Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny Director James Mangold Talks Franchise’s Mystical Elements (Exclusive)

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is now playing in theaters, and it marks the fifth Indiana Jones adventure to star Harrison Ford. Ever since Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indy has encountered many mystical relics, and the new film is no different. From the powers of the Holy Grail to visits from interdimensional beings, Indy has seen a lot of unusual things during his adventures. In the new film, Indy teams up with his goddaughter Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) in order to stop a Nazi-turned-NASA scientist Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) from acquiring Archimedes’ Dial and using it to go back and win World War II. Warning: Spoilers Ahead! Towards the end of the film, Indy and Helena find themselves traveling to the past and coming face to face with Archimedes himself. Recently, ComicBook.com talked to director James Mangold about creating the balance between an adventure film and a science-fiction one.  

“Well, certainly myself and my co-writers on the picture, we discussed it a lot,” Mangold said of adding the time travel elements to Indy’s story. “But it’s not really so controversial, these movies have a very elegant form. The relic always defines the third act and the power of the relic defines the magic of the movie. So whether you’re talking about the Ark of the Covenant or you’re talking about the Holy Grail, or at all, we can talk about all of them, but whatever goes down in the third act is usually some kind of reaction to the magic and power and mysticism possessed by the relic itself. And usually pretty mind-blowing.”

Mangold continued, “I mean, even the original Raiders I think was a pretty big swing in terms of chasing this tablet through the desert for two hours and then suddenly someone opens this box and the movie turns into Poltergeist or Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It was kind of a massive shift, but a beautiful one and one that in a way forced Indiana Jones to confront, as a scientist, something he could not explain. And I think that has become a staple of all the movies, that each movie ends up culminating with a kind of event, a kind of magical, inexplicable event that forces this doctor, this scientist to suddenly have to wrestle with how he’s going to explain this with simple logic.” 

James Mangold Remembers Seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark:

“It’s on this day that I went and saw it in Middletown, New York at the Orange County Cinema,” Mangold told ComicBook.com on the 42nd anniversary of Raiders of the Lost Ark. “I was alone on the first matinee. And blown away,” Mangold shared. “It’s crazy,” he added when asked how it feels to be making his own Indy film. “I mean, on the simplest level, if you go back to the 17-year-old sitting there, I knew I wanted to be a movie director, although seeing Raiders was only galvanizing that feeling. But if you told me that I’d be making a movie with those people on the screen, that would blow my mind.” 

 Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is now playing in theaters. You can watch part of our interview with Mangold above.