Episode 137 - Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (James Mangold, 2023) (with Sarah Thomas)

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (James Mangold, 2023).

The Fantasy/Animation podcast takes listeners on a journey through the intersection between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation. Available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify and many of your favourite podcast hosting platforms!

Episode 137 appropriately begins at the end of the commercially and critically successful Indiana Jones franchise with this discussion of the fifth and final feature Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (James Mangold, 2023) featuring special guest Dr Sarah Thomas. Sarah is Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media in the School of Arts, whose research expertise centres on stardom/celebrity, media industries, and screen performance in Hollywood and transnational cinemas. She is the author of James Mason (BFI, 2018), Peter Lorre - Face Maker: Constructing Stardom and Performance in Hollywood and Europe (Berghahn Books, 2012), and the edited collection Cult Film Stardom: Offbeat Attractions and Processes of Cultification (Palgrave MacMillan, 2012) with Kate Egan. In this podcast episode, the conversation turns to Harrison Ford’s star image and the representation of aged physicality onscreen; digital de-aging and the computerised replication of celebrity; ‘legacy’ cinema and the star’s role in supporting the continuity of a franchise; the impact of the film’s thematic “fissures in time” on the construction of narrative jeopardy; and how Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny uses images and icons of the past to disappear into its own sense of history.

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**

Suggested Readings

  • Bode, Lisa. 2017. Making Believe: Screen Performance and Special Effects in Popular Cinema. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

  • Golding, Dan. “The Memory of Perfection: Digital Faces and Nostalgic Franchise Cinema.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 27, no. 4 (2021): 855–867.

  • Holliday, Christopher. 2021. “Rewriting the Stars: Surface Tensions and Gender Troubles in the Online Media Production of Digital Deepfakes.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 27, no. 4: 899-918,

  • Holliday, Christopher. 2022. “Retroframing the Future: Digital De-aging Technologies in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema.” JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 61, no. 5: 210-237.

  • Peberdy, Donna. 2011. Masculinity and Film Performance: Male Angst in Contemporary American Cinema. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.

  • Thomas, Sarah. 2019. “The Star in VR.” Celebrity Studies 10, no. 4: 453-468.

PODCASTChristopher Holliday and Alexander SergeantHOLLYWOOD, SEQUEL, FRANCHISE, STARDOM, TECHNOLOGY, MASCULINITYComment