Harrison Ford Reacts to ‘Indiana Jones 5’ Flopping: ‘S— Happens’

Harrison Ford has addressed the failure of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny at the box office in 2023.

“S— happens,” Ford, 82, admitted to WSJ Magazine in an interview published on Wednesday, February 5.

The fifth and final installment of the Indiana Jones film franchise lost Disney an estimated $140 million and was met with only tepid reviews when it arrived in theaters.

Ford has now reflected on why the movie failed, stressing that he was a driving force behind getting The Dial of Destiny made after years of delays.

“I was really the one who felt there was another story to tell,” he said in this new interview. “When [Indiana Jones] 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.”

Despite the installment flopping, Ford insisted: “I’m still happy I made that movie.”

Ford vowed before Indiana Jones 5‘s release that it would be his last outing as the globe-trotting adventurer.

The Dial of Destiny was criticized by fans and critics alike for director James Mangold‘s controversial use of CGI de-aging technology on Ford for flashback sequences.

Ford came to Mangold’s defense during a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2023, insisting that the de-aged version of Indy looked realistic.

“I know that that is my face,” Ford declared. “It’s not a kind of Photoshop magic —– that’s what I looked like 35 years ago. Because Lucasfilm has every frame of film that we’ve made together over all of these years. And this process, this scientific mining of this library, this was put to good [use].”

Ford’s first outing as the character in Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark was the highest grossing film of the year in 1981 and launched a successful action movie franchise.

Spielberg and Ford found further success with 1984’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and 1989’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, but the franchise faltered with the release of 2008’s critically-panned Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Lucasfilm spent more than a decade developing a final Indiana Jones outing for Ford, with Mangold eventually stepping in as director for The Dial of Destiny when Spielberg opted to serve strictly as a producer.

Disney and Lucasfilm remain committed to the franchise, having released the video game Indiana Jones and the Great Circle to positive reviews in December 2024. Prolific voice actor Troy Baker stands in for Ford as the voice of Indy in a story where the hero must stop nefarious groups from harnessing the power of mysterious sites around the world, known as the “Great Circle.”

Mangold also bounced back from the fifth Indiana Jones project failing with the release of his Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, which has earned eight Oscar nominations, including Best Director and Best Picture.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is streaming now on Disney+.