Harrison Ford is still charming fans onscreen at the ripe old age of 82. Hailed as one of the greatest movie stars of all time, the actor’s continued determination and dedication to his profession is inspirational, to say the least.
However, his overwhelming domination of the industry even now, sparks an important question in the minds of many fans. Although it is a given fact that there will never be another Harrison Ford, what is happening to the current generation of Hollywood superstars?
Moreover, why can’t they provide the mass audience puller movies in the theaters? The answer to that, unfortunately, is quite complicated in nature.
Shrinking’s creator rightfully claimed that there will never be another Harrison Ford
Harrison Ford’s career spans longer than many of his younger generation of fans have been alive for. If his career is tracked to his very first movie role, albeit uncredited, it would go back to the 1966 thriller flick Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (Screen Rant).
Although he had to struggle quite a lot in the following years, things finally changed for him when he got a chance to play Han Solo in George Lucas’ Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. With Blade Runner and his billion-dollar Indiana Jones franchise after that, the actor has never had to look back to his struggling days.
While Hollywood has borne witness to many such success stories, what makes Ford stand out even among such legends is most of said superstars could not boast of working on back-to-back projects at the age of 82. In fact, trying out new things, be it making his Marvel debut, or headlining multiple TV series at the same time seems to come as easy as breathing to the Hollywood veteran.
Commenting on the same, the creator of Harrison Ford’s Apple TV+ show Shrinking, Bill Lawrence, noted his appreciation of the senior actor in an interview with Forbes stating, “He’s just so good, and he’ll try anything now. He might try it skeptically and ask you afterward if it worked,” but he will try it regardless.
There’ll never be another Harrison Ford. There’s never going to be another actor or actress because of the way the medium has changed, that was Han Solo and Indiana Jones and The Fugitive and the US President in Air Force One, and it is just bananas to me. To have that kind of trust from someone, probably one of the only actors or actresses I’ve worked with, that can honestly look me in the face and go, ‘I’ve done this way more often than you have, and know even more than you do about it,’ is a gift.
Lawrence’s statement also comes as a reminder of the stark scarcity of star power many actors from the current generation face. Mostly, through no fault of theirs or a lack of trying.
This also raises the question that these days, when so many avenues of acting are opening up, why are the superstars disappearing from the industry? Interestingly, the answer to that lies in the question itself.
There will never be another superstar like Harrison Ford, unfortunately, not for the lack of trying
The time when actors like Harrison Ford, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or even Tom Cruise shot to fame was a time before the world became digital. That was a time when people used to wait for a glimpse of their favorite stars on theater screens by queuing up for hours.
Eventually, that translated to buying and collecting DVDs of the same for an up close and personal experience of the movies if frequenting the theaters became impossible. What stemmed from it was a sense of unapproachability, and the idea that the actors headlining the movies were almost fantastical, larger-than-life beings far removed from the regular, mortal world.
A Variety article from a couple of years ago noted the same concern, when a sales agent at the Cannes Film Festival stated, “Over the last 10 years, we’ve done a really shi*ty job of creating a new generation of movie stars”.
They further expounded on that point stating that the division between the older and new generation of actors started after the DVD industry went under.
With the new generation, there’s more divisions between success because you could have the most-watched show or film on a streamer. But there might be a whole swath of society who might not subscribe, and they’re not part of that.
More importantly, having so many options to stream endless amounts of content at just the tips of your fingers also removes the sense of aloofness once associated with movie stars and reduces them to mere mortals.
Additionally, the strategic push to enlarge IPs over the stars headlining them like in the Marvel or DC movies has also been a key component behind actors losing the superstar status.
Furthermore, the digital age plays an instrumental part in exposing many actors for their deeply flawed nature, just like anyone else in the world which only shortens the gap between the audience and the movie stars. As things stand, Harrison Ford might be one of the only remaining reminders of a bygone era where superstars were worshipped like Gods by the audience.
This post belongs to FandomWire and first appeared on FandomWire
