I’ll start this off by saying that I really enjoyed Star Wars: The Last Jedi. It wasn’t a perfect Star Wars film, but it worked for me and it moved the franchise in a really interesting new direction. Despite the audience score on Rottentomatoes (which should never be trusted because it is really easy to game), most attendees and audience members seem to really like it as well. Still, there is a faction of people on the internet who are so incensed about the film that they’ve even taken to creating a petition demanding that the movie be removed from canon. In fact, for many of them, the fact that Mark Hamill has seemed to be less than thrilled with the direction of his character in some of his interviews.
This is the biggest interview on the matter in which Hamill seems to makes his most brazen comments about his displeasure with the direction of Luke. While I completely respect his view, I also agree with his final thoughts on the matter. This might not be what he wanted to have happen with his character, but it is what is happening with the character.
“I said to Rian, ‘Jedis 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, 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. 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. I almost had to think of Luke as another character. Maybe he’s ‘Jake Skywalker,’ he’s not my Luke Skywalker. But I had to do what Rian wanted me to do because it serves the story well. 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. I came to really believe that Rian was the exact man they needed for this job.”
The interesting thing here is that, to me at least, this isn’t the end of Luke’s story. We know he’s going to have some role to play in Episode IX. We know that force ghosts can manipulate things on the physical plane (ala Yoda). We also know that whatever role Hamill was going to have in the next movie, is now probably going to be larger as we no longer can look to Princess Leia as the last main character from the original trilogy. I’m genuinely interested to see what they do with the franchise and with Luke in the next film. I’m just really bummed out that because Leia won’t be around for her hero’s death, Chewbacca is definitely going to eat it in the next movie.