The movie Harrison Ford hated every second of making: “It took two days more than forever”
Whenever an actor makes a genre film that takes off at the box office, it’s only a matter of time before the studio begins clamouring for a sequel. It’s something Harrison Ford has gotten used to over the years, but it doesn’t come without its potential perils.
The actor grew famously weary of Han Solo long before the original Star Wars trilogy had concluded, which included begging to be killed off. He didn’t get his wish the first time around, but when he returned for The Force Awakens in 2015, he was finally allowed to realise his dream of being bumped off in a galaxy far, far away.
Ford hasn’t had much of a bad word to say about the Indiana Jones series, though, and he handled Dial of Destiny bombing at the box office in a typically gruff fashion. It wasn’t the ending he wanted for the iconic archaeologist, commercially, at least, but he made the movie he wanted to make, so he was happy.
The only other characters he’s revisited more than once are Blade Runner‘s Rick Deckard and Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, and he would have played the latter three times if the producers got their wish. He was the first choice to headline The Hunt for Red October, but after he passed and Kevin Costner turned it down, Alec Baldwin was drafted in to go head-to-head with Sean Connery’s suspiciously Scottish-sounding Russian submarine captain.
Two years later, things came full circle when Ford took top billing in the sequel, Patriot Games. It was a hit at the box office, but weathered some adverse publicity when Clancy went public with his disdain for the movie. “I think it did hurt the film,” the star conceded to Entertainment Weekly while shooting the follow-up, Clear and Present Danger. “I don’t think it should have. If one doesn’t want to submit to the process, the simple expedient is not to sell your stuff.”
He wasn’t on the best of terms with the author, to put it lightly, or as Ford more succinctly explained, “You do things when you’re typing that you would never do if you had to fucking stand there and deliver.” Still, even without Clancy’s input, the script went through several rewrites and remained in a constant state of revision on set, causing the production to fall behind schedule and over budget.
The picture’s standout set piece comes when Ryan and his associates are ambushed in Mexico City, which took three days more to film than initially agreed. Clear and Present Danger had been crawling towards the finish line, and when reflecting on that scene being just one of many to stretch the schedule to his limits, Ford cracked that “it took two days more than forever.”
To make matters even worse, he and the director, Philip Noyce, weren’t always in agreement. This being their second Jack Ryan adventure together, though, things didn’t get as heated as they may have done otherwise. “We had less of a script this time, so we had more to argue about,” Ford admitted. “I mean argue in a responsible way, not bicker.”
That professional relationship meant, in his words, that they conducted their disagreements “more like a husband and wife than business associates,” which might actually be worse. Negative reactions from test screenings forced the crew to shoot a new ending where Ford’s Ryan testifies before Congress after the events of the narrative, providing one more logistical headache for a movie that was overflowing with them. On the plus side, it made a lot of money when it was released in cinemas.
