Major Hollywood franchise? Check. Glamorous location? Check. Thrilling stunts? Check. Buff young heart-throb action star? Che . . . oh.

The fourth and as-yet-untitled Indiana Jones film is due to come out next year. An intensive three weeks of filming have just finished in Hawaii, where about a fifth of the film is being shot. The stunts, apparently, are breathtaking. The plot, apparently, is enthralling. The star, undeniably, is a pensioner.

How is this going to work? When Harrison Ford made the third film, (the, in retrospect, premature) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), he was a young-looking 47. Under the hat, the hairline was intact. The stomach was firm. When he attacked, the whip cracked and the elbow didn’t. The new film is set in the 1950s, two decades after the last.

Early on, you suspect, cinema-goers will be reminded that Indy’s last quest, to bring home the eternal-life-giving Cup of Christ, didn’t go all that well. Ford may be only 65, but some 65-year-olds look older than others. Can this one still outrun a huge, rolling, stone ball? With his whip wrapped around the arm of some ancient, battered idol, can he still clear a chasm?

“He’s doing the stunts,” insists Kathleen Kennedy, one of the film’s two co-executive producers (the other, of course, being George Lucas). “He just has a few more ice packs and a few more massages.”

Sadly absent, this time round, is Sean Connery, who played a star turn as Indy’s father in . . . the Last Crusade. The official line is that he was offered a cameo, but was enjoying retirement too much.

In truth, one wonders if vanity may have played a part. Connery himself is 77. It’s one thing to play a wobbly pensioner. It’s quite another to play a wobbly pensioner’s dad.

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