Indiana Jones 5 Star Promises Sequel is “Going to be Badass”

The last Indiana Jones movie — 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull — was controversial, failing to attract the same level of acclaim as its predecessors, but one of the stars of the upcoming, fifth Indiana Jones, Boyd Holbrook, praised the work of filmmaker James Mangold, promising fans an exciting experience and saying that the film has the character work and storytelling scale that made Mangold’s Logan work as a closing chapter two two decades of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. The praise for Mangold echoes one of the big things that fans have been excited for ahead of Indiana Jones, since it represents a lot of what longtime Indy fans were hoping for in a final outing.

Indiana Jones 5 will be directed by Mangold, and will also star Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Mads Mikkelsen, Antonio Banderas, Shaunette Renee Wilson, and Thomas Kretschmann. The project has been in development in fits and starts for almost ten years, but finally really took shape when the studio tapped Mangold.

“You know, just look at his work: Ford v Ferrari, it’s gonna be fast, it’s gonna be badass, and it’s gonna have heart. All of his films have this emotional beat in them, but we’ve got this grand scale of Indiana Jones,” Holbrook told Men’s Health, adding that it’s “going to be badass.”

“James Mangold has done an unbelievable job with Indy,” Lucasfilm’s Kathleen Kennedy told ComicBook.com during Star Wars Celebration. “And he and Harrison [Ford] have an incredible relationship and I think the fans are just going to love what he’s created. It’s fantastic.”

That idea of pleasing the fans isn’t just something that would stand in contrast to the reception of Crystal Skull; it’s also one of the most consistent things that the cast and crew have said is serving as a true north for the project.

“I don’t really want to give them what they want to see,” Ford explained in a 2020 interview. “I want to give them something they didn’t anticipate seeing. I think they’re used to a degree of disappointment when you revisit — I mean certainly the Marvel movies have made a spectacular example of success that worked the other way around. They killed it. Well, we’re not going to make another Indiana Jones unless we’re in a position to kill it. We want it to be the best. So we’ve got some scheduling issues, a few script things still to do, but we’re determined to get it right before we get it made.”

Indiana Jones 5 is set to be released in theaters on June 30, 2023.