This is gonna be far more radical and perhaps push a lot of people away.
I personally think it’d be cool to add more aliens throughout.
Not like, turning Han or Tarkin into an alien (tho I stand by that something like that during the concept stages would’ve been just fine, and ppl only laugh at it bc of what we’re familiar with), but just turning some of the minor and background ppl, maybe even with speaking roles, both Empire and Rebels, into aliens.
Perhaps with the Empire you could go with more sinister designs, insectoids, reptilians, tusked mammalians. Though insectoids and reptilians should also be allowed on the Rebels side besides reptiles and insects aren’t evil.
I’ll even say that perhaps in my head canon, a decent chunk of the troopers are aliens under the helmet.
It’s called Star Wars, I think it’d ok to introduce more alien designs.
“But the Empire is racist and human supremacist” that’s what the EU came up with to explain the noticeable lack of alien Imperials. There’s almost just as little alien Rebels in the OT, all due to budget (with the exception of ROTJ; no Imperials as prominent as Admiral Ackbar, or even any actual alien Imperials at all).
The Empire are already tyrannical space nazis, we don’t need to throw in alien racism just to negate interesting designs, especially since race isn’t a theme in Star Wars.
Even so, maybe the Empire are racist against some aliens, but not others. I can’t imagine, realistically, that every single species that’s not a human would be treated the same way.
Besides, this may be a flimsy argument since it brings in the Prequels, but Palpatine was gonna have Maul have the role that Vader got. Before Anakin/Vader was brought into the equation, he would’ve had an alien as second-in-command. And hardly anyone in-universe even knows if Vader is human either.
I feel like most of the reason fans will scoff at ideas of more prominent aliens/turning some minor characters into aliens is because oftentimes alien characters are one-dimensional or cartoons (esp Prequels) so an association is created.
Obviously this isn’t an actual substantive critique of the OT. They’re my favorite movies of all-time. Same with my “making some planets more alien” suggestion. It’s just an aesthetic value that I’d find cool.