Since 1981, Indiana Jones has been the whip-cracking, wisecracking action hero to beat them all — but the world's greatest adventurer is finally ready to hang up his hat. As star Harrison Ford, Director James Mangold and more reveal, it's going to be an emotional farewell.
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The year is 1969. A man named Harrison Ford, near the start of his professional life, is in Los Angeles. The 27-year-old has recently filmed a small role (‘Arrested Student’) in Zabriskie Point, a highly experimental Antonioni film which features slow-motion explosions set to Pink Floyd. That had been a peculiar experience. But nothing compared to what he is doing now. Staring at jawdropping images unfolding on a TV screen, having what feels like an out- of-body experience.
“It was very surreal,” Ford tells Empire. “I remember very distinctly the men landing on the moon, because I was with Jacques Demy and Agnès Varda in Beverly Hills. Agnès refused to face the television because she was putting pictures in an album. And she refused to look at it because she believed it was all faked. And so that’s my distinct personal memory of the moon landing.” Around Ford, America was changing, at seemingly the speed of a lunar lander. Troops were being dispatched to Vietnam. Jim Morrison had been arrested; copies of John Lennon’s new album confiscated by police. Protests roiled around the nation, lamenting injustices. And yes, a 44,000 kg lump of metal was blasted into space, taking with it three Americans all the way to the surface of the moon: the Apollo 11 mission. It was an astonishing, wild, invigorating time to be alive.
Unless it wasn’t.
The year is 1969. A man named Henry Jones Jr, near the end of his professional life, is staring retirement in the face like it’s a swaying cobra. After decades of quests mingled with academic lessons, in which he’s dispensed mountains of textbooks and whipped his way through endless hair-raising scenarios, he’s facing the grim truth: it’s all over. Compounding matters, the country he loves is transforming around him. This old-fashioned hero is now a man out of time.
He will not, it’s safe to say, be going to see Zabriskie Point. But he has forgotten one thing. That if adventure has a name, it must be Indiana Jones. And adventure isn’t done with him yet.
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