As collated by Life Journal’s Fortieth-anniversary look again at “Raiders,” Ford (by way of Leisure Weekly) defined how the unique battle sequence with the swordsman “would take three days to shoot,” a reasonably large time dedication for a film as chock-full of motion and placement modifications as “Raiders” is. Ford continued:
“I used to be sick, and apart from, as much as that time, I stored worrying about the truth that I had been sporting this gun that I had by no means drawn. So, I stated to Steven, ‘Why do not we simply shoot the sumbitch?’ He stated, ‘Okay.’ He was able to get out of there too. That is how we obtained that scene.”
Though Ford and Spielberg have been fully happy with their intelligent and stylish (albeit harsh) answer to the scene, Kasdan was lower than enthused. As the author advised Joseph McBride in “Steven Spielberg: A Biography,” he knew he held the minority opinion:
“It was very talked-about, nevertheless it disturbed me. I assumed that was brutal in a manner the remainder of the film wasn’t. I am by no means completely happy about making jokes out of killing folks. Steven is extra in contact with fashionable tastes than I’m.”
It makes good sense that Kasdan would discover the improvised and rewritten second distasteful, if just for the truth that he, as a screenwriter, put a variety of effort and craft into his work on “Raiders.” (Kasdan is not fairly ready to decry Spielberg’s ethical style after directing “Dreamcatcher,” however that is one other story.) To his level, the second was not initially mentioned when conceiving the character of Indiana Jones nor your complete story of “Raiders of the Misplaced Ark,” and if one sees “Raiders” as a devoted homage to the journey heroes of pulp magazines and ’30s film serials, maybe Indy’s capturing of the swordsman is not completely acceptable.