There are moments in life when you expect to be confronted by greatness: hearing a live orchestra swell into the opening notes of John Williams’ Star Wars theme; standing at the edge of the Scottish Highlands; watching a dog somehow open a fridge and retrieve a beer for its owner. And then there are moments when greatness sneaks up on you in the form of an 82-year-old Hollywood legend, materialising like a grumpy mirage, one metre from your face, during what you thought was a routine Disney presentation of new movies and TV shows.
Harrison Ford is not a man one simply stumbles upon. He is a force of nature, a living relic of an era when leading men didn’t have to spend six months on a chicken-and-rice diet before taking their shirts off. And yet, here he is, looking suitably nonplussed with the entire concept of being on a stage, fielding questions alongside his Captain America: Brave New World co-stars in an impromptu Q&A with all the enthusiasm of a guy who somehow finds himself trapped in the world’s most boring hostage video.
And perhaps this is the true magic of Disney, that an actor such as Ford can be persuaded to star as Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (now the new president of the USA) in a Marvel movie about a guy with metal wings whose job is to save us all from a sinister genius whose head is rapidly outgrowing his ambitions (Tim Blake Nelson’s The Leader) and a gang of snake-themed terrorists who, despite their name, are disappointingly not actually snakes. It’s a classic Marvel dilemma: can Sam Wilson protect democracy, avert global catastrophe, and stop Harrison Ford from walking off set midway through a fight scene because he’s had enough of this nonsense?
During his appearance at Disney’s 2025 slate presentation, Ford was typically gracious about the work done by the late William Hurt, who starred as Ross in previous Marvel and 20th Century Fox films but passed away in 2022. “I’m beginning to understand that this is a big family and I’m a small part of it,” he said with that habit of gruff understatement Ford-watchers have come to know and love. “The attraction of Marvel films for me is watching wonderful actors have fun and play. So when the opportunity came along I was grateful. It’s a new genre and audience for me, and it was fun.”
The assembled audience is also treated to an exclusive clip of the new film, out 14 February, in which we already know Ford will end up transforming into the Red Hulk. It’s an action-packed set piece in which Wilson (Anthony Mackie) infiltrates an enemy base, and showcases the new winged Captain America suit, which we’re told was given to Sam by those helpful Wakandans. . Marvel has always been a franchise built on increasingly wobbly physics, but even the most generous audience might struggle to believe that a bloke with no serum and no billionaire gadgets could stand toe-to-toe with a bad guy whose brain is so large it requires its own postcode.
Elsewhere on the slate of new movies, we were treated to an intriguing look at the upcoming Thunderbolts*, which increasingly looks like it will be Marvel’s answer to The Suicide Squad, but with fewer talking sharks and more ex-Avengers. The return of David Harbour’s Red Guardian and Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova, and plenty of heavily accented eastern European badinage, might well be worth the price of admission alone. Wyatt Russell’s John Walker/US Agent looks as if he’s been through the mill since we last saw him in the Disney+ show The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and there’s still no confirmation of why the Thunderbolts* have an asterisk next to their name. Will this one be Marvel’s new Guardians of the Galaxy? Or just another Eternals – a film that technically exists, gets released, but is then spoken about as often as Thor: The Dark World? We’ll find out in May when the movie hits cinemas.
Also on the slate is Tron: Ares, starring Jared Leto as the titular AI, who arrives in the real world from the digital domain with an undisclosed but dangerous mission. Footage shown didn’t go that far beyond what we’ve seen in trailers, but it all looks visually splendid, with light cycles flying here there and everywhere through human cities. There’s no way of knowing, of course whether all this incredibly expensive-looking digital sorcery will end up getting lost in a logic vortex by the time the titles roll this October. Jeff Bridges is back again, and let’s hope there’s a better part written for him this time than the two versions of Kevin Flynn that turned up fairly pointlessly in 2010’s Tron: Legacy.
That’s the thing about living legends – it’s only worth wheeling them out for a late-stage encore if you can give them something meatier than looking vaguely mystical or, in Harrison Ford’s case, brilliantly playing the US president with all the enthusiasm of a man who just found out his Light Cycle got impounded.
