We’ve seen plenty of imagery from the next ‘Indiana Jones’ outing, and thanks to coverage, we know something of what the movie is about. But like a crumbling rope bridge, what has always been just out of reach is the title.
All that changes today, as the first official trailer has landed, bearing the name: ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’.
And all we can think is ‘wow… the soap company must have paid a fortune in product placement.’
Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) in Lucasfilm's 'IJ5.' ©2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. TM. All Rights Reserved.
Okay, no snark please: it’s Indiana Jones, and the sheer thrill of seeing Harrison Ford’s hat-wearing, whip-cracking archaeologist back on our screens is something to be enjoyed.
With the story (aside from a prologue set in the 1940s at the peak of Indy’s adventures and featuring some impressively de-aged shots of Ford) now taking place in the late 1960s, an older and wiser––debatably––Dr. Jones is more content to lecture than to put his life at risk to find some mythical treasure. It’s not the years, as he once reminded us, it’s the mileage.
Yet clearly he’ll be flung back into adventure, not least the prodding of Sallah (John Rhys-Davies), whose recognizable tones open this first proper look at the new movie. And there are still nasty Nazis lurking around, including the mysterious Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) and henchman Klaber (Boyd Holbrook), looking to disrupt America’s successful space race and get their hands on whatever the Dial of Destiny (time travel?) turns out to be.
(L to R): Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) and Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) in Lucasfilm's 'IJ5.' ©2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. TM. All Rights Reserved.
Also featured, Helena Brody (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), Indy’s goddaughter and seemingly the daughter (or maybe granddaughter?) of his old friend Marcus (Denholm Elliott), who has gotten into trouble and needs some assistance.
From the looks of the trailer, there are plenty of callbacks to keep fans of the franchise happy (we spotted several, including a reverse of the classic ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ sword/gun moment, a familiar boulder and that section, as mentioned above, set in Indy’s own past).
Plus, and this could be our brains playing tricks on us, but we doubt it… A nod to a certain other franchise of which Harrison Ford was once a key part? We could swear that at 1:09 in the trailer, it looks suspiciously like a riff on the Millennium Falcon entering hyperspeed. In this case, it’s the lightyears, not the mileage.
Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) in Lucasfilm's 'IJ5.' ©2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. TM. All Rights Reserved.
This marks the first Indy movie without Steven Spielberg in the director’s chair, ‘Logan’s James Mangold instead filling that stop, and working from a script that has also seen contributions from Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth.
With Mangold overseeing things, we’re confident it’ll be full of drama, adventure and lots of thrills, plus a chance for Ford––who has gone on record as saying this is his last hurrah as Indy––to go out in style.
The cast for the new movie also includes Shaunette Renée Wilson, Thomas Kretschmann, Toby Jones and Antonio Banderas.
‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ will be in theaters on June 30th next year.
Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) in Lucasfilm's 'IJ5.' ©2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. TM. All Rights Reserved.
Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) in Lucasfilm's 'IJ5.' ©2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. TM. All Rights Reserved.
Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) in Lucasfilm's 'IJ5.' ©2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. TM. All Rights Reserved.
Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) in Lucasfilm's 'IJ5.' ©2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. TM. All Rights Reserved.
(L to R): Colonel Weber (Thomas Kretschmann) and Doctor Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) in Lucasfilm's 'IJ5.' ©2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. TM. All Rights Reserved.
Renaldo (Antonio Banderas) in Lucasfilm's 'IJ5.' ©2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. TM. All Rights Reserved.
'IJ5' poster. ©2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. TM. All Rights Reserved.
