- An Ending for Spielberg and Ford’s Indiana Jones
In all honesty, I’m kind of surprised that Disney got Spielberg to sign on for this. I’m glad that he’s onboard, as it’s the only saving grace this project has, but regardless of how it turns out, this is almost definitely going to be Spielberg’s last Indy movie. As for Ford, I could maybe see him sticking around for one or two more, but even that’s unlikely. Look at Han Solo’s fate in The Force Awakens and you can get a glimpse of where Ford is at with these characters.
But even if Spielberg and Ford were game to do a sixth Indiana Jones movie, they really, really shouldn’t. I don’t think Indiana Jones works in the second half of the 20th century. His story is rooted in a world that no longer exists: a world caught in between the cataclysmic upheaval of two world wars, where the entire structure of our reality is changing concurrent to technology’s ability to let us fill in the blank edges of the map. It’s a world where gods and monsters could plausibly exist in some deep, dark, unexplored jungle, and by the back half of the century that world had ceased to be. For all their similarities, Indiana Jones cannot transcend his setting as James Bond has done; he belongs in the 1930s.
Even if this is the glorious return to form we’d all like it to be, there’s no sustainability in continuing to move Indy closer to the present. Good or bad, this needs to be The End.
