Harrison ford

Harrison Ford was counting his blessings while accepting the Career Achievement trophy at the Critics' Choice Awards on Sunday (Jan. 14).

Read what Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, J.J. Abrams, and more wrote about the man who originated the role of Chewbacca.

As with any get-together involving this cast, there was one noted absence.

When you’re out promoting a movie, you’re often asked to do a lot of things, most of them pretty silly. With the amount of press the cast of Star Wars: The Force Awakens was being asked to do, there were asked to do a lot of silly things, none perhaps as silly as going on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and singing a medley of Star Wars music a cappella. But the entire cast — including Harrison Ford! — actually commits, and it actually turns out to pretty fun.

The original Star Wars was driven by nostalgia for pulp magazines, Saturday-morning serials, and a simpler era with clear-cut heroes and villains. The new Star Wars is driven by nostalgia for the original Star Wars, and a simpler era when that title evoked words like “adventure” and “excitement,” and not words like “the taxation of trade routes,” and “Jar Jar Binks.” The characters in Star Wars: The Force Awakens are all searching for something of great importance to the galaxy far, far away. I won’t reveal what this MacGuffin is, but I will tell you what it represents: that old Star Wars magic. Can director J.J. Abrams and the rest of the saga’s new creators find it?

With Star Wars: The Force Awakens just about two weeks ago, it may seem strange to now look ahead to a Star Wars film that isn’t coming out until May, 2018, but when that film is Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s Han Solo spinoff, you’ll forgive us for jumping out ahead. Though filming on the Han Solo project isn’t expected to begin for over a year, Lord and Miller have already started auditioning a slew of young Hollywood actors for the project and some of the names may surprise you.

Harrison Ford appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! last night to talk publicly for the first time about breaking his ankle on the set of Star Wars, crashing his plane and how Star Wars: The Force Awakens is an “incredible” movie. Oh, we should also mention he did all this while dressed up as a hot dog.

So much of Han Solo’s appeal is due to Harrison Ford’s portrayal of the legendary smuggler. It’s an iconic character elevated by an iconic performance. But it almost didn’t happen. Early in the development of Star Wars, Han Solo was a big, green-skinned alien Jedi with gills and no nose. Once George Lucas decided he wanted a human character, he actually almost cast Billy Dee Williams in the part, before reconsidering him for Lando Calrissian. That’s just one of the facts packed into the latest episode of You Think You Know Movies, which catches up with the captain of the Millennium Falcon, Han Solo!

Harrison Ford might be a superhero. This, according to Star Wars: The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams, who was on set for Ford’s unfortunate accident last year, when a hydraulic door broke his leg. (As Abrams’ describes it in the clip above, his ankle was at a, gulp, 90-degree angle to the rest of his body. Ew.) Thankfully, Ford was okay. Then he later got into a plane crash and was mostly okay after that too. Because, again, Harrison Ford is a superhero.

It should come as no surprise that Warner Bros. is planning to resurrect The Fugitive in some capacity. After all, a major film studio returning to the well of the comfortably familiar for a remake or a reboot (or a reboot of a remake) is pretty par for the course these days. What makes this news ever-so-slightly interesting is the suggestion that this may be a continuation of some kind, featuring the same characters that Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones played in the iconic 1993 film.

There’s a running joke in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade that Indy took his nickname from the family dog. That joke has some truth to it though because as George Lucas was developing Raiders of the Lost Ark, he actually named the character after his dog, Jones (the “Indiana” was a riff on Steve McQueen character Nevada Smith). Coincidentally, the same dog was the inspiration for Chewbacca in Star Wars. Need more Raiders of the Lost Ark facts? Throw us the idol and we’ll throw you the latest episode of You Think You Know Movies!

This is absolutely harrowing news: iconic actor and living legend Harrison Ford has been critically injured in a plane crash. The plane crash-landed in Venice, California today and Ford was subsequently rushed to the hospital where his condition is currently critical. Ford, who’s been reprising his role in the new series of Star Wars films and recently signed on for the long-gestating Blade Runner sequel, is 72 years old—making his enduring dedication to these franchises even more remarkable.