Harrison Ford's leg, in the Star Wars film, with the Millennium Falcon door A subsidiary company of Disney has admitted criminal breaches of health and safety laws after a door of the Millennium Falcon almost crushed Harrison Ford to death in a Star Wars film. Ford, best known for playing CSO Jack Stanfield in the 2006 cyber-thriller Firewall, was reprising his role in the the Star Wars franchise when …
"and hit a button before starting to walk back through it, believing the set was not live and that it would not close"
So, in effect, he closed the door on himself by being a careless twat.
And some bunch of legal fuckwits compensated him for doing that??!!11!!
So this is how it all ends, not with a bang, but with a lawsuit...
>He pushed the door close button and the door closed. Shouldn't have been a surprise. It doesn't matter if it was closed by gravity, pneumatics or a stage hand.
Wonder how long a door that could crush somebody without safety features would last in an office building. I maybe can buy the argument if he was a stunt man or doing his own stunts but work place safety laws apply to Hollywood as well and thus the guilty verdict.
"Wonder how long a door that could crush somebody without safety features would last in an office building."
It's not an office building is it? Loose cables wouldn't be acceptable in an office either, but are commonplace on film sets. As are hot lights, carpenters, pyrotechnics, firearms etc.
But in general there are loads of big, heavy doors in industrial situations. Sliding hangar doors are notorious for taking people's fingers off, for example. And have you seen the Sandbanks ferry?
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But in general there are loads of big, heavy doors in industrial situations. Sliding hangar doors are notorious for taking people's fingers off, for example. And have you seen the Sandbanks ferry?
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In all cases such doors should not be accessible by people who have not had relevant training. If they are accessible and a person is injured as a result, the organisation responsible could indeed face H&S charges.
Actors are made aware of the normal hazards present on a film set, and are not permitted unfettered access to certain areas of the set. Had Harrison Ford been given specific training on the hazard presented by the door, I doubt this case would have been brought.
Wonder how long a door that could crush somebody without safety features would last in an office building.
Not quite the same, but the place I worked at had a rotating "air lock" door which - supposedly - detected when someone had passed through one door, closed that and opened the other. When it failed to do so, which it did frequently, you got trapped in it because there were no controls on the inside. Fortunately it was a high traffic area, but more than once a victim had to use their mobile to telephone the switchboard for help!
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He pushed the door close button and the door closed.
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Sure, but that is irrelevant. Automatic doors should not be capable of closing with sufficient force to cause an injury unless they are fitted with appropriate safety devices that ensure they cannot close unless the doorway is clear. Think of how many people would be crushed by train doors and lift doors if that was not the case.
There may be exceptions for situations where such an arrangement would be impractical, but in that case all personnel who might use the door would have to have training in the use & risks. I doubt that a case could be made that a mock spacecraft on a film set could not have been fitted with safe automatic doors. IIUC in the original StarTrek series, the doors were operated manually by stage crew off-camera, and in any case the doors of a stage model can be made of cardboard made to look like thick steel.
in any case the doors of a stage model can be made of cardboard made to look like thick steel.
I do wonder why they went to all the effort and cost of building this door which turned out to be pretty dangerous. I watched the film - really enjoyed it (including the plot holes and other nonsense) - but I don't recall even noticing it. If it was there I guess I thought it was CGI.
Apparently your attention span is comparable to that of the guy who was operating the door, because if you had bothered reading the next paragraph, you would have read...:
"The door was remotely operated by another person..."
- also, there's no mention of compensation. This is a criminal case, not a civil one.
"The real crime is that Ford was bumped off in Episode VII. Gonna miss him!"
"The real crime is that Solo was bumped off in Episode VII." FTFY
Else this would be a murder case, not a H&S one.
And rumours of Solo's death may not be entirely accurate... but we'll have to wait and see.
I'm with you BillG. Never heard of the character or film. Perhaps it's just a blip in my movie knowledge but Harrison Ford, Indiana Jones, yes, Han Solo, yes, Jack Ryan yes (runs like a girl in that too). I liked Alec Baldwin as Jack Ryan in Red October, still my favourite sub film. I wonder why he didn't get the subsequent Jack Ryan roles? PP
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Ford, best known for playing CSO Jack Stanfield in the 2006 cyber-thriller Firewall...
Really?
My reaction exactly. Best known by whom... that was one of the more mediocre films he made. I think "Best known" for playing - well, Han Solo in the 1979 sf-thriller Star Wars perhaps...?
Perhaps El Reg is aping Richard Herring's recurring joke of introducing fairly-well-known guests as being "probably best known for his/her appearance as <insert the most obscure and little-known credit from their past here>"
Quite funny when you hear some of the things now-famous folks starred in.
Nobody told the HSE about JJ Abrams (claiming, at least) to have broken his spine in the same incident.
I'm not sure that HSE covers "trying to lift stuff crushing your mate in an urgent manner so as to minimise further injury", unless you're a member of the emergency services.
Yes, doing the manual lifting course would of course be required of anyone expected to lift heavy objects as a part of their job, but I suspect the heaviest thing JJ needs to lift is the shooting schedule or script (which are no doubt on an iPad nowadays)
They can't have been that fast, given one of the stormtrooper extras famously managed to smack his head on one.
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