The movie Harrison Ford didn’t think anyone would like: “We expected to be seriously slapped around”
Spending half a century on the A-list is a feat that very few actors have ever been able to achieve, but Harrison Ford has made it look effortless.
Ever since Star Wars first catapulted him to superstardom in 1977, his position as one of the biggest stars in Hollywood has never waned. Like everyone else to enter such rarefied air, Ford has been through some ups and downs, but he always emerges on the other side with his status intact as a silver screen legend.
It helps that Han Solo and Indiana Jones have given him the distinction of playing two of the most iconic characters in cinema history, another exceedingly rare accomplishment. Throw in his stint as Jack Ryan, his ass-kicking president in Air Force One, seeking retribution against a one-armed man in The Fugitive, and his roles in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, and his Academy Award-nominated turn in Witness, and it’s easy to see why he’s never fallen off.
Every picture is a gamble in one way or another, and Ford was concerned that one of his star vehicles wouldn’t be received as well as he hoped. At the time, it was about as close to guaranteed success as anyone can hope to find in a ruthless business, but his trepidation became a lot more interesting knowing what was to follow.
“It was never a lead-pipe cinch,” he told the LA Times of returning to the well after a two-decade absence for Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. “It was a calculated business risk, but I believe it paid off. The first time we showed it to a disinterested audience was at Cannes. That’s a crapshoot of the first order. Not only is that audience sophisticated and film-knowledgeable, it’s French.”
Ford “somewhat expected to be seriously slapped around” by not only the notoriously hard-to-please Cannes crowd but also Indiana Jones fans. After all, The Last Crusade had ended with the title hero literally riding off into the sunset, and after almost 20 years away from the big screen, questions were asked about whether Indy had anything left in the tank other than nostalgia bait.
That in itself sums up Crystal Skull in a nutshell: it was a monster box office hit, becoming the highest-grossing release of Ford’s entire career. And yet, there’s no shortage of people who hate the franchise’s fourth instalment with a level of commitment that would pass for admirable if it wasn’t so intensely vitriolic.
Was the lingering resentment towards Kingdom of the Crystal Skull not only the reason Dial of Destiny exists but the reason it bombed so thunderously? Maybe. Ford’s worries were assuaged when it made a fortune in cinemas, only for his doubts to be proven correct when time saw almost everyone turn on the film.
