The gospel according to Luke
Actor Mark Hamill talks about returning to the iconic role that made him a star and dealing with the loss of his co-star, Carrie Fisher. Michael Idato reports.
Along time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, farm boy Luke Skywalker longed for a more exciting life away from the desert planet Tatooine, and in 1977’s Star Wars, got his wish: the revelation he was descended from a powerful Jedi knight and a pivotal part in the galaxy-shaking clash between Empire and rebellion.
Though he emerged victorious in 1983’s Return of the Jedi, and saved the soul of his fallen Jedi father Darth Vader, the Luke Skywalker we meet in The Last Jedi, the eighth and penultimate chapter of the nine-film Star Wars saga, is bitter and disillusioned.
It’s hard not to see a real-world analogy here: of a postenlightenment era where the promise of freedom and liberty for all seems to have translated to little, and those who once dreamed of a better life are left inexplicably less certain than ever before.
‘‘I’m from the generation of The Beatles; I believed that love is all you need,’’ Hamill says. ‘‘[We believed] by the time we came to power there would be no more wars, no more racial discrimination, no more hatred towards the LGBT and trans communities. We’ll all love each other, and [yet] arguably, the world is much worse now than it was then.’’
As an actor, Hamill says, he used that disillusionment to distil the essence of Skywalker as the opening frames of The Last Jedi find him: alone on the planet Ahch-To, conflicted and exiled by his own failure as a Jedi master that saw his nephew Ben Solo – now Kylo Ren – lost to the sinister, shadowy hand of Supreme Leader Snoke.
‘‘That’s how I had to play it, I had to think, play that disillusionment, play the fact that you’re a failure, Luke Skywalker has failed,’’ Hamill says. ‘‘How else would I be alone on an island, not being with his sister [General Leia] and not being at the forefront of the rebel resistance? It should be escapism, but it works on so many levels to reflect what we really experience in real life.’’
As the founding poster boy of the billion-dollar Star Wars brand, Hamill’s place in popular culture is unique: many actors are associated with a single character, but few characters are the cultural equal of Luke Skywalker, whose longing for more, and his search for a place in the universe, became the coming-of-age story for successive generations.
‘‘It’s given me everything,’’ Hamill says. ‘‘It took me a long time to really put it in perspective, and even though I finished it – we had a beginning, a middle, and an end – and you go on with your life, you think, well, eventually, it’ll fade away, and something new, with more sparkles and pinwheels will come along.
‘‘But it never really went away. There was always a base of fans that kept it alive, and then they did the prequels, and Star Wars mania came back. And the thing is, I never expected that I would come back. I thought, if they do [chapters] seven, eight and nine they’ll be set in the future. I always thought [the original cast] were finished.’’
He says returning to the role has given him an appreciation of it, which was impossible to find in his 20s. ‘‘People tell me stories, that they met their future wife during The Empire Strikes Back and by the time of Return of the Jedi ,we had a daughter named Leia, or a boy that was paralysed with no hope but the doctors noticed his eyes went to the TV whenever a Star Wars toy commercial came on.’’
Recalling his audition in 1977, Hamill says he was initially confused. ‘‘I couldn’t make heads or tails out of it ... was this serious?’’ Hamill says. ‘‘Was it send-up? Was it a Mel Brooks version of Flash Gordon? Then comes the full script, I sit down, I read it and I said, it’s a fairytale: there’s a farm boy, there’s a princess, there’s a wizard, there’s a space pirate. There were the trappings of science-fiction, but it was so much more a fairytale.’’
Even the saga’s now iconic opening text – ‘‘a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away’’ – is a gentle reshaping of the opening line of traditional fairytales, ‘‘once upon a time’’, Hamill says.
‘‘It’s such primal storytelling. It’s good versus evil. Think back to the time when it came out, it was in a very cynical time for us, postVietnam, post-Watergate, so there were these anti-heroes. And by putting it in a galaxy far, far away [creator George Lucas] could tap into that innocently.
‘‘If you talk about religion it makes people uncomfortable, but if you talk about this force that binds the universe and flows through all of us, people can indulge their spirituality without getting nervous.’’
Two of the constants in Hamill’s lifelong real-life Star Wars adventure – actors Harrison Ford, who played smuggler Han Solo, and Carrie Fisher, who played General (nee Princess) Leia Organa – are now gone. Ford left after the death of his character in the preceding film, The Force Awakens, while Fisher died last December, making The Last Jedi her final screen appearance in the role.
‘‘It’s terrible,’’ Hamill says, acknowledging his heart is heavy with loss. ‘‘When you see the movie, this movie, Carrie is wonderful, but I still haven’t really accepted it, and I always think of her in the present tense rather than the past tense.’’
Fisher’s daughter, 25-year-old actor Billie Lourd, appears in The Last Jedi, expanding the role of resistance officer Lieutenant Connix, who was glimpsed briefly in The Force Awakens.
‘‘I see so much of Carrie in her, I see so much of Debbie in her,’’ Hamill says. ‘‘And when I start really getting selfish and saying, darn it, Carrie, her timing, it was usually perfect, and this is awful, I think of Billie, who lost her mother and her grandmother in the space of two days, and then I am just grateful for all the time we had with her.
‘‘She made my life so much more interesting. We used to have huge fights, and I’d tell her, you are so self-centred and such a spoiled little entitled brat and she would yell back at me, kind of like real siblings, but there was a baseline of love and admiration we had for each other. I’ll never stop missing her, and I’ll never stop loving her.’’ – Sydney Morning Herald
❚ Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi opens in New Zealand cinemas on December 14.