Indiana Jones Footage Rises From the Cutting Room Floor

As part of an upcoming Blu-ray release for the Indiana Jones series of films, the "original" version for one of the most iconic scenes of that series has surfaced on YouTube--with filmmakers walking Harrison Ford through a marketplace battle with a scimitar-wielding adversary. In the final version of the film, Dr. Jones waited through the swordsmith's initial flurry of movement (a showy display of swordsmanship, but one that took place several feet away from the hero and never threatened him directly) before taking out his gun, shooting the man and walking away. That version, iconic though it is, was not how George Lucas intended it, apparently, but came about (according to i09 and a number of personal accounts over the years) when the star and several others working on location in the Middle East took ill and, complaining of intestinal distress, Ford didn't want to shoot an action sequence. As one commenter on i09 put it, the scene "turned out better, I think. Hurray for dysentery?" Check the scene from the Blu-ray out below.