Harrison Ford will dust off his fedora for a fifth installment of the Indiana Jones franchise, due in 2019, and the jokey movie titles were flying on Twitter on Tuesday faster than you could crack a bullwhip.
“Indiana Jones and the Mystery of the Self-Cleaning Dentures.”
“Raiders of the Lost AARP.”
“Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Prosthetic Hip Joint.”
Ford will be 77 when the movie hits theaters on July 19 of that year — 11 years after “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” came out and a whopping 38 years after the character was introduced in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”
As we all saw in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” the rugged actor looks good for his age. But even in this era of graying action stars — Bruce Willis is 60, Liam Neeson is 63, and let’s not get started on the cast of “The Expendables” — 77 is rather … senior.
On social media, some fans expressed excitement about the sequel, to be produced by Disney and directed (like the other four Indy films) by Steven Spielberg. And there’s always the chance that, as in the latest “Star Wars,” Ford cedes the spotlight and most of the action scenes to younger co-stars.
Still, many observers were wondering Tuesday whether another Indiana Jones movie with Ford in the starring role is a good idea.
Then again, age is just a number. As Indiana Jones himself famously said in “Raiders,” “It’s not the years, honey; it’s the mileage.”