Star Wars: Mark Hamill Discusses Luke Skywalker's Tragic Arc, Plus a Power Fantasy Scene That Was Never Made

It's been months since Star Wars: The Last Jedi hit theaters and fans continue to have plenty of conflicting opinions on the movie. The biggest controversy surrounding the second installment in the new trilogy was the way Luke Skywalker's character was handled, turning an optimistic hero into a depressed shut-in who just wants to die.

Actor Mark Hamill has been quite outspoken about the portrayal of Luke, though his once critical opinion about the film has softened and the actor does genuinely endorse The Last Jedi. Still, that doesn't mean he's completely okay with Luke's tragic character arc, as his interview with IGN has shown.

One thing Hamill had to accept was the large time gap between Return of The Jedi and The Last Jedi. People can change after a long amount of time and Hamill was hesitant to think that Luke would, even telling director Rian Johnson that the Jedi do not give up.

"There's just such a huge gap between Return of the Jedi and Force Awakens - I had to really contemplate that," Mark Hamill tells me in an interview. "I said ‘hey, how did I go from being the most optimistic, positive character to this cranky, suicidal man who wants people to get off his island? It was a radical change, but I think sometimes being pushed out of your comfort zone is a good thing [...] Although a part of me said to Rian, ‘but you know, a Jedi would never give up'. My concept of the character was that even if I chose the New Hitler thinking he was the New Hope, yeah I'd feel terrible, but I wouldn't secret myself on an island and then turn off the Force."

So what drove Hamill to keep on going? The actor reveals that he looked at Luke's failure as a metaphor for his generation failing our current one. He brings up how the people from his era should have made things better but given the current political climate, it's clear that this isn't the case.

"It is tragic. I'm not a method actor, but one of the techniques a method actor will use is to try and use real-life experiences to relate to whatever fictional scenario he's involved in. The only thing I could think of, given the screenplay that I read, was that I was of the Beatles generation - ‘All You Need Is Love', ‘peace and love'. I thought at that time, when I was a teenager: ‘By the time we get in power, there will be no more war, there will be no racial discrimination, and pot will be legal.' So I'm one for three. When you think about it, [my generation is] a failure. The world is unquestionably worse now than it was then."

Hamill was also hoping to have a scene where Luke could show off all his Force Powers, something J.J. Abrams had supposedly promised. It seems like that final illusion trick with Kylo-Ren replaced that, which was a more fulfilling scene to be fair. Still, it would have been cool seeing Luke destroy AT-ATs with Force Lightning.

Star Wars: Episode IX hits theaters on December 20, 2019.

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