Following its out-of-competition world premiere this evening at the Cannes Film Festival, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was treated to a five-minute standing ovation as the audience inside the festival’s Grand Théâtre Lumière.
The franchise’s star Harrison Ford, who has said this will be his last time playing the iconic Indiana Jones and who received an honorary Palme’ d’Or to kick off the ceremony tonight, was visibly moved by the reaction to the film, which Disney and Lucasfilm premiered ahead of its late June theatrical release around the world.
The ovation began right as the credits rolled on the pic, with the crowd standing when the lights came up. They only stopped when director James Mangold was handed a mic to address the audience.
“Merci, I just wanted to say thank you, thank you so much for having us here,” he said, noting he first appeared at Cannes with the film Heavy in Directors’ Fortnight. “One thing that was true then and true now is that this film was made by friends. … It’s hard probably for you to believe that a movie this big can be made by friends, but it was,” he added, choking up. “It was made out of love, it was made out of devotion to what came before it, and it was made with tremendous trust from all these people.”
On hand for the celebration were the film’s stars Ford, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Mads Mikkelsen and Mangold, along with producer Kathleen Kennedy, Disney boss Bob Iger, Ford’s wife actress Calista Flockhart and more. Earlier in the evening, Ford received an honorary Palme d’Or and career tribute.
The movie, a big-ticket attraction for those on the ground here in Cannes, sees Ford reprise his role as legendary archaeologist/adventurer Indiana Jones. This fifth installment in the franchise takes place in the years depicted between Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; the latter also world premiered in Cannes back in 2008.
The new story is set in 1969, but the opening sequence take audiences back to 1944, using what Mangold has called “incredible technology” to de-age Ford. Later, we find Indy having spent more than a decade teaching at New York’s Hunter College. The esteemed professor of archaeology is preparing to retire to his modest apartment where, these days, he lives alone. Things change after a surprise visit from his estranged goddaughter Helena Shaw (Waller-Bridge), who is seeking a rare artifact that her father entrusted to Indy years earlier: the infamous Archimedes Dial, a device that purportedly holds the power to locate fissures in time.
An accomplished con-artist, Helena steals the dial and swiftly departs the country to sell the artifact to the highest bidder. Left with no choice but to go after her, Indy dusts off his fedora and leather jacket for one final ride. Meanwhile, Indy’s old nemesis, Jürgen Voller (Mikkelsen), a former Nazi now working as a physicist in the U.S. space program, has his own plans for the dial, a horrifying scheme that could change the course of world history.
Boyd Holbrook, Thomas Kretschmann, Toby Jones, Antonio Banderas and John Rhys-Davies also star
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Mangold directs from a screenplay by Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth and Mangold. Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall and Simon Emanuel produce, with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas serving as exec producers and John Williams returning as composer, having scored each Indy adventure since 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Dial of Destiny starts offshore rollout June 28 and rides into North America on June 30.
