Kathleen Kennedy Is Right: Recasting Original ‘Star Wars’ Characters Should Be a “No-Go”

It’s hard to come up with something new that’s just as good as something old. The old stuff, by definition, has nostalgia built into it — and oftentimes it has decades of adoration backing it up. That’s why we live in nostalgia culture; with the costs to produce and market TV shows and movies at an all-time high, the people in charge want to bet on a sure thing. It doesn’t get more sure than characters that parents and kids grew up knowing, loving, and collecting in miniature plastic form. And therein lies perhaps Star Wars’ biggest problem as a franchise, as laid out in a new feature piece published in Vanity Fair. Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy is very aware of the IP tug-of-war that exists between the characters we all grew up loving and the new ones that the franchise needs in order to keep Star Wars going for decades to come. Star Wars wants to keep going back to the classics — Luke, Han, Leia — because who doesn’t love the classics? But there’s a problem that just gets worse by the second: there are no good ways to stop the actors who originally played those characters from aging.

In the VF piece, Kennedy admits that recasting is a no-go. The clearest example is, of course, 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story. That film told the story of a young Han Solo, a role that Harrison Ford (who was in his mid-70s at the time) could not have played. The part went to Alden Ehrenreich, who was in his late-20s at the time. The film became the lowest-grossing live-action Star Wars film. While you could blame the summer release date (as opposed to Star Wars’ usual Christmas release date) or the fact that the late-in-production director switch generated a lot of sketchy press and caused the budget to balloon out of control, apparently the reason the film wasn’t a huge success was because they recast Han Solo. “There should be moments along the way when you learn things,” said Kennedy of recasting Han Solo. “Now it does seem so abundantly clear that we can’t do that.”

The Internet is piling on Kennedy for her take, but y’know what? She’s right. The Star Wars characters are just not the same as James Bond or, say, any number of supporting characters in the MCU. Because the original trilogy never really stopped being popular, and because there were only those three films for the first 22 years of the franchise, fans are really, really attached to those original actors’ faces. Recasting is a tough thing to pull off when the actors and characters are so closely tied together. And while a number of characters were recast for the prequels — notably Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, Uncle Owen, Aunt Beru, etc. — the expectations around Star Wars were drastically different in 1999 compared to 2018. Fans had endured 22 years without a new Star Wars film, and a lot of them were happy with whatever George Lucas delivered (like I was when I was a freshman in high school). But in 2018? After three successive years of blockbuster Star Wars movies in a highly-saturated market? Fan expectations and demands were infinitely higher for poor Alden.

Weirdly, though, is that the VF piece doesn’t get into Kathleen Kennedy’s take on the other method that Lucasfilm has used to keep classic characters in rotation: that creepy deepfake technology that transformed senior citizen Mark Hamill into post-Return of the Jedi Luke for a cameo in The Mandalorian and an entire episode of The Book of Boba Fett. And before that, it was used to bring Peter Cushing back from the dead as Grand Moff Tarkin in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. That film also included one shot of a CG Leia Organa, looking like a softer and shinier version of 1977 Carrie Fisher. Lucasfilm loves doing that, but we don’t yet know if they think that it’s successful. I think I speak for a sizable chunk of the Star Wars fandom when I say, “No, it is not.”

Look: it’s just creepy.

The CG de-aging wizardry doesn’t work for the same reason that recasting doesn’t work. They both mess with the versions of the characters that all live in our brains rent-free. It’s impossible to watch a scene with Fluke (Fake Luke) and not be a little bit unnerved — and that’s incredibly distracting from the storytelling! Because of this, it seems like the only clear way for Lucasfilm to move forward is to just cut it out on both fronts altogether. Let the past die. Invest in new characters.

“The CG de-aging wizardry doesn’t work for the same reason that recasting doesn’t work. They both mess with the versions of the characters that all live in our brains rent-free.”

Of course this is easier said than done. Disney+ has locked in a whole bunch of subscribers who are totally jazzed to see characters from the original trilogy pop up in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett. That’s a bonus of setting those shows so close to the classics, around the Star Wars equivalent of, like, 1988. By doing that, the writers and directors of these shows run the risk of narratively wandering into territory that should be populated by When Harry Met Sally-era Carrie Fisher, or Last Crusade-era Harrison Ford, or a Lando Calrissian that looks a lot like Harvey Dent. That’s why the temptation to use those risky techniques is so strong. But I say this to Kathleen Kennedy: that way lies the Dark Side.

As cool as it was to see Tarkin get more screentime, and as breathtaking as it was to see Luke in the prime of his Jedi powers — standing next to Ahsoka Tano! — it’s not worth venturing into the uncanny valley. The uncanny valley should be Mustafar: a place that no one wants to visit.

The thing is, there are still ways for Star Wars to continue forward and completely sidestep this problem — and the Disney+ shows are already putting them to work. There are a lot of A-list Star Wars favorites who don’t rely on a singular actor. Darth Vader, Boba Fett, R2-D2, C-3PO — any character whose face was obstructed (or didn’t exist because they were a puppet) is fair game. The Book of Boba Fett got to have all the space cake and eat it, too; they got to use a character from the original trilogy played by an actor from the prequels, since Temuera Morrison is the only face fans have ever associated with the Fetts. I’m just saying — if Disney+ wants to really make me feel my nostalgia, they’d trot out a show starring Dengar, IG-88, Bossk, 4-LOM, and Zuckuss. No deepfakes needed.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is another example of a way forward. Maybe the human characters from the original trilogy need to be retired, yes. But there are three whole movies’ worth of characters played by actors who are in the exact right age to make a comeback in Disney+’s preferred original trilogy era. As Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen are discovering, there are a lot of young millennials and Gen Z kids who f’ing love the prequels — and they’re all feeling that pull of nostalgia.

Even I, someone who could take or leave the prequels, have a fondness for a lot of those actors. Natalie Portman and Liam Neeson look more or less the same and both of their characters could use a modern refresh. Hell yeah, I would kill to see Ian McDiarmid play Palpatine again (anything to erase his turn in Rise of Skywalker from our minds). Not gonna lie, I would even love to see what Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni could do with Jar Jar Binks (Ahmed Best deserves it).

So someone let Kathleen Kennedy and the rest of the Star Wars illuminati know this: the well of 1977 to 1983 is dry, at least as far as mask-less, human characters are concerned. The 1999 to 2005 well, though? It’s waiting, and it is rich.