Harrison Ford has been chatting about the box office failure of Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny, and his thoughts on AI.
Harrison Ford is out and about promoting his turn in Marvel Studios’ Captain America: Brave New World which opens up here in the UK next Friday. While chatting with The Wall Street Journal, the actor was asked about his feelings regarding 2023’s Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny, the final chapter in his decades-long series of films featuring the iconic museum-loving, Nazi-punching archaeologist.
At 82 years old, we doubt Ford was ever going to sweat about the film’s failure to perform commercially. The movie grossed $384 million worldwide from a budget said to be around $329 million – with marketing costs estimated to have pushed the film into the red to the tune of $130 million. Ford’s response was typically blunt though: “S— happens,” he says.
The actor seems happy to point out that he was the driving force behind the film, adding that “I was really the one who felt there was another story to tell. 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 vigour, to see what happened. I’m still happy I made that movie.”
Harrison Ford was also asked for his thoughts on the topic that all of Hollywood is currently consumed by: artificial intelligence. With the controversy over the use of AI in The Brutalist to augment the vocal performances of its two lead actors potentially damaging the film’s Oscar hopes, the use of the emergent technology is subject to the glare of scrutiny more than ever before.
When asked for his thoughts on the matter, Ford took a straightforward stance, arguing that the voice perfomance of Troy Baker as Indiana Jones in the recent video game, Indiana Jones And The Great Circle is a great example of why AI will never be an adequate substitute for human perfomrance: “You don’t need artificial intelligence to steal my soul. You can already do it for nickels and dimes with good ideas and talent. He [Baker] did a brilliant job and it didn’t take AI to do it.”
Baker’s performance as a younger version of the character that Ford immortalised onscreen has been rightly lauded and behind Ford’s trademark grumpy humour, there’s a clear appreciation for the craft and work that went into it.
The actor’s response is a simple one, but that doesn’t mean it’s naive: Hollywood has gotten this far managing to find human solutions to human problems. It’s part of the ingenuity of filmmaking and hopefully will continue to be for a long time to come.
You can catch Ford – hopefully with his soul still intact – in Captain America: Brave New World when it opens next week.
