It has just been announced that the fifth (as yet untitled) Indiana Jones film will be released in 2020.  If it films in 2019, Harrison Ford, who is expected to star in it, will be 76 years old.  In his last outing in 2008, in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Ford was "only" 65 years old but still looked embarrassing as an action hero, with pants riding really high above his waist.

Playing Indiana Jones at 76 will be truly ridiculous.  It is true that Ford played Han Solo in The Force Awakens, filmed when he was 71, but that was not nearly as athletic a role as Indiana Jones.  Indiana Jones beats up people with a whip, and through hand-to-hand combat.  Indiana Jones swings by vines and climbs up disintegrating bridges.  Indiana Jones does not sit in a senior center eating Jell-O and playing bingo.

Really, they should recast the role.  But the problem is that there are no male action heroes.  A lot of films, like the recent The Force Awakens and Rogue One, have female action heroes.  Men can be found playing action roles in comic book films, but they don't really make such an impression.  The names of the actors who play Superman and Batman now don't exactly roll off the tongue, do they?  Movies have become all special effects and costumes and very little about character.

And action films, where the hero is not some fictional superhero, but a regular human being, have largely disappeared.  Where are films like Commando, where Arnold Schwarzenegger eliminates a gang of terrorists to rescue his daughter?  Where are films like Cobra, where Sylvester Stallone has to wipe out fanatics in a supermarket?  Where are films like Dirty Harry?  They simply aren't made anymore.

And that is a big part of why there are no more action heroes, and why it is so hard to replace Harrison Ford.  What's next, a film showing Rambo attacking a North Korean retirement home?

Questions for discussion:

1) Will you go to see the next Indiana Jones movie?

2) Who could replace Harrison Ford in the role (not Shia LaBeouf)?

3) What do you think the title of the next Indiana Jones film will be?

Ed Straker is the senior writer at NewsMachete.com.