CANNES: Artificial Intelligence may have been used to make Harrison Ford decades younger in parts of his final film as “Indiana Jones,” but the 80-year-old actor said Friday (19 May, 2023) he loved being older, and has no plans to slow down.
Ford, whose “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” premiered in Cannes on Thursday night, has vowed this will be his last adventure as the swashbuckling archaeologist after more than four decades in the role.
And Kathleen Kennedy, the president of Lucasfilm, which also produces the Star Wars franchise, gave a resounding “no” at a press conference when asked if AI technology would be used to keep Ford coming back to the role in the future.
An emotional Ford, who welled up several times reflecting on his long career and co-stars, and also cracked several jokes, said he was “real happy with age”.
“I don’t look back and say, ‘I wish I was that guy again,’ because I don’t. I love being older, it was great to be young but, shitfire, I could be dead, I am just older.”
And, he has no plan to slow down, confirming he would do another season of the Western drama series “1923” as well as the comedy “Shrinking”.
Ford first swung onto screens as the quick-witted and intrepid archaeologist with his trademark fedora and whip in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in 1981, which was followed by two hugely popular sequels.
Though a fourth film in 2008 made a lot of money, it was widely panned.
An emotional Ford received a surprise honorary Palme d’Or ahead of the premiere of the fifth installment.
He is joined in the new adventure by Phoebe Waller-Bridge as his witty and sprightly sidekick, with Mads Mikkelsen as a villainous Nazi scientist.
The movie sees him fighting Nazis from Manhattan to Sicily, but he struggled against critics who gave the film mixed reviews.
For some critics, the logic-defying scenes and rousing theme song provided solid sentimental fun.
“The finale is wildly silly and entertaining… (but) Indiana Jones still has a certain old-school class,” said The Guardian.
Empire also enjoyed the ride, saying it remained true to its “fantasy” leanings, but that the “barmy finale… might divide audiences”.
The Hollywood Reporter was less impressed with the “rinse-and-repeat formula of chases and gunfights” and “how glaringly fake so much of it looks”.
Elsewhere at the world’s leading film industry shindig, three of the 21 movies in the running for the top prize Palme D’Or were premiering Friday on a rain-drenched day on the French Riviera.
Friday evening British director Jonathan Glazer presents his much-awaited film “The Zone of Interest” about the banalities behind the horrors of Auschwitz, showing the ordinary life of a Nazi officer and his family.
“About Dry Grasses” by Turkey’s award-winning filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan, and “Four Daughters” by Tunisia’s Kaouther Ben Hania — who received an Oscar nomination for “The Man Who Sold his Skin” — are also on the line-up.
A brief moment of drama saw the police cordon off a wide area around the red carpet to probe a suspicious package, which turned out to be a bag lost by a tourist.
APP/AFP
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