EXCLUSIVE: Harrison Ford, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Mads Mikkelsen graced the Deadline Studio at the Taormina Film Festival before Sunday’s Italian premiere of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. The fifth and final film in the series and the first to not be directed by Steven Spielberg — he handed the baton to James Mangold — Dial of Destiny embraces the rich mythology that stems from the 1981 original Raiders of the Lost Ark, while making allowances that even Indiana Jones must age and his search becomes about solace and inner peace, after all those wild archaeological adventures. In his way is the need to thwart one last attempt by the Nazis to use a time travel invention by Archimedes to change history and once again plunge the world into darkness.
After giving a proper shout out thank you to Tom Selleck for being unable to get out of his Magnum P.I. series commitment that gave him his most iconic role, Ford recounts winning the job and knowing early that between a great script and the brain trust of his Star Wars director George Lucas and Jaws director Spielberg that Ford might well be catching lightning in a bottle. Not yet born when the original came out, Waller-Bridge nonetheless talks about catching up with many viewings that whet her appetite to play Indy’s goddaughter. Mikkelsen, who watched the original over and over and dreamed of being Indiana Jones, talks about the lack of hesitation when he got the call for Dial of Destiny, even though it meant dressing up as a Nazi meant to be on the business end of Jones’s fists. The film premieres tonight under the stars at the Teatro Antico, the outdoor ancient amphitheater first built by the Greeks and refurbished by the Romans.
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