Any untouchable characters?

[Superfreak]

Luke Skywalker

I'm going to disagree with this one. We saw LS at the max, 20 years of age by the end of ROTJ. Taking age into account, there is a multitude of actors out there that could tackle an older Luke Skywalker.

 

[Blitzkrieg Bop]

Clarence Boddicker

 

[Airwings]

Doctor Jones: The second Indiana Jones doesn't need to be similar to Ford at all. He has to make the role his own. Please, try to think outside the box!

 

[Rowsdower!]

Samuel L. Jackson

 

[DACrowe]

1. Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh, Gone with the Wind)

2. Michael Corleone (Al Pacino in The Godfather Trilogy)....I'd say the whole cast in a remake, but Vito was recast in The Godfather Part II as a younger man via Robert DeNiro.

3. Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca which is a film that can never be remade)

4. Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford in the Indiana Jones films)

5. Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver)

....and a few more:

6. The entire cast of Star Wars

7. The rest of the cast of the first two The Godfather films

8. Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood)

9. Frankenstein's Monster (Boris Karloff....I know many have tried since and they have all fallen short and been found wanting in comaprison)

10. Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird)

I'll stop there.

 

[Doctor Jones]

Doctor Jones: The second Indiana Jones doesn't need to be similar to Ford at all. He has to make the role his own. Please, try to think outside the box!

Then is it truly Indiana Jones? Please tell me the difference between Indy on the script page and when Ford plays him. You read the script and you see Ford. All of Jones' traits are pretty much Ford and his special touches. All within collaboration between the him, Lucas and Spielberg. They all created him. Ford came up in the discussions for the character before who he was cast. That means a lot. They originally were looking for an unknown or a commercial actor. Then they got Selleck, and eventually went to Ford. Because it was suppose to happen the entire time. It took Lucas to warm up to it, but from the beginning Ford was the choice.

Jones was an creation that doesn't come from any pre-existing material.

 

[Airwings]

You look at Indiana Jones and Ford as if it were mid 1960s and we are discussing James Bond. It was IMPOSSIBLE for anybody except Connery to play 007. It just couldn't be done. The public opinion was so.
The only difference is that the character of James Bond existed before the franchise started, and Indy is a mix of different characters.

But both of them is defined by the actors that first played the role.

 

[DACrowe]

Yeah. And yet, Bond has been recast five times while in 30 years Indiana Jones has been recast...never. And he never will because that is Ford's role. Nobody even wants it. When they hinted of doing an Indy V with Mutt as the lead or just people reacting to that hint in Indy IV there was a backlash. Who wants to see Shia in an Indiana Jones movie?!?!

P.S. Most people still think of Connery when they hear James Bond. That's why the series nearly crashed and burned under Lazenby and during Moore's first two installments. I'm curious in the front loaded nature of franchise blockbusters today how Garfield's Spider-Man will do so close to Maguire's. I actually think Garfield will probably be closer to the comics (despite an insipid suit and an equally insipid haircut), but audiences seem pretty skeptical.

 

[R_Hythlodeus]

.) Hans Landa
.) Jay & Silent Bob
.) Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski
I Do think, that maybe in 30 years there will be another Indy, but it would take an actor with a truckload of charisma

 

[Pittman4Two]

Rambo and Rocky.

Two of the biggest American film icons of all time.

 

[Thebumwhowalks]

Ok, i have been reading the thread all day, and have come to the conclusion that a lot of people are very precious about their movies and actors. I see very little in most of the performances or characterisation listed to suggest any of these roles could not be tackled just as well by an equally talented actor.
There is nothing much in the many of the roles that are *that* out of the ordinary, that go beyond the bag of tricks that many a great actor of that type would be able to pull off.
In other words...you never know.

So, I have been scratching my head trying to think of a character that was written and played to a degree of uniqueness that any other actor would be extremely hard pressed to strike a balance they could maintain in the role, without overplaying any of the characteristics that made the character great, and all I could come up with was...
Kyle McClachlan as Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks.

 

[Doctor Jones]

You look at Indiana Jones and Ford as if it were mid 1960s and we are discussing James Bond. It was IMPOSSIBLE for anybody except Connery to play 007. It just couldn't be done. The public opinion was so.
The only difference is that the character of James Bond existed before the franchise started, and Indy is a mix of different characters.

But both of them is defined by the actors that first played the role.

Bond is a literary character with numerous books published. It's pretty obvious that Connery wouldn't play him forever. It was just the matter of audiences getting used to a new Bond. And they have. But at first it must have been strange. Connery is still known as the best Bond, but that's all opinion.

As DaCrowe said, who the hell wants to see a different Indy?

And I do think people will be skeptical of the new Spider-Man movie. I don't even know how popular he is with the GA anymore. They all seem to love Batman and IM now. After SM3, and then this happening, who knows. I mean no denying he's still popular as a character, as he's practically the face of Marvel, but movie wise, the audience would think "A new actor? A reboot? Is this neccessary?"

 

[bullets]

I think any film that has spawned sequels or is considered a franchise might be susceptible to a remake eventually. It's just a matter of time. Here's a few I hope I won't live to see:


Rocky
Rambo
Doc Brown & Marty McFly
John McClane
Indiana Jones (not counting the show)
Ellen Ripley
Riggs and Murtaugh
Ash ( Evil Dead trilogy)

 

[DACrowe]

Ok, i have been reading the thread all day, and have come to the conclusion that a lot of people are very precious about their movies and actors. I see very little in most of the performances or characterisation listed to suggest any of these roles could not be tackled just as well by an equally talented actor.
There is nothing much in the many of the roles that are *that* out of the ordinary, that go beyond the bag of tricks that many a great actor of that type would be able to pull off.
In other words...you never know.

So, I have been scratching my head trying to think of a character that was written and played to a degree of uniqueness that any other actor would be extremely hard pressed to strike a balance they could maintain in the role, without overplaying any of the characteristics that made the character great, and all I could come up with was...
Kyle McClachlan as Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks.

Maybe but no one else will ever play Scarlett O'Hara, Rick Blaine, Michael Corleone or Indiana Jones again so....Huzzah? Huzzah, it is.

 

[DieSmiling]

Any character can be ultimately re-cast. It's all just a matter of circumstance.

Characters defined by their actors (Indy, John McClane, etc.) are hard, but there's no reason why they can't be recast. It's really more a question of whether or not the fans will accept the recast.

An Indy movie without Harrison Ford would be a hard sell for me.

 

[Doctor Jones]

Which is why it shouldn't even be done. What is the point of recasting?

 

[Venom75]

I think it's also a question of how much love you have for a character. As I've said,Robert Englund will always be Freddy and the man is an idol to me,but I love the character of Freddy more than I love Englund. Even though the remake wasn't the greatest, I don't wanna see Freddy die just because Robert isn't playing him.
My all time favorite characters are Freddy,Spider-man and Venom. So,I can say the same with Spidey. Maguire IS Spider-man for me,but I suppose that's because he was the first to play the role. Although I'll miss him,I'll still go see the new film because I love the character. I wanna see more Spider-man films. So,it's not so much about who plays them,but more about the characters themselves.

 

[Rowsdower!]

Well, Joanne Whalley played Scarlett O'Hara in the TV movie based on Scarlett, the Gone with the Wind sequel. I don't know if that counts, but the point is, at least someone thought that the character wasn't untouchable.

 

[Sam Fisher]

I think any character can be recast. Nobody thought recasting the crew of the original Star Trek was a good idea, and look how that turned out.

 

[Rowsdower!]

Good point.

I really hope Indiana Jones can be recast, and what I mean is, I hope there is an actor out there that has enough charisma to do the role justice. Because I think that sooner or later it's going to happen. So they better not cash some *****e like Channing Tatum or Sam Worthington.

 

[8wid]

Forget Indiana Jones, why don't Lucas and Speilberg simply invent another similar character and set him back in the 1920s and 30s where he can have adventures?

 

[DACrowe]

Well, Joanne Whalley played Scarlett O'Hara in the TV movie based on Scarlett, the Gone with the Wind sequel. I don't know if that counts, but the point is, at least someone thought that the character wasn't untouchable.

Who what when? The fact I think you and Ms. Whalley may be the only two people in the universe who knows that tells me it is moot.

Technically speaking any part can be recast (even in al ow budget TV movie sequel 70 years later), but that doesn't mean it should be or that they "touched" the original. Vivien Leigh is Scarlett O'Hara as Marlon Brando is the elderly Don Vito Corleone. Those roles may be based on literary characters and others may try to adapt them or redo them, but those performances are so iconic any other interpretation will come off as shallow, hollow and insulting. I feel the same with Indiana Jones. They may try to do one decades down the road without Harrison Ford, but it won't work. Because that was the perfect combination of character and actor. Catching lightning in the bottle like that twice is nearly impossible. It's why even with a character that has been adapted a hundred times like the Frankenstein monster still has one singular actor associated with the role--Boris Karloff. Everyone is else is just imitating or avoiding imitation by missing the character.

Some roles can have no definitive interpretation and be played a million ways with none being right. That is Hamlet. And some can be played once so well, nobody else needs to even bother. That is Michael Corleone.

Scarlett is in the latter.

 

[xwolverine2]

peter falk as Columbo

 

[Thebumwhowalks]

I have to say, I don't think this discussion about a character starting off in another medium makes any difference to the argument at all.
All of these characters started off on the page, whether screenplay, novel or comic book, after that, the character becomes something else entirely when they are embodied physically by the actor.

 

[dude stannis]

Eliot Ness

Win.

How come no one has mentioned Tyler Durden yet?