The Harrison Ford Stunt Mask From Indiana Jones 5 Is Horrifying Fans
Prior to the release of "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny," there was a lot of talk about how the film would use de-aging technology for a sequence at the beginning of the film set during World War II. The goal was to make Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) look similar to how he did in "Raiders of the Lost Ark." The digital effect was mostly a success, with director James Mangold achieving his desire to jolt the audience with a younger Indy before being introduced to the older one we meet in 1969. While there's ample CGI on display throughout the rest of the movie, there are also good, old-fashioned practical effects, including a realistic mask that may just haunt your dreams.
Twitter user @IndianaJones_ch shared images of a stunt mask used in "Dial of Destiny." Two of the images feature the mask on its own, where it doesn't really look all too freaky. Then there are the other two pictures of a stunt double wearing the mask to look more like Harrison Ford atop a motorcycle and standing in an office. Using stunt doubles is nothing new for action movies, and it seems no one has spotted the mask in the film as of yet. However, out of context, the mask is definitely getting a strong reaction from Indiana Jones fans.
Is that Indiana Jones or Karl Havoc?
While the mask blended seamlessly within "Dial of Destiny," it just looks bizarre to see someone wearing it when the cameras aren't rolling, and plenty of people have thoughts. Several people compared it to Michael Myers' mask from the "Halloween" movies, and in a more general sense, people just thought it was creepy, like @TD_Craig_, who wrote, "Definitely looks like something from Dawn of the Dead."
Other people had fun with the images, comparing them to other freaky masks throughout pop culture. It does bear an uncanny resemblance to the mask Ryan Gosling's character has to wear at one point in "Drive." Tim Robinson fans will be delighted to see people sharing various gifs from the "Prank Show" sketch of "I Think You Should Leave," which was one of the most difficult to film in Season 2. In the sketch, Tim Robinson's character dresses up like an older man named Karl Havoc to prank people at the mall, but he ends up just standing there, leading to the all-time great line, "I don't even want to be around anymore."
But while it's easy to make fun of the mask, others at least appreciated the use of practical effects in a movie coming out in 2023. One such person was @MisterMark34, writing, "Long proud history of these in movies. I'll take these over CGI any day because at least the brain knows there's a real person in the shot." It's great to see stunt performers continuing to get work in movies of this scale, even if Harrison Ford thinks they could back off every now and then.
Harrison Ford didn't like stunt workers getting too handsy on Dial of Destiny set
Stuntmen play a crucial role on film sets. They often do the difficult scenes an actor can't risk doing for fear of injury shutting down production. And with Harrison Ford being 80 years old, there's little doubt stunt performers were needed occasionally to help with some of the scenes. However, Ford still did plenty on his own and even thought the stunt workers were sometimes doing too much.
When speaking with Esquire, Ford discussed one scene, in particular, where he needed to get off a horse, and he thought several stuntmen were doing too much to help him get down. He described it, "I look down and there's three stunt guys there making sure I didn't fall off the stirrup. They said, Oh, we were just afraid because we thought, you know, and bah bah bah bah. And I said, Leave me the f*** alone, I'm an old man." The actor went on to say how he wanted it to look like an older man was getting off a horse because that's important to Indiana Jones' story in "Dial of Destiny."
A lot of hard work goes into making a movie, including someone making a Harrison Ford mask and someone else needing to wear that mask. It's all for the greater good of bringing a story to the big screen, even if the mask looks so hot and uncomfortable the person wearing it would want to rip it off while having an existential crisis.