Live-action Star Wars characters aren’t supposed to look ‘animated’
By Meg Dowell
In Star Wars, every time a character with origins in animation first appears in live-action, the angry tweets begin to flow.
This all started when The Mandalorian introduced Ahsoka Tano into live-action for the first time — the insufferable complaints that she didn’t look EXACTLY like she did in the “cartoons.” That she “wasn’t our Ahsoka.” That she was somehow “wrong.”
When the Grand Inquisitor in Obi-Wan Kenobi didn’t look exactly like his animated version, fans went so far as to make their own “edits” showing what he “should” look like. See also: Cad Bane. And soon: Grand Admiral Thrawn.
On August 23, #Ahsoka starts streaming only on @DisneyPlus pic.twitter.com/OdwgYBJWdo
— Star Wars (@starwars) June 7, 2023
There’s really no reason one needs to look like the other — comparing is fine and even sometimes fun, but animation and live-action are two completely different forms of art. If everything looked the exact same from one to the other, there wouldn’t be any point in separating them.
So Hera Syndulla doesn’t look exactly the same in live-action as she does in Rebels — as far as we can tell from the promotional images and trailers released so far in the lead-up to the Ahsoka series, anyway. Does it change her character? Does it change her legacy?
This goes for any live-action circumstance in which a character who originated in animation makes the leap to a different medium. Animation is art, stylized specifically for a series or movie. It’s not supposed to be a seamless transition from an animated model to a live-action version of the same character. It’s a different medium. A different form of art.
When you treat live-action and animated as two separate but equally valuable storytelling mediums within the franchise, you begin to realize that characters who cross over from one to the other are not always the exact same. And that’s because they were never meant to be. They may be equally good in their own ways, but the shift isn’t meant to be seamless. We’re supposed to be able to tell the difference.
There are so many bigger issues in Star Wars to complain about. Pick one of those.
Next. Dave Filoni describes Ahsoka as a ‘loner’ in upcoming series. dark
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