Harrison Ford ‘still happy’ he made ‘Indiana Jones 5’ even though it flopped

Harrison Ford has no regrets about donning Indiana Jones’ famous fedora one last time.

When Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny opened in theaters in summer 2023, it received mixed reviews and grossed $384 million at the global box office, reportedly losing Disney $130 million. He just had two words when asked about it in a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal magazine: “S— happens.”

“I was really the one who felt there was another story to tell,” he continued. “When [Indy] had suffered the consequences of the life that he had to live, I wanted one more chance to pick him up and shake the dust off his ass and stick him out there, bereft of some of his vigor, to see what happened. I’m still happy I made that movie.”

The sentiment echoes what Ford told Entertainment Weekly ahead of the fifth movie’s release in June 2023, though he admitted at the time that he didn’t immediately feel that way following the lackluster response to the fourth film, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

“No, it would’ve taken a while. I would’ve had to do a few other things,” he said. “It took me a while to miss him.”

But miss the wisecracking archaeologist he did, and eventually, Ford started to think “there was room for one more story…. And that story was the one that dealt with age, time, and relationships in his family — knitting the whole thing together just a little bit more, and feeling a kind of roundness in all of the different stories we’ve told. I’m more comfortable leaving him at this place than he was at the end of Crystal Skull.”

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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, set in 1969, follows Indy and his estranged goddaughter Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) in a rip-roaring race against time to keep the titular dial out of the hands of Nazi-turned-NASA-scientist Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen).

With that film behind him, Ford can next be seen in another major franchise — the Marvel Cinematic Universe — in Captain America: Brave New World. Ford told The Wall Street Journal that he accepted the role opposite Anthony Mackie as Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross with “no script” presented to him, adding: “Why not? I saw enough Marvels to see actors that I admired having a good time.” 

“I didn’t really know that at the end I would turn into the Red Hulk,” he then joked. “Well, it’s like life. You only get so far in the kit until the last page of the instructions is missing.”

Captain America: Brave New World hits theaters on Feb. 14.