James Mangold has explained why Shia LaBeouf does not appear in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

In the previous movie, 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones discovered Mutt Williams, played by LaBeouf, was his long-lost son, who had been kept a secret by his former love interest Marion Ravenwood.

During an interview with Variety, Dial of Destiny’s director insisted LaBeouf’s absence had nothing to do with his public criticism of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

“It’s separate from all past studio, political intrigue on movies I didn’t make,” Mangold explained. “You were either going to make a movie all about the two of them (meaning Indiana and Mutt) or you’re going to have to find a way to not have (Mutt) around, because he was too significant a player in the previous film to just pretend he didn’t exist.”

He added, “I didn’t think his whole thing worked that well in the previous film. I just went towards something else because it was what was more interesting to me.”

Two years after Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was released, LaBeouf told the Los Angeles Times that the movie “dropped the ball” and that “there was a reason it wasn’t universally accepted”.

He later told Variety in 2016 that he doesn’t like the movies he made with Steven Spielberg, who directed the first four Indiana Jones films, and added, “He’s less a director than he is a f**king company.”

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is in cinemas now.

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