In a recent interview, Fantastic Beast star Mads Mikkelsen discusses the resilience of Harrison Ford—his accident-prone, flyboy Indiana Jones co-star who suffered an injured shoulder on set.
“He’s an insanely powerful person,” Mikkelsen explains to The Hollywood Reporter. “I remember the first day we were shooting, it was a night shoot, then we stopped at 5 a.m.—and then he got on his mountain bike and went biking for 50 kilometers [31 miles].” At a spry 80 years old, perhaps Ford really did drink from the cup of the carpenter at the climax of 1989’s Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade.
Mikkelsen adds, “Harrison is a monster of a man, a very nice monster.”
Mikkelsen now joins the ranks of Ford, William Hootkins, and Julian Glover: actors who have appeared in both the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises. The actor declined to discuss any details of the new Indy picture which will be the first not to have Steven Spielberg at the helm. But despite having a new director–James Mangold—behind the camera, Mikkelsen feels like this latest film is a return to form for the blockbuster adventure series.
“They’re going heavily back to the first and second film and getting that original feel, the original Indy, something dense and epic,” he shares. With Mikkelson mentioning Temple Of Doom, maybe we will finally get that Short Round cameo we’ve all been waiting for.
“[Raiders of the Lost Ark] was one of my favorite films, and it just oozed that golden period of serials from the 1940s—and that’s in the fifth film as well,” he says before adding, “It felt like a Spielberg film, though it’s obviously James making it with the same vision.”
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets Of Dumbledore is now playing and Indiana Jones 5 is slated for release in the summer of 2023.