Harrison Ford Keeps One Thing In Mind When Portraying Indiana Jones

After owning the role for the past 42 years, Harrison Ford is naturally being introspective about starring as Indiana Jones in the five-movie saga as he approaches the end with "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny."

Ford, who made his debut as the daring archeologist in the 1981 action-adventure classic "Raiders of the Lost Ark," reprised the role in 1984 for "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" and "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" in 1987. In 2008, Ford and the trilogy's original filmmakers — writer-producer George Lucas and director Steven Spielberg — reunited once again for "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull."

Now, 15 years later, director James Mangold, working under the auspices of executive producers Lucas and Spielberg, is directing Ford in "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny." In an interview with Yahoo! Entertainment, Ford said the one constant he required with the role is that Indiana actually evolves as a character throughout the film series instead of carrying on as the same person who leaps from one adventure to the next.

"One thing I asked for in each of them was to further embrace a complication of the character," Ford told Yahoo! "I wanted to know more about Indiana Jones. I wanted the things that he did to be generated out of his character, out of his nature, out of his experience. I didn't want it just to be pinned on like a merit badge."

In "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny," the titular adventurer first appears in a flashback scene in the 1940s, which is a combination of new footage and a de-aged Harrison Ford that puts to use decades-old footage of the actor that fans never got to see. The film then fast-forwards to 1969, where Indiana appears as a broken man, struggling with a pair of devastating personal setbacks. 

On the verge of retiring from his longtime job as a college professor, Indiana is suddenly persuaded by his goddaughter, Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), to help to find Archimedes' Antikythera mechanism. Also known as "The Dial of Destiny," the device, according to legend, can open time portals to the past. Since the relic has such immense power, former Nazi scientist Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) is hoping to beat Indiana and Helena to the device so he can use it to execute a nefarious plan to change the course of history.

"Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" naturally has callbacks to the previous chapters in the film series, which serve as a reminder of why the character has meant so much to fans over the last four decades. As such, fans should expect to brace themselves to experience all kinds of emotions in the final "Indiana Jones" film, something Ford has been hoping for the whole time he's embodied the movie icon.

"I wanted these films to inspire people, to make them laugh, to make them cry. And so, for me it's been just an unbelievable experience to have this opportunity," Ford told Yahoo! "And the last one, I wanted to be about character. I wanted it to be about what it's like to be an older archeologist."