HARRISON Ford wasn't sure if he'd ever return to Indiana Jones, the whip-cracking hero he's played for more than four decades, ever since Raiders of The Lost Ark debuted in 1981.
Following the last film, 2008's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, "there was a period of time when I didn't think about it at all," Ford (80) admits.
"But then I began to think about seeing Indiana Jones in a different way than we'd ever seen him before. And during that period, 15 years passed, and age became either an issue or a benefit."
The latest, and likely last in the venerated franchise, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, begins with a blast of the Indy we know and love: hunting treasures and whopping Nazis in the face, fedora firmly on his head.
It's 1944. World War II is winding down. Hitler's in his bunker. The end is nigh. Some Nazis are attempting to skulk off with looted art and artefacts, only to be thwarted by a young, digitally de-aged, Indiana. So far, so fitting.
Fast forward 25 years and we are introduced to a quite different man: aged and on the precipice of retirement, adrift and unanchored in a new world that has no place for him (or so it appears).
It's 1969 and innovation is a-go: moon landings, nuclear fission, glue sticks, the internet. We find Indiana listlessly reclining on a lazy boy, sozzled and semi-conscious, the Apollo 11 landing flickering on the TV screen before him.
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He cuts a solitary figure: his marriage crumbled, his career disintegrating – retiring from a decades-long archaeology professor tenure at New York City's Hunter College. A man out of time in a world he no longer recognises. His days of far-flung adventure far behind him.
Or are they?
"I thought if we see Indiana Jones at the end of his academic career, sort of down in spirit and having trouble in his family life, it would be a great place to start to build him up again," says Ford. "With a new adventure, a new stimulant in the character that Phoebe Waller-Bridge plays, and that would give the opportunity to revisit this character one more time and to bring him to the audience with some new aspects of his nature to consider."
Indiana is dragged out of retirement by Helena Shaw, his unpredictable goddaughter, Fleabag star Waller-Bridge, who tumbles into his life with a mission in mind. She's on the hunt for the other half of the artefact that Indiana grabbed in 1944: the Dial of Destiny, a curiosity of ancient Greek lore rumoured to give its possessor the power of time travel.
Its creator, Archimedes, split the device in two, and the film revolves around a race between Ford and his nemesis, Jurgen Voller – played by Mads Mikkelsen – to capture both halves. Voller, an ex-Nazi now working for NASA, wants the device for his own nefarious reasons.
All involved in the enterprise were aware of the weight of the franchise's legacy and what this meant for creating the finale.
"I am making the continuing story of this character that Harrison has been playing for 42 years," explains director James Mangold, also co-wrote the script alongside Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth and David Koepp.
"So obviously the style, tone of the film, the history of his character, the people he's known, all become the backstory of our film.
"It doesn't require me having a kind of metal detector for nostalgic hot buttons. It's just there. There's all these wonderful characters in his past, all these wonderful stories, all that resonance that just comes into the room with him."
Each of Ford's co-stars has their own memory of Indy: the first time he flashed onto the screen, and the indelible marks it left on them and their careers.
"These movies have always been part of my life and I can't even remember the first time I saw them," muses Ethann Isidore (16), who plays Shaw's side-kick, Teddy.
Waller-Bridge (38) agrees: "I can't remember the first time I watched it, he was just always around. Indy just existed. It was almost like he was real. And the adventures were real and the places were real.
"When you grow up with them [the characters], it's like a place you go. And actually to be able to go to that place like we did, to be in that atmosphere and that world – there's something so specific about the Indy world and the feel of it – made the 10-year-old me high-five me, and be like, 'thanks man, you finally did something interesting'", she chuckles.
"I wanted to be an actor from when I was five-years-old and it was because of these sorts of movies," Waller-Bridge continues. "So even though there's the part of me which is the creator and the writer… that ambitious baby actor in me is still so alive and well. And when this came up, she's like, 'screw all the other crap you've been doing, this is the important stuff'".
"I watched it when it came out because that's how old I am," adds Mikkelsen, drily.
"I rented it on VHS… that one and five other films, and we ended up just watching Indiana Jones five times and not the other ones. That's the kind of film it just was… You wanted to watch it again and again. Never seen anything like it."
Special effects have come a long way since then, and digitally regenerated footage of Ford constitutes a significant part of the film. How did it feel to see his digitally de-aged self?
"Well, first of all, I felt 'wow, this time I believe it, because it's actually my face'," remarks Ford. "Not my face photo-shopped or made to look younger but my face at that age."
"Because Harrison's made all these other movies we had a reservoir, a kind of monstrous data-bank of him in this character in his late 30s or early 40s, playing this role in all kinds of lighting, high camera, low camera, side camera, silhouette… and so that became an incredible resource for us to draw upon," explains Mangold.
"It's suiting for this kind of film, when we jump in time," adds Mikkelsen, who is also digitally de-aged in the film.
"I think we will all be a little reluctant not showing up on set and just make an entire film based on something that they can do on a computer. That's probably not the dream we have. But in this case, I think it's a fantastic job."
Time is the core of the film. In the hunt for the time-bending device. In the battle for the time-space continuum. In Ford as he grapples with ageing. Both the heroes and the villains hanker for a time past. And the end, fittingly, addresses the only real way to deal with the past – not in futile attempts to change it, but by remembering and cherishing the good.
:: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is released on Wednesday.
