The level of fanboy ire targeted at George Lucas’s prequels will pale in comparison to the fury the studio would face if it mucks up the celebrated Star Wars icons in an expanded franchise

Why was the original Star Wars trilogy so successful, while the prequels are now considered by many to be the worst examples of space fantasy since the retirement of Ed Wood? That is the question Disney executives must have asked themselves countless times after buying George Lucas’s Lucasfilm for $4.05bn in October 2012.

The answer they appear to have come up with, if the studio’s current five-year plan for Star Wars is anything to go by, is that it’s all about the characters. Yes, The Force Awakens gave us a return to the masked dark side disciples, bright-eyed wannabe Jedis and fast-paced action of the early films – as opposed to the prequels’ constant tedious trade federation blockades and bloodless visits to the Galactic Senate. But it also succeeded by elevating the likes of Luke Skywalker and Han Solo to the kind of status usually reserved for totemic superheroes such as Batman, Superman and Spider-Man, characters destined to be wheeled out time and time again in different big screen iterations.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Force Awakens reunited shipmates Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) and Han Solo (Harrison Ford). Photograph: Film Frame/AP

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Harrison Ford’s Solo was the sardonic, septuagenarian centrepiece of the box office megasmash, and a younger version of the swaggering space smuggler will get his own, Lawrence Kasdan-penned movie in 2018. Skywalker will be a key player in Rian Johnson’s Episode VIII. And while plans for a spin-off movie based around bounty hunter Boba Fett appear to be on hold, there are increasingly powerful rumours that the greatest Star Wars icon of all time, Darth Vader himself, will appear in the upcoming Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

How Disney handles the long-running saga’s newly appointed deities, going forward, will surely decide whether it develops into a space fantasy take on the superhero “cinematic universe” created so successfully by Marvel, or eventually peters out as audiences decide Star Wars is being stretched thinner than George Lucas’s explanation for adding all that rubbish CGI to the 1997 special editions.

Let’s take Vader’s rumoured appearance in Rogue One to start with. Gareth Edwards’s film is about the brave Rebel Alliance grunts who stole the plans to the first Death Star, meaning that it’s set prior to the events of 1977’s Star Wars. This then, gives us an opportunity to see the evil Sith lord in his earliest screen incarnation yet (bar Revenge of the Sith’s mini-Darth). And Disney have got to get it absolutely right, or risk the kind of abuse which eventually sent Lucas scurrying away from his own space saga in horror at the fanboy monster he had created.

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Let me be clear. Darth Vader can’t be a cameo in Rogue One. That’s a copout which no fan worth their salt will accept. After more than three decades away from the big screen (barring ... ahem), to bring the character back in a five-minute segment where he admonishes some poor Imperial functionary for letting the Rebels in is just not going to be good enough. Neither should Vader be pitched as a Marvel-style supervillain, to be introduced in mid- or end-credit sequences setting up future films. If Disney is going to bring back the greatest baddie of all time, they need to do so with verve and swagger.

Nobody thought Jack Nicholson’s Joker could be bettered until they saw Heath Ledger’s spikier take in The Dark Knight. Few imagined there might be a James Bond as good as Sean Connery until they first witnessed Daniel Craig’s brutal British spy in Casino Royale. Vader can be reinterpreted – the rumoured Forest Whitaker ought to be able to pull off both the physical stature and the menacing tones if his Idi Amin is anything to go by – and Disney might even find itself conjuring up new Star Wars adventures to take advantage of the villain’s resurrection in an earlier timeline. Just don’t give us a half-cocked reimagination.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Choosing which actor to pilot the Millennium Falcon in any spinoff is a fraught casting headache. Photograph: Lucasfilm/Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar

Solo is a different deal entirely. The Corellian wiseguy has never before been given his own movie, and now he’s about to get one without Ford in the Millennium Falcon hotseat. The casting here is absolutely key, and Disney needs to pull off a blinder akin to Chris Pine’s Captain Kirk, or Chris Pratt in Guardians of the Galaxy. Even the briefest hint of a sniff of a rumour that the studio is going the “teen choice” route by plumping for looks over substance will see the movie sink faster than Luke’s X-wing in Yoda’s slimy Dagobah swamp, which is why rumoured candidates such as Glee’s Blake Jenner should be avoided like the Candorian plague. Others, such as Whiplash’s Miles Teller, Brooklyn’s Emery Cohen and The Fault in Our Stars’ Ansel Elgort don’t seem to have the right look. Personally, 21 Jump Street’s Dave Franco seems the best of the current candidates, though his brother James has the insouciant swagger to really make the role his own.

Whoever gets the part, they will – quite simply – need to be so good that we forget Ford ever existed. That might sound harsh, but iconic roles require iconic performances, and a “decent” bash at pulling off a younger Han Solo will simply lead many fans to question why Disney bothered in the first place.

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Get these two movies right, and confidence will flow that the studio knows what it’s doing. All of a sudden, talk of origins movies for Yoda, Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi and others won’t seem crazier than Kylo Ren on a bad news day. Get them wrong, and the barrage of discontent aimed at Lucas over the years will seem a mere trifle in comparison to the Starkiller Base-sized outpouring of angst that swiftly follows.

Millions of voices will suddenly cry out in horror – and it will probably be several decades before they shut up.