Harrison Ford Once Chucked Away His Script for This Divisive Daniel Craig Movie: ‘I Don’t Get It’
Harrison Ford once teamed up with James Bond star Daniel Craig for this 2011 sci-fi adventure. And although the movie was a return to form for the Indiana Jones actor, he initially was frustrated with reading the script.
Harrison Ford had no idea why he was asked to do ‘Cowboys & Aliens’
Cowboys & Aliens was a Western directed by Iron Man filmmaker Jon Favreau. The title of the movie was exactly what it sounded, pitting cowboys and aliens against each other in old times. Favreau had been meaning to make a Western for some time after his 1996 hit Swingers. Adding aliens to the classic sub-genre helped Favreau expand it even more.
“The aliens give [Cowboys & Aliens] an opportunity to open it up and make it something that’s a little bit original, a little different, but we never wanted to give up that ground that was the Western tradition,” Favreau once told ABC News.
Favreau recruited Ford and Knives Out star Daniel Craig for the experimental feature. But Ford had a strong reaction to the script when he read its initial pages. So much so he nearly threw it away.
“Well I read 30 pages and then I threw it across the room and I called my agent and I said, ‘I don’t get it. There’s nothing in this for me,’” Ford once recalled according to Contact Music. “’Why are you asking me to do this?’”
His agent convinced the 1923 star to read the rest of the script.But Ford still had his doubts, and had to meet with Favreau himself to understand the director’s intent.
“I thought this was clearly something I haven’t done before and one of the things to do at this stage is something you haven’t done before. As much as I have been part of sci-fi movies, I always approach them as fairytales. I didn’t really think of the sci-fi,” Ford said.
Harrison Ford felt films like ‘Cowboys & Aliens’ were made with good intentions
It seemed that many audiences might have shared Ford’s initial reaction to the script. The movie didn’t fair very well critically or commercially, and failed to win its money back at the box-office. But Ford harbored no regrets about doing the feature when asked about it by The Hollywood Reporter. Cowboys & Aliens was Ford exploring more roles in his career.
“All entered with the best of intentions,” Ford said. “I like to change genres. Take a movie like Morning Glory from Roger Michell with Diane Keaton and Rachel McAdams. That’s a movie that could have worked, that should have worked. But the first job of a movie is to make its money back. God knows why something doesn’t work. It doesn’t usually make that much difference — I just go on and do something else. I wasn’t counting the hits and misses.”
Craig felt audiences might have been confused by Cowboys & Aliens as well, which may have played a part in the film’s performance.
“I’m not sure anyone knows what to make of this movie,” he once told LA Times (via Daily Beast).
How Harrison Ford felt taking second billing in ‘Cowboys & Aliens’ next to Daniel Craig
There was a time in Ford’s career where he was consistently the biggest name in a film. But movies like Cowboys & Aliens saw the Star Wars actor taking second-billing from rising leading men like Craig. When asked about this new development in his career, Ford didn’t seem to mind it as much. He embraced the idea that his time as a leading man was coming to an end.
“Well, I’m not a leading man anymore I’m a character actor,” Ford once told Irish Times. “I’ve had my time. Some people realise they’re old when they’re 50 or 60, but at 69 you know it. So the leading man is Daniel Craig and I’m playing a character part and I’m happy to do it. I loved it. It was never my ambition to be on top of anything. It was my ambition to do good work in whatever was available.”
