Total Film magazine May 2023 #337

[Jonesy9906753]

Is that George Lazenby?

If you wish it to be. But choose wisely, for while the true Bond will bring you great enjoyment, the false Bond will take it from you.

Aww crap, wrong movie

 

[IndianaBones]

If you wish it to be. But choose wisely, for while the true Bond will bring you great enjoyment, the false Bond will take it from you.

Aww crap, wrong movie

Nice profile picture

 

[FordFan]

Nice profile picture

He looks GREAT in that shot.

 

[The Lone Raider]

Nice profile picture

Hey, speak for yourself too, my friend. You're both looking good@Jonesy9906753

 

[IndianaBones]

Hey, speak for yourself too, my friend. You're both looking good@Jonesy9906753

Hey, you’re not too bad yourself!

 

[The Lone Raider]

Hey, you’re not too bad yourself!

 

[Moedred]

From the mag:

James Mangold on making a standalone adventure...
That’s not my goal on movies [to set up spin-offs]. I am really old-fashioned. I’m very classically minded, and I think Steven [Spielberg] is, too. I make the movie very conscious about the movie being its own self-contained, functioning work of art in any way I can. If I feel pressure that I’m supposed to spin off or start to lay Easter eggs or track for some other enterprise later, it feels like a violation to me. Like I can’t focus on telling a cohesive story with integrity. I’m making a TV show, is what I feel like at that point. I never came under any pressure to do that. The feeling for me was really simple: Harrison Ford is Indiana Jones. And as Harrison Ford grows old, the Indiana Jones movies grow old. And so that was my focus. I do think Phoebe’s character is phenomenal, and her performance is phenomenal. But that’s a separate question. You could make a movie about any one of these fully realised characters who are in the film. But the goal is to land the plane with the same sense of clarity and satisfaction that the previous films have.

MADS MIKKELSEN
Q: Introduce your character, Voller...
M: He’s a mathematician. His love for that craft oversees his political ideologies. But if you can combine them, eventually that will be enormous for him.
Q: Was there much in the way of research to do?
M: It’s a fantasy world. I mean, I’m a history buff, so I know quite a bit about history. But I didn’t use it specifically for the character. We looked at a lot of pictures to get an idea of where to go with his looks. Voller and Indy are kind of stuck in their own period. The 50s and 60s are going over their heads somehow. So they’re kind of ancient people in 1969. So they have that in common, and that’s about it – and a love for archaeology, obviously.
Q: Was it intimidating to step into a scene with Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones?
M: It’s always intimidating to meet your heroes, but Harrison is very easy to meet. He’s so down to earth. Before we started shooting, we were just doing rehearsals and hair and make-up. One day, he was just standing outside his trailer, and I think he forgot about it. He was just wearing his jacket and his hat, and was carrying the whip. He was just waiting for something. I was like, ‘You’re back.’ It was just amazing.

BOYD HOLBROOK
Q: Introduce your character, Klaber...
B: For me, in terms of why this person is the way they are – that was just the time and era, and what was going on in the country and the world. I think, really, he’s a very confused individual who doesn’t know who he is. There’s a sense of him wanting to at least belong to something, which lands him in this predicament.
Q: Do you see parallels between Dial of Destiny and Logan?
B: You know, Jim is a fantastic director, and he really is honest. In approaching the subject, he’s not going to try to fake it. He’s really going to play with what he has.
Q: We see you on a motorcycle in the trailers...
B: I mean, just to pull that off was extraordinary. You know, rushing through the streets of New York and Glasgow. It’s amazing because all the architecture in Glasgow is the same architecture we used in New York.
Q: And on the subject of motorcycles, you also have The Bikeriders coming up...
B: The film is incredible. It was up in Cincinnati. I got to work with Michael Shannon, my long-time hero. I met him probably 15 years ago, and asked him how he got into acting. He said, ‘Get into theatre.’ I was like, ‘Oh, yeah. What a great idea.’ And now we worked together. So everything is kind of resolved.

PHOEBE WALLER-BRIDGE
Introduce your character, Helena...
P: She comes and turns everything upside down, basically. But she was a lot of fun to play, and they really nailed a humour and wit that is already in the DNA of the series. They created a really fresh character to carry that through again.
Q: Does she have any literal or spiritual counterparts from the previous films?
P: I think they really achieved something extraordinary: she fits into the canon, and she feels like there is certainly an energy that she shares with all the characters that have come before, especially with the female parts, but she is unique, and she has a fresh voice. She was somebody who was mysterious from the off. I think [Indy’s] often been the mystery to those characters before, especially his female counterparts, and I think there’s something really unusual in how they flip that here.
Q: John Williams has written a theme for Helena...
P: I still haven’t really found the words for that. I managed to actually meet John at the Oscars. To be able to say thank you to him for all the work that has inspired me over the years, but then also to specifically say, ‘Thank you for writing me a theme,’ was one of the purest and most precious moments in this side of my professional life. That was the best.

 

[Moedred]

Part 1 of 4:

Ford Focus
A legendary cinema character gets a final outing in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny as Harrison Ford prepares to hang up the fedora for good. Total Film meets the star and his collaborators to talk ageing heroes, and stepping back in time in more ways than one...
words Matt Maytum

I don’t believe in magic, but a few times in my life, I’ve seen things,’ glowers Indiana Jones in his latest adventure, Dial of Destiny. Magic of various kinds is embedded in the DNA of the Indiana Jones franchise. Without the alchemy of the perfect combination of character/actor, idea/execution, it’s a series that so easily could’ve fallen by the wayside, instead of becoming an indelible movie landmark, a face carved into the Mount Rushmore of cinema history.
Created by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg for 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones is in some ways inseparable from the man who has played him for more than 40 years.
The reluctant heroism. The cool-under- pressure charisma. The intelligence, curiosity and resourcefulness that’s led to a career littered with treasures. In his 80s heyday (in films set between 1935 and 1938), Harrison Ford’s fedora-sporting archeologist took on Nazis and cults, nabbing rare McGuffins, solving puzzles and evading boulders, before returning to take on Soviet agents and aliens in 2008’s Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (set in 1957). Despite stellar box office, it would take more than a fridge to protect that film from the nuclear assault mounted by critics.
A fifth instalment was soon mooted. Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm in 2012 made some form of new Indy content inevitable, although a fifth movie went through a protracted development journey – with Spielberg stepping down from directing duties and James Mangold (Cop Land, Logan, Le Mans ’66) taking the helm, before shooting would finally begin in the summer of 2021. The first miracle, after all this time, was actually getting Ford back in the hat and jacket, bullwhip in hand, for one last outing as one of his signature characters (in a career that’s not exactly had a shortage of them).
‘I always wanted to see a completion of the character,’ Ford tells Total Film in April 2023, at the end of a day on set playing Thaddeus ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross in upcoming MCU film Captain America: New World Order. ‘I wanted to see [Indiana Jones] at a later stage of his life, when he’s beyond the youthful enthusiasm and capacity, and beset by age and [stifled by academia]. I wanted to see him engage on one more unexpected, unanticipated adventure.’ Ford is now 80 years old, and was 79 during shooting; Dial of Destiny is (mostly) set during 1969’s space race, at a time when Indy himself is around 70. And the film won’t shy away from that.
‘I wanted it to concern age,’ Ford continues, in that unmistakable, measured drawl. ‘I wanted it to confront the issues of age for a character who had always been adventurous, youthful, and capable, physically. I wanted to see the effects of age on the character.’
Mangold had worked as a producer on Ford’s The Call of the Wild (2020); the pair had discussed other opportunities that didn’t materialise. Ford, Spielberg (who remains involved as a producer) and Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy approached Mangold with the proposition of directing this latest, and final, Indiana Jones adventure. ‘The overwhelming sense of honour of being approached by heroes of yours was intense,’ says Mangold, speaking to TF from his home office, lined with heaving shelves of what looks like books, records, DVDs, and a few banjos. (In the time since our chat, Mangold has since been handed the keys to another plum Lucasfilm gig - see page 7.)
‘But also... I always have anxiety about making a sequel in a franchise of any kind, even one as illustrious as this, because I feel like you need to have something to say,’ continues the straight-talking director. ‘It’s kind of easy to expect that the cultural significance of a successful franchise will do its own work. And I think that produces, sometimes, awkward films.’
After re-examining the movies and grappling with the idea of making one in today’s world, Mangold was struck by a crucial problem. ‘How do you make an Indiana Jones movie in the late 60s? What are those specific challenges? Thematic, even plotty, and technical?’ Echoing Ford’s sentiment, for Mangold, Indy’s age had to be a factor in the film. ‘Not just in terms of him saying, “Oh, my back aches.” That’s easy and also obvious. I mean more that when you’re at a point in your life when you’re suddenly taking inventory about what has happened, and where you are because there’s not much left... That’s not to say I wanted the movie to be Wild Strawberries [the 1957 Ingmar Bergman film]. But I did want it to be honest.’
Mangold’s highest-grossing film to date, Logan, is a swansong for an ageing hero, and he says he wanted Indy 5 ‘to somehow deal with a theme that I’m always attracted to, which is kind of a hero at twilight. To me, it’s this interesting moment when someone we know as a kind of legend is no longer appreciated that way in their surroundings. Time has outpaced them; their legends and their adventures have become either forgotten or maybe not even perceived as so cool any more.’
Both Ford and Mangold assert that Spielberg’s stamp remains on the film. In terms of working in the Spielbergian style guide established over four movies, Mangold says, ‘It would be a collaboration with Steven, even when he was not around and was making The Fabelmans. It was a collaboration with Steven’s gift to me all my life.’ He compares his relationship with Spielberg to that of a young musician listening to their hero and trying to play the same licks.
‘The assignment to [braid myself with Spielberg’s voice and choices], that was part of the excitement for me,’ explains Mangold. ‘I grew up on his aesthetics, and I learned from him, and tried to make my own discoveries within that world.’
‘There’s no denying that Steven’s stamp has been on this series all this time, but the primary task for Jim was to develop a script that would be so attractive to me that I could not deny myself the opportunity to do it,’ laughs Ford. ‘And that he did. He developed it with the Butterworths [brothers Jez and John-Henry]. It’s a fantastic script. A very ambitious picture.’

 

[Moedred]

Part 2 of 4:

JOURNEY INTO HISTORY
Magic has often been enmeshed with the McGuffin antiquities that Indy has sought out on his escapades: from the face-melting spirits sealed within the Ark of the Covenant, to the kind of alien tech Arthur C. Clarke might argue was indistinguishable from magic in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
The titular McGuffin in this film is largely a mystery, although in the recent trailer it’s described as ‘a dial that could change the course of history’, and it’s clearly something that the professor has been pursuing for a long time.
In 1969, Indiana Jones is retiring from his academic post. Amid the revolution of the era, where cultural horizons are expanding, and the space race is looking to the stars, Indy is somewhat untethered. But maybe that’s not an entirely new sensation for the character. ‘I think Indy’s a man out of time in every time,’ offers Ford. ‘I think his heart and his soul are invested in the past, and the mystery of the past, and the beauty of discovering the mystery of the past.’
The quest begins with a visit from Helena, Indy’s goddaughter. She’s portrayed by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the Fleabag multihyphenate who has a previous connection to Lucasfilm and another iconic Ford character via Solo:
A Star Wars Story (2018) in which she played droid L3-37 opposite Alden Ehrenreich as the young Han. Waller- Bridge stayed in touch with Lucasfilm’s Kennedy after that experience, and one night they were having dinner together in what would be the final restaurant trip either had before the pandemic lockdown began. ‘That was quite a situation to go into, [to then] go sit in my room for the next year-and-a-half, thinking about it,’ laughs Waller- Bridge. ‘She told me over dinner. She said: there’s a script being written, and there’s a really exciting idea at the heart of it. Would I consider reading it? I fell off my chair, drank a bottle of wine, and said, “Absolutely. Send it over.” And then I just fell in love with the script.’
Part of the fun of the Indiana Jones movies has been not knowing who you can trust, and this characteristic would seem to extend to Helena, the catalyst for Indy’s final adventure. Ford is full of praise when it comes to what Waller- Bridge brings to Helena: ‘Imagination. Intelligence. Grace. Humour. Joy,’ he reels off. When it comes to Helena’s relationship with Indy, Ford offers the more brusque: ‘Fraught. Complicated.’
‘She is a very witty and mercurial character,’ elaborates Waller-Bridge. ‘She’s somebody who’s part of Indy’s past, and is a surprise in some ways, and is a comfort to some extent. And then she turns that expectation on its head, because she has an agenda of her own, which is hugely fun to play. She’s rich and multi-layered. You don’t really know what’s coming next.’
The dial has a connection to an incident in Indy’s past (more on that later), and it’s also wanted by Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), a scientist who has gone from Nazi to NASA as a key figure in America’s Apollo efforts. ‘He’s loosely based, obviously, on [Nazi party member turned US aeronautics pioneer Wernher] von Braun,’ says Mikkelsen, playing the antagonist in another mega-franchise following appearances in James Bond, the MCU, Star Wars and the Wizarding World.
‘He’s a rocket scientist when we see him at this point, but he’s basically a mathematician,’ adds the actor, cosy in a beanie hat and lots of layers when he dials in from his Denmark home. ‘It was not a secret that both the Russians and the Americans – and, to an extent, the British, but not as much – opened their arms and their doors for scientists from the Third Reich. And they closed their eyes in regards to whatever atrocity they might have committed.’
Though Voller’s look (black coat, wide-brimmed hat, round specs) is extremely reminiscent of Raiders wrong’un Toht, Mikkelsen says the characters aren’t connected. ‘I love that character,’ he smiles. ‘He’s part of making that [specific look] iconic. We didn’t go that far with the character. It would have been interesting. [Toht] was more of a henchman, I would say. And this guy is the brain behind a lot of things. So they were not going down the same path. But I am wearing glasses. That’s one thing. But we tried to avoid copying him at all, because he did it to perfection.’
Also on bad-guy duties is Logan actor Boyd Holbrook, playing Voller’s US underling. ‘He is the liaison – sort of a lapdog, if you will – to Mads’ character,’ Holbrook tells TF with a grin. ‘He is the opposite of the moral compass in this film.’ As for how the motorcycle-riding Nazi got his geometrically precise flat-top, Holbrook deadpans, ‘They stick your head out the window on the way to work.’
That space-race backdrop of the 1969 setting, which dovetails the action with real events like the moon landing, provides an apposite counterpoint for Indy’s perceived values and life’s work. ‘Indiana Jones and archaeology has always been about finding history below us,’ says Waller-Bridge. ‘I think it’s such a brilliant nod to how far the world had moved on in terms of technology, to look at the above and beyond.’
‘You make a movie like this, and you think about what’s changed between the 30s and the 40s and the 60s,’ muses Mangold. ‘Modernism has arrived. Rock ’n’ roll has arrived. All these cultural things have arrived. Technology has arrived. All of these things chip away at the innate charm of the period where the classic Indiana Jones films take place. So I wanted to give the audience a chance to behold that polarity, and then to land it in a time of realpolitik and cynicism and confusion, where the bad guys and the good guys are harder to tell apart, and characters like Indy are no longer revered.’ But before the 1969 portion of the film gets underway, there’s the small matter of the prologue...

 

[Moedred]

Part 3 of 4:

ADVENTURE TIME
Dial of Destiny will open with an all-out Indy escapade set in 1944, in a castle inhabited by Nazis. Much talk has already been made of the VFX that will digitally de-age Ford to the era of the original trilogy, or thereabouts. The teaser trailer features a moment of gasp-worthy VFX magic when a bag is pulled from Indy’s head, revealing, well, a much younger Indiana Jones than we’ve seen for a while.
There was nothing particularly unusual about the shooting of the scene. Ford (who could still fit in his original jacket) would act out the scene as normal, albeit with myriad dots on his face to capture the performance.
‘I just shot him, and he just pretended that he was 35,’ says Mangold of his ‘incredibly gifted and agile’ leading man. ‘But the technology involved is a whole other thing.’ Differentiating this de-ageing tech from other examples of the practice is the fact that Lucasfilm had reels and reels of footage of Ford in the role in his 30s and 40s. ‘We had hundreds of hours of footage of him in close-ups, in mediums, in wides, in every kind of lighting, night and day,’ says Mangold. The advancement of the technology also came with additional benefits. ‘I could shoot Harrison on a Monday as, you know, a 79-year-old playing a 35- year-old, and I could see dailies by Wednesday with his head already replaced,’ continues Mangold. ‘Meaning it wasn’t a year of effort to get to a first pass. It was an incredible technology, and, in many ways, I just didn’t think about it. I just focused on shooting what’s [approximately] a 25-minute opening extravaganza that was my chance to just let it rip. The goal was to give the audience a full-bodied taste of what they missed so much. Because then when the movie lands in 1969, they’re going to have to make an adjustment to what it is now, which is different from what it was.’
Ford isn’t particularly interested in the method of the process, but in its storytelling potential. ‘I’m interested in what it brings to the audience,’ he says. ‘I’m not particularly interested in the technical means of the achievement of it. It’s not my jam. But I do think it’s a very potent device, and in this case, I think the de-ageing, which sees the
character in the context of another challenge, perhaps, 25 years earlier, is an intriguing, useful, and extremely sophisticated story device.’
When TF asks if he recognises his on-set performance in the final result seen on screen, he responds, ‘Yeah. In fact, when I look in the mirror, I still see that guy with brown hair.’
Of course, the main appeal of the Indiana Jones films has never been computer-generated visuals (and some of the biggest criticisms of Crystal Skull targeted its over-reliance on CGI). Despite shooting during the pandemic, Mangold resisted working in a sterile ‘volume’. ‘I really tried to, in all cases, avoid depending upon green screen or visual effects to solve problems when the connection to the earth, the connection to the gear, the physicality of the stunts, is so critical to the look and feel of an Indiana Jones film.’
Filming took place across the UK (with Glasgow doubling for New York), and beyond. ‘And then we went to Morocco for 69,’ recalls Mikkelsen. ‘We went to Sicily. And it all had that vibe of an Indiana Jones feeling. Back to scratch – everything we wanted for this film.’ Adds Holbrook, ‘It’s just really crazy to look around, and to realise, “Wow, this is the final Indiana Jones movie. Wow, this is really happening.”’
As well as a commitment to practical locations, Indiana Jones movies also promise bruising stunt work (you rarely find an action-movie director who wasn’t influenced by Raiders’ truck chase sequence). ‘If you’re throwing yourself off something, or rolling over something, or being thrown against something, there’s very little acting required a lot of the time when you are untrained at it,’ says Waller-Bridge of the physical demands of the role. ‘My God, it’s the most fun acting I’ve ever done, those stunts. Because you learn this new skill, and you’re embodying a character, and, at the same time, you have to completely be as honest as you can.’ Waller-Bridge didn’t have a great deal of training in advance, because the consensus was that Helena was more of a ‘leap before you look’ type.
‘Harrison does almost everything that he can do, except for the most ludicrous stunts, the most dangerous stunts,’ says Mangold. The 80-year- old’s physical commitment saw him pick up another injury - this time on his shoulder - which production had to work around while he had physical therapy. When TF asks how it compared to the knocks he took on previous instalments, Ford’s not really keeping score: ‘Every one of these films beat the **** out of me.’
In terms of how Indy’s (and Ford’s) age informs the stunt side of the film, ‘It just makes everything he does a bit more difficult, a little bit more complicated, and a little bit more daunting,’ says Ford. ‘But he has some companions on his adventure who are part of the process, not just Phoebe...’ he says, hinting at a character left to be discovered during the film.

 

[Moedred]

Part 4 of 4:

WEARY INDIANA
Perhaps the most crucial bit of magic in the entire film, though, is that marriage of character and actor. Topping Total Film’s Greatest Movie Characters poll back in 2017, Indiana Jones is a copper-bottomed cinema icon, but it’s impossible to imagine him existing without Harrison Ford.
‘I think sometimes there’s that magical alchemy of the right part being taken on by the right actor,’ says Waller-Bridge. ‘I think that actors should really be able to fill in the corners of the places that writers can’t reach when they’re writing a character. It’s a real collaboration. I feel like Harrison didn’t just colour it in, but he went all over the lines. There’s something about Indiana Jones being a reluctant hero, and a reluctant adventurer to a certain extent. I feel like Harrison has the same thing.’
When TF suggests that some of Ford’s collaborators must be overawed to work with him, especially when he’s playing Indiana Jones, he bats off the suggestion, much more a hardworking craftsman than a movie star. ‘I don’t look for, or agree to see, people who are daunted by me,’ he shrugs. ‘You know, I’m a working actor. That’s it.’
‘He has this amazing ability of making everything feel normal, because I think anyone meeting Harrison Ford goes a bit funny,’ says Waller-Bridge. ‘I was no different. But within about five minutes, he sort of relaxed everybody, and we just got to work. That’s what’s so great about working with him: he loves the work. And once you’re doing that, then you immediately become an equal. He really did treat me like that.’
As to how much Ford is in Dr. Jones, Mangold says, ‘I think every great actor takes aspects of their personality. Film is too much of a microscope to invent 100% a character from your imagination. You have to bring part of yourself.’
Ford isn’t shy of a one-word answer, and simply says ‘Yes’, when asked if there’s an essence of Indiana Jones that stayed consistent since 1981. Needled to elaborate, the answer is obvious. ‘I think the continuum is the fact that it’s the same actor playing him,’ he states, matter-of-factly. ‘This is not your fifth Bond. This is your first and original Indiana Jones.’
He gives another one-and-a-bit-word answer when asked if he ever thinks about what he’d like the legacy of the series to be. ‘Uh... no.’ Although he is a little more expansive when he talks definitively about Dial of Destiny being his final outing as the iconic adventurer. ‘This is the final film in the series, and this is the last time I’ll play the character,’ he asserts. ‘I anticipate that it will be the last that he appears in a film. I’m aware of the fact that there are plans underway – or underfoot – for a television version of the Indiana Jones experience, but I’ll not be involved in that, if it does come to fruition.’
Mangold talks of being keen to win over sceptics, and bringing them into the excitement of his movies’ worlds, be it car racing in Le Mans ’66, or Johnny Cash’s music in Walk the Line (‘The person I’m always trying to win over is the person who’s like, “Eh, not for me”... Almost like a politician, I’m trying to win the independents’). While Ford does think the film would work as a standalone viewing experience, it is, he says, ‘a richer experience for having seen the others’. He continues, ‘I expect that we will not have to depend on those that have not seen one of the Indiana Jones films, because the luck of my life is that these have become family films that are passed on from generation to generation.’ And with that, it’s time for Ford to go (he is in production on a huge Marvel movie, remember), but he heads off into the sunset with some effusive closing remarks. ‘I had been ambitious to do this film for 10 years, and there finally came a time when we all committed to that. It was a joyous moment for me. I think it’s a rare situation that I find myself in. I’ve been able to deliver amazing films developed by Steven and George over a 40-year period, and to end it not with a whimper, but a bang, has been my greatest ambition for this excursion.’