Harrison Ford is an old man, damn it, and he wants stunt performers to let him look like it
Promoting his final Indiana Jones movie, Harrison Ford has no interest in pretending he's still a scrappy youngster
Aux News Harrison Ford
Harrison Ford has always been a lovable rogue, probably even back when he was a carpenter, but he has really settled into his new role as a lovable curmudgeon and made it his own. He has clearly relished his many opportunities over the last few years to put his most famous characters to bed and never think or speak of them again, and the rollout of Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny has given Ford a few opportunities to gruffly speak his mind while we all clap and cheer.
In May he defended the film’s use of de-aging technology to make Indiana Jones look younger for flashback scenes, and now Esquire has published an interview with Ford where he tells a story about yelling at the film’s stunt performers for not letting him hurt himself trying to get off a horse—an interview, it should be said, that also includes Ford sending back eggs that aren’t runny enough and asking the interviewer (Ryan D’Agostino) not to mention how often he says “fuck” because Calista Flockhart told him he says it too much.
Before we get to the horse story, some important context: Ford mentions in the Esquire chat that he’s “known for shutting movies down” when he gets hurt, “which is not something you want to be known for.” Esquire points out that production on Dial Of Destiny completely stopped for two weeks after Ford hurt his shoulder practicing a punch for a fight scene with Mads Mikkelsen (and then it was another six weeks before he could start throwing punches again), and there was also the time he almost got killed by the hydraulic doors on The Force Awakens’ Millennium Falcon.
So “Harrison Ford got hurt doing something relatively normal” is not a completely unheard of concept on a film set, and yet here’s how he tells the story of filming Dial Of Destiny’s big Manhattan horse chase scene:
As Ford finished the scene, he felt hands all over his legs and, he says, “I thought, What the fuck? Like I was being attacked by gropers. I look down and there’s three stunt guys there making sure I didn’t fall off the stirrup. They said, Oh, we were just afraid because we thought, you know, and bah bah bah bah. And I said, Leave me the fuck alone, I’m an old man—”
Ford later added that he’s “an old man getting off a horse” and that he wanted it “to look like that” when he did it. He should recognize why people may think he’s a little fragile (no one wants to be responsible for hurting Harrison Ford, and also the company responsible for the Star Wars door injury was fined $2 million), but this does also speak to why Ford’s Star Wars/Blade Runner/Indiana Jones reunion tour has been so compelling. He’s not precious about it.
He let Han Solo die as a plot device and he let Rick Deckard be a standoffish jerk (though he did also get the phenomenal final line in that movie), so they need to allow him to make Indiana Jones look like an old man when he gets off a horse! The guy hid in a refrigerator while an atomic bomb went off, we can’t expect him to be a spry, punch-throwing archaeology professor anymore.
55 Comments
I suppose I’ll HAVE to see the new Indiana Jones, in hopes of healing the Scar of the Crystal Skull in my soul.
Nah man just do I do and rewatch the temple of doom
But Crystal Skull already pulled out my heart and ate it. I gotta put myself through that again??? 🤣
A lot of us got hurt watching that.
I could huck a bottle of Dan Aykroyd’s vodka at you so you could have a matching physical scar.
Given that IGN was absolutely wistful for Crystal Skull after seeing DoD, this has the chance to be a series wrecking finale.
Feedback was so uniformly bad for that one that I have managed to never see it. Plan to keep it that way.This one doesn’t look any better.
The main value in watching Crystal Skull is to compare it to Raiders in order to see what was lost between the two. I’d compare it to Breaking Bad vs. Metastasis, except that Crystal Skull comes out as even more inexplicably poorly put together as far as entertainment.
i think the real proof it’s that bad is that there has been no attempt to rehabilitate its image. i still don’t care for the star wars prequels but it’s been interesting seeing their stock rise over the last 20 years. crystal skull always had it’s ‘it’s not so bad’ people, but noone goes to bat for it beyond that, at best.
Thus my decision to skip it completely. I’ve yet to hear anyone say “eh, it’s worth seeing.” Raiders and Crusade are such perfectly assembled adventures that I don’t want to see some pale copy.
Is that the only other one with Karen Allen? I still don’t know if I’ve seen it. Was it really that bad?
It was bad in a way that’s hard to define until you actually sit through it. It didn’t have low production values, per say, but it still managed to make the action sequences feel cartoonish, again, especially compared to Raiders, which made you feel Indiana’s pain inside yourself.
Karen Allen for anything is wonderful, but even she couldn’t do anything for this.
If you so choose, you can make up for watching it for yourself by binge-watching the other 3. You might find more ways to describe how Crystal Skull fell short after doing so.
No it wasn’t that bad. I found it enjoyable to watch. As fun as the older movies? No. But still fun.
According to the critic you will on the contrary gain a new appreciation for Crystal Skull – that gives you an indication how bad is this new movie.
The man needs to take that advice when flying his airplanes
Fly? Yes! Land? No!
All planes land, eventually.
And what is “landing” but a reasonably controlled collision with the earth?
“A good landing is one you can walk away from” — Chuck Yeager.
“Anybody seen my baby?”
– Charles Lindbergh
Too soon.
Reminded of a recorded conversation about Flight 93:“That plane is down.”“It landed? When did it land?”“It. Did. Not. Land.”“Oh, it’s down?”
I’m sorry son, they got us.
ELEVEN O’CLOCK!!!
(looks at watch) What happens at eleven o’clock?
The network news.
What the hell “phenomenal final line” are you referring to?
“Hey you kids, stop running across my damn blades!”
He did get to utter the least true line: “I used to do your job. I was good at it.”NO YOU WEREN’T.
I think he meant when compared to Holden.
Compared to Holden Caufield, maybe.
Not James Fucking?
+1 Lao Che
“This… Fucking… Couch.”
Is there any point when he’ll just say “no” to these re-hashed movie things he asked to do but seems to hate?
“Harrison Ford got hurt while eating yogurt,”
If fairness, he was piloting a plane at the time.
Flyin’ a stolen plane away from Nazis ain’t like dustin’ crops, bfred!
“You make a mess pulling the top off the yogurt or trying to mix in the fruit and that’ll put you on a golf course real quick, won’t it?”
That plane was the Millennium Falcon with a bad door.
i imagine it will be a lot of shots of a clearly cgi-harrison ford doing insane things that he couldn’t do at 20 and then at the end he’ll struggle a little getting out of a car or something.
I agree with him – it’s jarring when they de-age an actor’s face but not his body language. See Sam Jackson in Captain Marvel – the deaging on his face was very convincing! Not so much the parts where he’s moving around and you can tell he’s absolutely not a fit 40-year-old spy.
He should just do it the Wilford Brimley way… getting off the horse by getting on a smaller horse, than a kind of large-ish dog.
We all know that it is not the years, it is the mileage.
Ric DeckHard.
Ford is the same age as my dad, and I get nervous watching my dad walk across the patio after it’s been raining. I just can’t shake that same feeling watching Ford do action sequences. Even 15 years ago in Crystal Skull I was worried about him doing a stunt. “Nooo Harrison don’t do that you could really hurt yourself!”
probably even back when he was a carpenter/pot dealer…in the interest of accuracy.
My money is on a general reevaluation of Crystal Skull after this new thing comes out. I myself have inched toward the maybe-its-not-that-bad category in recent years.
Now do the Star Wars prequels.
They’ve been done, hence my prediction.
ehhhh… I think part of the “redemption” was in Revenge of the Sith. That one brought up the other two in epic fashion. And considering Attack of the Clones, that’s quite the achievement.
I was never too unhappy with Phantom Menace. I kind of felt like it was more generally made for a younger audience, while still being enjoyable fun for the older fans.Plus, it inspired Weird Al!
Next up: Man Getting Hit By Football, starring Harrison Ford