Five things Indiana Jones 5 needs to not screw up

It's the news every Indiana Jones fan has been waiting to hear: Harrison Ford is to return to the role of everyone's favourite fedora-sporting, whip-cracking adventurer in a new instalment directed by Steven Spielberg himself. But there's also news no one really ever wanted to hear: Star Wars and Indy creator George Lucas is returning as a producer, and no one has yet categorically ruled out the possibility of him mucking the whole thing up again.

As any number of Indy's late fellow adventurers would have been able to tell you, had they not been unceremoniously spiked through the brain, fatal booby traps and horrific tortures lie in wait for the fool who rushes in. So here's some polite advice for Spielberg as he prepares to bring our archeological adventuring, Nazi-baiting hero back to the big screen for the final time.

The last Indy entry, 2008's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, is a deeply flawed movie. But there are many films which manage to be unutterably execrable without coining a phrase that will still be used to describe beyond-the-pale film-making wrong turns for decades to come. Thanks to Lucas' plan to have Indy survive a nuclear explosion by sheltering in a plain old household cold storage unit, the phrase "nuking the fridge" has now joined the Fonzie-riffing "jump the shark" in the lexicon. Just this year, a fan theory suggested the archeologist's remarkable durability might be explained away by events in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, in which our hero drank from the immortality-bestowing Holy Grail. To whoever came up with this idea: Hey dummy... If Indy can't be killed, why should anyone in the audience be remotely frightened by the prospect of him being hit by the next giant, rolling boulder?

Frankly, we just couldn't handle another death. When Ford took a lightsaber through the chest and tumbled into space in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a million voices cried out - and were suddenly silenced by the realisation that JJ Abrams might actually have pulled this thing off. But that doesn't mean moviegoers want to see Hollywood's best-loved wonky-grinned alpha male murdered in cold blood for a second time, even if we can't quite imagine the thought of Indy in quiet retirement spending quality family time with Marion and Mutt.

There have been suggestions Disney might consider splitting the narrative for Indy V into two distinct periods, with Ford playing the older adventurer in his twilight years while a younger version (portrayed by a different actor) got most of the heavy stunt work. This makes a certain sort of sense, if only because a 78-year-old Indy would be operating in the mid-60s, long after Hitler and his evil cohorts fell from power. And our hero was always at his best when fighting Nazi scum.

Even with Cate Blanchett as the gorgeously demented Irina Spalko, the Soviets never quite lived up to the mantle of their dastardly predecessors in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, partly because Hitler and his chums really did believe in the kind of mystical mumbo jumbo upon which Indy stories thrive. On the other hand, the "young Indy" route has its obvious drawbacks, and nobody wants to start down the time travel or CGI regeneration roads. Perhaps a Boys From Brazil-style subplot, via which a band of surviving Nazis are discovered alive and well (and cooking up mischief) in some remote and exotic ancient location, could be the way to go.

The digital gopher which turned up in the opening frames of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull may not be as preposterously incongruous as some of Lucas's monstrous CGI insertions for the 1997 "Special Edition" versions of the original Star Wars trilogy, but it certainly rubber-stamped the film-maker's inability to learn lessons despite a decade's worth of fan derision. According to reports, Lucas is back as a producer on Indy V despite having been sidelined by Disney for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which spells obvious danger to anyone who suspects period settings and video game style effects are not the best match. This is a film-maker, after all, who has admitted his own tinkering tendencies. "They weren’t that keen to have me involved anyway, but if I get in there, I’m just going to cause trouble, because they’re not going to do what I want them to do," he told Charlie Rose in December after Disney politely asked him to leave The Force Awakens to JJ Abrams. "And I don’t have the control to do that anymore, and all I would do is muck everything up." Lucas has also said he's largely retired, so fingers crossed he's just there to nod quiet encouragement from the sidelines.

One of Indy V's challenges will be to explain what's up these days with Karen Allen's Marion Ravenwood, who our hero married at the end of Crystal Skull, and Shia LaBeouf's Mutt, who he discovered was his long lost son. The return of Ravenwood, three decades or so after we first met her in Raiders of the Lost Ark, was generally welcomed by fans. But Mutt has to go down as one of the least popular movie characters in Hollywood history.

As mentioned previously, Indy V needs to avoid father and son storylines like the plague. And while LaBeouf has forged an entirely new career as indie character actor and intriguing performance art oddity since departing the role, clamour for the former teen idol to pull on the Brandoesque leathers and rock up once more on his fancy motorbike is currently about as loud as calls for Ja Ja Binks to pop up as an ageing Trade Federation ambassador in Star Wars: Episode VIII. Speaking of which, please leave all extra-terrestrial related plotlines out this time around.