Darth Hideout 🏳️🌈It’s interesting how closely the actors who play characters on TV & in film become associated with their characters. I think this is an artifact of the age of photography, film & video. After all, Hamlet is a well-known & beloved character. No one gets upset when it’s not Olivier.
#StarTrek now has at least 3 different actors (counting back to TOS) playing Kirk & Spock, including SNW & Prodigy, if I’m not mistaken (probably am). It hasn’t spelled the end of the franchise, as far as I can tell, especially since the passing of Nimoy.
#StarWars seems to have a hard time letting go of original actors. Tem Morrison & Hayden Christensen will have work into the 22nd century if they can hang on that long. Lucasfilm has notoriously produced pretty remarkable results with AI (Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker in "The Book of Boba Fett"), though I believe another actor played him in S2 of #TheMandalorian. And in #RogueOne & #TheRiseOfSkywalker, other actors were cast to play #Tarkin & #LeiaOrgana. Notably Billie Lourd, Carrie Fisher’s daughter, who played Lt Connix in the ST, played a younger Leia, with a helmet, in a training flashback.
I recall a remark on Twitter about the #JamesBond franchise. George Lazenby played JB in only one film: “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.” In part this was because he was not well received by the audience as a replacement for Sean Connery. But he successfully destroyed the idea that Bond had to be played by Connery & paved the way for Roger Moore to own the role for a generation, or at least until Remington Steele had gone off the air.
Though Abrams Trek has a mixed reputation in the fandom, it successfully broke the TOS cast barrier & paved the way for some of the new material on P+.
Star Wars is more conservative than Star Trek. Maybe that’s why fans have a harder time letting go. When Carrie Fisher died, I thought: Can’t they just cast someone else in the role? But the fandom would show up at Skywalker Ranch with pitchforks. I thought: Isn’t there anyone else with the fan cred to be Leia? Maybe Natalie Portman? Or Pernilla August? These actors played Leia’s mother and grandmother, respectively. Surely Portman is actor enough to play a character a bit older than herself. Leia (not Fisher) died around 54. I think Portman was about 40 when they were making TRoS.
It’s still hard to see the fandom letting go until they successfully release, say an OT remake with new cast or something. Until there’s a series about Luke Skywalker’s temple post-Endor starring Sebastian Shan (once rumored to be playing Luke in the Mandoverse) or something like that, I fear we’re in for deepfakes & de-aging technology for a while.
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