Ben Affleck Confirms He Turned Down Star Wars: The Force Awakens, And the Real Reason Why
The sequel trilogy continues to have an interesting legacy in the larger Star Wars franchise. For one, this represented Disney’s first entry into the galaxy far, far away, at least on the big screen, and that alone was always going to be a major obstacle. Of course, that arguably ended up going worse even than many had expected, with those movies continuing to get plenty of backlash and criticism and many in the fanbase continuing to see them as among the worst of the Star Wars movies. That’s less true of the first installment, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and much truer especially of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, but even in terms of the former, that movie has received its fair share of negativity and criticism. Interestingly, it turns out that this movie almost looked very different, with an unexpected name at the helm: Ben Affleck.
Speaking on Josh Horowitz’s Happy, Sad, Confused show, Affleck shockingly revealed, “They came to me and asked me, hey are you interested in this. I don’t know that that meant they weren’t also talking to JJ or other people…I thought, hey, I like Star Wars, and I’m a fan, but I’m not the person to direct this movie. Someone else who has more passion for this is going to do a better job. That’s not some great self-sacrificing thing because I thought I don’t know that I can make a great version of Star Wars or reinvent this. A lot of challenges to reinventing that. In fact, that you’ve seen played out. It hasn’t been easy for them to reinvent that franchise…And you’ve got this whole fanbase that’s got its own very strong opinions. It just was one, like plenty of scripts I’ve gotten as a director…that I just thought, like, I don’t think I can do it as well as somebody else, and I don’t want to direct something that I don’t feel like I have a chance to be really, really proud of.”
Ultimately, Affleck Made the Right Decision
It’s kind of shocking to learn that Affleck was being considered for this movie, particularly because, as he himself said in this interview, this isn’t necessarily a franchise that he has been strongly associated with before. However, that might have made his take on the project all the more interesting, and perhaps that’s what The Force Awakens needed. After all, among the biggest complaints about that movie was the fact that it felt so derivative of A New Hope, and there’s little doubt that this would not have been the case had Affleck been at the helm. It also seems like, with Disney taking over at that point, a true fresh start may have been ideal.
Even so, turning this opportunity down remains the right call, for all of the reasons that Affleck himself said. The Star Wars fanbase is notoriously difficult to please, and that was perhaps the truest at that point in time, when many were still very unhappy that George Lucas had sold the franchise to Disney. Whoever stepped into that role, and arguably no matter what they made, they were going to receive serious backlash. Really, there was no winning in this position, as massive an opportunity as it may have been, so choosing not to enter those dangerous waters was probably for the best, at least for Affleck.
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