Mark Hamill 'still hasn't accepted' Star Wars 8: The Last Jedi storyline: 'He's not my Luke Skywalker'

‘I almost had to think of him as another character’

Ahead of the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Mark Hamill voiced his initial concerns with the arc of his beloved character, Luke Skywalker.

The actor expressed his difficulty in accepting the way in which writer-director Rian Johnson had decided to steer Skywalker having lived with the character since A New Hope in 1977.

Hamill’s issues came from a grizzled Skywalker’s scenes with Rey (Daisy Ridley) in which he states that “It’s time for the Jedi to end.”

The actor revealed, in an interview with Spanish website SensaCine, how this made him tell Johnson: “Jedis don’t give up. I mean, even if he had a problem, he would maybe take a year to try and regroup, but if he made a mistake he would try and right that wrong, so right there, we had a fundamental difference, but, it’s not my story anymore. It’s somebody else’s story, and Rian needed me to be a certain way to make the ending effective.”

He added that he was forced to figure out “what could have happened that would make the most hopeful, optimistic character end up in this dark place. I almost had to think of Luke as another character. Maybe he’s Jake Skywalker – he’s not my Luke Skywalker.”

Hamill was ultimately happy to depict the scenes presented in the script because he felt it served the story well, however he ascertains that he almost views Skywalker in The last Jedi as “another character”.

“This is the next generation of Star Wars so I almost had to think of another character … but I had to do what Rian wanted me to do because it serves the story well … I still haven’t accepted it completely.”

The Last Jedi has proved divisive since release despite critics hailing it as one of the best franchise entries to date.

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