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Credit: LucasfilmThe Walt Disney Company and Lucasfilm have confirmed it: Indiana Jones, perhaps the greatest action-adventure hero of all time, is dead.
Harrison Ford has portrayed Henry “Indiana” Jones Jr since Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), the adventure series that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg created to outdo James Bond at his own game. Since then, Ford appeared in The Temple of Doom (1984), The Last Crusade (1989), The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), an episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles TV series, and, most recently, The Dial of Destiny.
The Indiana Jones franchise became one of the world’s biggest box-office hits, joining Star Wars as a crown jewel at Lucasfilm and cementing Harrison Ford as a global superstar beyond the franchise from a galaxy far, far away.
Even as The Temple of Doom has been unfavorably reappraised for its depiction of non-Western culture and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was treated with critical disdain for both its use of CGI and the suggestion that Shia LaBeouf would eventually take over the Indiana Jones franchise, the adventure series has remained an iconic part of Hollywood history.
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However, the recent Dial of Destiny seemed to finally see the franchise hitting a roadblock. Although legendary composer John Williams was coaxed to hold off on retirement for one more movie, the film was the first not to be directed by Steven Spielberg and based on a story by George Lucas.
Instead, director James Mangold was hired, while the script was handled by a series of writers, including Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, David Koepp, and Mangold himself. Despite fan excitement for the casting of Mads Mikkelsen as the primary antagonist and Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Jones’ protege, the film never developed the kind of positive fan expectation that others in the franchise had previously.
It showed. The Dial of Destiny grossed $384 million against an estimated $300 million production budget, turning it into the lone box-office flop in the series; for comparison, the much-maligned Kingdom of the Crystal Skull grossed nearly $800 million against a $195 million budget.
Perhaps some of this was due to Harrison Ford repeatedly telling audiences that he planned to retire after the film and that he was firm that no one else be cast as the character. He even told the Today Show, “Nobody is going to be Indiana Jones, don’t you get it? I’m Indiana Jones. When I’m gone, he’s gone.”
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Despite that, Lucasfilm chief Kathleen Kennedy was reportedly pushing for a Disney+ series to act as a quasi-continuation of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, but it seems that Disney has finally crushed that idea definitively.
In the press release for the upcoming Disney+ premiere of The Dial of Destiny on December 1, there was a short but very telling sentence, describing the movie as the “final installment in the epic, iconic franchise.” It’s a very quiet way to confirm that the franchise is finally over, especially given the fanfare for The Dial of Destiny before it bombed.
But it’s now official. Indiana Jones is over.
Do you think it’s time for Indiana Jones to be permanently retired, or could he be recast against Harrison Ford’s wishes? Give us your thoughts in the comments below!