The flop movie Harrison Ford knew was “not a good choice” to make: “The core audience was not interested”
One of the few drawbacks of being a cinematic superstar is that playing against type becomes an even bigger risk. Audiences become conditioned to see a particular actor playing a specific kind of role, and when they go against the grain, it becomes clear that paying customers aren’t interested, as Harrison Ford discovered to his detriment.
Ever since Star Wars first strapped a rocket to his back and turned the part-time carpenter into a household name, Ford’s biggest onscreen successes have usually been cut from a similar cloth. There’s the odd exception, with Robert Zemeckis’ What Lies Beneath prime among them, but his most memorable movies usually tick a certain set of boxes.
If he’s not playing a roguishly charming and charismatic protagonist caught up in a race against time to prevent an incident with far-reaching national or global implications, then Ford would often be cast as a dogged and determined character of upstanding moral fortitude, one who usually ended up tracking down, retrieving, or rescuing his loved ones from imminent danger.
Those tropes apply to the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, Blade Runner, his two-film stint as Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, The Fugitive, Air Force One, Witness, Frantic, and more, all of which are among his highest-grossing or most acclaimed outings, and in many cases, both.
Clearly, viewers voted with their wallets and let Hollywood know that the best way for a Ford-led flick to make the most money is to cast him in parts they wanted to see him play. Fittingly, when the veteran knew he was running the risk of alienating his fans, his suspicions turned out to be right on the money.
A lot was riding on 2002’s K-19: The Widowmaker beyond its costly budget. It was a history-making picture that saw Kathryn Bigelow become the first woman to direct a $100million movie, and when it flopped, she’d be the last for a while. Ford playing a Russian submarine commander required an accent, and it’s not too harsh to say it wasn’t very good.
Maybe he’d have been better off emulating his former onscreen father, Sean Connery, who sounded like himself when playing a similar part in The Hunt for Red October, but in the aftermath of The Widowmaker sinking without a trace at the box office, Ford admitted he always had his concerns.
“I think from a career perspective, a lot of people would say that was not a good choice to play that role,” he told Tufts Daily. “The core audience that has experienced me in the past was not interested in seeing me play a Russian submarine captain, an enemy of the United States, so to speak.”
It was a well-intentioned failure, and trying to break out of those associations was why he agreed to do it in the first place: “That’s the reason I did it,” he explained. “To bump against barriers, so to speak. Having bumped, then you want to get back into something that works, try and do different kinds of films.”
In the 20+ years since, Ford has never played another non-American character, which probably isn’t a coincidence when it was so vociferously, and expensively, rejected the first time.
