my biggest beef with the solo movie is that Qi’ra wasn't made to be an alien when the concept art for her was incredible, and when they decided to have her just be human they went with the most boring design. This isn't me having beef with Emilia Clarke or anything its a matter of her being picked out of the 6 other actresses all of whom were women of color and in a franchise who had ZERO women of color as main characters this is incredibly suspect (im looking at you Kathleen Kennedy).
“We explored Qi'ra being an alien in the early days. When you look at all of the characters that have been created over the years - for instance in the Star Trek franchise - you learn that you don’t want to cover the actor or actress’s beauty or emotional range… It is a very tough gray area. One needs to go all the way or not at all.” - Neil Scanlan
I understand not wanting to limit an actor's facial expressions and emotional range but there are literally species in star wars where the only thing that makes them alien is being an odd color or have facial tattoos. As for beauty why not make them the species that is literally enslaved for their beauty, or hear me out make them a species that only have head modifications like twilek and togruta. Also not to like have unrealistic expectations for actors but they shouldn't only rely on facial expressions to convey emotion.
“Early Qi’ra concepts. The challenge was to find a design that wouldn’t obscure the actress’s face or impede her facial expressions, to be feminine and attractive & of course fit the StarWars aesthetic.” - Luke Fisher
“There aren’t many characters in Star Wars that are a mid-ground between an alien and a human,” says Star Wars creature creator Neil Scanlan, reasoning that that belongs to “other franchises” – i.e. Star Trek.
it's one thing if you originally had planned for the character to be alien and then had to change it due to the actor you chase not having time to come in due to their schedule being involved in other things it's a simple fix if you're determined to have an alien character simply hire a new actor. It's another thing if its because you chose not to have an alien female character because you were worried it wouldn't be sexy enough for the old school star wars fans when at some point you need to think of what will bring in a new audience. Like just say you either didn't have the time, money or even want to do an alien main character because there are dozens of star wars characters that are mid-ground aliens. It's just insulting and then you go around and use one of Qi’ras concepts and create a character out of it who is gorgeous I just do not understand. This is all coming from someone who is literally going to school for costumes and prosthetics like I am aware how difficult this can be along with the horror stories of 5 to 9+ hours of application but having a female main character be an alien is literally no risk to Disney corp especially after seeing how poorly the movie did. I don't know maybe having more than one woman of color in the movie for more than just 10 minutes was too much for them.
Humanoid aliens ranked most to least difficult to create
Miraluka
Kiffar
Umbaran
Sarkhai
Echani
Mirialan
Balosar
Zeltron
Keshiri
Rattataki
Nagai
Kage
Zabrak
Twi'lek
Theelin
Imzig
Themian
Arkanian
Wroonian
Pantoran
Chiss
Vorzydiak
