Admiral Ackbar actor talks about his scenes in The Last Jedi (Spoilers) - Sensationalist Headlines

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/admiral-ackbar-actor-has-strong-words-about-his-star-wars-the-last-jedi-death-192151673.html Just playing it safe, I guess. “So after waiting 30 years to reprise Ackbar I was a little disappointed with Ackbar's role in that picture. So in The Last Jedi, I was quite looking forward to maybe them giving him something more juicy.” “We were only given the script on the day when we were shooting that piece of script, so each day I would come to work going, ‘Is today the day when Ackbar gets something a bit more involving?’ And I looked at my script and I went, ‘Oh, Ackbar's going out of the window. Well, that's that then!’” “We finished all of our bits and they asked me to come down to camera. And I thought, ‘Oh well, maybe they’re going to say thank you for being one of the heritage characters and giving 30 years and all that.’” “But what they did was, they gave me a Millennium Falcon sign that had the day and the date on it, the scene number, and they said, ‘Can you look at camera and say "It's a wrap?" Because that would be really funny.’” “I was actually in tears in the suit because I thought - after everything, after hoping there’d be something, after knowing there wasn't going to be anything else, Ackbar's final moment before he went in to the box was a big joke about ‘It's a wrap.’ They just thought ‘Wouldn’t it be funny?’ And that was the sum total of my life as Ackbar.”

I think it made thematic sense to have him die but I do completely agree that his character was completely underutilized and basically just thrown away. IIRC, he's not even utilized much in the books either, just very minor appearances/references. Maybe he'll get shown off more in some sort of spinoff media taking place before the force awakens at least.

In the scheme of things you either have a decent amount of time and be forever as the meme character to the general audience or get no time and nothing will ultimately change. Instead he gets a bit part, says a pretty grim line, then dies because the writer had not much else for a legacy character outside of the Skywalker characters and get the ire of fans when the film goes gold. I don't blame the guy for not given more content, but imo as much as I'd love to see more of him in TLJ, you either are remembered as the meme or a callback ala some semblance of TFA in TLJ.

Maybe I'm being a little insensitive, but this dude sounds like he's being more than a little dramatic... his expectations seems a little unreasonable.

Consider how valuable and important his role is to him, and the fact that he has been this character in one of the biggest franchises longer than a lot of people have been alive. About a 3rd of his life he held this role to high value, to be put to rest in a way he doesn't feel fit. It's a personal thing for him at this point, I'd wager he sees ackbar as a fictional version of himself. An alien fursona, if you will.

They're a beloved character that has been a fan favourite for years who played an important role in the original series, where they went to the lengths of bringing back the original actor to reprise his most well-known role decades later, and then they decide that it doesn't really matter and rather than doing anything of substance with him (Did he even have any lines?) he's there just so they can get rid of the character as if it's a worthwhile use for him. Then after all that, they decide to not even acknowledge the contribution of the character and more importantly the actor, and just go "do the meme, that'll be funny!" as if that isn't going to be hurtful to him after how underutilized his character was. There's absolutely nothing dramatic or entitled about his reaction. It's not as if he was asking to be a main character or anything absurd like that, just something that's respectful to an actor and character being bought back 30 years after they finished the original trilogy.

I guess I'm just not sure what he expected? I feel like he's only so beloved because of the meme status, so anyone being surprised or shocked by them cashing in on that is already pretty naive. Bringing him back at all is already a bit of an homage, they literally could have gotten any puppeteer but instead they made sure to get the original guy again. I don't see how that isn't enough "respect".

thing is Disney knows they messed up. They made a comic adaptation to repair TLJ and gave Admiral Ackbar more recognition and attention to his death in it

Akbar should've been the one to do the lightspeed ram.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKLJ0EomQk0

Dude, the only reason that anyone cared about your role at all was because he was a meme, what did you expect?

Soo basically he isnt that important of a character and shouldnt have expected a major role in the first place. Lol why did a guy playing C list expected anything else?

I thought he was killed off so quickly because the guy who did his voice died before TLJ was filmed.

Live by the meme, die by the meme

Admiral Akbar should've replaced admiral holdo tbh

There's hundreds of characters in Star Wars that have memes associated with them. Like them, he's important regardless. He had a long life, military career and history, ontop of being well known and recognized among even smaller fans. It's as dumb as saying people only like Grievous because of the memes, except Grievous isn't the posterchild of an entire species and did little of anything respectable in universe. Just had a shitty military career and died like a bitch, got his ass beat by Gungans, etc. Meanwhile Admiral Gial Ackbar started as a royal guard to the king of his entire species, protected the prince after an assassination, and fought off the separatists from keeping control from Mon Cala. Then, only a single year after Order 66 he commanded the fight against the empire and Inquisitorious led by Vader and Tarkin, preventing Mon Cala from becoming an imperial system. The Mon Cala military force went on to be VITAL to the Rebel's success, and a large portion of their ragtag fleet. He was also a major part of planning and executing the battle of Endor. He not only destroyed Vader's personal flagship but did so with jammed sensors and an enemy fleet blocking their escape. Then after Endor he further helped to snuff out the remnants of the empire and participated in the Battle of Jakku, which was the original Empire's last stand and the reason there's so much debris on the planet. He retired from military service while supporting Leia as a senator of the New Republic, but came out of retirement for Leia's Resistance, a militia dedicated to fighting the First Order, unsanctioned from the New Republic due to them not believing they are a threat (which led to the destruction of the entire new republic system of 8 planets) Ackbar survived capture from Phasma, and was rescued from a Ren execution by Poe Dameron. Disney already realizes killing him off like background fodder was a dumb mistake. Every one of the books released to "repair" TLJ's mistakes in the canon has made this clear. The novel calls him the most esteemed military commander of his generation when describing his death, and the comic gave him a new scene https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/134149/7d611aaf-b5f2-4dac-8c6d-859891afb72b/image.png there's no debating it. they already know. I'm not about to shit on the actor for recognizing it himself.

Dennis Lawson (Wedge) had the right idea. He straight up told them "If you're not going to give me a substantial role, I'm not coming back."

Yeah we got you the first time, thanks.

That was intended to merge with the first post, but I hadn't refreshed the page

as awesome as it would have been, it would have been more jarring then Buffhuge Kylo Renn or Leia flying through space using the force. No, I think the best use for him would not be to kill him (I didn't even know he kicked it, but now I'm disapointed...) but to keep his involvement to something like how he was in TFA where you just see him for a shot silently saying "We're doomed..." Because it's both pretty cool in the context of the movie, and novel seeing Admiral fucking Akbar, Meme Machine in the film, as if he never gave up the good fight.

When I was watching the movie at the cinema I was really confused, thinking did I miss this character in previous installments? Is she an EU throwback or something that I couldn't recognize, and why isn't Akbar doing this instead. So I looked her up after the movie and turns out she's a new character. Why? It's definitely one of the most iconic moment in the movie and yet they put it with some new character that we knew nothing about aside from she's a petty leader that'll probably fuck up eventually.

This is majorly depressing. I kinda choose to ignore everything Grievous ever did in canon, and just consider the Clone Wars cartoon (Not the 3d one lol, that's complete trash) Grievous to be the only one. Dude's a fucking murder machine

I like him but let's be honest, as far as the grand scheme of things goes? He's kind of unimportant in-universe. He's probably the best general in the separatist droid army, but the separatists were pawns and achieved very little. He's cool but I think he could not exist in-universe and very little would change to the timeline that leads us to A New Hope. Meanwhile other characters like Ackbar are essential to the rebel fleet, and Maul's actions on multiple occasions lead Obi-wan on the path to his role in ANH. Besides killing Qui-Gon, there's also (Clone Wars spoilers) The woman Obi-wan has feelings for, a woman he even admitted to he would leave the Jedi order if she had asked, is killed by Maul right infront of him out of spite just moments after revealing this. Had Satine lived, Obi-wan would've eventually left the order to be with her, and he wouldn't have been around to hide and protect Luke.

When I saw TLJ I didn't even realize it was the same character.

Juuust gonna chime in on this and point out both of those adaptations were written before the film came out. http://www.jedinews.co.uk/interviews/articles/jedi-news-interviews-jason-fry/ By who, how and when was the approach made to you? Del Rey’s Elizabeth Schaefer offered me the gig in June 2016. Which meant I had to shhh until my involvement was announced at Comic-Con the next year. That was a long time to keep mum. Was Rian Johnson involved in your creative process? I sat down with Rian at the end of July 2017 at Skywalker Ranch and we talked for a couple of hours. That was a huge help – among other things, Rian talked about how he saw the characters’ arcs, why certain scenes were deleted, and brainstormed with me a bit about how to translate some of the film’s visual storytelling to the page. But the biggest help Rian gave me was discussing how he’d tried to ensure the movie had “lift, not drag” – even when characters were wrestling with weighty matters or facing dark events, he tried to make sure the film offered a sense of adventure and fun. I made “lift, not drag” one of my commandments in adapting Rian’s story. http://www.jedinews.co.uk/interviews/articles/jedi-news-interviews-gary-whitta/ With all the criticism, I can imagine it must have felt like a huge pressure on yourself to get things right in the eyes of the fans, did you make any edits to your adaptation as a result of the fan feedback? Nothing I did was in any way prompted by fan feedback; I made most of my big creative decisions on the adaptation and started writing before the film was even released. My approach when writing is not to worry about what other people want to see but what I want to see, and then hope that my own instincts as a Star Wars fan are on-point enough that other fans agree with the choices I made. You’ll not only drive yourself crazy worrying about what the fans want, you’ll wind up telling an inferior story. So all of the editorial decisions I made were driven by things I wanted to see, but without upending any of Rian’s intent.

excuse me, what the fuck??!?!

I feel like that further proves my point they knew he was being shafted in the cut, although the first guy isn't the one who wrote the novelization I'm referring to, Michael Kogge did, and it came out around a couple days before Fry's

Well I mean, it is? Why you so mad. It looks trash, it's animated like trash, and giving lore details is the only thing it's good for since it's not like the performances or screenwriting is anything to behold. If the Clone Wars CG was transformed into a non-Star Wars franchise, it would just be another crappy early saturday morning cartoon that a few kids watch before playing fortnite or something.

And in this post you've shown that you can't even for a second give a man some dues for being proud of what he did and wishing it could've been more. Instead its just memes my dude, its not like a core part of resume my dude, man just get over it. Show some heart.

you have clearly not watched the series at all