James Mangold recently made it clear that while he’s happy to be involved with the new Indiana Jones movie, he’s not interested in making spinoffs. Specifically, he’s not interested in telling a story centered around Helena Shaw, played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
Helena is a new character, but she does have some important connections to the older entries in the franchise. She’s Indy’s goddaughter, and the son of one of his best friends, Basil Shaw. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny centers around something Basil Shaw spent a lot of his life obsessing over, the Dial of Destiny. Indy and Helena come together to hunt for it before it falls into the hands of Jürgen Voller, played by Mads Mikkelsen.
Since news of Waller-Bridge’s prominence in the film emerged, rumors began to swirl about Helena becoming the new face of the franchise moving forward. Given the fact that Harrison Ford has said that this will be the very last time he shows up as Indiana Jones, clearly any future movies would not center around him.
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When the director of the new film, James Mangold was asked about the possibility of a spin-off about Helena, he seemed pretty steadfast in his answer.
I’m not interested. I refuse. I just can’t do it … The amount of lore and Easter eggs and fan service starts to become antithetical to any of this stuff at a certain point. It isn’t storytelling anymore. It’s large-scale advertising.
While this take makes sense, these sequels can quickly lend themselves to just becoming a nostalgic easter-egg fest instead of telling an actual story… It seems kind of contradictory. If Indiana Jones and the Dial Of Destiny is completely devoid of fan service, fans will feel cheated. If there’s too much, people are going to check out. There’s a very fine line to be walked here.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny will open in theaters on June 30.
