5. J.J. Abrams Wants To Cast "Relative Unknowns"
It was recently said that J.J. Abrams wants to cast a bunch of "relative unknowns" in Star Wars: Episode VII, which makes sense in a lot of ways. His supposed theory is that having people we all recognise playing new characters will dilute the experience and will take people out of the film (sorry Jennifer Lawrence fans - guess she won't end up as a member of the Solo clan, as badass as that would be). In that respect, J.J. Abrams is kind of onto something... remember how weird it was having Samuel L. Jackson talking to Yoda? For some reason that felt plainly wrong. According to actor Dominic Monaghan (of all people), who spoke to Abrams on the matter (and worked with him on TV's Lost): "We've talked a few times about it and he said, 'We're putting together a cast of unknowns - we want to follow the '77 New Hope cast because obviously Harrison Ford wasn't well known at that point, Mark Hamill wasn't and Carrie Fisher wasn't either." Monaghan added: "What he said was, we don't want to fall into that mistake of people going, 'Oh it's that guy from that thing!' and then you're completely out of the Star Wars universe.'" Then again: how many films do you know that decided to cast relative unknowns and got away with it? There aren't many (or any), that's for sure. The problem is that actors genuinely take years and years to hone their performances in the motion picture business - it's rare that an unknown actor will just arrive as a rounded performer (though it does happen). Casting unknowns in every new role could prove even more jarring than casting familiar faces. Remember: Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen were both "relative unknowns" when they were cast! Disaster!