Star Wars Episode 7: Five Reasons Harrison Ford Has To Return

Friday, news broke that Harrison Ford is apparently very close to committing to appear in Star Wars Episode VII. Needless to say, half of the Internet rejoiced, while the other half booed through their cupped hands.In other words, it’s the Internet.At any rate, upon seeing these reactions, we wanted to collect up some of the responses and try and sift through why people are so keen to see, or not to see, the great actor return to arguably his most iconic role. We brought you some of the stuff we were worried about yesterday, but what we’re jazzed about? Well, here we go…

Fans are so into continuity that it’s really kind of absurd. DC Comics has had entire events that changed their universe(s) just to accommodate writing errors and back story tweaks that were never meant to be so serious.So is it any wonder that George Lucas made the (awful) decision to change Sebastian Shaw into Hayden Christensen for the “special” edition of Return of the Jedi? It probably seemed like a great idea at the time, since if he hadn’t done so fans would have spent years joking, “Except that Anakin looked like some old English playwright in the last movie.”This is the flip side of that—it really would materially impact the film’s continuity if anyone other than Ford were going to play Solo, so unless it was absolutely necessary (as in, the film picks up eight months after the previous installment, or something, in which case all of the principal players would likely have to be recast), it seems unwise to recast that role.Rounding Out the CastAssuming—as almost everyone is doing—that the films will star Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and the like, if Harrison Ford were missing, it would stick out like a sore thumb. Not only would his absence be felt (think Sean Connery in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), but trying to replace him with another actor would just feel bizarre in light of the fact that the new person would be bouncing off Ford’s old screen mates. Can you imagine anyone else talking to Chewie, while Mark Hamill looks on confused?It would also lend the film a sense of grandeur that it would lack if the movie poster screamed “We got everybody except the famous guy!”.