The Indiana Jones character was voted as the best movie hero in an Empire reader poll. It's been nearly forty years since Harrison Ford made his debut as the bullwhip-cracking, snake-hating, archaeologist and professor with 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark. Ford has gone on to reprise the role on three additional occasions so far, cementing the character's legacy as one of the true icons of American action-adventure cinema. Behind the camera, Steven Spielberg has served as the director on all four of Indy's big screen outings so far, drawing from a collection of stories written by his friend and fellow filmmaking legend, George Lucas.

Although Disney bought Lucasfilm from Lucas in 2012, they didn't acquire the full rights to Indiana Jones until late 2013. Even after that, they didn't confirm their plans for Indiana Jones 5 until 2016, and the project has seen its release date delayed multiple times since. Still, gauging by the results of a new poll, it appears the character's popularity hasn't diminished since his last appearance in theaters in 2008's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

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In an Empire Magazine poll, Indiana Jones was voted the all-time greatest movie hero, coming out ahead of characters that've been around for as long as James Bond (who helped inspire Lucas to create Indy) or were introduced just five years ago, like Imperator Furiosa from Mad Max: Fury Road. Sigourney Weaver's Xenomorph-fighting Ellen Ripley came in second place in the poll, though it's unclear how close she came to beating out Indy for the #1 spot.

Indiana Jones, Mutt and Marion in a truck in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

It's easy to see why Indiana Jones has sustained his popularity for as long as he has: he's charismatic, loves punching Nazis, and always maintains a sense of humor about himself that makes it easy to root for him. Ford has always been equally well-matched to the role, enough so that it's hard for many fans to imagine anyone else playing him as a full-grown man on the big screen (Ford included). At the same time, the original Indiana Jones trilogy had its flaws (for starters, it was typically bad at handling race) and those issues only became all the more apparent when the franchise returned with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Combined with the fact Ford is pushing 80, and there's a good deal of concern about Indiana Jones 5. Many feel it might be better to simply leave Indy in the past.

More recently, there have been some developments that make the fifth Indiana Jones movie sound more exciting. Earlier this year, Spielberg stepped down as director and has since been replaced by James Mangold, with the premiere date being pushed to 2022 as past of Disney's release slate changes following the coronavirus pandemic. Considering Spielberg himself was hesitant to return as director on Kingdom of the Crystal Skull since he felt he'd run out of new ideas for the Indiana Jones franchise, it's probably for the best he's decided to hand Indiana Jones 5 off to another storyteller. Mangold is all the more intriguing a replacement given his history of putting fresh spins on tried and true genres, and it'll be interesting to see if can find a way to update Indy for the modern-era.

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Source: Empire

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