“I’m old school George Lucas Star Wars.”
With Star Wars: The Last Jedi being released on DVD and Blu-Ray, plenty of additional quotes and bonus features are being shared about Rian Johnson’s latest installment of the beloved franchise.
We’ve already seen the deleted scenes featuring Tom Hardy’s Stormtrooper, Captain Phasma’s alternate ending and the reason why Snoke’s backstory was kept vague, but Luke Skywalker’s arc in Episode VIII has continued to divide fans.
Truth be told, regardless of the plot details, Mark Hamill delivered his finest ever performance in a Star Wars film because his take on Luke was incredibly different than what fans expected to see from the Jedi Master.
Alone, grizzled and isolated from the world, Luke is the polar opposite of the wide-eyed and optimistic farm boy that we met on Tatooine during A New Hope.
It’s clear that Luke’s failure to teach Kylo Ren has left its scars on the Jedi Master but some fans felt that at the start of the film, Luke’s apathy to the ways of the Force wasn’t in keeping with the mythology of the original trilogy.
In fact, during the press junket for The Last Jedi, various outlets jumped on a quote that Hamill gave about Luke’s journey. “This is the next generation of Star Wars, so I almost had to think of Luke as another character. Maybe he’s Jake Skywalker. He’s not my Luke Skywalker, but I had to do what Rian wanted me to do because it serves the story well,” he said.
In this week’s episode of Unfiltered, Hamill joined James O’Brien in our studio and the conversation inevitably turned to the latest Star Wars film.
After being asked about that aforementioned quote, Hamill explained exactly how it came about.
He said: “I really lowered my guard there because that’s the kind of comment that you keep internal in the rehearsal process. It shouldn’t be public and when I said it, it was still before I saw the film. I was still struggling with how the director was taking my character. I said to Rian (director of The Last Jedi) ‘a Jedi never gives up’.
“Even if I picked the next Hitler (Kylo Ren), it would be a shock but I certainly wouldn’t cut off the telepathic connection that I have with my sister (Leia) and all these things….but I’m old school George Lucas Star Wars. This (The Last Jedi) is the next generation, it’s not Luke’s story anymore.”
As you may know, Johnson will be staying in the galaxy that’s far, far away because he’s developing a new series of Star Wars films for Disney. Despite some fans questioning his approach on The Last Jedi, Hamill is supremely confident that the director of Brick and Looper is the right man for the job.
“Rian is so capable, such a really wonderful person and such a good writer and such a good director. I thought that as long as I get these (criticisms) off my chest, I’ll take his hand and follow him anywhere. It’s better that I expressed these concerns because as long as he knew that this is how I felt, I figured ‘let’s try and make it work as best as we can’ and we did,” said Hamill.
You can see the whole interview above, with the chat about Star Wars: The Last Jedi beginning at 41:35.
