasn’t as beloved as its predecessors. She says it comes down to the script:
“You never set out to do anything except make a great movie. 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.”
Previously the film’s David Koepp acknowledged the film’s shift from the MacGuffin being of a religious/supernatural nature to a sci-fi one involving aliens was an obvious mistake. Others have taken issue with Shia LaBeouf’s performance, the use of CG, and an infamous sequence early in the piece which introduced ‘nuke the fridge’ into the cultural lexicon.
The upcoming film will see Ford de-aged for the opening sequence, which will return Indy back to a setting much closer to the original trilogy before the main thrust of the film being set in 1969.
“Indiana Jones 5” arrives in cinemas on June 30th 2023, with a trailer expected to be released and reveal the film’s official title (the latest rumor at TheRaider.net being “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”) in the next 2-3 weeks.
