Mark Hamill is opening up about Luke Skywalker’s motivations in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, refueling the controversy about his character in that film!
The Star Wars movies are known for their passionate fandom, many of whom are known to take part if passionate debate. One of the biggest debates surrounds 2017's The Last Jedi. It’s truly a “love it or hate it” movie, with some fans enjoying its daring storyline and deconstruction of Star Wars lore. Others hate it for the same reasons, the “casino planet” subplot and suddenly killing off what appeared to be a main villain.
Luke Skywalker's role is among the most contentious points. After the fall of the Empire in Return of the Jedi, many fans had long imagined Luke living like he does in the Star Wars Legends continuity: a Jedi Master teaching at a school; a wise, revered, and confident hero and leader.
But in The Last Jedi, Luke is a bitter man living in self-exile on a distant world, wracked with guilt over not preventing Kylo Ren from falling to the Dark Side. He openly tells Rey that the Jedi order was flawed and needed to end. Even though the movie ends with Luke sacrificing himself to help the Resistance, fans hated this non-heroic turn for the character.
Hamill himself has been open about his dislike for the direction, and is now opening up about what he saw as Luke's mindset during these events.
Hamill’s take on Luke is far darker than fans expected
Speaking on Bullseye with Jesse Thorn to promote his new movie The Life of Chuck, Hamill how uncomfortable he was when he found out Luke had exiled himself in The Last Jedi.
Hamill was upfront about how much he liked writer-director Rian Johnson, saying that “he made a great movie.” Hamill also admitted, “The fact that I went public with my dissatisfaction with the motivation for Luke becoming a suicidal hermit might have colored things in a way that, maybe, I should have kept that to myself. But I kept saying to Rian, ‘This would just make Luke double down even…’ and he said, ‘Well, your class at the Jedi Academy were wiped out.’ I said, ‘Rian, I saw entire planets wiped out! If anything, Luke doubles down and hardens his resolve in the face of adversity.’ So that’s all."
And so, after Johnson gave the go-ahead, Hamill crafted his own backstory that explained why Luke was in this situation, and Hamill’s take puts Luke's actions in a much darker light. His headcanon is that Luke fell in love with a woman and had a child with her. But at some point, the child accidentally impaled itself with an unattended lightsaber and the grief-stricken wife killed herself. Yeah, that’s dark.
"I thought, that would be… because I hear these horrible stories about these children who find unattended guns and wind up dead. That resonated with me so deeply that, that could possibly… but he didn’t have the time to tell a backstory like that, I’m guessing. He just wanted a brief thing to explain it. And to me, it didn’t justify it."
A grieving Luke was something fans speculated about; it would certainly help explain his actors. This twisted tragic death of his child to a lightsaber would definitely give Luke a good reason to literally toss one over his shoulder and refuse to even consider bringing the Jedi back.
This is a very, very dark thing to be thinking about, and makes the tragedy of Luke's life even deeper than most fans expected. Granted, a “happily ever after” didn’t seem quite right for him, but losing a child and wife in such a fashion is out of a darker horror movie. Maybe playing the Joker for all those years did a number on Hamill’s thought process.
Still, it may make it more interesting to rewatch The Last Jedi, which is now streaming on Disney+.
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