Simu Liu Confesses To Bizarre Star Wars Ambitions
This would be a weird job for him.
This article is more than 2 years old
With the stunning success of Shamg-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings last year, Simu Liu pretty much instantly became one Marvel’s biggest superhero stars. But apparently, that hasn’t stopped the actor from considering other career options. Liu took to social media on Wednesday to propose a fairly bizarre working choice for the guy who led one of the biggest movies of 2021.
Was Simu Liu having a bad day? Did something very actor-specific happen that was frustrating enough to make him consider leaving Shang-Chi and every other Hollywood role far behind? We don’t know. We just know he posted the below tweet, revealing his idea for a possible alternate professional path.
The tweet earned tens of thousands of likes in a relatively short amount of time, along with plenty of replies. Some fans are clearly receptive the idea of pivoting from expecting Liu to beating up bad guys in Marvel movies to cosplaying on TikTok. Many either gave the actor examples of things he could try, or just piggybacked off his post to promote their own social media.
Other fans took the occasion to not necessarily campaign for Simu Liu to leave acting behind for Star Wars TikToks, but instead to show up in an actual Star Wars movie and/or TV show. Fan-castings included Liu playing the Jedi master Sifo-Dyas — who is seen only in visions and holograms in The Clone Wars — or even a young Qui-Gon Jinn. Others merely voted for the actor to show up in some of Disney+’s upcoming Star Wars shows.
What some of these fans may not know is that Simu Liu actually already has dipped his toe into the Star Wars universe. In the animated anthology series Star Wars: Visions, Liu voiced the force sensitive sabersmith Lah Zhima in the English dub of episode 5, The Ninth Jedi. Of course, considering he’s already in fantastic physical shape and has received martial arts training, not to mention he clearly has some connections at Disney, it may not be too long before we see Liu in a live-action Star Wars role.
It shouldn’t be too surprising that if Simu Liu were going to retire from screen acting for the sake of social media performance, his new career would be Star Wars themed. It’s clear the actor is a big fan of the sci-fi franchise, as Sean Evans of First We Feast’s Hot Ones series discovered when he was prepping for Liu’s appearance. The online series features celebrities being interviewed while eating spicy food. Liu was recovering from something Evans promised would “grow” and “bellow” when he pointed out Liu’s Star Wars themed images on Instagram. Evans asked Liu for his favorite Jedi. The Shang-Chi actor’s response made it clear that he was a guy who dives a bit deeper into the franchise than your run-of-the-mill fan. You can see that exchange below.
The actor’s choice might be controversial to some fans. Simu Liu chose Qui-Gon Jinn — played by Liam Neeson in 1999’s The Phantom Menace. While that in and of itself probably wouldn’t be too much of an issue in Star Wars fandom, his reason for choosing that particular hero might spark some debate. Liu said he saw the Jedi of the prequel films as hypocrites who “cause their own demise,” and praised Qui-Gon for going his own way.
