Sean Connery

Sean Connery had already run through the franchise gamut, and Harrison Ford was getting back into it after a series of underappreciated dramatic turns.

["Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens"](https://www.slashfilm.com/541635/star-wars-the-force-awakens-spoiler-free-review/) and will don the Fedora one last time in James Mangold's "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny"), he's clearly having a blast as he enters his ninth decade on this planet. [As he told Empire in 2012](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/indiana-jones-making-last-crusade/), "[Connery] was able to use his comedic skills, and Harrison was in a fantastic mood because he was able to be the foil for the father. In 1990, he attended Connery's 60th birthday party, and, in 2006, [paid tribute to his friend](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWkuwe8UOro) when the American Film Institute honored the legendary Scot with its Lifetime Achievement Award. ["Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,"](https://www.slashfilm.com/1007456/indiana-jones-and-the-last-crusade-let-sean-connery-flex-his-improv-chops/) but his agent was probably overjoyed that he was returning to the blockbuster franchise that broadened his appeal beyond "Star Wars." [Connery was scuffling something awful](https://www.slashfilm.com/1070878/the-best-sean-connery-movies-ranked/) in the 1980s. For George Lucas, a third Indy flick was an opportunity to end a live-action losing streak as a producer that included disappointments ("Labyrinth") and historic disasters ("Howard the Duck"). He took the boyfriend role in Mike Nichols' "Working Girl," and supported his co-stars (Melanie Griffith, Sigourney Weaver and Joan Cusack) to Academy Award nominations, but hit the box-office skids as the lead in Roman Polanski's thriller "Frantic." David Mamet's screenplay is loaded with quippy dialogue, and Connery's having a ball all the way to his bloody dispatching at the hands of Al Capone's hitman Frank Nitti. "And that made it interesting to work with him. Though the character of Indiana Jones was not tailor made for Ford (Tom Selleck [had been offered the role first](https://www.slashfilm.com/840552/harrison-ford-was-actually-a-last-minute-pick-to-play-indiana-jones/)), he'd imbued the whip-cracking archaeologist with the same roguish, seat-of-his-pants charm that made Han Solo such a dashing delight. The prohibition-era action-thriller allowed Connery to lean into his elder statesman stature as a veteran beat cop who preaches the "Chicago way" to Kevin Costner's untested federal agent Eliot Ness. Moviegoers lined up to see Ford as Han and Indy, but they were less enthusiastic about his dramatic turns.