SOLO WARS

Prequels, sequels, and remakes, just mentioning them will have many curling up into a ball, rocking back and forth trying to find their happy place. But some of the greatest movies ever made have been prequels, sequels and remakes. A Fistful Of Dollars, The Magnificent Seven, Scarface, The Thing, The Departed, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers - 1978, Zulu Dawn, The Empire Strikes Back, Internal Affairs II and The Godfather II achieves the remarkable feat of being both a sequel and a prequel in glorious fashion. The only problem I have with any prequel, sequel, or remake is if they are bad movies. Volumes could be written on what makes a movie bad, but one of the biggest make or break elements is the casting. Get the casting wrong and things are on a rocky road to hell right from the start. But get the casting right then you've got something remarkable on your hands and it seldom gets any better than Harrison Ford playing one of my absolute favourite movie heroes, Han Solo. 

Who Me?

I can't wait to see The Force Awakens and the two following movies that will continue the story with a new trilogy in George Lucas's space opera. But what about the other movies that Disney has in store? What about all the adventures all the characters had before everything in the galaxy went all dark side? The adventures of Han Solo could create a series of movies as enduring as the Bond movies. His DL-44 Blaster pistol is his Walther PPK, The Millennium Falcon is his gadget rigged Aston Martin, and even if he doesn't do it all for Queen and country on account of him being a bit of a scoundrel, he still wins the favour of a princess. But what about that crucial element of casting a new actor to play a younger Han Solo? Get it wrong and there will quite literally be riots on the streets.

I have a bad feeling about this

A few names are being thrown around who the successor to Mr Ford could be. Some I like the sound of and some I don't. Aaron Paul is a fantastic actor and he would make an admirable Han Solo, even if some part of me would be waiting for him to say, "Yeah! Deathstar BITCH!" Chris Pratt I am in two minds about. He could pull it off up to a point, but he would have to get rid of the Marvel makeover jacked look. Having an actor who is as beefed up as that would just look terrible as Han Solo or Indiana Jones for that matter. While I take my Fedora off to actors who get their bodies into such great shape, it would just look weird and out of place in a period movie playing Indiana Jones or playing Han Solo who is by all accounts just a regular type of guy rather than a superhero type. Harrison Ford had the perfect degree of athleticism to make Han Solo and Indiana Jones believable ass-kickers. So please casting gods, no actors with Marvel jacked makeovers for these roles.

Please make the right choice

Being an actor myself I would love to be in one of the Star Wars movies, and yes a part of me would love to play Han Solo, but more than anything I want the casting to be as close to perfect as possible. That's why I reckon the first new actor to step into Mr Ford's shoes should be Anthony Ingruber. Anthony plays a young version of Harrison Ford in the movie The Age Of Adaline, and he looks incredibly like a Younger version of Mr Ford.   

Harrison Ford / Anthony Ingruber
Find Anthony on his website click here

I first heard of Anthony on my friend Casey Ryan's very popular podcast show, The Cutting Room Floor where Anthony did this killer impersonation of Harrison Ford. 

Click here to find Casey on Twitter

Now if the right decisions are made and Anthony becomes the new owner of the Millennium falcon, as awesome a job of impersonating Mr Ford as he can do, I don't think he should do a simple impersonation. I would be very surprised if that was expected of him or from whoever ends up in the role. What Anthony's performance in The Age Of Adaline and being able to do such mind-bogglingly accurate impersonations proves, is that he has the acting chops to pull this off. 

 Anthony impersonating Harrison Ford

The Age Of Adaline trailer

Like every actor who has played James Bond, he should bring his own brand of scoundrel to the role. Anthony is the perfect choice to be the first new Han Solo. Maybe I can play Han Solo's old smuggler friend Mako Spince and tear around the galaxy on smuggling adventures together. That would be awesome. 

YEAH!

Je Suis Paul

My blog has been long overdue for an update. I will carry on using my blog to post updates about Gameboyz, but I’ll also be blogging about other projects I’m working on and various subjects.

Like everybody, I was stunned and horrified by the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris. I wanted to create a piece of humorous art in show of support of the importance of freedom of speech, and how we can’t let barbaric acts like these silence us. But what is freedom of speech really? Is it more than simply voicing our opinions, or does it have to go as far as to say that I’m ok with someone being verbally abusive to me or what I believe in? I have seen many people hiding behind their right to freedom of speech as a reason to be appalling abusive to people, and usually from the safety of being behind a keyboard. Of course it is not ok for someone to be abusive to you, and certainly it is not acceptable to encourage abuse towards you and commit hate crime.  

But can we justify any level of this freedom with comedy? Several times have I witnessed an almost immediate change in emotion when an article which at first was believed to be serious, was in fact revealed to be satire. It’s easy to say there should be no barriers when things seem to be in your favour and not being directed at you, but I believe there is an element of the hypocrite in us all. Even with humour we all have a point when we say enough is enough when things do not seem fair to us. There is a saying that if you don’t wish to offend anyone, then you should spend your life doing and saying nothing, but even doing and saying nothing is bound to rub somebody up the wrong way.

Freedom of speech should not be a coward’s excuse to be abusive to another person, and I certainly believe we should be able to laugh at anything, but we have a long way to go to truly accept and understand our fellow human beings. And if one day we finally do, maybe we can truly be at peace.