With tomorrow markng twenty-five years since the arrival of The Phantom Menace in theaters in North America (it didn’t arrive in the UK until 16th July 1999) what better time for Ahmed Best to remind us of what a treasure he is. A performer who should have been a staple of the saga for the last quarter of a century, Best has enjoyed a very welcome resurgence in the GFFA with his appearances in Jedi Temple Challenges and the third season of The Mandalorian where we saw his latest character Kelleran Beq clean house as he helped Grogu escape the Jedi Temple after the activation of Order 66. Speaking with ComicBook, Best made it very clear that while the work he showed off in Chapter 20: The Foundling was impressive, it barely scratched the surface of his skills.
“I keep putting this out there. I want to do a Jedi John Wick as Kelleran Beq. And I don’t even need to say any words. I just want to do two hours of lightsabers and people in the way. I really want to do something like that because the fight that I did for Mandalorian is 1/10th of 1% of what I could do. And there’s so much more.”
“I was just talking about this, the style that influences Kelleran Beq is from Filipino martial arts, and nobody really knows very much how deep those arts are. Most of the Jedi are Japanese Samurai influenced, but the Filipinos beat the Samurai and they beat the Spanish. The way they move, the style that they move, and the weapons that they use are revolutionary. It’s so much so that a lot of what Bruce Lee does in Jeet Kune Do is influenced by Filipino martial arts. So I really want that to be highlighted through some kind of Jedi story.”
Ahmed also took a moment to look back at that seminal film 25 years ago.
Ahmed Best looks back on 25 years of #ThePhantomMenace, now in theaters. pic.twitter.com/QBw2uvPZPY
— Star Wars (@starwars) May 18, 2024
