The Ringer-Verse - 'Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny' Plus James Mangold | The House of Midnight

Episode Date: June 30, 2023

It's time for another adventure! Joanna, Mal, and Van saddle up for another round with Indiana Jones and give their reactions to his latest adventure (05:27). They also discuss the hubris of Indy villains and how this film carries that tradition (46:51). Later, Jo and Mal are joined by the film's director, James Mangold, to discuss directing this legendary installment and what he has planned next for ‘Star Wars’ (85:45). Hosts: Mallory Rubin, Joanna Robinson, and Van Lathan Social: Jomi Adeniran Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Erica Ramirez, founder of Ili, and hosts of What About Your Friends, a podcast dedicated to the many lives of friendship and how it's portrayed in pop culture. Every Wednesday on the ringer dish feed, I talk to my best friend Stephen Othello and your favorites from within the ringer and beyond about friendships on TV and movies, pop culture and our real lives. So join me every Wednesday on the ringer dish feed where we try to answer the question TLCS asked back in the day, what about your friends? For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matter.

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Find yours at Target today. We never talked. Do I detect a rebuke? A regret. It was just the two of us, Dad. It was a lonely way to grow up for you, too. If you'd been an ordinary average father, like the other guy's dad's, you'd have understood that. Actually, I was a wonderful father.

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I am here now. What do you want to talk about? Welcome into the Ring Reverse, your Nexus podcast, Eid, for all things, fandom. Joining me today for a very special House of Midnight presentation of Indiana Jones on the Dial of Destiny. It's Mallory Rubin and Van Lathen, Jr. Hi, guys. How you doing? Woo!

Woo! Fantastic. So happy to be here. thrilled and delighted, surprised to hear the dulcet tones of Sean Connery on a podcast about a film that does not star Sean Connery? I am surprised to hear Sean Connery not advocating for problematic things.

Great way to start this podcast. I'm going to pivot just beautifully over in the program reminders. Over the weekend, Jess Clemens will have new video, new breakdown for you guys, Jess's videos, like, so fun. I'm so excited that she's here during this. Please check it out. If you have not checked out her previous content Monday,

the Mint Edition will be here to cover The Witcher season three, part one. Wednesday, the Midnight Boys, we'll be back with Secret Invasion Episode 3, Instant Reactions, and whatever the hell else they feel like talking about. And then Friday, Mallory and I will be back to do a house of our deep dive. Mali Rubin, how can everyone keep track of all of that? Well, my first suggestion would be to follow the pod. Follow the ringerverse on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast.

Follow the ringerverse across the social media platforms of your choosing. The ringerverse is on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, everywhere. And also, if you have thoughts that don't fit into a tweet, send us an email. You can reach us at hobbits and dragons at gmail.com. That's hobbits and dragons at gmail.com. com please continue to sign your emails with your apple of choice on today's show we're talking about the fourth or okay i guess if you must the fifth installment of the indiana jones franchise dial of destiny yeah crystal skull shots coming off early off the top uh after the shon connery shots

but before anything else written by jess butterworth john henry butterworth david kepp and james mangled directed by james mangold and if you stick around after our chat today Mallory and I'll be joined by Mangled himself. What? To discuss, yeah. Indiana Jones, Logan, and believe it or not, Star Wars. Mallory asked him a question about Star Wars

and guess what? He actually answered it and I was shocked. Shocked, I tell you. Hail Mary at the end. Shocked. What the hell? Fantastic. Hey, we got to work on, we got to talk to our booking people over there at

the Pew Pew Midnight Boys. Y'all got Man of Gold on the potty pod. That's amazing, guys. Nobody asked him about the Wolverine. I would just like to talk to him for five minutes about it. Wolverine.

I think we talked about Logan a little bit. Sure we did. All right, so since we're talking about Indiana Jones with the Dial of Destiny, Van, what is our spoiler warning today? We're spoiling everything. We're spoiling the entire Lucasfilm catalog. We could spoil old cereals

that Indiana Jones is based on from like the past. We could spoil movies that are bizarre old versions of Indiana Jones, a la Dumummy, Damami Part 2, The Search for King Solomon's Minds with Chuck Norris from the 80s. All of those movies could get wrapped up into a conversation here. So if you haven't seen all of Indiana Jones and his inspirations and his mutant clones,

you might want to like skip forward a little bit. Wow, slight bars there at the end. I loved it. All right. So we're going to start. with our overall impressions of this film, Dial of Destiny. And I'm going to start with Van. Van, I believe you've seen this film once.

What was your experience with Dial of Destiny in the theaters? Guess what? I liked it. How's that sound? How's that sound to everyone that is so exhausted with the era of IP that we're on? You know, it's put, put, puttting along like you're going. go cart when it needs a little bit more of a charge, you know.

But I expected to go in there and experience a degree of exhaustion with all of it. But I was happy to see Indiana Jones. And I thought that the movie moved really well. And here's the thing. It felt like an Indiana Jones movie. It had the DNA of an Indiana Jones movie. And that was the most important thing to me. Mal, you and I've seen the movie twice because we couldn't resist.

and we went back again last night. So how was it your second time around seeing Dialog Destiny? Fantastic, just as it was the first time around, but even better the second time. I really loved the movie. Like, I think the first time I saw it, which was a couple of weeks ago, I really enjoyed it.

I had a lot of fun at the movies. I thought it was quite good. But I think mostly I was relieved. You know, I was relieved that it wasn't a disappointment. I was relieved that it wasn't a letdown. I was relieved that we weren't going to have a sour note at the conclusion. of the Harrison Ford phase of this cherished, iconic franchise.

And I left the theater. I know we'll talk about this more as we go today, but I left the theater and I was like, is this the third best Indiana Jones movie? And then in the ensuing couple weeks, I started to think, okay, like, is this too much recency bias? You know, I revisited all the films. Maybe this is checking in at four.

I saw it again last night. I really genuinely love the movie. I think it's wonderful. It's got some flogical. We will have some notes today. It is certainly not a perfect film, but it does feel like an apt film. It's a meaningful film.

I had fun at the movies for two and a half hours with my friends, and I will enjoy revisiting the movie, just like I enjoy revisiting the entire franchise. For the rest of my life, it was action-packed. I thought that, most importantly, it was, in addition to being, you know, whip smart and funny and clever in a way that an indie film needs to be,

it was poignant in a way that I was like not expecting and not totally prepared for. I cried more than once during this film and was just genuinely moved not only by some of the more emotionally impactful moments, which I look forward to discussing today, but by the recognition of like a life lived and our lives as moviegoer spent with the character. Like it really felt like an appropriate sendoff for all of the time that Harrison Ford has playing indie and that we have spent watching indie. And I'm really grateful that we got the movie. What a better way to go out than Crystal Skull. Okay. Sorry, I didn't know how you're going to end that sentence and I had a trouble interpreting it for a second. I thought this is going to turn into

like a wildly pro Crystal Skull podcast. I have some Crystal Skull positivity coming for you later, but not a person who felt that the franchise should have ended with Crystal Skull, certainly. I'm braced for it. Yeah. So the first time I went in, I was very nervous because, you know, the film debut to Cannes, a bunch of people that I respect and love and admire wrote absolutely scathing reviews out of Cannes. And so I was like, uh-oh, like this is going to suck. And I wanted it like a really fun Indiana Jones movie. And, you know, our hopes were high because Mangold had done Logan, which was this incredible sendoff for the Wolverine character. So we're like, oh, he's going to, mangle's touch a gold, going to do it again with Dialod Destiny.

and then the people at Cannes were like, no. And I was like, oh, God damn it. And so that I went in and I think I was like, yeah, I was like in a, like a clenched the whole time, like so nervous that it was going to be bad. And I was like, is this good? And I walked out liking a lot. And then when I saw it again last night, I just enjoyed it the whole time. Like, I just completely relaxed into it. And even some of the flaws that I felt the first time kind of melted away in my overall enjoyment of it.

I also got very emotional watching it. This, you know, this hits, we have like a slight spread in our ages, but we're pretty close. This hits the nostalgia, like, pretty hard for all three of us. And oftentimes I get really spiky when someone tries to, like, intentionally dump some nostalgia on me, but this just really, really worked. The only, so then I was rereading the bad reviews this morning to be like, what do I agree with?

What do I disagree with? It's unusual for me to disagree so heavily with these various people who gave it bad reviews. And the only thing I found that I agreed with is one critique they had was they felt like Steven Spielberg's style was more like visually humorous. And I was like, okay, that is something that I can agree is slightly missing is that like rewatching the other Indiana Jones films, there's just stuff that the camera does that delivers the joke that I'm like. like, okay, I don't think Mingold did that, but he did a lot of other, he did like almost everything else that I could possibly ask for. So like, I'm not really missing it. And contrary to Mallory, I mean, I also rewatched Crystal Skull this very moment, like this very morning to brace for Mallory's Crystal Skull takes because she wore me yesterday. She was going to bring them. And I still really don't

like that movie. So Spielberg is also capable of making a bad Indiana Jones movie. So there's that. I wanted to, Mallory and I spent the last month rewatching all of Harrison Ford's movies essentially for this other podcast. We did screen drafts where we drafted. Regarding Henry? Yes. I did rewatch regarding Henry and I got it on the draft list, man. I like it.

Regarding Henry on the draft list. Thank you. You have to have regarding Henry on there, in my opinion. Thank you. Thank you, man. That's how I know. You're my soulmate. And something I found out while reading this Harrison Ford biography is that the lance of Longinus, which shows at the beginning of this movie, was sort of the thing that Hitler was obsessed with that inspired, like, the very first Indiana Jones movie.

And so I just love that there's this nod to, like, earliest early Indiana Jones history. And there's like little nods throughout the movie to the other films in a way, you know, like, yep, yep, even Temple of Doom's here. Like, we're going to talk about it. It's in the movie, like, et cetera. So we, I want to talk about, okay, I want to talk with Harrison Ford specifically, what Harrison Ford, what Indiana Jones means to us. Our beloved pal Charles is not here today. And when I found out he wasn't going to be on the podcast, I did text.

And I was like, Charles, do you hate the movie? And he was like, no. But he was talking about it. He was like, Indiana Jones, this doesn't mean much to me. He's like, so it doesn't really like make sense for me to be on that pod with you guys because I'm, I just come at the character differently. So I want to start with you, Van, like, what are your feelings, lots and feelings about Indiana Jones as a character or Harrison Ford as an actor and how impactful that actor and that role has been on your, like, movie-loving life? So it's interesting, right?

The first Indiana Jones movie I saw was Last Crusade. And then, yeah, it's the first one I saw. And then I watch all the other ones because we watched Last Crusade and then. they're walking through the caves on the way to Last Crusade, and then he says, somebody says, what is that on the thing? And then they go, the ark of the covenant. And he goes, sure, I'm pretty sure. Pretty sure.

And then everybody in the house was laughing. And I was like, what's so funny? And my mom was like, straight into the lost art. The thing with the ball rolling after him, I knew about that because it was at the beginning of Muppet Babies. at the beginning of Muppet babies they had Kermit and he was running from that

and I had seen that before but I hadn't seen in the movie so my mom was like oh my God like mom always did and then we went we had to rent the VCR too that's how things were going for us

in the mid to the late 80s I guess the late 80s we had to rent the VCR too we ran the VCR and we watched Tipola Dune which was a little scary for me at that time and we watched

Raiders of the Lost Art. Up to that point, I didn't know that Indiana Jones was the archaeologist. So I learned all of these things at once, that one, he was a doctor, that he was actually an academic that was an adventurer because of something that he believed in.

And number two, that these movies were as captivating to a degree as Star Wars for me. Because I knew the guy as Hans Solo. And it was the first time that I was confronted, it with seeing an actor that I love, that his charisma carried over from role to roll. I was used to looking at Eddie Murphy

or somebody else like that, but like when I saw Indiana Jones and I was as into it, I mean like when I say into the movie, like every single beat of it, the film stops and then I want to learn more about World War II. I want to learn more about the,

the Holy Grail. I wanted to go back, I started going back and reading books about the other crusades and about the night and all of that stuff, right? I was like completely in. And like, for me, it represented a time

when there was like a softer touch to making adventure films that were really about putting people and all of their weaknesses and idiosyncrasies in these great worlds where they wanted to do these amazing things. and amazing things happened to them.

Indiana Jones didn't have no super soldier serum. He didn't have anything. He had bravery, his brains, a whip, a hat, and a gun. And nothing was too big for him. He was just a force of nature. And even in this movie, and he looks at you, he downloads the information, and he either punches the shit out of you

or he figures out what he needs to know. He's just so confident and so charismatic. My mother and my aunt were going crazy. That's when I realized my mom's little white boy thing. You know what I mean? Like, he would, there was the one scene in Last Crusade, because there's that impossibly good-looking German lady. Dr. Elsa Schneider.

Yeah. And I remember there's a scene between him and my mother went. And I was like, what? She's like, them, some fine-ass white people right there. And, you know, even with that, Sean Conner is someone who I knew from James Bond. So I'll say all that to say this. I didn't have like, you know, the relationship with the older cinema that expired these movies. These movies were a fundamental building block of my love for film.

Harrison Ford is the probably biggest. ambassador to my love of movies of any actor. Of any actor. He had already come, I didn't watch him come of age. He was a fully formed, grown-ass man in his 40s. By the time I started getting into his stuff. But every time I saw him, I knew that I could count on the quality of that film, that he was going to be in a movie that was good.

He never got to the point, he was always kind of like for me, and I'll stop by for this, He was always kind of like for me, just us. Harrison Ford never won like an Oscar. There was never like. Tragic. Yeah. A defining Harrison Ford performance. But there were many defining Harrison Ford characters.

Like he gave you great characters. And in many ways, watching this movie, I was, I think the thing that was, at points I was like sad. You know, like this movie is about time and about finding the creases in time,

but we can't do that. It was kind of, the film is also kind of about letting go or holding on. I thought the themes were perfect. Anyway, a long way to say

these films in the 80s to me were Indiana Jones movies, Star Wars movies, Harrison Ford and everything that he did. Even Working Girl, which is a film

I'm obsessed with. I talk about it all the time. I'm obsessed with it. It's a perfect movie, man. Just seeing him was very important for me to go, I love all of this stuff. Like, I love this type of stuff. Yep, loved it. Anyway, that's me.

I love especially you telling me that part about, you know, I love hearing stories about your folks. So I love hearing that story about your mom. Speaking of smart women who lust after Harrison Ford, Mallory Rubin, what do you want to say about Harrison Ford? I've probably spoke. spoken about my love for Harrison Ford more than any other thing, maybe with the exception of Game of Thrones and the history of my time podcasting at The Ringer. So I'll try to keep this brief. He's like the most consequential figure in my life as a movie watcher, period. It's without question. I actually can't really think of anybody who's close. Han Solo is obviously

a huge part of that. Indiana Jones is a huge part of that. But witness is one of my favorite movies of all time. Working Girl is fantastic. The Fugitive, on and on and on the list goes. The fugitive. I just had really a lot of fun revisiting clear and present danger. Mosquito Coast. You know, the list is just so deep.

Blade Runner is a personal favorite and a favorite in this household. I think that in particular, like, his role in genre films, sci-fi, action adventure, it's just inextricable from like the things I love spending time with in the worlds I love visiting. And, you know, I really enjoyed hearing Sean and Amanda and Chris on the big pick Harrison Ford Hall of Fame, which was, as I told them yesterday, I'll be sending them a very long detailed memo of all the things they got wrong. But I did think that the point about the unrivaled rewatchability of Harrison Ford movies was like really tapped into something elemental about the experience. Like I would just never tire a

revisiting, and we're not just talking about a handful of movies. There are a handful that I think are, like, sacred, first ballot hall of famers, right? But you're dozens deep in movies that, like, we'll enjoy rewatching for the rest of our lives. And Indy is so central to that. Raiders and Last Crusade are two of my favorite movies of all time. And Indy is one of the most iconic characters.

I mean, you know, Harrison Ford played Indiana Jones and Hot Solo. Like, what more is there to say, right? How could you do both of those? And like that close together. And I think part of what that captures, right, and a lot of his other characters do as well, there's just this undeniable level of charisma, of magnetism.

He embodies cool in a way that nobody has really matched. And he's unbelievably sexy. He is the sexiest person who has ever graced the screen. It will not be the last time that I say this today. but there's just some draw to watching him, the crooked smile, the scars on his chin,

the wink, the different levels of scruff or lengths of his hair. He's just perfection. And he isn't perfect, and that's part of what makes him perfection, right? And, like, I just absolutely adore him. I adore the movies.

Indian, in particular, is a franchise. That mix of action adventure with those genre elements. We get religious elements. We get sci-fi. We get fantasy. Dan, I love the point you made about the thrill of learning and realizing he's an archaeologist, he's a scholar, right? Like, we're all big nerds.

The idea that the coolest person you could point to in movies is also a nerd is somebody who likes to learn and read and spend his time in the library is like a really fun thing. The vibe and dynamic between the different characters across the movies, the way that indie changes. I think like one of the things that I don't love revisiting about Temple, of Doom. And obviously that movie is a prequel, right? That's set before Raiders. But like, you're kind of like, is this, is this my indie? This guy is like, I think of India as being a smart ass, but not an outright asshole. And part of what I adore, and I know Joe, you feel this way, about Last Crusade, is that it felt like such a meaningful step forward, a progression in understanding the character, the essential figure in his life, his father, Henry Sr.

and revisiting Crystal Skull, which I think was like really devastating collectively for Indiana Jones fans when it came out in 2008. When I revisited it a couple times in the last few weeks, I didn't think that it was nearly as bad as I remember, though it is still a deeply, deeply flawed movie, easily last in the franchise. And I think the things specifically among the other flaws

that it misses is that continued progression, is that evolution in the character, like everything with Mutt, who will talk about a bit more today, doesn't work, but specifically, like that question of, is this the person who's going to be able to pick up the fedora? What does it mean for Henry Jr., for Indy, to go from being the guy in the clip you picked today, Joe, right? On the other side of the table in that father-son relationship saying, like, this is the way that the choices you made define the course of my life. That's an interesting

thing to explore with the character. It just didn't work in Crystal Skull, but it does here in a beautiful way that allows us to feel like we have gone through every phase of this character's life with him. And one of the things that Joe and I, I think, had the most fun talking to James Mangold about was this idea of, like, the aging hero, the aging icon. One of my favorite things about the movie was the choice for the 69 setting, the moon day setting, that juxtaposition of the future all around a character who has always been interested in history, interested in the past, but also increasingly feels like he is the past. When he says at the end, like, who am I going back for?

Who am I going back to? That is fucking devastating, right? And it's important for him to realize that that's not true, but it's also important for him to confront what it would mean if it were. And this movie, Dial of Destiny, just does a beautiful job of examining the way that people's, especially people with these consequential, like, hefts and legacies, have to confront the way the world changes around them

and what their places in it. Like, what a beautiful way for, for the franchise to conclude, or at least this phase of it. Phoebe Waller Bridges' character pulls him out of the past, literally. She literally pulls him out of the past. And that's what your children do for you. And he didn't have that because his kid died. So, you know what I mean?

So, like, what your children do for you, what, not even just your children, but people that you invest into, younger people, what they do for you is they pull you, out of living in like nostalgia and what you did and what you used to be and who you used to be. And then you kind of live through them, right? You live through seeing the things that they tell you. Like when I talk to my mom,

my mom is always talking to me about, she needs me to update her, like what's going on here, what's going on there, like what's happening? Because when I talk to her, she feels like sometimes the best parts of her life are in the past. And I have to remember, I have to remind her, that we still got a lot of more memories to make.

So in that point where he's back there, living what for him would be the pinnacle of his existence, like witnessing it. Like he could have easily thrown on a goddamn togo, whatever they wear, put some sandals on, and just, like, for the rest of his time, got to see that stuff. But no, we not.

You can't stay here. I will drag you into continuing to make memories and reminding you that there's more for you to do. And, you know, we do that for the older people in our lives all the time. I think what's also really special about this film and my favorite Indiana Jones film, which is Last Crusade. Last Crusade, a film that I've maybe watched more than any other film that has ever existed, is what Last Crusade does,

because I had seen Raiders in Temple of Doom before Last Crusade, but I think Last Crusade is the first one I saw in the movie theater. And I saw it with my dad and it was like a really special experience. And then it made me like, I liked those other movies. And then I loved Indiana Jones after Last Crusade. A lot, you know, plenty of people think Raiders is the best one. That's fine. But I think that like...

One A and one B. Two all timers. I think what Last Crusade does is it contextualizes who Indiana Jones is. So like a brilliant part of, you know, the Indiana Jones stories. And we're going to break down something of like the key elements or whatever. But a brilliant part is like he's not just seeking after, you know, an artifact because of his own intellectual curiosity or because of X, Y, and Z, he's always in a race with some evil force. It's always like, I have to get there first, or else the goddamn Nazis

are going to get it and do something with it that's going to, like, you know, alter the course of time or history or whatever. And so that's an interesting stake. But what we find out in Last Crusade, what's so brilliant about Tom Stoppard's screenplay is that Indie's constant drive to go and seek out these items is all tied up and seeking approval or attention from his father, right? Like, this is a, this is a, and never a bottomless pit inside of him that he is trying to fill with these accomplishments, with these adventures. So he's like chasing and chasing and chasing. And the way in which these films deal, like, take the setting of adventure and use the

setting of adventure to explore these relationships. So whether it's with Marion in the first film, I would. let's leave some characters out of it and just a short round in the second one, you know, his father and the third one, if things had gone better, his son in the fourth one, and then his goddaughter and this one, like that is such an interesting key component of the Indiana Jones films. And what I love, to Van's point, when I love about what this story does more successfully, unfortunately, than the mutt story does, is give Indiana Jones a reason to stop

looking in the past, right? You don't have to go chasing, you know, like, what am I back here for? For people, for connections, for people who are here who love you, whose love for you is unconditional, whose love for you is not contingent on you bringing them something interesting to look at or study or get their attention. They don't care if you can find the thing. They just want you here. And that is such an emotional, huge ending for Indiana Jones. Like, yes, the film ends with him, snatching the fedora off the clothes line. But, like, if he never goes on an adventure again, it's enough. He's done enough.

He can rest now, sort of thing, you know? And so I, these movies are really important to me emotionally as someone with, like, you know, severe, you know, parental insecurity issues or whatever. I think Last Crusade is, like, forever, so much in my heart. But the way in which the character of Helena Shaw, who has a father, who also keeps a diary and is a you know, is like very Henry Jones Sr. Has like a maniacal obsession that, that, you know, swallows his life and Indy sees himself in her, understands the way in which he let her down as her godfather

and is able, you know, because she punched him in the face and brought him forward, to break the cycle of like bad attitude, you know what I mean? And move forward. Too late for mutt, alas, who dies off screen, but like move forward with this new family. and we've got Sulla and the kids and Teddy. And, like, it's very, like, family, new generation feeling in that apartment with the hustle and bustle at the end.

That's what is so tremendous to me. And the fact that they can do all that, not shy away from Harrison Ford's age, have him talk about the pins in his knees and the plates and the being shot and, like, all this other stuff is he's trying to, like, scale a wall. And give us a whole opening sequence with a digitally de-aged Indiana Jones. That did not piss me off. and you know how easily I get pissed off by digitally de-aging people. I love that.

I know Mallory, you don't care as much as I do, but I, it's just like, it's a pet peeve of mine, and it works so well in this film. It didn't bother me at all one bit. Okay, Mallory, it bothers you a little. What are you going to say? I just think, like, I thought that sequence, I know we're not quite at our, what are our notes section. That's okay. I thought the opening stretch was super fun and, like, propulsive and a great way to start.

the movie, it gives us the history with Indian and Basil. It gives us the history with Voler, before it becomes Professor Schmidt, it gives us the history with the dial, all of that. I just thought it was, the entire movie is much, this is a longer Indiana Jones movie than any other Indiana Jones movie, and I rarely have notes on the runtime of a movie. As you know, I'm like, one of my very things to do

is to watch a four-hour extended edition of Lord of the Rings, right? But the whole movie is like a chase scene. It's chase scene after chase scene after chase scene. And opening with the deaging for that long, I was a little surprised by. And I think it's in part because it's Harrison Ford. So on the one hand, you know, and I know he's talked about this in interviews, like the volume of reference footage that they had. And it's just the vault that they were able to call upon. There were certain shots that I thought were gobsmacking, like he was opening the door on the train to walk into a new compartment.

and you're like, this just looks real. But then other shots, as is always the case with the aging, something in the eyes is off, it's uncanny. And I think because it is Harrison Ford's face, like the face that is just, there's no other face like it.

You, I bumped on it a little bit more, I think in part because of the length of the sequence. But I thought that that sequence, that type of thing is precisely what the movie wouldn't be able to get right. Uh-huh. So I thought the movie would be able to get right, hey, old gunslinger, this is unforgiven. You know what I mean?

I'm back in the saddle again. It's me. You know what I mean? I thought the movie would get that stuff right because Harrison is such a capable performer. But the smack smack bang, I'm in a room for the Nazis. Oh, I got to like, how is indie going to get out of this situation part of all of these movies? you know, Indies in the goddamn

in Last Crusade he's sneaking through the Nazi thing Hitler grabs the thing and signs the book like all of that stuff that's what I thought this movie wouldn't be able

to get right because I thought that there was a chance that this movie would be two hours of Robert De Niro beating up that guy in the Irishman

where I go where I go yo dog we gotta we gotta get to grumpy or old man five and we got to let somebody else it's time for somebody else to tune guys up love you bobby d but the fact that that was executed well the fact that that felt Indiana Jones the fact that we're

wearing the knots uniform and then they see that it's got the holes in it and the the anti-aircraft gun flips around and starts shooting people like and the fact that that worked to where my eyes are doing this again and I'm in the popcorn again and Kalika's going. The action was great. It's just, yeah. The face is just a, you know, it's a little distracting because we all know what Harrison Ford looks like as a young Indiana Jones. Can I tell

you something to know about that? Let me tell you what happens to me. My mind corrects for that stuff and we have a different relationship with Harrison Ford, I think. But like my mind I think there's a, my mind corrects me quick. When I see that I go, okay, 85%

I know that's not really I usually do that that's like usually the response I have you know and this was certainly we're a long way from like Grand Moth Tarkin right

but with like apologies to Peter Cushing and Mark Hamill and everyone else who's been D.H I'm just like you know there's other DG in this film I was trying to think about

like my moral issue with it like the Peter Cushing thing absolutely not because Peter Cushing has passed away that absolutely enraged me I think digital resurrection is sick. Like, I really hate it. The fact that Harrison Ford is here performing this,

and you tell, because, like, it's not Bobby De Niro on the Irishman level, but, like, there are certain shots where you're like, that is an old man body. And certainly that is an old man voice. Yeah, certainly that is an old man voice. Like, they resupured him a little, but not all the way. And, you know, it's for the best, I think. Yeah, I think it might just be that Van and I don't have, like, quite exactly the same relationship with Harrison Ford's face that Mallory does. But like I expected it to bother me. It didn't. To your point about the chase scenes or this being a long movie, there are definitely

chase scenes I would cut, but I would cut like ticker tape or I would cut eels before I would cut this sequence, honestly, because like, I don't know, there was just a joy being here. I thought Toby Jones was fantastic. We only get, you know. What about my dicky knee? Yeah, my big, one of my sticky E is, maybe one of my favorite A. Jones lines of all times. Love Toby. And just, I think having him be there and be so real really helped.

I think Mads looks kind of weird in his de-aging. I thought Mads looks a little gumpy to me, I think, because they don't have quite as many reference images of Mads-Mickleson at that age. But I, Harrison really worked for me. But I hear you, Mallory, and I respect your feelings on this. I get it because, like, Kalika said the same thing. Calico was like, I wish, because Kalika and I talked about, like, when we left, we talked about comparing that scene to the opening scene of The Last Crusade where River Phoenix plays like a young Indiana Jones, which has, to me,

which has one of my favorite scenes in the history of Indiana Jones movies, where he runs in, which I think tells you more about the characters than anything, he runs in to tell his father like what's happening in Latin. Like I don't give a fuck about what's going on with you. Do it. Back to one in Latin. You know what I mean? And she was like, I just remember she's like that felt like, okay, I'm looking into the past.

Like that felt like, all right, I'm seeing a younger version of the character. And she goes, is there just not a world where? And I'm like, no, there's not where you can have some new whippersnapper, like playing Indiana Jones. We saw it, right? Solo Star Wars story. People don't want it. Yeah, I was like it just is like a derated movie that, as you guys know, I really like.

Don't hear my eye roll, but it just happened. Don't get me started. You know what? We should do this. Don't like, don't get me started because it's a lot of people out there capping. Like, the movie was good. All right, that guy, not whatever, but he was, he was okay. I like the movie.

Anyway, so what I'm saying is that. It's not Alden Aaron. fault. That's the point. It's not Alden Ram Reich's fault that he's not Harrison Ford because no one is. Right. But River Phoenix, like, and especially, you know, I mean, that was early in his, like, he wasn't quite River Phoenix yet when he did that. But it's still, like, it's River Phoenix. You know what I mean? And there is, like, so much to that. And I agree. I mean, I agree in general. Like, I think in general, I would like, if we're, if we're giving a flashback to an age of a character we've never seen before, I would always prefer it be a.

different actor than to do the de-aging. But you can't do it here because we're sliding this. Yeah, we're sliding this into the middle of a story we already know, you know. Let's talk about, I just thought it would be fun to talk about some of the elements that a great Indiana Jones film needs. And I was sort of ticking them off as I was rewatching the film last night. And there are ways in which James Mangold and his writers went down the line and ticked all the boxes without necessarily, with a few exceptions, without necessarily making it feel like box ticking. So like chases, as Malay mentioned, key relationships, as we talked about, McGuffins, right?

And I don't know. McGuffin King. This is, this is, they're the McGuffin. They got the best McGuffins. I will tell you right now, name me another goddamn franchise that has, that has even MacGuffins on this level. They got the best MacGuffins. I mean, we can talk about the Infinity Stones.

We don't need to. But franchise, no. Having just done this on trial by content, I will say the Malcalfrey. The Maltese falcon or the briefcase from full fiction are like the two that I would put up against an idiotin Jones. But nothing else. But those are the only other two McGuffins that I would put up. A bit with some critters, right? Bugs and eels and this one.

That's the one where I was like, you have to tick some boxes and that's why you gave me eels. I didn't think we need it. No, they don't. Puzzles and clues. Nazis. That's a big thing that Crystal Skull is missing. And Temple of Dune, the two bad ones are missing. a big fella, like a big guy, a huge wall of a guy, a Wilhelm scream or two,

bumbling professors in something supernatural, anything that I'm missing. What am I missing? Oh, you know, the uniform, right? We've got to have the fit, the fedora, the whip, the sweaty tan shirt. We need the animated travel map. It was a delight to see the animated travel map return for our journey here. But I think this is a really good template and the way that each of the movies

follows the blueprint, adheres to that structure and then finds its own space to play around within it is one of the fun things about the evolution of the franchise. Like after we saw it for the first time and before we did our Mangold interview, one of the things that Joe and I were really like enjoying talking about and enjoying thinking about was the evolution

and the core pairing. I mean, there are a lot of key relationships in an indie movie, right? Like, I will just say one of the moments that hit me on the second viewing, much more so than on the first viewing, was when Sala is dropping indie at the airport and says, I miss the desert, I miss the sea, and this waking up every morning wondering what wonderful adventure the new day will bring. It tells me as his passport that he's ready to go. I was like, oh, my God.

Like, this is just not only a beautiful way to. to capture that bond between them, these lifelong friends and people who have shared adventures, shared journeys. But to capture that thing you were talking about earlier, Van, like, how do you grapple with the passage of time in your own life and the things that you get to do and what's behind you and what's ahead of you? But like the key core central relationship is going to be like a love interest and the way that that's then morphed, even though Marian is here in a truly satisfying, wonderful way. the switch from, okay, first three movies, this is a character who might be rivaling wilt for how many people he has fucked, right? Like, indie, the tally is high.

The love interest, the dynamism. And to shift that into, I'm now the parent figure and the core dynamic at the heart of the film is some sort of parent-child relationship is like a hard trick to pull. One of the things that I love about Dialett Destiny is that we still get that like relentless lust. It's just from Phoebe Waller Bridges character.

She's the one multiple times throughout the movies who's making eyes at somebody. I wouldn't call it relentless, but I would call it present. I meant that as a compliment. Ever present. Oh, I know. I know.

I know. She was like, okay. You're a hot person that I'd like to fuck. Joe, she was trying to get busy. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Multiple people, right? That, that diver and untrue.

in Bandaris's boat. Too hot to die. Rest in peace. The dive. Yeah. We've got the finale. The ring didn't go for as much as I thought. Iconic.

The hot diver. They're the guys then in Sicily. She's just eyeing across the street while having a snack. I ain't a snack while having a snack. I love it. As you know, I love a sexually adventurous woman. I'm very fond of it. So we still have that and then indie can focus on.

Yeah. Okay. Well, and like we get it incorporated directly into the text when Helena. That's not great scene like, well, if all only. there had been somebody who's like exact job description was to be there for me after my father died. Like, what is a godfather? Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

It was great to like really interrogate what the central relationship in his life is at a given moment of time. I want to go back to the Sulla thing, though, because I actually think when I watched it the second time, my friend next to me, he was like, oh, Sulla drives a cab now? Like, that's what it's, I find the Sill, I mean, like, he has life and joy as a grandfather we see is interacting with his grandchild. children, like, teaching them things. They're there at the end. Like, he's singing that one song that he knows, like, all this sort of stuff like that. But, like, Solo's story is kind of sad, actually. It's profoundly sad.

Yeah. Yeah. He's longing for adventure again. Yeah. It's sad to me because, like, you know, come from this great generation of horsemen and outdoorsmen, and someday you just can't fucking climb a tree anymore. You go from the tree to the porch. I just watch it like, God damn, man.

Take them to the desert one more. time, please. Yeah. Like, you know what I mean? And it was just, it's kind of what the movie is about. It's kind of what the movie is about, you know, we watch these hero stories where heroes refuse the call to adventure, but they normally refuse it because they don't want to, not because they can't.

And like, asking this character whether or not you can or not, can I do this again. Like, can I? And then you see, there's a guy who was right with him, right with him who. who's lost it, he can't do it anymore, but he still misses it. And it kind of, like, a whole life thing. It's bigger than kind of like any one thing that we see. Remember, and there's another movie where one of Indy's compatriots dies, and he goes, well, you know, to the great adventure, Indiana Jones, the great unknown, I'm going first and you won't be with me. And, like, those are things that I thought.

Beginning at Temple, them, yeah. Yeah, things that I thought when I was like a kid, I'm like, Jesus Christ, this movie is really about, what it takes for somebody to be alive. And for Indiana Jones to be alive, this is how he has to feel. I will say one thing else that a great Indiana Jones movie has, crazy aircraft bullshit. Wow.

I mean, again, the Harrison Ford experience. Yeah. Get off my play. Crazy aircraft bullshit. When we get into crazy aircraft shenanigans here with the same, who's the brother from Logan that plays a villain? Oh boy,

Whitehole broke. Stop shooting. She kills. And then he sends the Reapers in there. Like, like, just him being completely dedicated American Nazis? Oh my God, this movie was cooking. The whole thing is like, I loved it. And the Uber Nazi.

We always see Nazis, but we always see the Uber Nazi. Mickelson right here as the Uber Nazi, the cool, collected, almost a match for Indie if he wasn't such a zealot. If he wasn't such a zealid, he'd be a match for him. That character has existed in different iterations throughout the franchise as well. This episode is brought to you by Sweet Green. The day doesn't ask for permission. Lunch window?

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Dunton Ranch starring Colehauser Kelly Riley, Annette Benning and Ed Harris, now streaming on Paramount Plus. I want to talk about, I want to move to genre on a second, but I do want to, I just want to pause for a beat on villainy and say this is one of my, I mean, I was going to do this at the end, but I think it's fine to sprinkle our notes throughout. This is one note I have. This is actually maybe my biggest note on rewatch is that I wish the death of Mads-Mackelson's character and Boyd-Hulbrook's character had been a little bit more. tied to, because what I love about, especially the Nazis as villains, but this is true for, like, Kate Blanchett and Crystal Skull as well, is, and Mallory and I talk about this trope a lot, is the idea of a villain who doesn't understand the thing that they are chasing or whatever, and so their, like, calmuppance is directly tied to a misunderstanding of... Not factoring in continental drift.

What? Well, yeah, no, no, no, I won't get to that a second. Like, misunderstanding the arc of the covenant or whatever. And so, like, yes, the continental drift thing, but that's not a matter. actually really what it was. It was just that it wasn't continental drift. It was that our comedies, this device is like a bootstrap paradox sort of thing and it's just always going to go to one place. That isn't really what it was. And it's not, it wasn't going through the portal because a ton of them went through the portal and survived. It was just randomly staying on

the plane and insisting on continuing to shoot at people rather than grab a parachute. And that just didn't really feel connected to a great fitting end for, you know, a worthy villain of Indiana Jones. Do you know what I mean? The fact that he has to confront that he is wrong, right? Because, like, his hubris and his sense of import and accomplishment and, like, the ability to achieve to the point where he's giving an interview about, you know, if the president doesn't, like, accept the wrinkles in my suit, he can fuck off. Can I print that?

You know, the publicity says no. He says, no. He says yes. So it's only at the last second. They're like within the 10 second count of going through the fissure where he has to accept that what Indy's saying might be right, tries to pull out. It's too late. Then the second they go through, he's like, I fucking did it. I nailed it.

I crushed it. I'm the champion. Yes. But then he realizes he's wrong. And he's just like, wow. But then he has so much time between realizing he's wrong to dying. Like if he, if there's like a. a, oh shit, I'm wrong, now I'm dead.

That feels tied to me. But like, why isn't he making the decision? Anyway, that just feels like a little disconnected. A lot of the indie villains have that. And I think it's kind of, I think a lot of times Indies villains are like Fun House Mirror versions of him. Yeah. Like these warped.

They're before the grace sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, when you look at all of these other guys that, you know, wanted to find the Ark of the Covenant or wanted to find the the Holy Grail

for these for these various reasons they become obsessed with the actual thing and they lose kind of sight of everything else going on around them which is how Andy ends up beating them.

Mads Mikulsin in this he has like an incredibly ambitious fucking goal. He wants to go back in time and take over Germany

to win World War II. That is breathtaking. But what I love is he wants to go back in time and kill Hitler, which is like I just do a good enough job. It's a joke time travel trope. Let's go kill Hitler is like a classic. I love that they're like, yeah,

that's our thought. So by the time, That's such a desperate thing to want to accomplish that there's like nothing that can, there's no substitute for it. There's nothing besides just direct mission accomplishment, there's absolutely zero in substitute. You can't be like, oh, well, at least we went back and then we can find some cool stuff and get back in there and give it another shot. No, you have to win the fucking situation there. And those guys, they normally die with their ambitions. Indy's ambition always is the greater good of humanity,

which is this stuff should be studied and put in a museum and stuff like that. These guys are so selfish that that ends up what kills them. And they always die irrationally. They always die from what they don't know. Selfish, but also just misunderstanding the thing. Like that's like Indiana Jones knows more than they do or Henry Jones Sr. knows more than they do or whatever about the nature of the thing that they're looking for.

But because he's more focused though. Yeah. They are so hell bent on having the thing and beating Indiana Jones to the thing that they're not concentrating on the thing. Like if you, if you'd have been really concentrating on the Holy Grill, you fucking know that there were no fucking diamonds in it, bro. But like you're you're obsessed with just beating him and getting there and you're not really anyway. Right. Because, well, no, no, I think we're saying the same thing. You're focused on the power.

Right. and not failing to understand the totality of the object. You know what I mean? And that I think, you know, again, Mal and I have talked about this a lot as it pertains to, like, I don't know, the likes of Voldemort or various other villains and genre stories where it's like a thing that's like beneath your notice or, you know, that sort of thing. Like they're all standing in Archimedes' tomb. And does Voler take the time to look at the watch, to see the world? watch his own watch on the wrist of... His fucking watch!

You know, no, right? Indy clocks it. Indy thinks about what it might mean, because Indy's paying attention. And the, you know, that, like, one of the great moments in the entire history of the franchise, even though Henry Sr. was obsessed

with the grail. That was another great moment in Dial of Destiny, of course, is like, the why are you chasing the thing that drove your father crazy? Wouldn't you exchange? Which calls back to that and those patterns. that recurns that recurred really wonderfully. But, like, the, the, Elsa thought she had a prize, like, what did you find? Illumination. And for that to be, ultimately, the true inheritance,

even though they had a great divide for decades of their lives, that's the inheritance. That's the legacy that's passed down from senior to junior, right? The pursuit of illumination of some sort of understanding. And it is, I think, to the Funhouse Mirror part, like, that's why Belloc is one of the stronger villains, I think, in the whole franchise and Raiders, because he's like, literally, like, and he'll voice it repeatedly. We're the same. Right. We are the same.

We want the same thing. And it's like, what is the distinction ultimately? It's that. It's what are you pursuing and why. I think that's why Ilsa is, like, Donovan is fun, you know, and shout out to Donovan. I love him. But, like, that's why Dr. Ilsa Schneider is also an incredible villain, right? Like, she's an ally for so long and then she's not because, like, she and Indy have so much fun

solving these puzzles together. And then she's like, you and I. Is that the only thing they have fun to? Yep. Just those two things. And nothing else. Is it? Nope.

That was a, that was a time and young van's life. Just going, just digging through the cat of combs together. That's it. You know what I mean? But yeah. Okay. Let's talk. Can we just, can we just, can we move on?

Can we just in this, just kind of like a 20-second van latehaten problematic corner just that only exists in 1980 or 89? Of course. just the breathtaking amazingness of the scene where they realize that they've both been with her.

Yeah. That she's talking to it. That's like so amazingly toxic. I was the next man. Just grace. So good. Our lovely producer, Steve, was texting me about how

Mads-Mickleson is too hot to be a Nazi and I was like, this is a, this is a legacy of Indiana Jones. Complicatedly hot Nazis. It's part of it all. It's part of it. Let's talk about genre. This is the ringerverse after all. So like every single Indiana Jones movie has an element of genre, be it aliens or voodoo or grail nights or eventual ghosts or whatever the case may be. This is time travel. You know, the Midnight Boys just had a great episode about time travel properties. Van, then I want to start with you. Sort of like, how does this work as a time travel story?

How does it use the genre or the tropes of time travel to tell the story he wants to tell? I think using, so I thought it would be a more direct time travel movie than it actually ended up being. I thought that this movie would be about some sort of device to where we would see indie. at different points in time. There was actually a point in the movie because the movie has a high-ass body count. Like, there's people getting killed everywhere in the movie.

Like, people get killed in Indy's office and then Antonio Bandera's entire crew gets shot up. Like, it has a high body count of just, like, collateral damage in this situation. So I thought watching a movie that there would be some sort of thing that would happen

that would, like, he would go back in time and save all of those people. I was like, there's no way they're going to just kill everybody in the movie. People die in Indiana Jones movies, but. Not Antonio Vandaris level. Yeah, I felt like it was more people died in this one than normal. You know what I mean?

Less violently and horrifyingly. Like, no faces melted off. No hearts were pulled out of a human chest cavity. It was kind of tame in some respects. But those are the bad guys, though. Like, enormous bad guy hench. gets handcuffed to a grill under water.

They drown. They drown. Teddy had to learn how to swim him somehow. Bro, don't. I love Teddy. Teddy was great. They drowned. So I thought that there would be something in a movie where he would go back in time and those deaths would be undone.

And I say all that to say, there really wasn't a time travel movie at all. It was about finding cracks and about like renewal. And I guess that has to do with. time. I think time, I think we are relationship with Harrison and with the property, we have to discuss time at this time, but the movie says style of destiny,

not time travel situation. I think the movie is about more about destiny than it is about time travel. You were always going to come here. You were always going to get here. This is where you were, this is a part of your life, and your life is both your past, your

present, and your future. And I think that's kind of what the movie is about. I didn't really come away, I wouldn't even, of course, time travel is in it, but this is not like a time travel film to me in that sense at all. What do you guys think? Yeah, I feel similarly about it. I don't know that I'll think about it long term as a time travel story, though they do go back to 21 BC in the siege of Syracuse. That's the thing that happens in the movie in a way that I like really enjoyed. And I think that ultimately the genre aspects of indie movies, like, you know, Raiders in Last Crusade in particular, it's much more of a religious thing.

Obviously, we go just hardcore alien hive mind in Crystal Skull. But the variance, you know, I enjoy that part of the franchise, and I like the way that Indy himself is always, like, wrestling with that question of belief, right? And that moment in this movie where he and Helena are talking about that, I don't believe in magic. But a few times in my life, I've seen things, things I can't. explain and I've come to believe it's not so much about what you believe, it's how hard you believe it. That idea is so central to the character to me and to the franchise. And the fact that

that is still something that he is wrestling with at 80, 79, right, is wonderful. And so for that to then be tied into his personal view of purpose and intention and ambition, I thought was lovely, like to think, okay, I've spent my whole life thinking about the past, the past where I belong now. I'm just another relic too. And for someone to say, for Helena to say, like, no, you belong back here with us and all of those things can be true at once was really great. And like you think about one of the great moments, you know, the leap of faith, like taking the step in Last Crusade, right? Penitentine, man, a penitent man, building. We build, we build, we build, we build, we get to that leap and his ability to take that step. It's, this has always been so

central to his journey and his cynicism and his skepticism never really fades, but he has to make room in tandem with that for something inexplicable that has happened around him. And like the flashback, not the early, not the opening train sequence, but in the middle of the movie, when he's thinking back on the day that Basil gave him the dial, made him swear that he would destroy it and that the fight that they have, I thought, was really interesting, like, specifically about, like, what is science? Because I think, you know, one of the things that we always love talking about on our pods, we've talked about this a lot in the Thor pods, because it's actually incorporated into the first Thor film when Thor and Jane are talking about, like,

Arthur C. Clark and magic is just science that we don't understand yet. And I've always enjoyed the way that the indie franchise plays with that idea. And this was just a very thematically rich way to explore it. Plus, I love a paradox. I love a paradox in a story. Love it. Can I tell you something? You know the one thing that annoyed me more than anything in the movie? Like, how can this motherfucker still be cynical? I'm sorry, y'all. He took the grill water and poured it on his father's stomach. He'll have a dominole win. Yeah. It's spit a bullet out. I get it. I like that part when he said that It's like, I was like, Indy, bro.

You watched fucking the goddamn Ark of the Covenant release like a fucking weapon of mass destruction. The girl healed your dad's wounds. You drank, you saw a guy protecting the grill that had been there for centuries. But man, that's like, that's the key to the character. Because he, that's one of the things that stops him from becoming one of those zealots. Is that he's still going to say, like, how is a thing? thing possible. Let's take a moment to interrogate it and ask what is what is possible in the world and what allows things to be possible in the world. What I think circles, what I think circles back

to our conversation about like the what the villains get wrong and what Indy gets right and stuff like that is. And this is such a key. There's this great essay that my friend Matt Patches did years ago about this concept of like Spielberg face, which is a face slightly upturned to the camera, eyes wide, baston, like, wonderment, right? This is a, you know, like, it's Sam Neal seeing a dinosaur for the first time. It's like all, you know, it's like seeing E.T., like all this sort of stuff. And so that is such, even though this is not a Steven Spielberg movie, that moment of wonderment for Indiana Jones, for Harrison Ford, when he sees the thing, when he sees the

grail night for the first time, when he sees, you know, et cetera, et cetera, when he sees aliens, I guess. when he sees when he sees Archimedes or the Battle of Syracuse or whatever it is that moment of wonder

is so key because like Helena kind of shares it but no one has it the way that Indy has it and like He can always be awed anew because he always leaves room for doubt.

That's a beautiful way to put it but I think also it's just sort of like to Vans earlier point oftentimes our villains will have a similar moment of a gleam in the eye but it's a gleam for something else

It's a gleam for power and stuff like that. And for him, it's just a hunger for knowledge, right? Like, this is what I've always dreamed of. And I could be here and I could learn all of this and just, like, bask in it and study it. I think the time travel element, I agree, this is not a time travel movie. I would not call it a time travel movie. And what is so key about the way the genre is used, and I think, I'm sorry, I'm just going to like keep rebutting your crystal skull is not so bad take, Mallory. I think something that Crystal Skull gets really wrong is that it tries to keep, like, in making.

I didn't say Crystal Skull was good. I said it was deeply flawed. I said not. I just said not that bad. Not as bad as we remember. Not as bad as we remember. Ding, ding, ding. That's bad as we remember.

But Cape Plage just shows up and she's like using psychic powers from the beginning. I think it's a mistake to make that film so genre when I think what's beautiful about Indiana Jones film is you're just like, we're actually studying history. we're doing historical shit. We're like, before Dan Brown was Da Vinci coding, we're doing this, like, all this sort of stuff. And then you get your dash of genre and your moment of wonder and confronting the way in which your scientific pursuits bump up against the unexplainable, be it faith or something else. And that's what I think this movie does so well. Like, it's just the perfect, you know, like grace note of genre on top of everything.

But something that time travel in general, um, helps us the kind of story that it deals so well in his stories of like regret, right, remorse. Can I do it again? Can I fix it? And that will bring us into the next point I would talk about, which is good old mutt. And the way in which this film very brilliantly does not brush aside a big mistake, which was the casting of Shilabuff or the writing of mutt, whichever you prefer, like, that character doesn't work. Whoever you want to blame, that character doesn't work, right? And so, cleanly getting him out of the franchise by killing him off screen, it's a little

funny on the one hand. On the other hand, turning it into an incredibly poignant moment and to go back to what Mallory was saying about, like, all the things we enjoy about Harrison Ford, the scar and the chin, the imperfections, something Mal and I talked about a lot on that screen draft podcast we did was the vulnerability, that, like, for all is masculine, gruffness and blah blah. Harris and Four cries actually quite a lot in movies. And when he does, it really matters because it comes from such a gruff, masculine,

cool, charismatic, sexy figure. And so it's why Van and I agree that regarding Henry is a great movie, but it's also why when he's talking to Helena about mutt and he's talking about his regrets and what he would have done, you know, if I could change anything, this is what I've done. He has this massive regret, the loss of his son, right? or he has a ton of regrets in his life. I'm sure he would go back and do his relationship with his father differently. I'm sure there's so many things that he would do differently.

But the point of the movie is you can't go back. You can only go forward. And that's what like that's the best thing a time travel story can do for us is that it goes back to one of my favorite storytelling elements, which is like things matter because they end. things matter because they happened and you can't change them. Things matter because they're finite, right? And you cannot live on a time loop forever and just go back and back and refine and refine and refine. People die and they need to stay dead,

even if they're Antonio Banderas and like inexplicably in this movie because why would you use Antonio Banderas that way, aka not at all? So, yeah. Van, any thoughts or feelings about mutt in this movie? Here's the thing about mutt. I think it's interesting. I think one of the things the movie's saying is, not only can you not go back, you shouldn't want to.

You know what I mean? You find purpose in the now and what you still have left to live. But here's the thing about mutt. Mutt represented a time where we didn't know what we wanted. Just, yeah, we didn't know what we wanted. What we thought we wanted was New Indiana Jones. We thought we wanted somebody to take the mantle over. It was a real interesting time.

I remember listening to Nipsey Hustle talk about the rappers from that time, and he was like, bro, like, we had somebody. started rapping and things were the old way and then social media and all of that stuff came while we were doing it. So he's like, we had to learn how to fly the plane while it was still in the air. Everybody else is of different errors.

So they bring Shia LaBuffin and he, for all of his problems and they are plentiful, was just brimming with charisma on screen. Like it was Tom Hanks-esque. He was just, he could just pull things together and it was like,

Okay, I could see that guy being Indiana Jones one day. I could see him pulling it off. That was like Wall Street 2. They were using him to kind of bring back everything, right? He was in all he was the young guy, the next guy, and then it didn't fucking work. And then we realized, you know what, we don't want nobody else to be Indiana Jones. There's one, Indiana Jones. And I think, I think killing him is, to me, was indicative of killing the notion that anybody could step in and feel that,

role besides Harrison Ford. And look, all of these movies are, they represent the times that they were in. We talked about the Raiders and the Last Crusade. Those movies are like where I was from in the Bible Belt. They were looked at as Christian adventures. Like at a time when in the 80s were the religious right. And evangelicals had a hold over American politics in a very specific way. So you could go to a movie and when the Ark of the Covenant, like, kills the bad guys at the end or when the Holy Grail kills the bad guys at the end, that's going to resonate with people in a very specific way.

It's like I think this movie represents, like resonates with me and other people in a very specific way because we're at a time now when we're not like sure, like, what our destiny is. and if the past was better or if the future is going to be better or if we should be grounded in the now. I just think the child above mutt character just didn't build to any of that stuff. It was a weird thing where we thought we needed to turn things over or we thought that we had enough, that we were solid enough with the new group of people that one of them could do the thing that the nostalgia stuff did for us. And I don't think that happened. really don't think that any of the things that were supposed to be awashed and a new at that point. They tried at a couple of different times.

I remember when they were like maybe Renner, like Renner with Jeremy, well, Jason Bourne. And Mission Impossible. And Mission Impossible. They're going to turn all of this stuff over. I remember then they said, hey, we might give Chris Pratt. Yeah. And we were like, hell no. No, you won't.

So I think this movie just made a conscious decision to be like, we're killing that idea that. that anybody could wear this fedora other than this guy. We might get another one of these when he's 85 and he's literally like Professor Xavier on a hover wheelchair

going through the adventures. You're not going to get on. What I am obsessed, I mean, like, we know that at the end of Crystal Skull, Mallory's favorite movie, but doesn't get the fedora, right?

Like, you know, Indie takes it back. I know he doesn't. What I love at the end of this movie is that Helena puts on her own hat at the, like, one of the last shots and she's down on the street,

she puts on her own like jaunty little stylish cap because she's a fashion icon and you know he grabs his his fedora but she's like I'm not trying to wear the fedora I'm not trying to be any there's a lot of elements of india in her that mallory and I have talked about right you know like mallory's talking about the the relentless lestiness but there's also you know like the the the the brilliance like you know the cool the charm like all this sort of stuff the way talking yourself out of a situation and talking yourself back into another situation like there's all these ways that reason why she is a spiritual successor, but they're not trying to jam it down our throats as like this must be the next thing. Like if this movie did a gazillion dollars at the box office,

I could see them being like, Phoebe, do you want your own movie? But they couldn't call it Indiana Jones and the, you know what I mean? You have to call it something else. Mel, what did you want to say? You know, of all the things that don't work about Crystal Skull, Irina, Mac, Mack, the hive mind. the monkey swinging through the farce. On and on the list goes, the single greatest sin, even though he doesn't keep it at the end, is the fucking gall

to have but pick up the fedora for even an instant. Like, it's an outrage. It is genuinely an outrage. And I think that, like, knowing that people felt that way about it and have felt that way now for a decade and a half, that more, like, organic, gentle exploration of Helena,

I keep wanting to say Helena, of Helena as a potential better fit for inheriting the mantle in whatever form that takes, was one of the best parts of Dial of Destiny, because it isn't forced. Like, it isn't literalized in that way, Joe, as you're saying. And, yeah, like, one of the great little zingers in the movie is during the Morocco chase when... Indies like, how did you get this way?

And I'm paraphrasing, I'm missing probably a couple of the descriptors that she ripped off. But she's like, what way? Resourceful, independent, beautiful, right? And it's like instant icon stuff. That was just the best. So you have, I think, a more natural era parent should they choose to go that way. My feeling on it is that like if they decide to center of franchise in the future around Phoebe Waller Bridge, I would be delighted because I thought she was fantastic. And I thought the character was wonderful.

I would also, I think maybe we can all say, like, we just had this beautiful bow on this, like, decades-long experience. Let's, like, just sit with that for a minute and not rush out the next thing in the IP machine. But in terms of the mutt of it all, part of what made it expertly executed is that the Helena relationship is so successful and that she is such a strong, dynamic winning, captivating character. who's already got her own sidekick and Teddy, et cetera. But, like, what I really strongly agree with what you said, Joe, just the wallop of that moment where when she's asking Indy, like, what would you have done differently? And he's talking about mud.

I mean, it was a beautiful performance from Harrison Ford, and it shredded me because it's not just about mud. It's about him. It's about what he's learned. There's a great song Exploder episode about father and son. One of my favorite songs from all time. And it's of it's there's this fascinating part in it about how Kat Stevens when he's saying it again at a different part of his life, sang it from the parent from the dad's point of view instead of the son's point of view. And I thought that was like one of the most interesting things I've ever heard not only about like your relationship to the art that you make, but the way that it evolves over time, right? And the way relationships involve. And when Indy is talking about mud and his grief and his pain, he's also talking about. And he's also talking about. Marion, right?

He's like, and we don't, you know, we're not watching this on streaming. We're singing in the theater, so we don't have the script to come through and get these exact quotes. But he basically says, like, in response to what would you tell him, that he would die, that his mother would find no end to her grief and that his father would be helpless to console her. Helpless to console her. Like to carry that with you that you're not only your grief, right? Because he's like he did it. He enlisted to make me mad. So there's the guilt and the grief, but the inadequacy.

of not having been able to push through that with Marion. What I love him more about that. I mean, it's such a good moment. But what I love even more about that is that my interpretation watching in the second time is that he's actually wrong in that characterization. Because when Marion comes back at the end for him and she says, are you back? Right. And she means like, are you back?

There is an interpretation with that you could say like, are you able to. But it feels more like he's like she finds no end to the grief. He couldn't push through. Yeah, exactly. She finds so much of her grief. It's almost like she retreated. But from Marion's point of view, he's the one who retreated into his grief. And so, like, can we connect again?

Can we find each other? And the thing that I love about both Marion, the Marion moment, which genuinely made me cry both times. And the mutt of it all is that it reminds me of what the best, and we talk about this a lot when we talk about the MCU, what the best franchises do, which is that they will wrap their arms back around. both their weakest and their strongest points and make them feel intentional. So the loss of mutt now becomes this profound thing. And in the first three movies, right, Harrison Ford is a James Bond-esque, different babe and every movie kind of guy. Crystal Skull tries to make the point of, no, it was really Marion the whole time.

And this movie much more successfully says, no, really it was Marion the whole time. What's in his bag at the beginning? It's the hat and the whip. and the photo of Marion are in the bag. He's still wearing his ring, right? He can't take the ring off. But I mean in the very beginning, in the flash check when it's like years after he and Marion has broken up, there's the photo of Marion in his bag with a hat and the whip.

This is the uniform. It's the hat and the whip and Marion. And so then it makes the whole story going back to the beginning of, let's admit, problematic relationship between Harrison Ford and a girl who fucked when she was a teenager. But it makes it like a love story for the ages. So, Van, anything you want to say about that? Well, I mean, look, a couple of things that when I thought about the father and son

and the marrying thing that jumped out to me is I thought it was probably hard for Indy that it was his son's call to adventure that got him killed. That it's always difficult in what I've seen of father and sons when the fatal flaw of the son ends up being such a fundamental part of the father.

like I love to do extreme sports my son loves to do him he dies racing the car you know what I mean it's like stuff like that so he wanted to go serve his country but also the kid was an adrenaline junkie and he liked he probably felt

that thing inside of him that we want him to go out and be a part of that is probably the part of Indy that he most saw in his son and then he dies right he couldn't unendie his son and his son passes away. And then with the Marion thing, it's like, I think a lot for someone like Indiana Jones,

who is defined by the adventures that he does take, I think people in his life probably define him by the adventures that he doesn't take, by the challenges that he doesn't meet. And the fact that he didn't endeavor while he had endeavored to stick it out against the toughest of odds to find the Holy Grail or to find the Dial of Destiny or whatever those clear skull things were or like all of that stuff right but he didn't do that in order

to make his wife whole when she says are you back I felt like she's saying are you back on this adventure and journey of us finding each other again are you like are you are you back and re-engaged into

this thing have you run out of distractions and excuses to make this thing right here as important and as as triumphant as any of that other stuff. And so to me, that's why that scene didn't have to be some kind of big, teary-eyed thing. Just as like it's not a big teary-eyed thing to ask Indiana Jones to go to another continent

and find some relic. It's not a big teary-eyed thing to ask Indiana Jones to participate in this. He's just got to want to do it and believe that he can. And he can do anything. And that concludes, like, marrying his marriage. I think we're almost done here.

I do want to shout out one small moment that made me laugh the first time and the second time, which is in the beginning, in the opening, we meet him in the 60s. And we see him looking at his divorce papers and he moves the magnet on his fridge in front of Marion's photo on the fridge to be like, I don't want to look at your face. And then in the kitchen at the end when she's back, very subtly, the camera does not linger on it at all. He moves the magnet off her photo to be like, I never put a magnet on your face to hide you. I'm so glad you're back, honey. It's fantastic. Malany, any other moments or points that you want to make sure we cover before we go? I mean, we got to talk about the elbow kiss,

the callback to, you know, because God damn it, Indies there anywhere, it doesn't hurt. And that's, like, the good kind of nostalgia, right, to go back to something that's, like, so central to the viewing experience for indie fans and then give it that slight twist of him asking her this time. It was just like so sweet and it made me laugh and it made me think back to all the memories that we had with the character and like there are a lot of really cheerful moments in the movie that do that, a lot of sad ones. I mean, listening to you both just now, like talking about Marion and Indy and that, you know, again, like the difference of being a child versus a parent, like, when we think back to Henry Sr. and Henry Jr., and it's a brief, a brief acknowledgement,

but there is a conversation about like the loss of Henry Sr.'s wife and Henry Jr.'s. mother and that, like, that clearly was not a thing that they were able to talk about and work through together. It was just this hole, right, that ultimately ended up eating everything around it. And for those beats and patterns to keep recurring in the character's life, and then to juxtapose the things that, oh, okay, these are the traps we fall into. These are the mistakes that we make time and time again because that's what it means to be human, right? And can you surround yourself with people or trust people or open yourself up enough to other people so that they can allow you to feel comfortable trying to do something differently or push through those tendencies.

The indie movies get this specifically right, I think. They give us that in tandem with showing us not just the things that are always the same, but the things that really do change. So, like, a little thing the movie did that I loved and thought was important in that respect the glimpse of his students, right? Because what's one of the first things that pops to your mind when you think of Raiders? It's the eyes closing, love you, right? It's the room for.

full of students who adore him, who deify him, who idolize him, want to fuck on. He's lost his mojo. Yeah. But it like evolves slightly movie over movie to the point where here he can't even get anybody to care. They just want to go participate in Moon Day and watch the news broadcasts that they wheel into his class. I think that's as much a commentary on the 1960s kids that it is on him and the fact

that he has completely lost his like ability to hold a room. You know what I mean? And they're all connected, though, because. Because that's part of how he assesses how he fits into the world, right? Like, what is the way that you make a mark on the thing around you if you've changed and the thing around you has changed? There's no constant then, right? It's all just variables. And the 60s was the adolescence of the country where the country was sort of reassessing what they were.

And them kids weren't trying to hear about the motherfucking holy girl. They was out there. They had the war. They had the moon. they had all of this promise of what are we now and there wasn't as much what were we the boomers that they had moved on from that. So I'll say this, this movie,

I always love singular scenes in movies. I'll point this scene out where the villain shows how fucked up they are. And it's never, and sometimes they do it easy. Like Jason, like Jason Isaac and the Patriot where he fucking kills the kid and like the first time we see him on screen, we're like, all right, dog.

Like, he's a bad motherfucker. We get it. But in this scene, it was Matt Miggleston, talking to this brother, this black man who had served his country in World War II and asked the question that that man had been asking himself ever since he came back home from the war. And it's a hard question to hear from a fucking Nazi, which is, was it worth it?

Like, how do you feel? Do you feel like you won? You know what I mean? You didn't win, Hitler lost. I mean, he's got his own thing. But he's essentially, like, approaching a very real question in such a debasing, dehumanizing way that at that very moment, I was thinking, I fucking can't wait till he gets it. I can't wait until it happens to this motherfucker. You talk to that brother like that.

He, like, fought for a country that doesn't love him and you throwing it in his face? I can't wait for it. I love that. And, you know, that's the last thing I'll say. And a shout out to also another Harrison Ford movie, 1995, Sabrina, Greg Kinnear. My mom loves that movie. I love that movie. Justice for Sabrina.

Love that movie. Van, let's do a podcast about Working Girl, okay? I would love to. We talk about every single minute of Working Girl. And we can bring Mal on for the scene where Harrison Ford changes his shirt and all the everyone shares. Joan Cusack, he's eating a hot dog. You think you can do this without me? And she has to reassure him. Sigourney Weaver. Pek everyone. He's got a connoissellness on like the corner of his mouth. That's a perfect hero. Joan Cusack, coffee, tea, me. No? Okay.

All right, let us go now to our conversation with James Mangle. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tramphia offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tramphia is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject trumphia, proper training is required. Tramphia is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis.

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That's great. Fantastic. Yeah, we were huge Harrison Ford fans and we were thrilled. So I want to start by asking you, outside of just the pure joy of getting to make an Indiana Jones movie in the first place, what were you most wanting to accomplish by telling this story? It's impossible to separate the thrill of making an Indiana Jones film from making this movie. It's also impossible to explain how as a, you know, a 13, 14-year-old boy was making Super 8. movies in upstate New York, listening to John Williams' records and watching Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas movies, how, and Harrison Ford being the star of them, that the kind of full

circle, you know, I always wanted to be a movie director since I was about that age and started playing with a camera. And these were my heroes. And, you know, when I was 17, I saw Raiders in my upstate theater. And I knew I wanted to be a movie director, but I certainly never thought I'd be directing a movie with the people who were working on that picture in front of me as my collaborators. So that it's an undeniable emotional connection

to the idea of stepping in and being part of something separate from all the business and creative considerations. The company of your heroes, making a movie and the company of people, you've idolized, who have been speaking to you through their work, at least, all your life, um, was an impossible thing to rule out, um, despite obviously the idea of kind of stepping in for Stephen is like, you know, pinch hitting for Babe Ruth. It's like a kind of, um, you know that you are the, you know that there, you are, um, you know that there's that the, that the, that,

The legend and the shadow of the person you're stepping in for is so extreme. I mean, he's probably without much argument the most famous and renowned filmmaker in the world. So the, for our entire lives. But when you asked me, your question was very specific, and I've given you a rambling answer, which is that what did I want to do with Indy? Well, what I felt was obvious to me was that my star was at that point in his late 70s, he's now 80, and that the movie had to in some way deal with his age. And I don't mean deal with it, like make jokes about it.

I mean, deal with it like it's just right there in front of you. And no matter how much all of us want to just live in the world of our entire lives or spent being 35, that's not reality. And so the challenge and the opportunity to me became trying to construct a movie that, of course, had the fun and the thrills and the action and the comedy that defined an Indiana Jones. film, but also wasn't one of those movies where you have an older actor pretending he isn't, and just doing miraculous things and that the actual issues and concerns and realities of life in your 70s are also present in the movie. Because I thought they were interesting questions. What does a hero, a grand golden age hero?

do in his, you know, sunset years as the world has changed around him and as, and as he has, of course, changed. And that, and, and the, how does he, is he kind of forgotten? Has the world moved on? Is the world so focused on rock and roll and moon landings and red menace and all this other stuff, that the things that he was primarily focused on for most of his life are now kind of more marginal to the culture at large, which to me even spoke to the way our current culture might interact with an Indiana Jones film,

which is there's this kind of dissonance between our kind of the current contemporary culture and the kind of hero that Indy is. That was wonderful. There are so many different places we could go from there. We have a lot of those elements

where things we were eager to talk to you about today. I guess there's no better place to go than Harrison Ford and spending a few more minutes on working with genuine icon Harrison Ford. Our guy is 80, still down to do a shirtless scene in a movie. You have to love it. He is starring in multiple blockbusters right now. He's making television shows.

He's on 1923. He's doing shrinking. He's just chewing up scenery on the press circuit. I feel like we are genuinely all fortunate to be alive right now enjoying this. So what was it like to work with Harrison Ford? period, but specifically accounting for all those elements you just laid out inside of this truly like pantheon iconic franchise and role. And during this period of his career, this like fortisance where he is so active in both really new ways and ways that connect to this like deeply rooted

nostalgia. I think the first thing I'd say is that Harrison has been a leading man for our entire lives, right? A kind of, as you say, iconic or a kind of larger than life. But part of how he got there and part of how he stayed there and part of what makes him him is that he doesn't think like a leading man. He doesn't think like, how do I look best or how does my character always look like he comes out on top? He's always, he's an actor before he's a leading man. And what I mean by that is his quest in work every day is how to undermine audience expectations, how to how to kind of play with his innate like ability that we all love him so much. He can kind of be a little bit more of a whiner or grumpy or a little bit, you know,

phobic or socially awkward, all these things and kind of eccentric. and that he tries to cut a path. You don't even need just Indiana Jones to see this. You can see it in what he did, really, with the kind of gigantic arrival he made for the public awareness as Hans Solo in Star Wars, how he's playing a kind of anti-hero, even though he's clearly the most dashing and determined and capable

of the key trio of that movie. There's a level of cynicism and selfishness that he is comfortable playing that might play against him. your idea of a hero, but also gives him a really great arc in that movie to play. And I think it's the same as true of Indy that he's kind of not necessarily from the first movie. It's clear he's not a genius at relationships. He's kind of book-focused.

He'd rather be alone in his study with papers and relics than in a party or interfacing with other people. that he's somewhat oblivious sometimes in his focus on his work to other people's feelings, that he's phobic about snakes and other things that he always looks for the easy way out of a fight before he has to take the hard way out. All of these things are reflections of Harrison's instincts that run counter to the way most kind of, certainly in the modern era, the most, the way most kind of costumed here. heroes interact with obstacles and foes when they just seem to kind of have the innate ability to just kick ass at all points and make a smart remark in between punches.

And that Indy and Harrison finds much more fascination throwing a punch that doesn't land or jumping downstairs and it hurts. And that that is part of what I think we all love about. Indy, what we all love about Harrison. The only other thing to answer your question is he's a wonderful man. He's a wonderful, charming man who loves his work, who loves the crew, who arrives every day on set. And as we're lighting goes, let's shoot this piece of shit. And what he means, of course, is just he's taking the piss out of the day and let's get on with making a movie.

And he's irreverent. He is unselfish in the sense of the way he works with the others. Crew and cast. He loves his work. Amazing. Another movie that Joanna and I hold dear, hold sacred, is Logan. And Logan and Dialett Destiny are very different films. They have very different intentions.

But both of them grapple with these. seismic figures who are confronting their relevance, confronting their mortality, confronting their role in it, as you noted already, this rapidly and drastically changing world. So what draws you to these kinds of stories to making movies that focus in some way on how legacies evolve over time and potentially how they conclude? It's such a tricky question because I'm sure there's some aspects, Freudian psychological aspects, somebody other than myself to get in touch with.

But there's another very simple craft-oriented answer, which is that I find too often that, for me, what people call superhero movies or summer blockbusters, have very little, or it feels very invented kind of Band-Aid character arcs for the characters. They, you know, they're having a squabble. Two of the team members are having a squabble. and by the end of the movie, they're good. But it's kind of like, it's hardly a blip. It's like an emotional arc that could be handled in a toothpaste commercial.

It's kind of not, it's not deep. And that to me, therefore, and to me, there were arcs in the best of the Indiana Jones films. Just to offer one example, you have a kind of secular scientist, obsessive bookworm in Indiana Jones who has this kind of, he's a Clark. who has a kind of life as a kind of adventurer on the side that he keeps secret and deals with all sorts of nefarious characters from around the world. But one thing he doesn't believe in is magic or spirituality. He views these things as objects of history. Of course, in that movie, he's come face to face with the miracle of the arc. And so the kind of arc of the character is also about a kind of scientific character coming to terms of the limits of his science.

At the same time, you're dealing with a character very much in theme who can't cope with relationships and comes into contact with the woman he loves most, Marion, and is forced to kind of reckon with the fact that he loves her, although he kind of can't say it, but you see when he thinks she's dead that he feels. like he lost his everything. So you can kind of understand that there's all these emotional contradictions in this character that are profound. So why did I try and wrestle with this theme in Dial of Destiny is kind of answered by the fact that I think it's incumbent upon me

to make the movie about something other than a kind of nostalgia fest of just watching an older indie kickass like he used to make a smart remark and that there's something. something of interest in this idea of what is a hero and how long can they be one and do we just avert our eyes when they get over 40 at that point and hire a new one and i mean that's what essentially the movie business does but the but the but is that is there something interesting in the fact that we that we can't quite cope with with growing older and we don't want to see it or

or see our heroes running into it, that very forbidden nature, and the fact that my star was in his 70s, said to me that there's something juicy in here that is less explored and will be challenging for fans. But I kind of have no choice to challenge, but to challenge them,

because at the same time, I can't hide that Harrison, you know, when we shot was 79 years old. And I don't want to, to. Part of the beauty of movies is the intimacy and the honesty you have a relationship the camera has with the actor. And if you're if you're kind of committed to a kind of fiction, even if it's kind of the

easier pill to swallow, it's a kind of lie. And the whole movie is living on a lie. We'd all get older. What happens to heroes when we get older? We have 28 movies about young, virile, perfect specimens jumping about. So also it's looking for something. It also gives the movie someplace to go. It's not like the whole movie has him hobbling around with a cane.

In fact, he never does. But that the movie has someplace to start with a guy who's lost his mojo, who feels like the world doesn't give a hoot anymore and has moved on. And whose own domestic situation like it usually is is in turmoil, meaning that's not a new thing. Indies always existed in some kind of interpersonal, you know, kind of mess when you start the movie. And so all that was the attraction. Obviously, Logan is a kind of somber, gritty, dark rumination on similar themes.

But also, you know, I find always, like, I know the movie everyone focuses on the fact that Logan died, but I always find the fact that he happened to die holding the hand of his daughter and feeling love for maybe the first time in his life for the last, maybe it's the last 30 seconds of his life, but the fact that he feels something pure and golden and warm and tender in his last moment is deeply romantic and a beautiful way

to relieve him of the pain and the burden he's felt being this time. kind of Frankenstein monster for the last 200 years. And so I saw the movie as dark and gritty Logan, but never some kind of hammer to the head of fans. I thought it was profoundly loving about who Wolverine is. Similarly, but differently, Indy is profoundly loving about who he is, but again, dealing with who he really is and not a kind of,

and that's, and I think. what Harrison does in our movie is lift him up. He gets reawakened into an adventure. And what we get to see is an old guy who, yes, the knees might hurt a little and he can't quite do this and that the same. But who gives a shit? He's Indiana Jones. And there's no one else like him, meaning there is no young guy. Like, it isn't like the movies where there's a new Indiana Jones just pops up and takes over. The world doesn't even think about needing men or women like that anymore. And it's gotten too cynical.

And so the assertion of a hero like that becomes really interesting to me. I absolutely love what you have to say about frailties and relationships as they pertain to any of my favorite stuff in the film, him reckoning with being not there for his son, a bad godfather, all this stuff, and all of that is sort of funneled

through the eyes of Phoebe Weller Bridges' character. So we wanted to talk about Helena a little bit this is a different type of chemistry co-lead for Indiana Jones, right? This is a different figure, but we're still curious if there was some kind of chemistry read involved with these two actors to make sure they would spark as well as they wind up doing. No, I don't do. Chemistry reads. It's the most frightening thing. I've never done anything like that on a movie. Because how can you measure chemistry on two people? Usually one already has the part, the other one's coming in, hoping to get it, and then what, they have to have chemistry on a dime?

Can you imagine any situation where you could have more challenged chemistry than if the, that it's a complete bullshit thing to do? The fact is that that Phoebe is such a miraculous character on her own and a brilliant creative force as well that I never really had a doubt. Also, both Harrison and I had seen both seasons of Fleabag and were kind of completely blown away. And she's such a force of nature. I really had no doubt that she would have, she would be fine with him and push buttons. And in many ways, I saw her as a kind of extension, a modernist extension of Marion in the sense of kind of fearless and uninterimitated and just as smart as him. but also a generational representative of kind of our new modernist thinking,

which is things are more about advantage and cash and position in the world. And this kind of idealism that Indy represents will get you killed and won't make you safe. And that that relationship, I mean, in essence, she's kind of his hand solo. And the, and the, I can only say I saw, I also as I was writing with my partners on the script, there's a great old Preston Sturgis movie called The Lady Eve with Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda. And Barbara Stanwick plays this card shark, this kind of con woman who Henry Fonda falls in love with. But the characterization Barbara Stanwyck does in that movie, because she has a heart, you know she has a heart and you know she doesn't like what she's doing, but she's doing it for survival. And there was something about that that I see Phoebe as a kind of very logical extension of some of these great, great movie stars of the 30s and 40s.

Kate Hepburn, Barbara Stanwick, et cetera, who are kind of beautiful and brash and have personalities of their own and are intelligent and dangerous. There are people who you might, you might, there are women who, if you get involved with them, they might destroy you, but you might have a very good time while you get destroyed.

And I thought she would be a whirlwind in this part. And honestly, when they first came to me with the proposition doing the movie, and I started to sketch out a story that involved a goddaughter. My condition to my producers was like, you have to get her. We had no other choice. I didn't have a backup. I had nothing else. I just wanted them to get Phoebe to do the movie. Or at least get our script in front of her and then let me try and convince her to do the movie.

While we're on the Helena frontier, and you mentioned, Marion and these consequential people across different periods of Indy's life, we're really curious because there's, I think, this internal dissonance and this dilemma as a fan watching the movie. Like, what choice do you want the characters to make? Where do you want Indy to end up? And we're curious, was there a moment where you considered ending the film a different way and having Indy stay in the past?

This is the ending we wrote two years ago. And no, but when we were writing the ending, obviously, a million, you know, there's, there's, when you start writing anything, you don't know exactly how you're going to land it. You just start keep working. And there were moments where I thought about, I thought maybe they're going to end up going back to Germany and he'll stop Mads from doing what he's doing. But I felt like we already did that with the opening. So I kind of go, what, I'm just going to be doing a. reprise of the same action you saw at the beginning. And then,

but also, I felt like the plot engine of the movie is one thing, but the character engine is bigger in these movies, that you care about the people. I never really considered him staying. Because

it seemed to me to be a kind, it would have been a kind of suicide by time warp. And the, and the, and kind of grim. Like, is he really going to be happy watching people? Like even Phoebe says, you know, with leeches and blah, blah,

like watching people haul dung around in carts and slaves. No. And what use is that knowledge to him if he's trapped in the time it's happening? The whole thing seems more like the impulse of a guy who doesn't know what he would be going home for. You know, and so what has to be solved for the movement. is the fact that as the adventure seems to be resolving itself, there isn't the life he would return to when he was younger isn't there for him. And so what is there for him? And that's, it seemed to me that the most powerful thing we can say about growing older, about Indy, about all of it

is that it's family. It's who we love. That the thing in the end, the people, hands we're holding as we exit this world, I guess not unlike Logan, is our relationships and our loved ones and that they're the connection. They carry on our memory. They are who we can teach and who teach us. And they've shared our lives with us. They know what we've been through. And so for me, in the end, a movie like this is not the plot gets resolved and then the, you know, often in movies there's like a place where what has been driving the plot forward gets resolved but then there's an emotional thing that needs to get resolved and I find too often in movies we just focus on the plot we resolve the nefarious character who is going to destroy the world

or whatever but what's the where does this land on our heroes what is the effect of all this on them if that's an answer if that's an answer no it's a great answer and I just want to you to know that when Marion and India have their reunion. I cried. I literally cried at the end. I've never cried an Indian. I've never cried a lot of this. Yeah.

Wonderful. Speaking of people who are near and dear to Mallory and yours, truly, we want to talk to you. We love Mads Mikulsson, but we love Boyd-Holbrook. We are, like, massive Boyd-Holberg fans on this podcast. You obviously already used him masterfully in Logan. We just love him whenever he shows up. But I'm very curious, actually, about this character.

he's playing because I love when we meet him, he's studying German and seems like you've talked very eloquently about the Nazi component as sort of this elemental component of an Indiana Jones story and how you wanted to evolve that. There's this great great quote you had where you said, whether they're called one thing or another, these things don't die away. And so you've got Boyd's character is almost this like, gross to say, like Nazi fan boy. Like he's like, I want to do this. Absolutely. He's a southern fried Nazi fan. boy trying to learn German and hang out with his with his with his heroes um so yeah i was wondering if you could talk about that character and like why why boyd's the best man for the job here well boyd's

always the best man for the job so that's real simple but uh but the to me the the idea the idea of what nazis would be in the late 60s in the united states seemed to me that it had to get more complicated. It wasn't just going to be a bunch of Germans in uniforms planning, you know, some kind of invasion. It would be they've infiltrated our world. They've, they're us. They're part of the world. And whether they're planning a new rising or not, they're in the fabric of us. They're not just an enemy coming from Germany. They are something that, to the degree, So that it not only explains Boyd's character, but also Mads, himself, who is a rocket scientist helping us get to the moon. As Werner von Braun, who was a full-on Nazi in the war effort of the Germans, became a kind of became a central figure in getting in the rocket science that took us to the moon and into orbit.

And so a lot of that was trying to address what is the big difference. And I thought what I think a little of the challenge they had on Crystal Skull is that the first three movies exist in perfect harmony. I'm talking about Raiders, Temple of Doom and Last Crusade, with their time and their setting, meaning you've got John's kind of Golden Age score. You've got Harrison, kind of this kind of funky Bogart in a fedora riding on horses and to that music and battling Nazis who are 100% evil and the allies are 100% good. And the style the movies are shot in is a kind of classical Golden Age Hollywood style. So you've got this tremendous unity and harmony of form. The second the movies moved into the 50s, as in Crystal Skull, Stephen had an additional challenge, which I knew I was going to have, which is modernism has arrived.

The culture is no longer one of kind of good guy, bad guy, allies, Nazis, the red scare, real politic, nuclear power, modern art, rock and roll, individualist culture, a sense of kind of a youth revolution among young people, a kind of post-war re-evaluation of what's all of that is what Indy's operating in. And it makes it much more of a challenge for the filmmaker to hold together the stylistical armature or structure and touches of the older films because you've now entered this period where golden age scores don't belong in the 50s. That's where on the waterfront and the wild one and, you know, the Elvis Presley, Reveita Las Vegas. These are the, this is, it's not that period anymore. And now you're imposing this kind of, it's almost like a toupee. You're imposing this look of the past into the present. And it can kind of look what I mean by, it's not like it to pay. It looks like one.

It could feel like a sticker or a kind of stick on. And so my, you know, I kind of had this idea that that's part of the reason I wanted to do this very large opening sequence was to give everyone their full golden age experience to the best I could with technology and et cetera. not being Stephen, but doing the very best I can, and then dropping us into 1969. And, you know, one of the early discussions I had with John is we thought, well, maybe the indie theme is going to be gone for a while once we arrive in 1969, just like he doesn't have his mojo. So we get it out. We really bum, bum, bum, we let you have it all in the opening. And then we land in 1969, and it's kind of more of a conspiratorial 70s movie. of about an old professor who gets roped into some kind of weird plot with a dark Nazi figure

and the United States government is involved and some relation of his who's stealing something from him and they're chasing and he gets pulled in. And as he gets pulled in and puts on his hat and finds his mojo, the music kind of starts to bubble up with his own awakening and rejuvenation, if you will. And that that charting of the movie, I thought, allowed us to handle that bump where you come into the modern world and the look and feel of a classic indie movie

would feel like false, potentially, if we didn't earn it, if that makes any sense, through the character growth in the movie. Wonderful. Okay, well, we think we're down to our last minute here. Our last question we've chatted a lot about, evolutions. We've chatted a lot. Well, we've got all day. Yeah. We're happy to say a chat.

We've chatted a lot about evolutions, a lot about endings, but I think we would regret it if we didn't ask you about the beginning of something. The birth of the force, as you have described the subject of your impending Star Wars movie. So what, if anything, can you tell us about, like, what drew you to that as the focus of your Star Wars story and what's most exciting to you about getting to make a Star Wars movie? Well, it's a world, obviously, as from the very beginning of our interview, you know, has been incredibly influential on me and George and Stephen and Harrison and John Williams are all now friends and parts of my life. So it's kind of the – it's a miracle of my own journey that I've kind of come this far. But that original movie changed my life, episode four, as they say. And the, but what's my, I'm really aware, you know, as we've discussed, I've worked in franchise world here and certainly in the Marvel sense with Wolverine. And I know what I'm, I think I'm better at and worse at or kind of where I'm my strengths lie.

And I think that I'm good. I feel most comfortable. It actually has less to do with my strengths. I feel most comfortable when I'm not a Rubik's Cube guy. Let's put it that way. So if you're making a movie where you have to make sure you do this because that happens here, and you have to make sure you do that because that happens in episode, blah, blah, blah. And you have to make sure that you show to that there's so much, there's so many kind of, not just fan service, but lore service and that you almost can't move.

It's very hard to tell a story in an environment where every move you make challenges some kind of precept that's already been set in place. So part of what was what was driving me when I proposed this to Kathy Kennedy was just something really interesting to me that also was far enough away from everything else that the movie could be a movie. It could just be, it could just start and take us and introduce entirely new cast, entirely new world. And, and, and that everything wouldn't be a kind of curtain call for someone you met elsewhere, but would be a kind of a fresh Star Wars movie in this world. And the other thing I thought of is that I think all the best ones kind of have their own goal,

in the sense of their own, all the best movies in a franchise to me, all franchises seem to know what they are, Because franchise is not a genre and superhero is not really a genre. It's just, it's like, it's like comic book movie. Why is that, do we call movies based on novels novel movie? Right. The reality is, I mean, obviously, comic book movie defines kind of Greek gods made as modern heroes kind of thing.

But for me, Star Wars, there's this kind of religious, spiritualistic aspect to Star Wars that George built in from the very beginning, that to me said, what if we, I just said to Kathy, what if we made the Ten Commandments of Star Wars? What if we made this kind of biblical movie about the people who first found this and how they contended with it, wrestled with it, how it affected them, and what it liberated them from, or how it hurt them, that this milieu and this world, and also being more than 20,000 years before any of the movies,

the look and feel is going to be not the same thing we've seen. It'll be in the family. It will be leading to what happens, but it will be its own universe made with the passion and the iconography, the language of Star Wars, the visual language, but also with the freedom,

which is what I'm, always looking for the freedom to make something and not be just servicing previous commitments to hand off to something else in a universe, as it were. Obviously, it's a story that would be handing off to the entire universe in this sense, although there's 25,000 years in between, but to me it's a chance to just have a little air, you know, as you're trying to kind of figure out the story, which I think helps usually. make a better one. Excellent.

Well, thank you so much. This is wonderful. Pleasure to meet you both. Thank you, thank you, Mallory. This was a joy for us. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, that is it for this episode of House of Midnight, Indiana Jones, the Dial of Destiny. Come back, never leave this feed, essentially, because Jess will be here with a video. Mint additional will be covering The Witcher. We'll be back with our Secret Invasion 2 for next week.

And I just, I can't leave this without doing my really shitty Sean Connery in Preston, so I will just say, I should really remembered my Charlemagne and say thank you to our producer, Steve Allman. Thank you to Orina McFell for his production work on this episode. And thank you, of course, always to join me a dinner round for his work on the social. We'll be back sooner than you think with another adventure. Bye.