Why It Took 15 Years For Harrison Ford To Say Farewell With Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny

Harrison Ford loves playing Indiana Jones. It's clear as day when he talks about the character in interviews. Henry Walton Jones, Jr. is someone you would have to love playing to do so more than once, much less several times across nearly 45 years. He suffers so many scrapes and bruises over the course of his archaeological adventures ("You call this archaeology?" as Henry Jones, Sr. bemusedly asks his son in the middle of the tank skirmish from "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade") that it almost makes Bruce Campbell's legendary suffering in the "Evil Dead" franchise seem like a pleasure cruise.

One can only imagine what was going through Ford's mind on the last day of filming for his fifth and final rodeo as the whip-cracking part-time professor, and full-time Nazi-puncher, in "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny." Except, you don't have to, because the notoriously grumpy pants reticent Ford was uncharacteristically forthcoming about the topic during an interview with Digital Spy. Ford explained:

"The feeling I had is the feeling you have when you've made something, and you can look at it, or you can remember having made it, [and having] the satisfaction of putting work in, and getting something worthy out of it."

Ford's determination to conclude Indiana Jones' story on a note that "really felt satisfying" to him and that he hopes "others find it as satisfying" also meant he felt no need to rush into making the film. Whereas Disney started pumping out new "Star Wars" films within three years of buying Lucasfilm, Ford was content to sit on his hands and wait for the right story to present itself — even if that meant having to wait 15 years for the film to come together after 2008's "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull."

"Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" might be the bane of many Indiana Jones fans' existence, but that's not at all the case for Harrison Ford. He's admitted the film was "not as successful as we wanted it to be," yet maintains that didn't factor into his feelings about donning his fedora one last time. "There were some interesting ideas that were floated, but they didn't quite gel over a period of time," he told Digital Spy. "And then we found an idea, and a script, and a strong story that we wanted to tell. I'm very happy with the story that we're telling," he added.

Continuing, Ford indicated "Dial of Destiny" was never about redeeming the franchise post-"Crystal Skull," nor was it about passing the torch to a new Indiana Jones. (He's already made it plain that, so far as he's concerned when he dies, Indy will die with him.) It was always about ending Indy's story the way he wanted:

"We're coming to the end of Indiana Jones's time on the planet, and I wanted to see a conclusion of his story that accommodated the reality of his age, and what that effect has on this person that we've come to know over the years."

In a time when franchises simply never quit (and those that seem to have died are really just lying there unconscious until some studio executive with dollar signs in their eyes thinks they can make money off it again), the prospect of a sequel that's mainly about wrapping up an iconic character's story is particularly enticing. Whichever way audiences react to "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" when it arrives on June 30, 2023, it's at least got that going for it.