‘That’s a Wrap’ on Indiana Jones 5!

After eight months of filming, the fifth instalment of the classic Indiana Jones series starring Harrison Ford in his legendary role, has finally completed initial filming. 

The producer of the film, Frank Marshall, who has been involved with the series for years, as a producer on the very first one, the classic Raiders of the Lost Ark, in 1981, and its fourth entry, the much-less-classic Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in 2008, sent out a tweet on 27 February that simply consisted of a photograph of Indy’s world-famous hat along with the phrase, ‘That’s a wrap’, meaning principal photography on the production should now be complete, although there’s still a long way to go for post-production, as the film isn’t set to come out until 30 June of 2023, and still doesn’t even have a released title yet.

The fifth film was directed by James Mangold, acclaimed director of Girl, Interrupted, Walk the Line, and perhaps most relevantly for this series, The Wolverine and Logan. Given Harrison Ford’s advanced age and the amount of time he’s been playing the role, many people have assumed that this will be his Indy swan song. Since Mangold’s last film was similarly a goodbye to an actor playing a long-running role, it’s assumed that that’s one of the reasons he was brought on board here. 

Whether this film will share Logan’s melancholy tone is yet to be seen, but we can expect from an interview that he gave ComicBook.com that Mangold is aware of the gravity of taking on such a potentially key chapter of such an iconic saga. He said to them, “Like in all my work, I’m always trying to find an emotional center to operate from…[In] an age when franchises have become a commodity…[I’ve learned that serving the same thing again, the same way, usually just…makes an audience wish they had the first one over again.

So you have to push something to someplace new, while also remember the core reasons why everyone was gathered.” With that in mind, it wouldn’t seem unlikely for such a new direction to be Indy either retiring or confronting his mortality.

After the critical and fan disappointment of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, it would certainly seem that at least part of the drive behind bringing this film to fruition was to end such on an important series on a high note more befitting its high status. To that end, this film has a screenplay co-written by acclaimed playwright Jez Butterworth and his brother, John-Henry Butterworth, along with Mangold himself, and the cast is full of top talent, including Fleabag star and writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Hannibal’s Mad Mikkelsen, and Antonio Banderas.

This will be the first Indiana Jones not directed by Steven Spielberg, and plot-wise, basically the only thing confirmed so far is that Nazis will be involved in the story again. Based on set photos that have emerged of Harrison Ford’s face covered with dots (presumably to digitally de-age him), alongside images of a train bearing a swastika, the current theory is that the film’s first scene will be a 1930’s or 1940’s flashback, as a parallel to the flashback that opened Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in 1989.

Unfortunately, it will be quite a while until we find out, so we’ll just have to be patient in the meantime!

Featured Image Credit: IGN

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