Mads Mikkelsen has been waiting a long time for a role in the Indiana Jones franchise: almost his whole life, in fact.
“I grew up with this [franchise],” he says. “This shaped our generation. I have plenty of friends who are, specifically, directors, film directors who started out because of that one film.
“So obviously, sitting there, as a kid [who] just wanted to be him… is an enormous honour to be, 42 years later, part of this world.”
Never mind that he’s the baddie (in fact, Mikkelsen’s “first Nazi”): battling the forces of evil are all in a day’s work for Harrison Ford’s Indy. This time around, the action is centred around the 1969 moon landing: 25 years after the Second World War, the US government has secretly recruited several ex-Nazis to help them beat the Soviets in the race to space.
One of them is Jürgen Voller, played by Mikkelsen – somebody Indy scrapped with in the past for the magical Greek Antikythera, a gadget said to have immense power. Back in the heat of the Second World War, Voller wanted the Antikythera to further the Nazi’s aims, but was stopped; in 1969, he wants to find and use the dial’s power to turn back the clock and re-create a Nazi utopia.
Cue the rousing theme tune. Now 80, Ford has returned to play Indy after a break of almost fifteen years (the last Indiana Jones film, The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, was released in 2008). However, making the film was a no-brainer. “I’d always wanted to round out the story with seeing him towards the end of his career, towards the end of his life even,” Ford says.
The end of his career is about right: the film opens with Indy getting ready to retire from the world of academia for good. As Ford puts it, “we meet him on the last day of his retirement from academic life, which has not been inspiring for him. We meet him at a point where he’s at a low that we have not seen before.”
Fortunately, fate has other ideas: Indy’s plans for a quiet retirement are rudely interrupted by Helena, the son of old friend Basil Shaw.
Played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, she’s “self-sufficient… she doesn’t really look before she leaps, and there’s a fearlessness in her that can be misconstrued as a recklessness.” She’s also hoping to find the ancient Antikythera - and she needs Indy’s help. How could he resist?
Of course, it’s not going to be that simple, as Voller is on the hunt, too. He’s a compelling villain: does his character have any weaknesses? None, says Mikkelsen, until director James Mangold reminds him of the important one: his love of National Socialism.
“Keep forgetting that part. Yeah, I think that his passion is his strength and is also his weakness because his passion for his job, for math, for science, for a brighter future is obviously strength. And this, his passion for the party and the Third Reich will his downfall.”
This being an Indiana Jones film, there are of course explosions, daring stunts and a high-stakes endgame, but as Mangold makes clear, the films have changed alongside Ford.
“Indiana Jones is one of the most beautiful aspects of all the Indiana Jones films and I think led by Harrison’s performance all these years,” he says.
“I had a star who was in his 70s, so it’s clear that we can’t deny reality, as Harrison has said, Indy’s older… we had to focus on what that is, and to me that’s a question that doesn’t get asked very often. What is it to be someone who’s led such a dynamic life, who’s seen so much conquered and won and survived adversity and odds, but then life descends in kind of normalcy and the world moves on, and those adventures aren’t presenting themselves anymore or you’re not even necessarily ready for them.”
This will be Ford’s last outing as the whip-wielding hero – in a sense, it feels like he is passing the baton to Waller-Bridge’s character Helena.
“When she comes in, not only does she bring a breeze of, like, joy from his past, and this past relationship he had with her father and the joy of that. She brings a passion for archaeology. She brings a passion for adventure, and I think that lights him up again,” Waller-Bridge says.
Though Helena has her own agenda, she does have some redeeming qualities that hint at a future in archaeology: “I think, ironically, the thing that she learns in the end is that that passion that she was kind of faking at the beginning, is the thing that she discovers for real by the end.”
After bidding farewell to Han Solo – that other iconic role of his – in 2015’s The Force Awakens, does this particular departure feel different to Ford? “It doesn’t feel different, but it feels good because of the shape of this goodbye,” he says.
“We’ve taken our concern, our interest in the character, and tried to shape a story that would bring this character back into [the audience’s] lives with an interesting story. And I think given the people that we’ve involved in the character and nature of the story that Jim has created for us, it’s a splendid goodbye.”
