50 Roles for 50 Actors: Dream casting the Star Wars saga

Dream casting the Star Wars saga: Ansel Elgort as Luke Skywalker

Reportedly, young actor Ansel Elgort has actually auditioned to play Han Solo in an upcoming movie about the famous smuggler’s early life*, but I think he’d make a better Luke. There’s a fresh-faced, aw-shucks quality to Elgort that fits with Luke’s “country bumpkin to Jedi badass” arc, and I think he’d be able to gain our sympathy much in the way Mark Hamill did back in the original Star Wars.

True, Elgort is a little more polished than Hamill was when he began work on the saga, at least so far as major Hollywood movies go (Hamill did a fair amount of TV work before landing Star Wars). As is de rigueur among up-and-coming actors in Hollywood nowadays, Elgort has appeared in a sci-fi/fantasy movie based on a series of young adult fiction novels (Insurgent), which means he’s familiar with working on large-scale productions.

You could argue that his experience actually makes him less qualified to play Luke than some unknown who would bring more of a wide-eyed purity to the role, and you might be right, but Elgort also has a lot going for him. He’s unstudied, charming, and has floppy hair that would probably look good waving in a Tatooine breeze.