At a meeting the other day, Disney CEO Bob Iger announced that Star Wars: Episode VIII has started it's principal photography. With the success of The Force Awakens and the upcoming Rogue One, Disney is wanting to forward fast so they can capitalize on the excitement that has been building for the franchise. Thanks to writer/director Rian Johnson, they are now able to do just that.
But what's it going to be about and in what direction are they going to be taking the franchise? It's way too early to know anything like that, but there was one bit of news that popped up over the last couple of days that has me shaking my head. Apparently Ewan McGregor is in talks to return to the Star Wars universe as Obi-Wan Kenobi's ghost. This bothers me on a number of levels. Let me explain.
Okay. When Return of the Jedi was first released, the end of the movie showed the ghosts of Yoda, Obi-Wan, and Anakin. Obi-Wan was played by Sir Alec Guinness and Anakin was played by Sebastian Shaw. It was the perfect scene, showing Luke that he was able to save his father from the Dark Side. Then when the movies were re-released, George Lucas mucked things up and replaced Sebastian Shaw's ghost with that of a younger Anakin, played by Hayden Christiansen, but they left Obi-Wan's ghost as Sir Alec Guinness. Now they want to bring in Ewan McGregor to play a younger version of Obi-Wan's ghost for Episode VIII? I don't like it.
During one scene in The Force Awakens, Rey is kind of flipping out because Luke's lightsaber is showing her all sorts of images and sounds, and she doesn't know what's going on. One of those sounds was the actual voice Sir Alec Guinness calling out Rey's name. What they did was take an actual line of his from the previous films where he says something like "Afraid", I don't remember the actual word, and then shortened it to say just "Rai", or more to the point, "Rey". Why go through all of this trouble to use Sir Alec's voice if you are just going to replace him with McGregor?
Lastly, it's being reported that in the upcoming Rogue One film, they are going to be doing some impressive movie magic and bring Peter Cushing back to the screen as Grand Moff Tarkin. They are doing this because he's instrumental to the story, and also because...well, they can. So if you're going to do this for a stand alone movie that takes place in the Star Wars universe, why not do the same for the actual storied franchise? It makes no sense to me.
Anyway, that's my two cents on the matter. Think I'm over reacting? Probably, but it still bothers me to no end. It just reminds everyone that the prequels actually happened, and that they are still apart of the storyline, whether we like it or not.
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