10 Ridiculously Long Periods Between Movie Character Appearances

We live in the age of nostalgia, reboots, and sequels. So we've grown accustomed to spending a lot of time with certain characters. James Bond has continued on through nearly 60 years with multiple actors ordering their martinis. The modern day equivalent to Hamlet: Batman, has been recast 6 times in the last 30 years. We're on our third Spiderman. John Krasinski is the fifth Jack Ryan. You get the point.

However, there are some characters who are sacred. No one else can fill their shoes. Harrison Ford IS Han Solo. You can't just replace him with some dude named Alden! This unfortunately means that we as an audience have to sometimes wait a long, long time to see some of our favourite icons return to the screen.

So let's take a look at some of the longest periods between movie character appearances. We're talking by their original actor and in movies already released, of course. So don't expect to see Sam Neill or Laura Dern pop up for their 21 years between Jurassic Park III and Jurassic World: Dominion.

In 1980, Kurt Russell was desperate to escape from his Disney-clean image. Knowing he needed a dark and gritty change to avoid type-casting, Russell teamed up with his Elvis (1979) director John Carpenter to create the iconic Snake Plissken character for Escape from New York.

The producers pushed for known grizzled action stars such as Charles Bronson, Nick Nolte, and Tommy Lee Jones. Carpenter insisted upon Russell, though, and won out in the end. The pair would then go on to work together again in The Thing and Big Trouble in Little China.

Though Snake was Kurt Russell's favourite character, it would take 15 years before he'd return to the eye-patch wearing ex-con. Despite having both Russell and Carpenter back in the fold, Escape from L.A. ultimately ended up as a box office disappointment.