Credit: LucasfilmThe Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular! at Disney World is being accused of the death of an unknown soldier in a horrific new video making the rounds of the Internet.
This has not been a good time for the Indiana Jones franchise, formerly one of the most beloved and highest-grossing action franchises of all time. Along with Star Wars, the Indiana Jones series was one of the main reasons why The Walt Disney Company purchased Lucasfilm from founder George Lucas, spending billions of dollars on the IP.
Since then, Star Wars has made billions of dollars for Disney (while still not earning its purchase price back in feature films) and generated a huge amount of backlash for its various streaming TV series.
Indiana Jones has produced one final film starring Harrison Ford as the title character, which ended up costing the company a staggering $134 million. Given Ford’s insistence that the character be retired (and his co-owning of the rights), Disney is in a bad place with the world’s most adventurous archaeologist.
Related: Harrison Ford Returns for ‘Indiana Jones 6’ in New Trailer
In short, Disney does not need any more bad news when it comes to Indiana Jones and a video alleging to show a soldier being killed as part of the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular! will not help anything. Per Yahoo News, a clip of a performance of the Indiana Jones stunt show is currently circulating the Internet, falsely stating that a scene depicts a soldier being killed.
Posted by unknown parties, the five-second clip (which can be seen here) depicts a sequence of Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular! at Disney’s Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, from an unknown date. It appears to be taken from a longer video posted by WDW Magazine a year ago:
The specific moment in the stunt show shows a stunt performer being approached by the moving propellor of a plane, an homage to a fight scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). In the clip, an Indonesian religious song plays while the performer is briefly pixelated. The caption, translated from Indonesian, falsely states, “The moment when a soldier was killed by the propeller of a taxiing plane” and “his body was destroyed.”
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The Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular clip has been viewed over 2.1 million times since it was posted on June 20, which is almost certainly causing Disney World a headache. The show has been a popular attraction since 1989 and was the first Indiana Jones attraction at a Disney Park, predating the purchase of Lucasfilm by decades.
The park’s official website invites Guests to “Cheer as Indy and Marion perform incredible stunts with explosive special effects—and learn the secrets behind the magic.”
While no one was actually injured in the video, the actual stunt show has seen a number of injuries over the years. Most tragically, stunt performer Anislav Varbanov was injured during a show rehearsal in 2009 and later died in a hospital.
At the time, Disney spokesperson Zoraya Suarez said, “It’s worth noting that stunt is a common acrobatic maneuver and has been performed successfully thousands of times since the show was created,” which is perhaps a callous response in retrospect.
Disney World and Lucasfilm have not yet issued a statement regarding the Indiana Jones death hoax video.
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