The choice to undo Indy’s happy ending was a plot device to make director James Mangold’s story “work.” I will preface this article with a spoiler warning because we are going into that territory to discuss some of the choices made with this film and why Mangold thought it was a good idea. The box office has yet to agree.

In an interview with Variety, ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ director James Mangold discussed his three-year scripting time for the film and why he made some of his choices.

From the beginning of this film, Lucasfilm and Disney did what they do best and took away a character’s happy ending given to them by the previous owners of the franchise. They pulled this with ‘Star Wars,’ and now they went there with Indiana Jones.

Mangold decided that for his film to work, he needed to make Indy so grief-stricken that he would want to stay in history instead of return to his own time. Because usually, Indiana Jones would never do that. Just like Luke Skywalker wouldn’t toss a lightsaber over his shoulder, try to kill his nephew, and become a hermit, but I digress.

Indi’s son

For the new film, James Mangold felt it necessary to remove the family that Indy got in his last movie ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.” So he killed Indy’s son Mutt Williams off-screen, saying he died in the Vietnam War; this leads to him losing Marion Ravenwood too. Why? He claims it was partially because of Shia LaBeouf’s character not being there. Apparently, LaBoeuf complained about the fourth film in 2016, so he likely wouldn’t return for this one.

Mangold indicated that he needed to make a film with both characters or remove Mutt.

“You were either going to make a movie all about the two of them, or you’re going to have to find a way to not have [Mutt] around because he was too significant a player in the previous film to just pretend he didn’t exist.”

That is an excuse. Mutt could have been recast now that he would be much older. There were other ways they could have explained Mutt’s absence without killing the character but it feels like the real reason the character was now dead was Mangold’s need for Indi to be a broken shell for his film.

Mangold had it in his head they needed to do something more epic and less predictable with his Indiana Jones film, so instead of going back to Nazi Germany, they went to ancient Rome. Where the inventor of the artifact, Archimedes, was. The 1969 team arrived in the past just as the Romans were invading Sicily in 213 BC.

But it was all to see Nazi warplanes with an ancient Roman fleet. To outdo the Arc of the Covenant scene and put Indi into history that he wouldn’t want to leave. His life sucks now, so let’s double down and make him want to stay in history.

Here’s what he told Variety:

“That seemed to me to be right emotionally, that a disillusioned hero could end up at this wonderful, tumultuous moment in world history and — with his son gone and his wife gone — that he’d picture himself staying in the place he loves best, which is this imagining these worlds.”

Because it was all being set up for the new goddaughter, Helena Shaw, who repeatedly leaves an elderly Jones to die potentially, can punch him and save history. She even calls Marion to come back.

“Unless we established him healing and setting up shop and remarrying and finding a beautiful Sicilian house to live in — I guess there was a way of doing it, but I didn’t imagine it. I felt like he had to come home. He had to clean things up. He had to own what happened to him and Marion and the amount of loneliness and disappointment in himself he’s carrying about his inability to navigate that between them.”

Mangold put Indi in Sicily and that situation because he ruined his happy ending so we could have a 5th movie. The director put him there and made it so Jones would have to “clean things up.” The idea that they “could have done that” implies it was out of their hands, but it wasn’t.

There were many ways it could have been handled in this film that would have allowed Indi to keep his family, and still help Helena go to the past while staying true to his character.

But I guess it wouldn’t be Lucasfilm if they didn’t find some way to vilify their other male legacy character. Women have to save the day, but they’ve already been doing that in these franchises for years.

Perhaps this is partly why the film didn’t perform well during its opening box office weekend.