With Harrison Ford back on television and in theaters with the double-whammy of Shrinking and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, fans of his six-decade (and counting) career are forced to reckon with an impossible question: When has Harrison Ford been his hottest?
When it comes to judging an actor with such a storied and rich career, qualitative hotness can be a slippery sucker to calculate. Just when you think you’ve got a handle on it, in swoops a furrowed brow in an Amish flick that strikes your fancy, or a shimmy in the sci-fi slacks that lands just so. And yet, though some might argue for subjectivity within such matters, I have come to the conclusion that there is only one likely suspect in this specific sexy investigation.
Six decades of hot Harrison Ford: where to even start?
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In Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Ford proves he’s still got what it takes to keep us gasping. However, it’s safe to say that we can narrow Harrison Ford’s window of prime hotness down to a particular decade of his long, hot career. If we were to poll other Ford fans, I can guarantee that 95% would choose the era beginning with Star Wars in 1977 and running up through Working Girl in 1988 as his personal pinnacle of pulchritude. You’ve got your Han Solo and you’ve got your Indiana Jones, of course. But there’s also Rick Deckard in Blade Runner and sturdy John Book in Witness. That dude with the glasses in The Mosquito Coast! There’s Jack Trainer, the guy who makes all the office girls swoon when he changes his shirt in Working Girl. And we can’t forget about Dr. Walker in Frantic, a role that includes Harrison’s only (yes, only) nude scene.
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I am sure there are arguments to be made for his Jack Ryan in Clear and Present Danger or his stalwart President Marshall in Air Force One. And perhaps some of you feel fuzzy downstairs when Dr. Richard Kimble fights his one-armed man in The Fugitive, wink wink. Hot daddy Harrison sitting shirtless in bed beside Michelle Pfeiffer while plotting to murder her in What Lies Beneath? Now we’re getting somewhere, hubba hubba.
But no, it is none of them. I have run the numbers, and Harrison Ford’s hottest role is Indiana Jones, and the hottest Indiana Jones is the Indiana Jones in Temple of Doom, and the hottest Indiana Jones in Temple of Doom is the evil one.
Harrison Ford’s hottest as Evil Indy. It’s just science.
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It’s just a cold, hard, scientific fact that evil is hotter. (Fictional Evil that is, and it’s an important distinction; in the real world, evil looks like Mitch McConnell.) In Superman III, when Superman grows stubble and gets drunk? Definitive hottest. Evil Spock with a goatee? Forget about it. And I’d bop Skeletor over He-Man any day of the Eternian calendar.
You might be swayed, as you watch Temple of Doom, by Indiana Jones wearing a white-jacketed tuxedo during the opening musical number. And the siren song of Indiana wearing a tweed blazer and bow tie with his hair slicked down nerdily at that legendarily disgusting sit-down with the Maharajah might also whisper your name. Or Heroic Indy in the last act, his shirt torn to tatters as he slams that large scimitar into a rope bridge? That ain’t no unpretty sight.
But all of that will fall away at the one hour, 17-minute, and 50-second mark, when Evil Indy first appears. When the steam of the firepit clears, and there he stands: shirtless, sweaty, bathed in blood-red light. His chest puffed out and a red cord bound around his torso. For what purpose is this cord, you ask? Visually, I suppose it signifies how Indy is mentally restrained in this moment, under the power of another. But let’s not kid ourselves. The purpose is kink, my friend — blazing-hot kink. And, oh, how it blazes.
Spielberg’s camera sinks low, low, lower still — obscenely low, some might say. Taking in the sight. The spectacle. We find ourselves staring up at fiery Indy like we’ve been handed a $50 bill and a pillow on the floor for our knees. And Harrison relishes these moments, dramaturgically speaking; his eyes go dark and his lips tremble with dumb submission. A slutty smirk barely buried. He’s the sex zombie of our dreams.
Look no further than when Evil Indy straps Willie (Kate Capshaw) into the cage in which she’ll be lowered into the fire pit, and she spits in his face. Ford touches the spit, looks at the spit on his hand, and I’ll be damned if he doesn’t smile the filthiest smile this franchise has ever seen (and that’s saying a lot, because there are some real characters in this series). And when Willie starts shrieking as she’s being lowered into the pit, Evil Indy might as well be climaxing, the way Harrison heaves his chest and shakes all over with antici…pation.
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This is to say that Harrison Ford is having a blast in this sequence, and there’s nothing hotter than fun. So what if said “fun” is torture and red-eyed devilry? As every lifestyle magazine has told us since time immemorial, when a man loves his job it shows, and he’ll in turn bring that sense of play back home into the bedroom. So you can loop a red cord around my chest and chain me up anytime, Indiana. My pants are already on fire just thinking about it.
How to watch: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is now streaming on Disney+.
How to watch: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny opens in theaters June 30.
