If you asked anyone watching action cinema in the last fifteen years to name a handful of the biggest stars in the genre, you’d be hard-pressed to find any who wouldn’t have Liam Neeson in that list.
However, with age catching up on the star, it’s looking like he’s set to hand in his action hero card… although there is one franchise he would come back to. But we’ll get to that in a minute.
“I’m 68 and a half. 69 this year,” the star said in a new interview.
“There’s a couple more [action movies] I’m going to do this year – hopefully, COVID allowing us – there’s a couple in the pipeline and, then I think that will probably be it. Well, unless I’m on a Zimmer frame or something.”
The star made his action movie name with the Taken series but has starred in numerous ones such as The A-Team, The Communter and Cold Pursuit, but he is looking to step down from that line of work as he’s feeling a bit old for it but he does add: “I love doing ’em. I love beating up guys half my age.”
He’s also not looking to step into the MCU or back into the DC universe, saying: “I have no desire to go into the gym for three hours every day to pump myself up to squeeze into a Velcro suit with a cape.”
However, he would be keen to return to Star Wars and the role of Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn.
With the news that Ewan McGregor is returning as Obi-Wan for a Disney+ series and it will also star Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, fans have been wondering if we might also get Neeson back as the man responsible for them both being so instrumental in the Star Wars universe.
“Sure, I’d be up for that, yeah,” he says.
“Sure I’d like to, I mean, I’m wondering is Star Wars starting to fade away from the cinema landscape do we think?”
He is of course talking about the fact that Star Wars’ home for the foreseeable future is on Disney+ but this would be an ideal time to bring him back to the role.
When Qui-Gonn died at the hands of Darth Maul in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, we later learned that he had returned as a Force ghost and had been communicating with Yoda, who then instructed Obi-Wan on how to communicate with former Jedi, so there’s certainly ample ways that we could see him come back into the fold.
Of course, he did briefly return to the role for Clone Wars (above), so he’s not totally alien to the notion.
What say you? A world without Neeson being an action hero but potentially having him back for Star Wars? Would that work? Let me know…
Source: ET and
Marc
Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….
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