Harrison Ford Receives Honorary Cannes Palme D’Or Ahead Of 'Indiana Jones' Premiere

Actor Harrison Fordreceived the honorary Cannes Palme D'Or ahead of the world premiere of "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny."

This will mark Ford's fifth and last time as the famed archaeologist, following 1981's “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” 1984’s “Temple of Doom,” 1989’s “Last Crusade,” and 2008’s “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.”

On Thursday, Harrison Ford took the stage as the Cannes Film Festival declared Ford “one of the greatest stars in cinema” (via Deadline). A video compilation of some of Ford’s career highlights were shown on screen as the actor received a standing ovation from the audience inside the Grand Theatre Lumière.

The career highlights reel, set to a John Williams “Star Wars” theme, showed off clips from the entire “Indiana Jones” series, the cantina scene from 1977’s “A New Hope,” along with scenes from “Blade Runner,” “Working Girl,” “Air Force One,” “K9: The Widowmaker,” “The Fugitive,” and “American Graffiti.”

The ever-humble Ford took to the stage, saying, “I am pleased and honored… but I got a movie you gotta see.” He also had a clever remark about his career montage, adding, “They say before you die, you see your life flash before your eyes, and I just saw my life flash before my eyes.”

The latest “Indiana Jones” film takes place in the years between 1989’s “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” and 2008’s “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” which also featured a world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival that same year.

Although the famed archaeologist is getting ready to hang up his fedora, a surprise visit from his estranged goddaughter Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) pulls him back into the action. She is seeking a rare artifact that her father gave to Indy years earlier – the titular Archimedes Dial, which is said to have the power to locate fissures in time.

Of course, Helena steals the dial and runs off with it, intending to sell the dial to the highest bidder. Indy is forced to go after her, but he’s not the only one trying to get his hands on the dial. His own nemesis, Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), is a former Nazi who is now working as a physicist in the U.S. space program. Voller has his own plans for the dial and plans to try to alter world history in the process.

In an April 2023 interview with Total Film Magazine, director James Mangold confirmed that a de-aged sequence featuring a younger Harrison Ford will be approximately 25 minutes long. He explained that the goal was for Ford to look as young as he did when he filmed "Raiders of the Lost Ark," the first film in the franchise.

Mangold praised the 80-year-old actor, saying that he was "incredibly gifted and agile" during rehearsals, which made it easy for him to "pretend that he was 35." However, he also had to give credit to the new VFX technology in the film that was used specifically to create a young Harrison Ford for the scenes.

“We had hundreds of hours of footage of him in close-ups, in mediums, in wides, in every kind of lighting, night and day," Mangold explained. "I could shoot Harrison on a Monday as, you know, a 79-year-old playing a 35-year-old, and I could see dailies by Wednesday with his head already replaced.”

Additionally, the “What Lies Beneath” actor told Empire that seeing himself de-aged was “a little spooky,” adding, “This is the first time I’ve seen it where I believe it… I don’t think I even want to know how it works, but it works. It doesn’t make me want to be young, though. I’m glad to have earned my age.”

"Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" hits theaters in June 2023.