Mark Hamill, the star who plays Luke Skywalker in Star Wars had worried the franchise’ fans earlier with his revelation that he “fundamentally disagreed with everything” related to his iconic character after reading the script for Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
We wonder what made Hamill react in such a fashion? It will also be worth knowing as to how Hamill would have handled the sad, disgruntled horizon of his character.
A recent interview answered the question. However, it was such a crazy premise that it is bound to cause a lot of consternation among the Star Wars fans.
Mark Hamill Revealed His Weird Pitch For ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’
While Return of the Jedi ended with a young, powerful and cheery Jedi Knight, the Luke Skywalker at the end of Star Wars: The Force Awakens was a disgruntled, evasive and thoughtful person. Now, what events brought upon this drastic change?
Yes, it is known the destruction of his Jedi Academy and the way he was betrayed by Kylo Ren, left him devastated. Still, during a recent interview with Empire Magazine for their latest issue, Mark Hamill eagerly disclosed what he proposes as the alternate explanation for the changes in Luke’s behavior in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. He says it just wasn’t the real Luke in the movies.
“Oh baby, would I [have loved] to play my own evil twin!”
It seems like Hamill is heavily inspired by the ‘Clone Saga’ of the Spider-Man replete with doppelgangers and all. Although Hamill didn’t give any explanation as to how and where did this duplicate Luke Skywalker come from, he had a lot of fascinating ideas for Skywalker after his time on Ahch-To:
“It’d be great because you could maybe not reveal its Evil Luke until the real Luke shows up. We could watch this guy undermining the good guys secretly, maybe even killing a supporting character out of everyone’s sight so they all go ‘What’s going on? He’s crazy!’ And then, of course, the good Luke shows up.”
It would be interesting to see a devilish version of Luke Skywalker in the light of the fact that The Last Jedi is illusioned and possibly headed in that direction. There are numerous examples of evil twins, doppelgangers, etc. replacing the main character. Therefore, the idea despite being fascinating, isn’t novel for sure. However, Lucasfilm gave an entirely different explanation to Hamill while rejecting his suggestion:
“When I suggested that storyline they said, ‘Well, it’s been done.”
In fact, that’s the truth. Star Wars has already gone into the concept of an evil duplicate replacing Luke previously. Hamill went on to explain the same to Empire that Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn had a sequence where his character came across the duplicate Luuke Skywalker (the evil duplicate had an extra ‘U’). This was the story that created the path for the struggles faced by the New Republic after the Return of the Jedi.
Mark Hamill’s Helping Hand
You might remember Luke losing his hand and lightsaber in an incident in Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back. It is revealed in The Last Command that Darth Vader had retrieved both things after their battle and later these two things ended up being stored in the secure storage facility of the Emperor for some future usage. Once the Empire fell, the Grand Admiral Thrawn took possession of them and a lunatic Jedi duplicate JoruusC’baoth used the stored genes to clone his version of Luke Skywalker. In fact, he later battled with Luke using his old lightsaber before Mara Jade (Luke’s future wife) killed him. Although, this concept was scrapped in the process of Disney’s takeover of the Lucasfilm.
Had the above-mentioned events been filmed, it would have made for some interesting viewing; there are plenty of fans who would be happy to know that Rian Johnson didn’t pick up that line. Reason being the stronger appeal of a defeated, distraught and aging Jedi Master over the appearance of some deranged clone. Also, the fact remains that an evil Luke Skywalker might just become a reality anyway.
We must clarify here that Hamill doesn’t have any grouse against either Rian Johnson or Lucasfilm for having rejected his ideas. He is quite a classy and understanding person, he even stated that he is a “fountain of really terrible ideas” and then went forth to clarify why he had disapproved of the shape that Luke Skywalker takes in the upcoming movie.
“Being the caretaker of the character I have a possessive attitude towards him, but even though it’s not the way I would have gone, the more I got into the work, the more I realized I was wrong.”
All this sounds highly promising, but, we are still left grappling with one question, and that is whether Mark Hamill regrets asking George Lucas to reveal the duplicity of Boba Fett and Luke’s mother!
These revelations are likely to delight fans that their favorite actor didn’t indulge in the script-writing process for the Star Wars films. Though, it would have been interesting to imagine what shape the distant galaxy would have looked like in case Hamill’s suggestions had been incorporated into the script. In any case, fans are excited to see Mark Hamill come back to the Star Wars. The Last Jedi will feature Hamill in a balanced and more thoughtful role which might even lead the saga to an Oscar once again.
