With a fifth Indiana Jones movie being in the works, there are voices to recast the title role, since Harrison Ford is not exactly ‘dynamic hero’ material any longer at his age. Some say that’s not going to work, others point to other franchises (especially James Bond) to prove that it would. Yet, it will be a good deal more difficult to recast Henry Jones than to recast James Bond. Here is why.
There are quite some differences between Indiana Jones and James Bond, but two things are especially important for why it is easy to recast James Bond (or Sherlock Holmes or Dracula or a number of other characters) and why it is much harder to recast Indiana Jones.
The first of those differences is ‘prior history.’ James Bond has existed a long time before Sean Connery first asked for his drink ‘shaken, not stirred’ and introduced himself as ‘Bond, James Bond’ to the villain of the piece. Bond was created as a literary character, first appearing in novels and short stories. Indiana Jones, on the other hand, has featured in various media, including novels, comics, and computer games, but he has no ‘prior history’ to “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, the first time Harrison Ford played him.
Why is that important? Because it influences how much we connect a certain face, the face of an actor, with a character. James Bond was more or less faceless until the first movie was made. He was a character on the page and every reader could imagine him the way they wanted - the way they read him, the way they wanted him to be. Bond was a malleable character like everyone who first came to the world as a literary figure (hence I mentioned Sherlock Holmes and Dracula, also two literary characters with a lot of different movie and TV incarnations).
Indiana Jones, on the other hand, only has one face - the face of Harrison Ford. Even in other media, this is how he looks. On the covers of novels, he bears Harrison Ford’s likeness. In computer games, he more or less looks like Ford (depending on how far advanced technology was when the game was made). In comics, he’s displaying Ford’s body language as well as his face. In all of this media, our picture of Indiana Jones is that of Ford in his early forties.
Recasting James Bond means putting another actor in the role of James Bond. Of course, the way Bond is portrayed varies greatly between different incarnations, but the identity of 007 remains the same - it’s only different aspects which might come to the forefront, depending on actor and time. Recasting Indiana Jones will mean selling the audience a new face which they will not associate with the character. This is not just another aspect of a faceless literary figure, this will be a new face for a movie creation, replacing one actor with the next. It’s much harder to make this kind of thing stick for the audience.
The second difference is the length of time an actor had been connected to the role in question. James Bond changes his face every few years - which lends credence to the theory that he’s a time lord. We all might associate him most strongly with the first actor we saw in the role, but we are used to seeing a different face introducing himself as ‘Bond, James Bond’ every couple of years. We might approve or disapprove of the new face, but we don’t mind a new incarnation.
Indiana Jones has never really had a different face from Harrison Ford’s. There are a few actors who have played a much younger version of him (as in the prologue of “The Last Crusade”), but that is not a real recasting - of course, Ford can’t put on a boy scout uniform and play his own 15-year-old self (well, he could, but it would be weird).
Ever since 1981, there has only been one fully-grown, adult Indiana Jones and it has been Harrison Ford. During this time span, four actors have played James Bond: Roger Moore (1973-1985), Timothy Dalton (1987-1989), Pierce Brosnan (1995-2002), and Daniel Craig (2006-?).
Had Ford been replaced by a younger actor in movies (not just on TV and as a younger person) during the 90s, it might still have worked. People wouldn’t have liked it (which might be why the second-ever James Bond actor only got one movie), but they would have warmed up to it eventually. He hasn’t been for forty years and now it’s a little late for it.
A big problem which comes from not having recast Indiana Jones for a long time can be seen in “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” (aka ‘the movie fans pretend doesn’t exist’). Since the actor ages, so does the character. Since the character ages, time has to move on. One big problem with ‘Kingdom’ is that they had to switch out the big baddie. As Ford was already well in his sixties at that time, time had to have moved on to the late 1950s or early 1960s. The Nazis were out, the Soviets had to come in. That is a bigger problem for the story than one might think. The Nazis were obsessed with mysticism, they had a whole department to search for mythical objects - the ‘Ahnenerbe’ division. The Soviets, while sometimes interested in the limits of what human minds or bodies can do, had no time for all that mythical stuff. The Nazis sending someone to look for the crystal skull and use its powers would have worked. With the Soviets, there’s a problem.
James Bond or Sherlock Holmes do not have that problem. They can be moved in time, but there’s no need to do so. Bond always lives in the present, using modern technology (a lot of which was not around when Ian Fleming wrote the stories). He never grows too old to be employed by the MI6 - unless the writers wish for him to. Sherlock Holmes usually stays in Victorian times, unless the writers wish for him to be a more modern character. Since the character is recast whenever it is deemed necessary, that’s not a problem.
James Bond will be a virile man in his late thirties/early forties infinitely, seducing women, fighting enemies, drinking more than perhaps he should, and providing the audience with the wish fulfilment they’re looking for. Indiana Jones is aging with Harrison Ford and is, if we’re honest here, no longer in the shape to do all the derring-do of his younger self.
What solution is there? Well, Indiana Jones as a franchise can probably not really be saved, but making another character who is like Indiana Jones, a pulp adventure hero who lives in the 1930s and 1940s and goes on daring adventures, is perfectly possible. There are some, but there’s also no problem in creating new ones. ‘New pulp’ has become a thing, new stories in the same vein, in various times, are being written. Establishing a new hero and, perhaps, establishing the hero as interchangeable, is possible. A recast of Indiana Jones at this time, though, is highly likely - one might say ‘fated’ - to fail.
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