Harrison Ford’s return in Indiana Jones 5 should have more in common with his role in Blade Runner 2049 than Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The legendary (and legendarily gruff) actor joked at SDCC 2017 that he intends to reboot every franchise he’s ever started, but in truth he was only slightly exaggerating. By that point, Ford had already suited back up as Han Solo for the first entry in Disney’s Star Wars sequel trilogy and was actively promoting his return as replicant hunter (and possible replicant himself) Rick Deckard in Denis Villeneuve’s sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1982 box office bomb-turned sci-fi touchstone Blade Runner.
Ford was similarly planning to come back as Indiana Jones in a fifth movie when he made his comments. The actor and Indiana Jones trilogy director Steven Spielberg had reunited for a fourth movie featuring the world-famous archaeologist, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, in 2008, but it was generally agreed to be a step down (or more) from the films before it. Nevertheless, Ford has remained enthusiastic about playing the character for a fifth and (presumably, given his age) final time ever since Disney acquired the full IP rights in 2013. The untitled sequel is currently scheduled to open in July 2022 after being delayed a few times (most recently, as a result of Disney overhauling its release slate post-coronavirus).
More than anything, Indiana Jones 5 gives the franchise a chance to go out strong and avoid repeating the same mistakes as Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. However, in order to do that, the film would be better off looking to Ford’s return to the Blade Runner universe for an idea of how to approach things, rather than his journey back to a galaxy far, far away.
Harrison Ford Is Better in Blade Runner 2049 Than Star Wars: The Force Awakens
The Force Awakens plays heavily on nostalgia for the original Star Wars trilogy (in ways both good and bad), allowing Ford to once again portray Han Solo as a scoundrel with a heart of gold – albeit, one who’s gotten rusty in his old age, but could still shoot and hit a stormtrooper with his blaster without even looking (which he does at one point). It’s a fun performance by Ford and gives him some moving emotional scenes with Leia and her and Han’s son Ben (aka. Kylo Ren), yet for the most part The Force Awakens doesn’t deepen our understanding of Han as a person. He had already started fighting for something bigger than himself in the original trilogy and formed loving relationships with Luke and Leia (while coming to accept The Force is a real thing), so everything that happens in The Force Awakens more or less reinforces what viewers already knew about him.
Ford’s role as an older Rick Deckard is more challenging by comparison. The Blade Runner sequel upends our perception of the character and what motivates him by revealing he not only fathered a child with the replicant Rachael after the original movie, but then gave her up to the replicant freedom movement and went into hiding in order to keep her safe. He’s far more selfless and empathetic (not to mention, haunted) than the person he was thirty years earlier and respects replicants’ right to exist and sense of agency in a way he didn’t when he was younger. Because Deckard was actively involved in estranging himself from his daughter, this subplot also lands in a way the Han-Ben story doesn’t, if only because Han (for all we’re told) bore no real responsibility for Ben’s turn to evil. In the end, it’s Blade Runner 2049 that offers Ford a truly meaty role, and his performance is all the stronger for it.
Indiana Jones 5 Can’t Just Rely On Nostalgia
Were Indiana Jones 5 to play out as a standard legacy-quel (in the same mode as The Force Awakens), it would more or less end up rehashing the “old man Indy” angle that Kingdom of the Crystal Skull went with, complete with nostalgic fan-service nods to the original Indiana Jones trilogy (a la the Ark of the Covenant’s cameo from the fourth movie’s opening minutes). Spielberg, by his own admittance, was all the more hesitant to come back for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull because he felt he didn’t have any fresh ideas to bring to the table. This arguably showed in the final film, which struggled to give Ford anything that difficult to do as an actor emotionally (his stunt-work aside), other than be a grouchy fedora-wearing, bullwhip-cracking dad.
For that reason, there’s a lot of excitement about the news that Spielberg has decided to pass on directing Indiana Jones 5 (though he’ll remain onboard as a producer), and has since been replaced by James Mangold (who’s drawing from a new script). The filmmaker showed how to incorporate an iconic character’s old age in a powerful way with his work on Logan and has similarly demonstrated a knack for balancing exhilarating set pieces (the kind Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was lacking) with rich character drama on movies like Ford v. Ferrari and 3: 10 to Yuma. We’re not expecting Indiana Jones 5 to go as dark and violent as Logan did (and it won’t), but there’s reason to be hopeful Mangold will find a way to deconstruct Indy’s identity and legacy, much like he did so well with Wolverine.
How Indiana Jones Can Give Ford A Role More Like Blade Runner 2049
Given his age by the time Indiana Jones 5 picks up, Indy (like Wolverine in Logan and Rick Deckard in Blade Runner 2049), will have reached a point where he’s forced to fully reckon with the life he’s led in the movie. The story could take his arc in any number of directions from there, be it having Indy try to make amends for all the archaeological items he’s stolen from their native countries or perhaps confronting some new enemies (like escaped Nazi war criminals, as the abandoned script for the fourth movie, Indiana Jones and the City of Gods, did) that challenge his beliefs about what he’s accomplished in his lifetime. There are certainly ways Indiana Jones 5 could do this while still following the usual formula of having Indy and some of his allies hunt a MacGuffin in order to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands. It would be a nice way of both updating the franchise’s sensibilities while at the time giving Ford something genuinely compelling to do.
At the end of the day, that’s the only thing that would really justify making Indiana Jones 5 from a storytelling perspective (all talk of box office aside). We’ve already seen Ford play an older version of the same beloved character twice (first in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, then in The Force Awakens), and while there are plenty of things to enjoy about his performances in both of those sequels, they arguably lack the substance and depth of his return as Rick Deckard in Blade Runner 2049. For that reason, it would be great if Indiana Jones 5 took more of its cues from the latter before sending Indy off into the sunset – this time, for real.
