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Am I Overthinking Kathleen Kennedy’s Quote About ‘Indiana Jones 5’?

Articles, Pop CultureBrandon MarcusComment
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Kathleen Kennedy received the BAFTA Fellowship Award last night and made her way down the red carpet to talk to press and be bathed in due congratulations. While speaking with the BBC about her big night and career, Kennedy had this to say about the next Indiana Jones film:

We’re working away, getting the script where we want it to be and then we’ll be ready to go. Harrison Ford will be involved, yeah. It’s not a reboot, it’s a continuation.

The statement is similar to ones she has made before. It’s a variation on the basic idea that Indiana Jones 5 is happening, Harrison Ford will star and they aren’t rebooting the series.

Maybe it’s just me but her above quote feels a bit more vague than previous ones. The fact that she didn’t just come right out and loudly proclaim that Ford will be starring in the film (she agreed with interviewer by saying he’d be “involved”) just feels…odd to me. Is “involved” the same as “starring”? Sure, I’m probably looking into it too much but it sounds like she’s giving herself some wiggle room, as if Harrison Ford will be a part of Indy 5 but maybe not as big a part as before.

It’s very, very likely that I am being dramatic and that Harrison Ford will be the lead star of the forthcoming Indiana Jones 5. But it’s also possible that the film, while not a reboot, will be a transitional film where Indy passes the torch to a new character who takes up a lot of screen time and then eventually gets his or her own spin-off series. Why do I think that’s possible? Well, because that was initially the plan with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It’s no secret that Spielberg, Lucas and the team saw Shia LaBeouf’s character as the future of the franchise. The plan was that Mutt (yes, that was his name) would be introduced in Kingdom Skull, win audiences over and then begin his own on-screen adventures without Dr. Jones. But obviously that didn’t happen for a number of reasons, namely the fact that people kinda hated Mutt and didn’t really go nuts for Kingdom Skull as well. It’s possible that Disney is going to try the same thing. Perhaps the script in the works will attempt this again.

Or, like I said, maybe I’m just being a nut and Indiana Jones 5, like all the Jones films before it, will feature Ford front-and-center. I could really see this going either way.

Big thanks to Collider for the news.




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