Indy 5 Indiana Jones & The Dial of Destiny All Aboard the Hype Train to June 2023!

Anyone have any solid updates on the filming of Spielberg's West Side Story? He's got a few other projects lined up, but if they're serious about Indy V, it would just have to be the next film on his slate.

As far as I know, Ford does not currently have any other projects lined up. Disney has purged a lot of 20th Century Fox projects since the acquisition, but so far, it seems that Ford's Call of the Wild is OK. It recently was pushed back from this December to next February, and for the time being, it remains on the theatrical schedule, rather than the Disney + schedule, where it seems a lot other Fox projects are getting dumped. Reports from this week indicate that many of the last scheduled Fox films are in need of re-shoots. I don't know if Call of the Wild is one of them, or not.

Anyways...yeah. Official word on Indy V would be nice. If they are indeed shooting in April 2020, then hopefully we'll get some official news soon.

 

It is difficult to see what they can actually do with Ford, unless they really shake up the formula and either flashback a story with a younger actor, or have a story which is a far more cerebral quest for Indiana Jones.

Ford is awesome don’t get me wrong, I have liked the guy since I was four years old, but let’s not kid ourselves that a man at nearly 80 is going to be swinging and fighting his way through Indiana Jones 5.

He looked creaky in KOTCS which was filmed 12 years ago? When he would have been what, 65?

If it were me, I would consider maybe writing a story that kept intersecting back and forth between two time periods of Indy’s life. The 1930’s, with a fresh actor playing the younger version, and maybe the 60’s or 70’s, with Ford playing the elder version. The story would have a common McGuffin that appears in both eras.

That would be a transitional movie for Indy 6, which would go forward with the younger actor in the role.

 

Unfortunately there is no Marvel comics with Indiana Jones in the interim which to me is strange with a movie supposedly happening. Some of the really good Indy stories are from books and comics and stuff - now likely tossed out like SW's EU.

 

They find a time traveling artifact, Indy and Short Round, and go back in time to when they were younger. Then they cannot get back, and have new adventures with younger actors.

 

Ford has made clear he feels he owns the role and said "no way" to the possibility of a younger actor. I believe his exact words about Indy were "If I go, he goes!" I have to agree with the man.

 

it's hard to know when Ford is kidding sometimes as his humor is very dry.

 

Actually that's a good point.

 

Spielberg and Ford have both publicly stated that they don't believe anyone else could ever play the role, and there's no indication that they're joking. Here's what Spielberg said:

"I don’t think anyone could replace Harrison as Indy. I don’t think that’s ever going to happen. It’s certainly not my intention to ever have another actor step into his shoes in the way there have been many actors that have played Spider-Man or Batman. There is only going to be one actor playing Indiana Jones, and that’s Harrison Ford."

That's pretty definitive, if you ask me. Not very vague or mealy-mouthed at all.

I have no doubt that Indiana Jones will be rebooted by Disney eventually (there's money to be made), but I can't imagine either Spielberg or Ford having any involvement in any entry that seeks to do so.

Maybe instead of trying to resurrect Indiana Jones after the actor and director who defined him are no longer around, filmmakers should simply create a new character who draws inspiration from Indiana Jones as well as various other characters. You know, the same way Indiana Jones himself was created. Do something new.

This is far from an impossible task. Just look at Jim Hopper from Stranger Things. I'm not saying he's Indy-level iconic, but for many people he's become a beloved character who scratches that Indiana Jones itch without simply being Indiana Jones or an Indiana Jones ripoff. It can be done.

The best way for Indy to survive is for his influence to live on through the impact he has on exciting new characters and stories. The absolute worst way is trying to keep Indy himself on life support for the indefinite future. That's just a way to guarantee that Indy will live on only as a pale imitation of his former self, with ever more diminishing returns as his essence is desperately mutilated and cannibalized in search of a vital, creative spark that has long since died with his creators.

 

I agree with that. And in fact, I wish they wouldn't even make Indy V, now that Lucas has retired. For me, the Lucas-Spielberg-Ford trio was the key to the series.

 

Apparently Lucas is still attached as executive producer. But I gather he won't be providing the story this time, which I find to be very sad.

But then again, maybe he gave Spielberg his blessing to come up with his own story this time given the limb Spielberg went out on for Lucas the last time.

 

But exectuvie producer can be an empty title.
In all the previous movies, Lucas provided the story, wrote a story treatment, supervised the script, and was more or less involved in the pre and post-production of each movie (and visited the set).

If Lucas isn't involved this time around, and is only credited for the sake of continuity, I don't like it.

 

That's true. And after looking into it further, that seems to be the case, unfortunately.

Oh, well. That's the way it goes these days. I guess it'll be 2/3 of an Indy movie, at least.

 

Well, there was this:

 

Not even that. He's not involved at all.

 

Yes, but that's Young Indy, not Indy. The whole point is that he hasn't quite become Indiana Jones yet. It's a different character, and Young Indiana Jones is a different kind of series than the main one. Sean Patrick Flanery was playing a kid in his late teens and early twenties still trying to figure out his place in the world. Any actor stepping into Harrison Ford's shoes would be attempting to portray a full-fledged version of the character in full-fledged Indiana Jones adventures. The actor would be attempting to replace the Harrison Ford character in a way that Flanery was never intended to. There's a reason that the Raiders March was never once used as Young Indy's theme despite Lucasfilm owning the full rights to it. Young Indy hadn't earned it yet.

It's the difference between Ewan McGregor playing a younger version of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Ewan McGregor trying to pass himself off as the Alec Guinness version of the character. One works, the other wouldn't.

Yes, I've been made aware of that fact. It's a shame.

 

Lucas' apparent non-involvement is news to me and it honestly made my heart sink a little just now. Whether he feels disenfranchised in general by Lucasfilm and/or its parent company or he simply does not want in, it's hard to tell, but at least we still have Spielberg (hopefully!).

 

I'd say Lucas' non-involvement is one of the reasons it seems the movie isn't going to be made. If he were in charge of the script, there would be some sense of progress. Instead, the last thing we know is that they keep bringing in new writers who create new stories (and therefore, they haven't even decided a story yet!).

 

Lucas sold away the rights to Indy in the SW deal I believe.

 

Lucas sold his rights to it, but they could still involve him. For better or for worse (mostly better) this has been a collaboration between Steven, George and Harrison. We'll see where it all goes. I don't understand why they couldn't have moved faster on this project after KOTCS

 

Honestly, Lucas non-involvement in Indy is way more of a big deal to me than in Star Wars (and even then, he was involved in 2 out of 3 of the ST anyway).

Just feels weird. It's not like it'd be a huge commitment, he could just broadly story it out with Steven and hand it off to the writers from there. Oh well.

 

He wasn't involved in any of them.

 

Uh, yes he was. Just because he dropped out at some point, or that they went in a different direction than he originally came up with, doesn't somehow mean that he wasn't involved. The only way he wouldn't have been involved in these movies would have been if he had never spend any effort on coming up with anything for them, but he clearly did, and parts of it are very much still around.

 

Which parts exactly? Even if they had parts of it (which they don't), that doesn't make him involved. Not only there's no evidence of his involvement in any of them, but we do have Lucas himself on record stating that they decided to discard his stories (and that they weren't that interested in having him around), and as such, he decided to part ways. The movies themselves also don't credit him in any way whatsoever, except for the characters that he created in his movies that they happen to be using.

Disney's ST is not the ST he outlined and wrote. He confirmed as much. Others like Hamill confirmed it as well.

So yes, he's not involved at all.

 

Was Lucas part of the development early on, yes or no?
There you have your answer. He was involved, end of story. I really have no idea why you are trying to twist reality like that. He was the one that set things in motion, he came up with characters and storylines, quite a few of which are still around in some form, as you can easily find out by looking at the development of the ST topic. Just because they ended up taking the story into another direction doesn't mean they suddenly dropped everything they had worked on so far and started over with something entirely new.

I really don't know how you could possibly claim that he wasn't involved when it is so blindingly obvious that he was. Being involved to some extend doesn't require staying around the entire time, nor does it require for everything you came up with to remain intact. Philip Kaufman worked with Lucas on Raiders, little of that remains in the final movie, yet it would be absurd to claim that Kaufman wasn't involved with the project. Lucas was involved with Apocalypse Now as well, Spielberg with the development of ROTS, Gary Whitta with the development of Rogue One. Involvement is a pretty straight forward concept, either you were involved with a project at some point or you weren't. And in this particular case, Lucas clearly was involved.

 

If you want to say that, because he set things in motion (by deciding to make a ST), he is involved somehow, you can say it. But that doesn't make it true.

Lucas isn't credited in any of the movies of the ST, except as the creator of the original characters. Lucas has said that he has parted ways (it's like a divorce, he says), and that he gets to see the movies as part of the audience.

Anyway, I don't want Lucas to be "involved" in a generic way. I want Lucas to be in charge of the movies (in the case of SW) or to supervise the whole production (in the case of the Indy movies), as he always has before selling the company.