Steven Spielberg has seen ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’

Christopher Rosen
·3 min read
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Once upon a time, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” was supposed to be Steven Spielberg’s fifth time cracking the whip with the famed adventurer and archaeologist. But Spielberg departed as the project’s director in February 2020 due to what Variety called at the time, “a desire to pass along Indy’s whip to a new generation to bring their perspective to the story.”

Spielberg did stay on as a producer for “Indiana Jones 5,” leaving directing duties to “Ford v Ferrari” filmmaker James Mangold. Now, with the next Indiana Jones feature set to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival next month before its global release on June 30, Spielberg is opening up about the new film.

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“Bob Iger had a screening for a lot of the Disney executives and I came to the screening along with the director James Mangold,” Spielberg said during an interview at the TIME 100 Summit this week. The post-screening review? “Everybody loved the movie. It’s really, really a good Indiana Jones film. I’m really proud of what Jim has done with it,” Spielberg said.

Furthering his praise, the Oscar-winning director added, “When the lights came up I just turned to the group and said, ‘Damn! I thought I was the only one who knew how to make one of these.’”

“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” is a decades-spanning affair that finds the title character played by Harrison Ford grappling with the late 1960s. Using digital effects and de-aging technology, “Dial of Destiny” also features Indiana Jones in his “Raiders of the Lost Ark” era, with Ford playing a younger version of himself. 

“I never loved the idea until I saw how it was accomplished in this case — which is very different than the way it’s been done in other films I’ve seen,” Ford told The Hollywood Reporter earlier this year about the de-aging sequence, which reportedly opens the film. “They’ve got every frame of film, either printed or unprinted, of me during 40 years of working with Lucasfilm on various stuff. I can act the scene and they sort through with AI every fucking foot of film to find me in that same angle and light. It’s bizarre and it works and it is my face.”

As for not having Spielberg on set as the director, Ford said Mangold was up for the task – and that Spielberg was still actively involved as a producer. “Jim developed the script, so I knew what we were getting when we were going in that direction. But Steven’s still on the picture and has always been on the picture. He’s not the director this time, but he’s intimately involved,” Ford said.

The new film stars Ford, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Mads Mikkelsen, and Antonio Banderas among others. Audiences will get a chance to see if Spielberg’s proclamation is accurate when “Dial of Destiny” arrives in theaters on June 30.

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