2y ago

Star Wars’ reluctance to recast Luke and Leia is holding the franchise back

www.gamesradar.com

It’s time to talk about something Star Wars has been avoiding for some time: recasting its original trilogy characters. There have long been calls for the likes of Luke Skywalker to be portrayed by new actors (Sebastian Stan, anyone?) but it has, by and large, been something that the franchise hasn’t needed to properly confront – until now.

37 comments

Hard disagree. We’ve seen enough of these characters. They’ve told their stories. It’s time for new stories rather than just retreading the same ones over and over.
The strongest shows to come out of the franchise lately have focused on new/and or minor characters — like Rogue One, Mandalorian, and Andor.
- Seriously! I am so tired of watching events that keep happening always within the same 50 years or so. With a whole universe and the possibility of going backwards/forwards thousands of years just for fun, MORE Luke and Leia is just a nuisance at this point.
- Yeah. The world they live in is the main character.. Not the same tired old stories.
  On this point, Lucas was right. There's nothing more to tell. It's finished.

How about we explore literally any group of years, from 20,000 BBY to 100 ABY, and finally stop writing more content for the Skywalker saga?
- You could get quite a lot out of Revan/kotor/swtor
  
  Yes please.
- Just do Bane
  Explains the Sith in a lot more detail and I bet people would love it.

No, it isn't. Three shit tier sequel movies and the killing of Expanded material are what fucked the franchise

Maybe we can write some new cannon that doesn't suck. Nah let's just make Chris Pratt play Luke, everyone loves Chris Pratt.
- I would rather someone who is a little less known and doesn't already have multiple major pop culture characters.
  
  You have twisted my arm, but I’ll do it.

I really don’t think recasting is what’s holding Star Wars back - it’s the adherence to being strictly pre-Sequel Trilogy for anything new now.
Give us something new, either from the High Republic era and start building that up or something post-Sequels.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away there was only one family and like a dozen planets that are worth telling stories about.

The guy they got to play Luke in Boba Fett looked like a perfect replacement for Mark already even without the deepfake stuff on top.

Lets just move on to actually new stories, yeah? Let Luke and Leia rest for a bit its been like almost 50 years.

Yep that's it. That is the one reason Star Wars is being held back.
Ladies and gentlemen, we got him. Bake em away, toys.
- What did you say Chief?

insert regurgitated joke about how braindead media journalists can be
Do they not understand the idea of original content? Have we gone so far down the corporate IP hole that people have forgotten all these franchises started from an original idea?
Star Trek figured this out decades ago. Hell all of the original Star Wars spinoffs figured this out.

I swear they're paving the way to remake the og trilogy, and shit on everything. And people over 40 will just shake our fists at cloud.

Studio executives would rather rehash the same story.

Man... I just really want something about Rey's parents. They were hyped up so much in these movies... But now? Nothing!
- The father is a failed Palpatine clone that escaped. The mother is a nobody. There is nothing more to their stories.

Time for a fucking reboot of the whole thing. It Batman can be rebooted 7 times then Star Wars can have one reboot. Start by reshooting eps 4-6. Keep 4 and 5 essentially the same but with modern digital capture and better effects. Tweak 6 to remove the ewok stupidity. Make massive changes to 1,2, and 3 to remove some of the suck (jar jar, bad acting, pointless characters, etc). Completely shitcan movies 7,8,9 and start over with a plot that isn’t retarded and doesn’t plagiarize 4-6.
- Best I can do is rewrite all major characters but in a way that you dislike each and every one (R2 is the only exception), more Ewoks and Jar Jar and Ep. 7-9 are now heavily integrated into the rest of the anthology, basically pushing aside the Skywalkers. Oh yeah and special effects will be good.
  
  Special effects will be modern, we make no promises they will be good.
  
  I truly despise how on point you are. I am not even bothering with Ashoka because I am not interested in watching them set up the sequels. Basically at this point all I really am looking forward to is the conclusion of Andor.

It is true that there's now a big gap in the canon for the period after Return of the Jedi and before Force Awakens where in theory Leia, Luke and Han should be the protagonists of the universe, at the front lines against any threat to the Republic, where it's awkward to tell big stories without including those characters. But that seems like more the role for an animated series where they'd have new voice actors as a matter of course.

I've been saying this for years. Let some young, promising actors take the characters and grow out from the original cast's shadows.
I do think it odd the author did not mention Alden Ehrenreich's take on Han. He didn't quite measure up to Harrison Ford, but that's a tall task and I wouldn't hate seeing him get another shot at the character.
- They tried to do this. That was the whole sequel trilogy. Except instead of growing the new cast they smashed everything that existed before and made everyone hate the entire series.
- I think he nailed it.
- Every time I go rewatch Solo I think man you know what, this IS Han Solo. Sure he has some shit lines and writing but that's not the actors fault
  
  Hope solo...

Pfff, nah. What's holding the IP back is that the goddamn story is a mess.
The entire thing needs a reboot using the original 3 as an anchor. The prequels are meme garbage; I watched them in theaters (or more accurately, the first one because I gave up after that). I will die on this hill, don't bother arguing with me. The sequels got JJ Abramsed into lens flare oblivion because that goober can't tell a coherent story to save his life.
There was some good EU content but there was also the Yuuzhan Vong invasion so maybe we calm it down a bit. By all means keep the Rogue and Wraith squadron stuff, maybe Corran Horn's storyline. We need not speak of Kyp whatshisname. Mara Jade was amazing and should exist.
One story thread that needs resolution and examination is the nature of the light and dark sides of the forcee. As is they're basically Buddhism with the serial numbers filed off and respectfully, NAH. Let's explore the unifying force ideas; make the nature of someone's character about intentions and actions and not just emotions. We need to make peace with the idea that SW is a space fantasy, not a hard sci-fi show and just learn to be ok with that.
tldr; We need a single, competent vision behind the story and we need to make some potentially polarizing decisions instead of trying to please everyone and ending up pleasing nobody.
- I think it would be a horrible idea to butcher the canon again and reboot the whole series.
  I think the TV shows are doing fine and (would) work pretty well without the original cast. I'd probably like if they just cut the ties with the original films and just let the upcoming movies play in a future (or past) where the original cast is not necessary for (but pls leave The Old Republic alone).
  
  I mean we do it all the time in comics, anime, and other mediums. There's no reason Star Wars has to be a special snowflake. And let's be honest ... Lucas has good ideas but has always been bad at story. The originals only worked because his ex-wife edited it into something halfway coherent.
  But yeah, it might be worth letting the mainline series fade into the past.
- Have you been watching Ahsoka? I personally feel they are at least trying to take the story in the direction you're talking about. Sabine has next to no force powers, but is taken on as an apprentice by a former Jedi, there's another former Jedi who is framed as a sith but still holds attachments to his former life (didn't go full Darth Vader).

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