Harrison Ford came dangerously close to making his final film appearance in 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens. While preparing to shoot a scene aboard the Millennium Falcon one day, Ford was knocked to the ground and crushed beneath the ship’s door, which was described as weighing about the same as a small car. The hydraulic metal door was reportedly operated by another person, who’d apparently pressed the button to make it go down while Ford was standing underneath it. Ford was badly injured and unable to continue working on the movie for two months.
As Ford told Jonathan Ross in December 2015, the design of the Millennium Falcon had evolved significantly since the 1970s, when the doors were controlled using a pulley system. “Now we had lots of money and technology, and so they built a f—king great hydraulic door which closed at light speed,” Ford explained.
“And the door came down and hit me on my left hip because I was turned to my right,” he continued. “And then it flung my left leg up and it dislocated my ankle, and as it drove me down to the floor, my legs slapped on the ramp up to the Millennium Falcon and broke both bones in my leg.”
Harrison Ford Was Crushed by a Millennium Falcon Door and Nearly Died
The company responsible for the incident, Foodles Production, was later fined £1.6 million (more than $2 million). During one hearing, prosecutor Andrew Marshall said that the accident nearly cost Ford his life.
“It could have killed somebody,” Marshall told the court. “The fact that it didn’t was because an emergency stop was activated.” Had it not been pressed in time, Marshall asserted, things might’ve turned out very differently.
Though production was halted as Ford recovered, the actor was eventually able to complete his scenes. Director J.J. Abrams recalled that Ford’s injuries had actually helped bond the crew on set. When Ford finally returned, Abrams claimed he was “better and stronger than ever.” Abrams went on to say that there was “a fire” in Ford’s eyes that you can see in the final cut of the movie.
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