Empire has released exclusive images and details about “Indiana Jones 5,” the final film in the franchise according to star Harrison Ford.
“It’s full of adventure, full of laughs, full of real emotion. And it’s complex and it’s sneaky,” Ford told Empire. “The shooting of it was tough and long and arduous,” he says. “But I’m very happy with the film that we have.”
“Indiana Jones 5” (which does not yet have a full title) will take place in 1969, amidst the space race — and Indy will encounter his old enemy the Nazis once again. Jez Butterworth (co-writer with brother John-Henry Butterworth) told Empire, “The simple fact is that the moon-landing program was run by a bunch of ex-Nazis. How ‘ex’ they are is the question. And it gets up Indy’s nose…”
Mads Mikkelsen will play Voller, a villain inspired by Wernher von Braun, a real Nazi who became a NASA engineer.
“He’s a man who would like to correct some of the mistakes of the past,” Mikkelsen said of Voller. “There is something that could make the world a much better place to live in. He would love to get his hands on it. Indiana Jones wants to get his hands on it as well. And so, we have a story.”
Boyd Holbrook portrays Klaber, Voller’s minion. Holbrook said the character is a “lapdog to Mads, and a crazy one at that.” He and Indy will have an action scene at the Apollo 11 ticker tape parade in New York on August 13, 1969, as seen above.
The parade inspired Sam Hadley’s illustration for the Empire exclusive subscriber issue. Note this illustration is not based on an actual moment in the film.
Director James Mangold told Empire about the challenge of making the last Indiana Jones film and steering the script to focus more on Indy’s age. “It became really important to me to figure out how to make this a movie about a hero at sunset,” he said. “The issues I brought up about Indy’s age were not things I thought were being addressed in the material being developed at the time. There were ‘old’ jokes, but the material itself wasn’t about it. To me, whatever your greatest liability, you should fly straight towards that. If you try to pretend it’s not there, you end up getting slings and arrows the whole way.”
The “Indiana Jones 5” Empire issue will be available on November 24. “Indiana Jones 5” hits theaters on June 30, 2023.
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