In a recent interview with Mika Mifune (Toshiro Mifune’s daughter) she claimed that Lucas had approached her father to play Obi-Wan Kenobi.
“I heard from my father that he was offered the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi, but he was concerned about how the film would look and that it would cheapen the image of samurai, on which George Lucas had based a lot of the character and fighting style,” said Mika.
“At the time, sci-fi movies still looked quite cheap as the effects were not advanced and he had a lot of samurai pride,” Mika said. “So then, there was talk about him taking the Darth Vader role as his face would be covered, but in the end he turned that down too.”
I guess this sort of makes sense since Mifune starred in The Hidden Fortress which inspired Lucas to make SW, as well as playing the character that eventually evolved into Obi-Wan.
However, in addition to no one having talked about this before, I find it kind of strange since Mifune didn’t really speak English, and Obi-Wan was after all a character with quite a lot of dialogue. Vader also seems kind of pointless to me, since he wears a mask and his voice would’ve been dubbed anyway.
Any thoughts on this?