The actor who refused to appear in ‘Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker’: “I was asked as a favour”
Ask any old average Joe off the street, and nine times out of ten, they would be incredibly keen to take even a tiny role in a new Star Wars movie. But, once you enter the world of show business and see the magic behind the mystical curtain, the allure of appearing in a big-budget epic doesn’t seem all that appealing, especially when Star Wars, in particular, has had such a dramatic fall from grace.
Transforming cinema upon its release in 1977, George Lucas’ Star Wars brought the dawn of the franchise era of movies, where seemingly every Hollywood release was brought out with endless merchandise and a sequel already in mind. Indeed, by the time Return of the Jedi, the third film in the trilogy, had been released, the lead stars Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill were already industry icons, with kids across the world having their faces on pencil cases, lunchboxes, T-shirts and much more.
1999 brought the long-anticipated release of the fourth movie in the series, The Phantom Menace, with the first of three prequel films helmed by Lucas being billed as the sci-fi flick that would represent the technological progress of the new millennium. The result, while technologically impressive, was an awful product of filmmaking, with Lucas getting high on his own supply of sci-fi gobbledygook.
By the time the third trilogy started in 2015, fans had all but lost hope, and while the first film, The Force Awakens, reinstated a bit of franchise credibility, its two follow-ups were worse than ever. This led director J.J. Abrams to rely on flashy, futile cameos to see out the trilogy for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Such came to a head toward the end of the film when the voices of several iconic characters from the series were heard calling out to revive the protagonist, Rey.
In the scene, the likes of such big names as Liam Neeson’s Qui-Gon Jinn and Hayden Christensen’s Anakin Skywalker can be heard, but so too can the voices of lesser-known characters like Kanan Jarrus, played by Freddie Prinze Jr in Star Wars Rebels. A fan favourite of the animated series, despite having died in season four of the show, Abrams was keen on briefly bringing the character back.
Prinze was less than keen, however. He shared on The Big Thing podcast that bringing his character back would “dilute his impact” in the Star Wars Rebels series. When asked about his role in Rise of Skywalker, he added: “Yeah, I didn’t want to do that either. I was asked as a favour, and I feel like all their favours are used up now.”
Rise of Skywalker was certainly the most desperate Star Wars movie ever made and one of the most pathetic, transparent studio exercises we’ve seen in quite some time. Doing nothing original at all, Disney were simply interested in tying up the issues of the previous movies to bring the mess to some sort of close.
