If Indy is recast, should he keep the same costume?

emtiem

Well-known member
I was thinking today that pretty much whenever an iconic role has been recast, the new actor usually gets a new version of the costume to help make the role his/her own. Happens with pretty much any superhero; Bond rarely wears the same stuff twice apart from his uniform and a dinner suit, and they're pretty much always different...; Han Solo's got a new look which is sympathetic to the old one... the only one I could think of in the same gear was Mad Max. Ben Kenobi maybe?

But Indy's costume is of course so memorable that it's changed only in very subtle ways in 37 years. So if they were to ever recast Indy, do you risk the new guy looking like he's turned up in Harrison Ford's clothes, or do you give Indy's iconic costume a revamp and redesign it?
 

IAdventurer01

Well-known member
A recast should keep the same costume, or at least the trademark parts- Hat, obviously, plus bullwhip and jacket. Earth-tone pants and keep the shirt period-acceptable and everything will be good.

If they try to do something in the same universe with someone who isn't Indy - a return to 'Raiders' perhaps, then the costume definitely needs to change. But that's not going to happen, so this argument's a bit moot.
 

emtiem

Well-known member
IAdventurer01 said:
A recast should keep the same costume, or at least the trademark parts- Hat, obviously, plus bullwhip and jacket. Earth-tone pants and keep the shirt period-acceptable and everything will be good.

Exactly the same though? Or would you let a costume designer reimagine it a little? I tend to agree that's it's too iconic to mess with hugely (you've obviously got to have the hat! Whip too) but y'know: when there's a new Batman they get a new look based on the same core design to go with the new actor.
 

Raiders90

Well-known member
I think a recast should subtly change things. Maybe change the cut of the leather jacket, maybe give Indy boots instead of Alden's, maybe a mandarin collar shirt instead of the khaki shirt.
 

Pale Horse

Moderator
Staff member
harrison-ford-tours-spain-before-indiana-jones-5-filming-starts-10.jpg


How about a red suit, and eight tiny reindeer?
 

Raiders90

Well-known member
I think something which could make a reboot more interesting is to throw all the original continuity out the window and set the series in a different time period - Say the 1880s or 1890s. If we're going to go full reboot, basically, do a total makeover. Keep the very basic elements of the character - name, hat, jacket, etc - and maybe go nuts with some radical changes. I personally don't want to see adventures set during the 1920s, because you enter prequel territory there. There's gonna be a want to see how Indy met Belloq or to see Indy's partnership with Abner which will never live up to any of our expectations. If we're going to reboot the thing it should go way beyond just costume changes.
 

Lambonius

New member
Raiders112390 said:
I think something which could make a reboot more interesting is to throw all the original continuity out the window and set the series in a different time period - Say the 1880s or 1890s. If we're going to go full reboot, basically, do a total makeover. Keep the very basic elements of the character - name, hat, jacket, etc - and maybe go nuts with some radical changes. I personally don't want to see adventures set during the 1920s, because you enter prequel territory there. There's gonna be a want to see how Indy met Belloq or to see Indy's partnership with Abner which will never live up to any of our expectations. If we're going to reboot the thing it should go way beyond just costume changes.

The problem I see with that is that if you go back into 19th Century America, it basically just becomes a Western. We're already not all THAT far removed from a Western-style costume with all the leather and wide brimmed hats.
 

Raiders90

Well-known member
Lambonius said:
The problem I see with that is that if you go back into 19th Century America, it basically just becomes a Western. We're already not all THAT far removed from a Western-style costume with all the leather and wide brimmed hats.

True, it would be hard to not turn into a Western, and to keep the 'purity' or whatever term you want to use of the character intact, but I think if done right it could be interesting. I just feel that unlike James Bond, there isn't really much you can do with Indy that wouldn't displease fans here. So I say, go nuts, be inventive, color outside the lines. People here are gonna complain anyway no matter what, cause that's what diehard fans of anything do best. I would pay to see a reinvention of the character in the 1890s if done right.

Some people want to see 1920s adventures, but that would essentially be prequels. Abner, Marion, all that stuff is part of the "Indy mythology" and if you don't show it, people are gonna let down, and if you do, people are gonna be let down cause it'll never go the way people have built it up in their own minds. Others want to redo the 1930s without Harrison but we've already been there and done that. The 1940s fans would want noir tones and I don't know that noir is a genre that can sell today.

I just think that any recasting is going to have to take the series in a very different, almost "alien" direction - the same way each Bond actor plays a very different character from the last. Like, take Live and Let Die - outside of the character of James Bond (who is played very differently by Roger Moore), it has very little in common with past Bond films, but it worked. Change on the order of that magnitude I feel has to happen with a post-Harrison Indy for it to work. Playing the safe route and having the next phase be prequel films is going to get boring fast, and those films will never get to be their own special, unique things - the same way I feel that the Star Trek reboots leaned too heavily on pre-established mythos to really stand out in their own right.

I feel that Harrison has played the character for so long that any new actor is going to have a VERY hard time not standing in his shadow, and I think Harrison was half the selling point for a lot of people even back in the 80s - Han Solo in a quasi-Western that happened to also be a great set of films.
 

Pale Horse

Moderator
Staff member
Here is a sobering thought, Harrison Ford realistically only has about 24 total hours of screen time representing himself as Indiana Jones. I'm being very generous with that allotment. One day in 36 years. The rest is our projection of the character on him.
 

Raiders90

Well-known member
He has played the character across four films which span 27 years in time (from 81 to 08) and will span 39 years as of 2020. It is not "our projection of him on the character", it is that his characterization is what helped to make the character.

There have been others who have played in the role but outside of this forum how many really remember the YIJC? LC has River Phoenix but for what, 12 minutes of screentime? Ask any average movie fan who played Indiana Jones and I would bet 100 to 1 they would say Harrison Ford. Not George Hall or Doug Lee or anyone else.

It's a role that in the public mind due to the space of time has come to be associated with Harrison Ford. He is iconic in it. It is not like James Bond, which had a backbone of novels to support differing interpretations of the character, or like Batman which has the comics with alternative storylines and characters. The entire franchise is based around Harrison Ford's portrayal of the character. It's been that way for almost 40 years. More than a generation in time.

I do not think there is much hunger for Indy V; I think there's even less without Ford. Consider that the first post Connery Bond film flopped and he was only in that role for 5 years. Harrison Ford is as linked in the public to Indy as Sean Connery was for Bond in 1969. It will be uphill climb to sell a sixth Indy film without Harrison, and like with Bond, any reboot of Indy will have to make radical changes to stand on its own. There needs to be some hook to make a reboot work, and even then, I think they would rely on Harrison to cameo in a reboot to hedge their bets (like how Nimoy cameoed in the ST reboots)

I'm not saying Ford should be the only guy to play Indy, but I can't see a reboot coming out all that quickly after V, and I honestly can't even see V doing all that great because there's no demand, really, for it.
 
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