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.
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.
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?
Just do Bane
Explains the Sith in a lot more detail and I bet people would love it.
You could get quite a lot out of Revan/kotor/swtor
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.
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.
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.
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).
