Here's the lowdown on the new Indiana Jones movie starring an 80-year-old Harrison Ford

Harrison Ford, still dashing with that mildly hesitant crooked smile at 80, though somewhat inhibited these days when it comes to doing eye-popping stunts such as leaping out of airplanes, has been amazed by the new cinematic technhologies used to de-age older actors – as deployed elsewhere such as in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman when decades were rolled back for Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci.

The new instalment of the ever-popular Indiana Jones franchise centered on the whip-cracking adventurer who’s still at it after years of being tortured with voodoo and nine (or more) assasination attempts, shows such technology deployed in order to make Ford appear at least four decades younger as he gives his all to, for example, intense punch-ups on a speeding train.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which also stars Fleabag writer and actress Phoebe Waller Bridge as Ford’s goddaughter Helena, is the fifth movie in the series and this time sees the titular character and his alabaster skinned side-kick embark on a hectic journey to retrieve the other half of a precious dial invented by Archimedes which has the power to change the course of history when both components are connected in a supernatural moment of fusion.

Said dial has been stolen by chief villain Mads Mikkelsen as Jurgen Voller who – by joining together both pieces of said superpowered dial will therefore be able to alter the space-time continuum and, according to his evil plan, instantiate a new world order of revised Nazism that will improve upon Hitler’s vision, since the dictator made mistakes that Voller apparently won’t.

Indy and Helena’s mission is of course to stop Voller from plunging humanity into such a state of apocalyptic bloodshed and doom.

Harrison Ford has been interviewed by numerous media outlets about the new film – due for release in the UK on June 30 – and which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May.

He has said: “I wanted an ambitious movie to be the last one. And I don’t mean that we didn’t make ambitious movies before—they were ambitious in many different ways. But not necessarily as ambitious with the character as I wanted the last one to be.”

After the Cannes screening the audience responded with a five-minute standing ovation, and Harrison Ford's storied career was celebrated with an honorary and ultra-prestigious Palme d'Or – the loftiest accolade that the French festival can bestow.

"I’m very moved by this," Ford told the assembled audience, according to Variety. "They say when you’re about to die, you see your life flash before your eyes, and I just saw my life flash before my eyes. A great part of my life, but not all of my life... I’m grateful."

Later, the handsome octogenarian, who is married to former Ally McBeal star Calista Flockhart, told reporters about how amazed he was at the de-aging technology used to make him look 40-ish throughout the film.

"It’s not a kind of Photoshop magic—that’s what I looked like 35 years ago," he said. "Because LucasFilm has every frame of film that we’ve made together over all of these years. And this process, this scientific mining of this library, this was put to good [use]."

Old footage of Ford as whip-cracking, wise-cracking Indy was reportedly used to make the scenes more believable, and showed the character donning the original jacket and wardrobe from Raiders of the Lost Ark, directed by Steven Spielberg, in 1981.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is directed by James Mangold, the first time in the franchise’s history that Spielberg has not been in charge.

Ford continued marvelling about the incredible de-ageing tech deployed in the movie: "It’s a little spooky. I don’t think I even want to know how it works, but it works."