Peter Cushing is clearly having fun on SW in a way that Alec Guinness isn’t. Guinness a lot the time IMO is phoning it in, probably feeling like “why did I take this film, this is so cheesy, it’s so beneath me.” Whereas Hammer horror veteran Cushing is quite obviously having a blast and it shows in his performance.
Disagree completely. Obi-wan is supposed to be a serious character. Even still there are moments where you can clearly see Guinness has portrayed Ben with a good sense of humor. And he was downright furious at Lucas for killing him off and therefore cutting out some of his scenes, so I don’t buy that he thought it was beneath him. He was far too professional to “phone it in,” even in a genre film like this. Even by the time ROTJ was being worked on he was still pushing for more screen time and more stuff to do. Unfortunately he ended up just stuck on a log.