Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones movies have been filled with exciting stunts and action sequences. Among the five movies of the popular franchise, there have been many exciting scenes and actions, including brilliant improvisations. However, there are some extremely funny scenes that the fans still laugh about.
In the first Indiana Jones movie Raiders of The Lost Ark, Harrison Ford’s mastermind archaeologist comes across a massive swordsman. Instead of engaging in an epic sword fight (as was rehearsed), Ford chose to just whip out his gun and shoot him. And here is the reason why.
Reason Why Harrison Ford Refused To Film A Sword Fight
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Known popularly as the ‘Gun vs. Sword’ scene, it remains a memorable yet hilarious scene in the history of cinema. In the 1981 movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, the famous professor/archeologist is busy trying to find the Ark before the nasty Nazis could get their hands on it. While in Egypt, he comes across a feared swordsman assassin in the busy streets of Cairo.
“We were shooting in Tunisia, and the script had a scene in which I fight a swordsman, an expert swordsman, it was meant to be the ultimate duel between sword and whip. And I was suffering from dysentery, really, found it inconvenient to be out of my trailer for more than 10 minutes at a time.”
Harrison Ford being extremely sick, Steven Speilberg and Ford figured it would probably take days to shoot it.
“We’d done a brief rehearsal of the scene the night before we were meant to shoot it, and both Steve and I realized it would take 2 or 3 days to shoot this. And it was the last thing we were meant to shoot in Tunisia before we left to shoot in England.”
And hence they come up with the idea to just shoot the swordsman.
When Harrison Ford Just Shot A Stuntman Point-Blank
Harrison Ford was suffering from extreme dysentery when the elaborate scene with the expert swordsman was supposed to be shot. Not only was there supposed to be an amazing sword scene, Indiana Jones was supposed to fight five guys trying to kidnap Marian.
“And it was the last thing we were meant to shoot in Tunisia before we left to shoot in England. And the scene before this in the film included a whip fight against 5 bad guys that were trying to kidnap Marian, so I thought it was a bit redundant.”
Hence, instead of extending their stay in Tunisia, Ford thought about just shooting the stuntman and cutting out the redundant whip fight. Thankfully, Steven Spielberg had the same thoughts.
“So he drew his sword, the poor guy was a wonderful British stuntman who had practiced his sword skills for months in order to do this job and was quite surprised by the idea that we would dispatch him in 5 minutes. But he flourished his sword, I pulled out my gun and shot him, and then we went back to England.”
And hence, Ford literally chose not to film a swordfight to avoid shitting his pants in the $389 million movie.
Raiders of the Lost Ark can be watched on Disney+.
Source: Reddit
