Composer John Williams has talked about the score for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Fate and shed some light on the character played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge
In a recent interview with Variety, John Williams shared some of his ideas for developing the score for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Fate. The five-time Oscar winner expressed his enthusiasm for his music in the sequel, revealing that he has composed at least 1.5 hours of material. Williams also spoke about the dynamic between Helena and Indy in the film and the theme he composed for the character of Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
“It certainly has to be an hour and a half of music, maybe more. But I’m pretty happy with it. There is a lot of new material. The old stuff works very well as a memory touchstone, but I had a lot of fun and I have a song I wrote for Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the wonderful actress. Harrison is wonderful in it. He looks great, moves great. The best part for me is the writing and dialogue interplay between Harrison and Phoebe, like the old-style Hepburn and Tracy kind of bickering. It’s witty, brilliant and snappy, like a duet that lasts two hours.”
Who is Helen?
Although it was technically revealed that Phoebe Waller-Bridge would star in the film as Indy’s goddaughter, and the film’s co-writer/director James Mangold has revealed that she is the daughter of one of Indy’s old friends who have yet to show up in previous films in the franchise. Theories suggest that she is related to Toby Jones’s Basil, an ally never seen before in the saga who appears only in the flashback sequence at the beginning of Indiana Jones and the dial of fate.
Mangold has also previously said that Helena will be the “catalyst” of the Indiana Jones story and the dial of fate by forcing Ford’s character to become involved in an adventure of his that is not going well. Between their driving of the story and Williams’s statements of a joke between the two characters, it seems Mangold and co-writers Jez and John-Henry Butterworth have looked back at Indiana Jones’ past in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, with a dynamic comedy buddy for Helena and Indy.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Fate has generated a lot of anticipation about the final chapter of the franchise and how Lucasfilm will expand it in other directions, including an Indiana Jones TV series, so it will be interesting to see if Helena is up for a spin-off with their own adventures.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Fate opens in June.
