Harrison Ford began his career as an actor back in 1964 and landed a per-week contract with Columbia Pictures when he was just 26. Today, Ford is 80 and returning to Indiana Jones 5, and he wants fans to be fully aware of his age while he does it, especially when doing every stunt.
The fifth and final entry in Indy’s saga is Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. That’s in part, because Ford said “I wanted an ambitious movie to be the last one.” To send Indy off, Ford wants to show the fedora-adorned hero to be shown in an authentic way – even if it means Ford fends off stunt people while on horseback. Here’s insights from Ford from the set of Indiana Jones 5.
Harrison Ford doesn’t want stunt guys hovering around him while filming ‘Indiana Jones 5’
Filming for Dial of Destiny started in June 2021 in the U.K. and wrapped up in February 2022, and took Ford and his peers to Italy and Morrocco. With an estimated production budget of $295 million, the final entry in Indy’s tale promises more spectacle and thrills than ever. Part of that action has seen Ford riding horseback, with many stunt people keeping a close eye on him.
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Ford wasn’t a fan of this arrangement.
“I thought, ‘What the f—?’ Like I was being attacked by gropers,” said Ford, recalling when he was riding on horseback and supervisors spotted him from the ground. “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 f— alone…Leave me alone, I’m an old man getting off a horse and I want it to look like that!'”
What Ford wants for Indy in this final installment
Ford has been with Indy for four movies already, and he wants the fifth to represent a culmination of all that time that’s passed between them both. Actor and character are not the same action icons they were in 1981, when Raiders of the Lost Ark first swung into cinemas on a trusty whip. But they are still action icons – and for Ford, it’s important to represent both the epic and the real in Dial of Destiny.
So, he insisted on taking his shirt off for an early scene in the movie. “Waking up in my underwear with the empty glass in my hand was my idea,” he added. Some of his insistence on staying hands-on comes with drawbacks, like when he pulled the subscapularis muscle from his right shoulder, shutting down production for weeks.
But Ford wanted something refined for Indiana Jones 5. “And I don’t mean that we didn’t make ambitious movies before — they were ambitious in many different ways,” he added. “But not necessarily as ambitious with the character as I wanted the last one to be.”
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny premiered at the 76th Cannes Film Festival on May 18 and will hit theaters in the U.S. on June 30. Will you be checking out Indy’s last adventure?
