With the release of the fifth and likely final Indiana Jones movie starring Harrison Ford, could this be the Hollywood legend’s final bow as the blockbuster headline act..?
The cinema landscape has evolved so much in the past few decades. Movie stars used to rule the world, and even at the dawn of the event blockbuster with films like Star Wars and Jaws, you still often saw a film powered by a popular leading star. Occasionally, these hugely successful movies owed their success as much to their concepts and being well cast than having ready-made superstars.
The big name in Jaws was Roy Scheider with a fresh-faced character actor (Richard Dreyfuss) and a long-standing one (Robert Shaw) alongside. Alec Guinness was the marquee name in Star Wars but had never been considered as one of the apex of the A list. Of course, by the time Star Wars had played its first week, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher were stars, and by the time The Empire Strikes Back rocked up, Harrison Ford was suddenly the best thing since sliced bread, launching himself into a run of leading man hits for the next 20 years.
These days the generation of stars who rose at the same time as Ford are still afforded plumb roles and high billing, but Pacino, De Niro, Hanks etc, are not the money magnets they once were. The same is true of Harrison Ford. Whose bankability as the headline act in tentpole films was floundering by the end of the last century. The fact is, he was too old to star in the films which were popular and the rise in success of the MCU and other similar films effectively meant that intellectual property and concept ruled over the stars themselves.
Sure, you can be iconic as a character still, like Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man or Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, but these guys would then find it difficult to draw audiences over to original material or anything outside of what they were most famous for. Even in the 80s, a star like Arnold Schwarzenegger was reeling off a litany of electric hits in several genres. Nowadays his only way back to the big screen on wide release is reviving the T-800.
Still, whether it’s Hanks, Cruise, Arnie, Sly or whoever, has there ever been a blockbuster powerhouse who endured so long and impressively as Harrison Ford? On top of being a superstar with a magnetic presence, he has also been fortunate to have a number of genre (re)defining films and characters that would make anyone envious. He’s not just been Han Solo, he’s been Indiana Jones and Rick Deckard in Blade Runner (a film still mercilessly stolen from to this day). He’s also headlined popular headliners like The Fugitive (which is still an insanely good tentpole film that holds up) and his turns as Jack Ryan. Has anyone at their peak done it as well and as successfully as Ford?
In the last decade, we’ve seen him return as Solo in the contentious Star Wars sequels. He was the highlight, albeit somewhat lazily used, in The Force Awakens and if the much-maligned The Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker lacked one thing (aside from the array of internet-combusting issues) it was his level of gravitas and presence (terrible cameo in Rise notwithstanding).
We also saw him return as Rick Deckard to far greater effect opposite man of the (then) moment, Ryan Gosling. It’d be unfair to say Gosling’s slight dip from prominence of late suggests he’s one of many flash in the pans from the modern blockbuster landscape. He’s always been good at what he does well and engagingly eclectic in his role choices. It’s just that Gosling vs Ford only reinforced that movie stars were just that bit cooler and brimming with more gravitas in Ford’s generation.
Maybe that’s down to the overriding quality of movies and the fact that Hollywood was (slightly) less driven by disposable entertainment. The films (or now content) are disposable and as such the studios probably consider stars to have a shelf life too. As it happens shelf life has always been a thing, but you’d at least hope to get a decade or two at the top back in the day. As I discussed with a friend recently, regarding Arnold. He’s the perfect embodiment of right place, right time. His presence is great of course, but he’d be lucky to be half as successful if he was coming through in this generation.
This brings us up to Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, out now and released to indifferent reviews. Here’s the thing, it’s probably not important. This doesn’t tell us Ford is too long in the tooth, or that James Mangold and Disney failed in their remit to do Jones justice. Effectively, whether reviewers like it or not, they’ve made a film that labours probably above average for the modern-day blockbuster. Very few films hit a bar close to what Raiders of the Lost Ark did (arguably as near-perfect an action-adventure blockbuster as you’ll get).
Sure, it’s probably come out a decade later than it needed to. It was unlikely to strike surprising notes of magic in the same way Top Gun: Maverick did, particularly under the careful gaze of Disney who expect the blockbuster bells and whistles, scale and visual FX that young audiences are accustomed to. It was never going to have that dust and dirt grounding of the original trilogy which themselves liked to hark back to days of yonder and old-school Buster Keaton-esque stunts. It’s just far easier to do things with green screens, wires, CGI stunt head replacements and embellish even location shot frames with all manner of CGI flourishes. Just like every Terminator sequel after Judgment Day, comparisons to perfection seem a tad unfair.
Furthermore, a corner of the baying internet mob has already written off the film before seeing it, assuming because of the mere presence of Phoebe Waller-Bridge, that this is some kind of woke, feminist affront to a classic male hero. On that concern, they’re wrong (but try convincing them of that). Phoebe is an interesting phenomenon really. As a wildly successful and popular writer/star with hits like Fleabag and Killing Eve she was very well-liked.
No sooner did she take pen to paper to rewrite a few scenes in a chaotic Bond swansong for Daniel Craig with No Time to Die did she effectively open the floodgates to a slew of hate (largely coming from middle-aged Bond fans who long for a return to more gadgets, boozing and disposable girls). She’s really not a reason to pre-write a review for a film before seeing it but this is the curious modern trend among fandoms and vitriolic youtube critics more concerned about why films are shit, rather than taking a more positive approach to their content.
The internet film politics of Jones matters little to me beyond marvelling at the inherent silliness of such obsessions (likewise Star Wars and Bond). People forget freedom of choice and the privilege we all have to choose whether or not to watch a film. I grabbed my ticket and turned up to see Ford crack his whip, despite knowing it may well disappoint as a film. My remit was to honour a staple of my cinematic upbringing. To see a likely last hurrah for Ford as the lead in an event movie.
Jones is kicking the summer off. Will it kill at the box office or whimper like a nun’s fart? I couldn’t care less. The end result was something with a litany of modern corporate blockbuster sins, but none of which included “agendas.” The biggest sin was an overabundance of frankly dreadful CGI, but (as a topic all on its own could cover) this is a seeming trend in modern mega-budget films, given how thinly spread and overworked the best VFX houses are. CGI has seemingly peeked and even regressed in the last decade, precisely because there isn’t as much care and attention per film as is really required (through no fault of juggling, overworked artists) and not every film can hone and refine for six-to-seven years like James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water. So the CGI blew, but Ford? Well, he’s always been the best effect in any film he’s ever made.
Ford deserves a tip of the hat and his due reverence in this last leading big-screen outing. He’s been doing great work as a character actor on TV, reaffirming that presence and charisma aside, he’s a great actor. He didn’t need another Jones movie but he clearly wanted to give it another go. In truth when I sat watching Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, some 15 years ago, I wondered then whether it was Ford’s last big leading role. The film was loaded with problems of course but Ford still threw himself around in his mid-60s and donned the fedora with aplomb and he’s done again in his 80s with the Dial of Destiny.
Here’s to Harrison Ford – an absolute legend of the game. It’s not going to be the last time I see him on the big screen (he’s busy shooting Captain America: Brave New World and has recently confirmed he has no plans to retire), but if this is indeed his last time as the star attraction it’s a bittersweet moment.
Tom Jolliffe is an award winning screenwriter and passionate cinephile. He has a number of films out around the world, including When Darkness Falls and Renegades (Lee Majors and Danny Trejo) and more coming soon including War of The Worlds: The Attack (Vincent Regan) and The Baby in the Basket. Find more info at the best personal site you’ll ever see here.
