FILE - In this Jan. 23, 2017 file photo, actor Mark Hamill poses for a portrait during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Hamill returns as Luke Skywalker in the upcoming "Star Wars: The Last Jedi," in theaters December 15. (Photo by Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP, File) (2017 Invision)
Mark Hamill is about to get a big push back into the “Star Wars” limelight thanks to the upcoming, and inevitable, hype surrounding “The Last Jedi.” Now, a new image has dropped teasing his character’s return and he’s opening up about the bitter-sweet return.
Fans of the “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” will remember that Hamill was announced to return to the franchise along with co-stars Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford. While his old friends played major roles in the movie, the Luke Skywalker role was reserved for more of a cameo. However, he’s going to return in a big way, and fans now have their first taste of what he’ll look like in the movie - and it’s pretty dark.
Hamill posted an image from a Hungarian magazine called Cinemania Mozimania. On the cover, he can be seen in full “Star Wars” costume in a dark jedi suit. His expression is serious and somewhat vacant.
There’s a lot of mystery surrounding Luke, as not much is known about what he did between the end of the original trilogy and the beginning of “The Force Awakens.” It will all be covered in “The Last Jedi,” but Hamill admits he had his reservations.
“A thing that felt maybe wrong about coming back was the fact that the original trilogy had a beginning, a middle and an end. But there's two ways of looking at that,” he said. “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.”
All fans know about Luke Skywalker from “The Force Awakens” is that he trained the villain Kylo Ren. Since then, he was living in exile until Rey found him and returned his lightsaber. Now, despite his reservations, Hamill is excited to show fans the story of what Luke did with his status as a Jedi master and pass the torch to the new generation.
“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. What you're talking about is what really fascinated me. 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,” he said. “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.”
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Hamill’s role being that of a cameo in “The Force Awakens” helped draw fan’s attention, but it also made it so that he couldn’t work with Ford or Fisher. Now, Ford’s character left the franchise and Fisher died earlier this year, something Hamill feels is a hurdle that the cast, crew and fans need to jump ahead of “The Last Jedi” release in December.
“It is different. She was irreplaceable. There can never be a proper reunion anymore. It's tragic. I hate that it adds an air of melancholy to the film because it doesn't deserve it,” he said. “I know for a fact she would obviously want us to be having fun. She was all about laughter and enjoying the moment. We're all sort of having this communal period of grief. In a way, it sort of reflects the movies themselves, which were about triumphs and tragedies. They are about a family — a dysfunctional family, but a family nonetheless.”
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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