Efron is pretty much the outstanding poster boy of Disney from the last ten years or so, and whether he wants it or not, that's an image which is not leaving him any time soon. This may be due to the fact that he has a swathe of female fans who worship the very ground he walks on; it could also be due to the rest of us refusing to take a man seriously who starred in a musical wherein high school basketball is the be all and end all of life, the universe and everything. So Efron can thank Disney for this, because every time we see him, we immediately feel as if he is going to be a vessel of cheesy morals, and what we should be afraid of is whether this will creep into the Star Wars movies. It's not necessarily that Efron is doing this deliberately either, it's hardly his fault he's been possessed by the spirit of a corporation-heading mouse, but he's already been typecast and tainted by Disney. Every time we'll see Efron in Star Wars, regardless of what character he's playing we're going to expect him to tell us that we should be using Tatooine mouthwash, or travelling safely under the parsec limit. Efron has a serious battle on his hands to get over this image, and it's an important one which needs to be won in Star Wars or it could very easily upset the overall balance of the movies. For all the flaws you may attribute to the franchise, it has a very definitive and basic moral point: good must conquer evil. We don't need a cheesy character to flit around in the background and explain to the audience the importance of living clean and easy. We're talking about a series which was so focused on the victory of good over evil with such tunnel visionthat a shuddering incest storyline is simply brushed off as if it was totally normal. So I guess what I'm saying is: if we managed to not care that Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia came dangerously close to raising a brood of twelve-fingered, illiterate Jedis, we certainly won't care if Zac Efron is there to tell us to be polite to old ladies and to stick in at school.
