"It's not the years, it's the mileage," said Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

It was 1981. 

Four decades and many kilometers later, the great actor, who turned 80 last July, still plays the role of the legendary archaeologist.

And by clothes we mean exactly the same since the awaited fifth film in the saga, directed by James Mangold, who took over from Steven Spielberg, is set in 1944, i.e. eight years after the events of the first.

At least in some scenes we will therefore see Harrison Ford "as he was" thanks to an anti-aging technology.

In the opening sequence, the adventurer-archaeologist armed with a whip and a fedora is once again grappling with a band of Nazis.

"Then you rush forward to 1969," explains the director.

"So for the audience there won't be a conceptual leap between the 1940s and 1960s: viewers will be able to experience the spirit of adventure then and then the beginning of the present."

Old footage was used to recreate the illusion along with the original jacket worn in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

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Poster of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark

Until now, the use of anti-aging technology has been judged as unlikely to be credible.

Actors like Robert De Niro in “The Irishman” and Kurt Russell in “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” experienced it, but, according to critics, the result was that the protagonists appeared as rigid versions of themselves.  

It seems that Ford, on the other hand, promoted the result on Indiana Jones: "This is the first time I've seen the technology used in a credible way," said the actor.

''It's a bit creepy.

I don't think I even want to know how it works, but it does."        

After the first sequence set in the past, the film's narrative jumps to 1969 - using the current Ford - and it is in this era that most of the action takes place. 

The director explained that he wanted ''the opportunity to dive into an old photo taken by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg' and give the audience an adrenaline rush.

So that they really literally experience the buccaneering spirit of those early days." The hope, added producer Kathleen Kennedy, is that audiences look at the opening and think, "Oh my God, they've found some archival material." .

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Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark

The fifth film in the saga will arrive a full 15 years after the last Indiana Jones film, 'The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull', which many fans and critics had considered a disappointment. 

Ford's co-star in the film Mads Mikkelsen previously told The Hollywood Reporter that the new chapter "happens heavily to the first and second films and gets that original feel, the original Indy, something thick and epic." ", and told an anecdote about Ford's resistance.        

"[Ford] is an insanely powerful person," Mikkelsen had said.

''Not just as an actor, but physically.

I remember the first day we were shooting, it was a night shoot, then we stopped at 5am – and he got on his mountain bike and cycled 50 kilometers [31 miles].

Harrison is a monstrous man, a very nice monster''. 

Indiana Jones 5 will be released in theaters on June 30, 2023.