Rian Johnson responds and speaks out about what sounds like Mark Hamill’s thoughts about how the director mishandled Luke Skywalker in Disney’s failed Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which explains a lot.
Recently saw Johnson tell Empire Magazine how happy and proud he is with the movie and how he handled Luke Skywalker.
As I pointed out, following the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Mark Hamill said he was outraged, shocked, and tricked and how some things that were handled were a big mistake.
Before we dive into Rian Johnson’s response, here is what Mark Hamill had to say following the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, where Hamill obviously isn’t at all happy with what happened in the movie, much like most fans.
Rian Johnson didn’t care about Luke and C-3PO
Hamill said that Johnson didn’t care when Luke first saw C-3PO.
“They had me walking by 3PO, not even acknowledging him,” explained Hamill in an interview back in March of 2019. I said, ‘I can’t do that!’ [Rian Johnson] said, ‘Okay, go over and do whatever.’ So I went over, and I did whatever. They say it in the script. ‘Forget the past, kill it if you have to,’ and they’re doing a pretty good job!’”
He’s not my Luke Skywalker
Mark Hamill also questioned Rian Johnson about Luke Skywalker and said it isn’t his Luke.
“I said to Ryan, I said, ‘Jedi’s don’t give up. I mean even if [Luke] 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,” said Hamill. “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.”
Mark Hamill continued, “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 have 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.”
Mark Hamill isn’t Luke Skywalker
Regarding what Rian Johnson had to say to that, Johnson tells Empire Magazine that Mark Hamill isn’t Luke Skywalker and that Luke lives in the minds of those who believe in the myth, and he is one of them.
“I’m choosing my words carefully, not to be diplomatic, but I don’t want to frame Mark’s experience of this through my lens because there’s no possible way I can ever put myself in the shoes of Mark, or Carrie [Fisher], having lived their entire lives being known as these characters,” Johnson said. “And what it’s like to play them first in their twenties, and then to come back and play them in these movies and have a script handed to you saying, ‘Well, it’s this now’… I can never fathom what that experience is like. It’s impossible.”
Johnson continued, “If Mark Hamill is talking to me about Luke Skywalker, I’m gonna listen to him, and I gotta think about that and argue with him and go back and forth. Genuinely plumb the depths of my soul and what I wrote and figure out if this seems right. Also, though, remembering that, obviously, he created the character on screen, but he’s Mark Hamill, he’s not literally Luke Skywalker. Luke Skywalker lives as a creation on that screen. He’s a myth. And as such, he only really lives in the minds of people who listen to and in various ways believe that myth. And I know that was me. So, it’s complicated.”
