The Character Harrison Ford Wishes Star Wars Had

In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, the near-simultaneous popularity of both the "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" franchises transformed Harrison Ford from a bit player in TV series and small films into one of the most recognizable faces in Hollywood. In fact, if one were to use two words to describe this era in film history, those might well be "Harrison" and "Ford." 

It helped, of course, that his two most beloved characters share a litany of similarities, allowing the line between actor and character to become (in the eyes of fans) even more blurred. Ford's deadpan, sarcastic approach to antihero Han Solo and his reprisal of so many of the famous space smuggler's characteristics in "Indiana Jones" have even birthed a number of theories about the two protagonists' sharing a very strange sort of in-world relation to one another (via The A.V. Club). 

The similarities notwithstanding, there is one narrative element of Ford's famed archeologist/action hero that the actor couldn't quite replicate in Solo's surrounding space opera. That element, as "Everything Everywhere All at Once" star Ke Huy Quan revealed in a recent tweet, is that of a very specific and special kind of sidekick. 

Before Quan was blowing the minds of both critics and audiences alike in Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert's 2022 film (via Rotten Tomatoes), the "X-Men" fight choreographer was best-known for playing two memorable and celebrated '80s characters: the burgeoning child inventor Data in "The Goonies," and Jones' pint-sized sidekick Short Round in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom." In the film, Quan's character not only provides an abundance of adorable and genuinely funny comic relief, he also becomes a protagonist and hero in his own right. In fact, fans so loved the sidekick that some are saying Short Round should carry on his mentor's legacy in future films (via Twitter).

Of course, fans weren't the only ones who fell for Quan's character. In a tweet displaying a picture of himself and Harrison Ford getting ready to shoot a scene from "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," Quan writes, "Me and Harrison Ford just chilling before he said he wished there was a character like me in 'Star Wars.'" So there you have it. Solo may be satisfied with Chewbacca, but it seems like Ford felt there was room for more than one crew member aboard the Millennium Falcon.