Highlights
- Star Wars live-action debuts have been praised by fans, but a tweak made to Grand Admiral Thrawn’s look has sparked discussion on social media.
- Fans debate over whether a hairline change for Thrawn in Ahsoka is necessary, with some noting its alignment with previous character depictions.
- While the hairline debate is amusing, it doesn’t impact the essence of Thrawn’s character, whose depth lies beyond physical appearance.
The recent push for Star Wars live-action debuts have been much appreciated by fans, but one decision made in bringing a certain character to the small screen has been given the fix treatment by one social media user.
Star Wars has seen a rapid growth in its content since the Disney era began and canon was scrubbed to build up a new one. Most recently, a slew of live-action projects for Disney+ have given fans all sorts of firsts and interesting experiences, with the most notable of these being Star Wars: Ahsoka, which was easily one of the best Disney+ series of the year. The show’s first season ended on an eventful final arc, which featured the live-action debut of none other than Grand Admiral Thrawn, portrayed by his Star Wars: Rebels voice actor Lars Mikkelsen.
While Mikkelsen made one major change to his Thrawn portrayal for the live-action, other changes were made by the costume and makeup team, and one fan on social media thinks they’ve made a mistake. In a post to the r/StarWars boards on the site titled “They could improve him so much by just changing his wig, dont you think?”, Reddit user danielwhitehall uploaded an image featuring two side-by-side stills of Grand Admiral Thrawn’s live-action depiction from Star Wars: Ahsoka, with the one to the left showing the character’s unaltered form and the one on the right showing off an edited version with a much more appealing hairline. The images sport no other differences, all the better for other fans on the site to admire the fix.
The edits not only make the character look better but actually bring his look in line with previous depictions of the character in the comics and animated shows. However, many fans were quick to disagree and point out that the new look tells you everything you need to know about Thrawn post-time skip. These users highlight the fact that the character has been through a lot since he was last seen and has aged quite a bit as well, making it more than reasonable to expect a less refined, less youthful look. Others in the replies also took issue with such a minor detail being nitpicked despite the fan-favorite being cast and the costume being very accurate. While this segment of respondents seemed upset for this reason, some more casual respondents likened the image to Elon Musk in blue body paint.
While the original post is certainly humorous and does show off some really smooth editing work, it sort of misses the mark on what matters with Thrawn. In reality, his looks have little to do with what it is that makes Thrawn so scary in Star Wars and shouldn’t be that big a deal beyond a certain level of faithfulness to the source material. Additionally, being of an alien species makes it perfectly feasible that he could undergo whatever minor changes the showrunners see fit to inflict on him, making complaints about his hairline especially uncalled for. On the other hand, when bringing an iconic character to live-action, there’s a case to be made that fans want to see the most common version of the character and not one that’s noticeably different from what was imagined. The addition of a younger Thrawn in a flashback sequence could go a long way to really highlight the difference in much the same way Ezra Bridger’s facial hair did for that character.
Considering that fans might already have Ahsoka Season 2 in the works due to popular demand, there’s still time for the show to give Thrawn more screen time and really drive home how his time in another galaxy has changed him. Fans will have to wait and see whether or not the hairline will be fixed with his return home.
The Star Wars franchise is available to stream on Disney+.
Source: danielwhitehall/Reddit
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