You might find it hard to believe, but, the truth is that Mark Hamill didn’t exactly pounce on it when the opportunity to reprise his legendary portrayal of Luke Skywalker in the new Star Wars trilogy, came his way.
He told Associated Press that he didn’t think that it would be the right thing to be recast in the same character. “When they asked me to come back, it was scary,” he said. “I thought, ‘Gee, it was hard to catch lightning in a bottle the first time. I don’t know if this is such a wise idea.’ When we left [the original trilogy], even if they were going to do a third trilogy, it wouldn’t have anything to do with us. George [Lucas] never said you’re going to do three more. He did mention maybe coming back and doing a cameo and handing Excalibur to the next young hope.”
One wonders why he would have such notions against the role.
“A thing that felt maybe wrong about coming back was the fact that the original trilogy had a beginning, a middle and an end,” Hamill said. “But there’s two ways of looking at that. On the one hand, it had closure. But if you look at it another way, it’s the story of how Luke went from becoming a farm boy to a Jedi and then the story ends. It would be like telling the story of how James Bond got his license to kill and became 007, and the story ends.”
He also said that the massive changes in the character of Luke Skywalker have made it difficult to comprehend as to where the character will be positioned in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. “Luke changed, I think, more than the other characters in the original trilogy, from callow farm boy to a Jedi in training to finally a Jedi master,” he said.
“Between Return of the Jedi and Force Awakens, there’s just decades of history that’s unknown. So I was wondering how they’re going to handle all this. Now, obviously, with Force Awakens, J.J. [Abrams] had a full plate. It was inevitable that they would push me down the line. I was sorry I wasn’t able to work with any of the original actors again. But it’s not about us anymore. In this new one, I was saying to Rian Johnson: ‘I need to know my backstory.’ It was kind of unclear. You read where he is now and what he’s doing now and sort of have to fill in the blanks for yourself. So I did do a backstory myself. It’s not about Luke anymore, so it’s not really important. But I had to make sense of it for myself. What Rian came up with, I was stunned.”
We won’t be able to find out the truth any time before the release of The Last Jedi on December 15, however, one of the recent photos depicting Hamill as Skywalker suggested that the character is likely to be inching towards the Dark side, much closer than what we believed.
