Harrison Ford's Most Famous Indiana Jones Improv Deeply Disturbed A Key Crew Member
It's one of the most defining moments of the character of Indiana Jones, and the most key moment in terms of the tone of 1981's "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is when confronted by a master swordsman in the streets of Cairo, Indy (played with a mixture of Bogart-like weariness and gumption by Harrison Ford) makes a snap decision not to engage the brute in a lengthy and (likely) ill-fated physical bout. Instead, he merely pulls his revolver from its holster and shoots the swordsman point blank, allowing him to quickly continue the search for his missing partner, Marion (Karen Allen).
As has become a thing of "Raiders" legend by now, this altercation was not originally scripted in this manner. In fact, it was the result of several factors, most notably director Steven Spielberg wishing to hurry his production schedule along and Ford, suffering from a gross illness at the time, being not at all eager to go through filming a fight sequence.
Thanks to Spielberg's ineffable sense of timing and Ford's pitch-perfect performance, the moment not only made the scene work, it became one of the highlights of the film. However, not everyone involved with the movie was so pleased with the moment as it turned out; screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan was not a fan, believing that the improvised change actually hurt the character of Indy as well as the movie itself.
The 'Raiders' screenwriter thought the improv was too brutal
As collated by Life Magazine's 40th-anniversary look back at "Raiders," Ford (via Entertainment Weekly) explained how the original fight sequence with the swordsman "would take three days to shoot," a fairly large time commitment for a movie as chock-full of action and location changes as "Raiders" is. Ford continued:
"I was sick, and besides, up to that point, I kept worrying about the fact that I had been wearing this gun that I had never drawn. So, I said to Steven, 'Why don't we just shoot the sumbitch?' He said, 'Okay.' He was ready to get out of there too. That's how we got that scene."
Although Ford and Spielberg were completely pleased with their clever and elegant (albeit harsh) solution to the scene, Kasdan was less than enthused. As the writer told Joseph McBride in "Steven Spielberg: A Biography," he knew he held the minority opinion:
"It was very popular, but it disturbed me. I thought that was brutal in a way the rest of the movie wasn't. I'm never happy about making jokes out of killing people. Steven is more in touch with popular tastes than I am."
It makes perfect sense that Kasdan would find the improvised and rewritten moment distasteful, if only for the fact that he, as a screenwriter, put a lot of effort and craft into his work on "Raiders." (Kasdan isn't quite in a position to decry Spielberg's moral taste after directing "Dreamcatcher," but that's another story.) To his point, the moment was not originally discussed when conceiving the character of Indiana Jones nor the entire story of "Raiders of the Lost Ark," and if one sees "Raiders" as a faithful homage to the adventure heroes of pulp magazines and '30s movie serials, perhaps Indy's shooting of the swordsman isn't totally appropriate.
A moment that created the unique and influential tone of 'Raiders'
However, "Raiders" is no mere pastiche. It's not an actual vintage film, but a modern one set in the past, and it both cannot and should not be beholden to antiquated moral attitudes. For one thing, the character of Indiana Jones is established early on to have had a relationship with Marion when she was underage, making Jones a morally unsavory character from the jump. That, of course, is part of the film's larger subtext: as Indy's unscrupulous rival, René Belloq (Paul Freeman), tells Jones multiple times during the film, the line separating the two of them is gossamer thin.
Given all of this, Jones' brusque shooting of the swordsman is totally in character, continuing his moral ambiguity while also demonstrating that he's ruthless enough to stand up to his enemies, which include the likes of Belloq and the Third Reich. As Kasdan says, the moment is played for laughs, but those laughs have some shock in them; both from the brutality of the act as well as Spielberg knowingly subverting audience expectation. Perhaps the moment would stand out negatively if the rest of "Raiders" didn't feature several "cannon fodder" baddies with similarly glib fates, but it certainly does.
Ultimately, Kasdan may have a point that the improv helped contribute to the trend of making jokes out of on-screen murder, but "Raiders of the Lost Ark" was certainly not the first instance of that happening. Instead, the moment has a much more positive lasting influence: it painted Indiana Jones as recognizably human and fallible, allowing his flaws to be just as compelling and acceptable as his strengths. Thus, we have the now-standardized action hero of today, someone whose exploits are that much more impressive given how human they are. Amazing what a single shot can do, isn't it?