Indiana Jones And The Tuk-tuk Of Terror
The makers of DIAL OF DESTINY on the art of crafting Indy action
TUK-TUKS? WHY did it have to be tuk-tuks? Indiana Jones has commandeered some pretty unusual vehicles over the years. A mine cart. An elephant. A fridge. But it’s not until upcoming instalment Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny that we’ll finally get to see him behind the wheel of a motorised rickshaw, attempting to navigate chaotic streets and even steps while inside the kind of vehicle usually seen irritating people around Leicester Square. The highvelocity sequence, in which Harrison Ford’s Indy and Phoebe Waller-bridge’s Helena pursue Nazi villain Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) through the Moroccan city of Tangier, recently brought the house down when shown at Star Wars Celebration, getting raves for its crunching physical stunts and witty beats.
“We’d be sitting there behind the eight-ball,” says co-writer Jez Butterworth of the process of dreaming up the movie’s action with his brother John-henry, “and the thing that would get us out every time was just how much fun it is to think about Harrison doing these things. We’d think, ‘What awful situation do we want to put him in and watch him get out of?’ He does it better than absolutely anyone, I think, in the history of cinema.”
The chase, which unfolds almost exactly halfway through Dial Of Destiny, is an intricate dance with many moving parts. Besides our heroes, who at one point spill into separate vehicles while going at speed, there are motorcycle goons, Voller’s henchman Klaber (Boyd Holbrook) in another car, and Helena’s poor fiancé, who presumably has no clue what the tuk-tuk is going on. For the writers, keeping track of it all proved tougher than assembling the Staff Of Ra. “They’re so hard to do,” says
Butterworth. “I’d rather write you a three-act tragedy than write you three action sequences. It’s got to feel like you’re not just rehashing something. It’s got to feel as fresh as can be.” Adds John-henry: “They’re character. They’re all character. They’re not just chopsocky.” In the Morocco scene, this manifests as mid-mayhem bickering between Indy and Helena — “Go left!” Jones is instructed, prompting him to immediately turn right and growl, “I know Tangier…”
With it honed on paper, the production headed to Fez, Morocco, in October 2021 to shoot the damn thing; unlike Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, this one made sure to trot the globe. Besides the oeuvre of Buster Keaton, which he kept studying as he shot (“Geometric ingenuity…”), director James Mangold was determined to rebottle the essence of Indy
action. “It was an extremely old-school endeavour. Dollies and track and sliders and anamorphic lenses,” he recites, as if recounting an ancient spell. “Old-school lighting and beautiful sets and travelling around the world and physical stunts. And one shot at a time.”
All the above is crucial when it comes to crafting a pell-mell Indiana Jones adventure. Of course, a budget big enough to fill the Well Of Souls doesn’t hurt either. “It’s lovely making a movie where you’re never going to have that meeting where they’re like, ‘This has got too expensive,’” laughs John-henry Butterworth. “That doesn’t happen on an Indy movie.” Fortune and glory, kid. Fortune and glory.
INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY IS IN CINEMAS FROM 28 JUNE