The recent fifth and final Indiana Jones film offers various callbacks to Indy’s past adventures, including several familiar faces returning.
SPOILERS AHEAD FOR “INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY”
Whilst John Rhys Davies’ return as Sallah was widely advertised in the “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” trailers, another returnee was kept under wraps – Karen Allen’s Marion Ravenwood, who appears in the film’s final few minutes.
In the film, Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones now lives alone and is still dealing with guilt over the death of his son, Mutt (Shia LaBeouf), who was killed in action during the Vietnam War.
That death had a massive impact on his marriage with Marion – leading to the two having separated before the movie’s events. In the end, the pair are reunited, with the film ending with a hopeful tone.
In a recent interview with THR, Allen speaks out about her return as Marion and says that initially, her role was bigger. After James Mangold took over the film and reworked it, her part shrank:
“When Steven was still going to direct the film, I didn’t have the opportunity to read any of those scripts, although I know that Marion was much more involved in the story at that juncture. Steven and I had spoken after he decided he was going to step down as director, and he said to me, ‘You’re going to love working with James Mangold.’ And I said, ‘Oh, great.’
So I knew James had hired new writers and that there was going to be a whole new approach with a new director and new writers, but I was really going into the unknown. And the next thing I knew, I was reading a script that told [Dial of Destiny’s] story, and of course, I was disappointed. I had thought that I would be majorly a part of the film, and that was just not the direction they decided to go.
I think they had some problems to solve with the story in terms of Shia LaBeouf not coming back, and they chose to create this story that Mutt had been killed in the war and that it put a wedge between Marion and Indy. I mean, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I read it. (Laughs.) But I was really happy that they came back together in the end.”
This marks Allen’s third time in the role following her leading turn in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and a significant role in “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”.
