‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi.’ Few films have elicited quite so much love and hatred from the fans of a franchise, especially when it comes to how it treated a beloved character like Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker and decided to send him off into the sunset. Needlessly some would say, especially when there was so much potential for redemption since the character had basically given up on the galaxy, the Force, and the Jedi after seemingly accidentally created the next Darth Vader.
At the time Hamill was quoted in an interview as saying his reaction to the script was:
“I was shocked. I said to Rian, number one, Luke was the most optimistic, hopeful character, and now he’s this miserable, despondent hermit…You see in the story why that is, but I had a real problem, because I don’t believe a Jedi would ever give up. You see, if he makes a mistake, he doubles down and does the right thing, regardless of the magnitude of his mistake — choosing Ben Solo and being so wrong and giving rise to the possible Darth Vader.”
Hamill was also famously quoted at the time for saying he “fundamentally disagreed” with Rian Johnson about the direction of the character, but later clarified that his words were inartfully [sic] phrased,” making them a bit less harsh, even going so far as to tell IMDB after the film came out that he “was wrong.” However, he does make mention that the script does not delve much into Luke’s motivations for the movie, making it difficult for him to piece together why Luke made the choices he did, forcing Hamill to invent his own backstory for the character up to where we find him at the end of ‘The Force Awakens.”
Hamill told The Vancouver Sun:
“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.”
All of which leads to this week’s news, where a fan on Twitter asked both Rian Johnson and Mark Hamill the following question and get this reply:
When I understand, I’ll let you know.
— Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) August 29, 2018
Which kind of throws new fuel on the embers of this fire, as clearly Hamill still does not agree/ understand the direction Johnson took Luke Skywalker in for ‘The Last Jedi’ (understandably), though perhaps he is reopening the discussion because we get more closure on the topic in ‘Episode IX.’ Who knows, but for now, we might see this whole topic get dissected on the internet once again, because people seem to love tearing ‘The Last Jedi’ apart.
Feel free to share your own thoughts on the matter in the comments below!
