Further information is learned how much of a failure Star Wars: The Last Jedi really is, and we also get an insight in that Disney obviously had no direction for their Star Wars films.
Mark Hamill reveals the epic original ending to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which was changed at the last minute to compensate for the story for Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
The original ending to Star Wars: The Force Awakens was going to feature Rey finding Luke Skywalker on Ahch-To who was wielding The Force in an epic manner featuring boulders flying around him (via Digital Spy).
“When we were doing [The Force Awakens], Rian said, ‘We might have boulders floating to show your Force emanating’, so I was led to believe that I still had the Force and it was really strong in me,” Hamill said. “When I read [The Last Jedi] before [The Force Awakens] came out, I said ‘what?!” and called JJ [Abrams] or Rian [Johnson] to say, ‘Are you guys aware of this? Have you seen a cut? Is there floating boulders?’
Mark Hamill reveals the ending was changed.
“And they said, ‘No, we caught that and we worked it all out’.”
The theatrical ending to Star Wars: The Force Awakens simply featured Rey finding Luke and offering the lightsaber, with Star Wars: The Last Jedi then featuring Luke discarding the lightsaber over his shoulder.
So we see there was at least a version of Disney’s Star Wars movies that was going to feature Luke as a powerful Force user/Jedi, which is what a lot of fans wanted to see following Return of the Last Jedi.
According to Mark Hamill’s comments above, it seems Disney wasn’t sure which direction they were going to go with as filming on The Force Awakens was already underway or even completed.
Instead of giving fans what they wanted, Disney – for whatever reason – turned Luke into a near child killer who disappeared, abandoned the The Force, abandoned the Rebels, and let the Dark Side take over the galaxy, which is the antithesis of Luke Skywalker in Return of the Last Jedi where Luke saw good in his father, Darth Vader, and turned him.
And we again see the surprise of Mark Hamill, as previously Hamill disagreed with the direction of his character in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which saw the actor go so far as to say this isn’t his Luke Skywalker:
I said to Ryan, I said, “Jedi’s 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 Ryan needed me to be a certain way to make the ending effective. That’s the crux of my problem. Luke would never say that. I’m sorry. Well in this version, see I’m talking about the George Lucas Star Wars. This is the next generation of Star Wars, so I almost has to think of Luke as another character. Maybe he is Jake Skywalker. He’s not my Luke Skywalker, but I had to do what Ryan wanted me to do because it serves the story well, but listen, I still haven’t accepted it completely. But it’s only a movie. I hope people like it. I hope they don’t get upset, and I came to really believe that Ryan was the exact man that they need for this job.
While Star Wars: The Last Jedi has a billion dollar box office (it is a lot less than The Force Awakens), the movie is being shunned by fans worldwide. Less than half of fans at Rotten Tomatoes liked Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and Chinese fans – the #2 market in the world – stated it was an insult to their intelligence.
