I was rewatching some of the reactions to luke skywalker in the season 2 finale of the mandalorian and some people were either expecting or hoping for Sebastian Stan to be recast as a young Luke since he apparently looks really similar to Mark Hamill and especially as Mark Hamill might not be physically capable of the work required at his age and de-aging costs a lot of money.
but I wonder how different it might have been received if it was someone else instead, i'm sure many would be hyped regardless but I think part of what made that so special was that it really was as much of Mark Hamill as you could realistically get for that, de-aging body double and all, when everybody thought his time portraying him was done. and there are a lot of people who i've noticed feel attached to a certain actor as a character to the point where they think it would be offensive for someone else to do it. I feel like recasting usually skews more on the negative side when it happens as well, even with not as known characters like when people got angry that Rodrick got recast in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid films, tho that one might have been more of a satire.
and I don't mean recasting in the vein of Edward Norton to Mark Ruffalo in the MCU's Hulk where they only portrayed a character once in a film, but characters that have been played by an actor for so long that they are intrinsically linked to that character by default in the general public's eyes. things like Iron Man, Indiana Jones, Jack Sparrow, Harry Potter, etc.
so i'm curious as to opinions on it. does it matter to you at all? should they just go for new iterations/reboots of said character instead like spiderman, batman, etc? i'm personally indifferent towards it, I don't really care about anything enough in specific to react in any way towards it and it's understandable as things always have to change eventually but I can see why it might depend on the circumstances for some.
Last edited by FloatingWaffles - on 01 June 2021