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Mark Hamill on Rian Johnson’s vision for The Last Jedi: “Unexpected is good in a Star Wars film”

By David Harris (Razor)

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Mark Hamill was honored as a Disney Legend on Friday, and afterward, he spoke about director Rian Johnson’s vision for Star Wars: The Last Jedi…

To Star Wars fans, actor Mark Hamill has always been a legend, and when Disney made him one its Legends on Friday, July 14, it cemented that fact. Hamill’s onscreen sister, and longtime co-star, Carrie Fisher was also given the title, posthumously.

However, before her death in December of 2015, Fisher finished her filming for Star Wars: The Last Jedi, a film in which, much like her onscreen brother, she played a much larger role. As to Hamill’s role in Episode VIII, the actor spoke to Access Hollywood at D23, after winning his award, and had some very interesting things to say about Rian Johnson’s vision for The Last Jedi.

You can fast forward to the 0:55 mark to hear Hamill talk favorably about his director. Check it out:

When asked why The Last Jedi is going to be unlike any Star Wars movie we’ve seen, Hamill responds with a simple answer — “Two words: Rian Johnson.”

"This guy is…so gifted. As a writer, as a director, just as a person. He’s so easy going: He’s not a hollerer, there’s no great tension on the set…he’s so open and collaborative."

Hamill goes on to explain that he told Johnson he was shocked at how he saw and used Luke in the film, and that even though it took him a while to “wrap his head around it,” and though he “disagreed with some of it,” he finally realized how wrong he was.

The newly minted Disney Legend then gives a wonderful quote about The Last Jedi being unexpected in a good way.

"Unexpected is good in a Star Wars film, cause you’ve seen so much, and we have to find another way to throw a curveball and keep the audience on the edge of their seat, hopefully."

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One has to wonder, with Hamill’s Luke Skywalker uttering those now infamous words in the first official trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi, “It’s time for the Jedi to end,” if a curveball from a visionary director like Rian Johnson means the true chosen one himself, Luke Skywalker, has fallen to the Dark Side of the Force. Hear me out…

What if Luke had fallen to the Dark Side years before the events of The Force Awakens, while he was a Jedi Master at his own newly built Jedi Academy, and it was his fall from grace that allowed Snoke to lure Ben Solo — Luke’s own nephew — to the Dark Side as well, becoming Kylo Ren?

Follow me a little further down this mad little rabbit’s hole, if you will…

Wouldn’t whatever major event that would cause such a Paragon of the Light to succumb the Dark be considered a heck of a “curveball?” And, might this not cause Mark Hamill himself to question Rian Johnson’s vision for Luke in The Last Jedi, before eventually coming around to the idea?

Next: The 25 Greatest Sith in Star Wars

That would certainly keep me on the edge of my seat. Of course, my little theory is probably so far off it isn’t even funny, but then again…maybe it isn’t. I guess we’ll all find out what the big deal is, when Star Wars: The Last Jedi premieres on December 15, later this year.