The Skywalker saga

Mark Hamill returns to his famous role Luke Skywalker and chatted with journalists about the new film. 
Excerpts:
Where do we find Luke at the start of the film?
It’s a direct continuation of The Force Awakens, so the final moment is the first time you see him in The Last Jedi. It’s very ambiguous. Rey offers him the lightsabre, and he just stares at her, interminably.

What is Luke’s relationship to Rey?
It seems to be an obsession for people to want to know what the relationships are and that’s understandable. So much of the previous stories have to do with lineage: who’s your father, who’s your surprise sister, who’s your mother. In this, it’s broken down a little bit. 

What do they think of each other and learn from one another?
Rey has based her assessment of Luke on this great mythology that’s been built up. At some point, people doubt he’s a real person. Because of the gravity of the situation, the urgency of the situation, she doesn’t have the luxury of getting to know him and relax and exchange ideas. She needs him and wants to enlist his help and abilities towards her cause. And, that’s the conflict. Luke’s in a much different place than we’ve ever seen him in before.
He’s disillusioned. He’s turned off the Force and renounced the idea of the Jedi order. It was unexpected for me as an actor. My character always represented hope and optimism. And now, here I am pessimistic, disillusioned and demoralised.

What was it like to walk back into the Millennium Falcon?
It was bittersweet. Everywhere you looked, these memories come flooding back. It’s like going to your old high school or the house you lived in sixth grade. The detail’s absolutely perfect. It’s just as I remember it. I climbed up and down the ladder, got in the hold where we stowed away and sat in the cockpit with my grown children and wife. Later I slipped away and got really choked up. This is a moment, and it’ll be gone.

Talk about the director, Rian Johnson
Every so often you meet someone like Rian who has such a passion for film and television and pop culture, and is so gifted a filmmaker. And he’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. He’d be a friend of mine even if we didn’t work together. I had this instant connection with him. He came over to my house to get to know me, and we hung out and talked about this and that and the other, and the movie to a certain extent. I invited him into my den where all the toys are, and he saw my DVDs, model kits, puppets and Beatles memorabilia. He was looking at my DVDs, so I said asked him if he had ever seen “Sergeant Bilko” and if he wanted to watch it. It’s one of my favourite pieces of film comedy. I wouldn’t ask just anyone into my den to watch “Sergeant Bilko,” but Rian has a golden ticket in my book.

What was it like to work with him on set?
I trust him. There’s no one more deserving of trust than Rian Johnson. Rian in so many words said stop acting and just be. If you look at his movies, each is different than the last. You can’t pigeonhole him and say, that’s the kind of film he makes. That’s what will happen with The Last Jedi. It’s so different in many ways, subtle ways, than the other Episodes, and yet it is satisfying in delivering what the fans want to see as well.

Do you have a favourite Star Wars memory?
There are so many that I can’t single one out. I really looked forward so much to doing the Cantina sequence. It’s an experience I’d never forget. The Cantina sequence, swinging across with the Princess. We were in harnesses and flown by the people who developed that system to fly Peter Pan. In the old days you could just swing back and forth. In 1953 for the Broadway production of “Peter Pan,” the Jerome Robins one with Mary Martin, they developed a system where you could go back and forth, but also another way. It takes two operators, which is a great skill because you have to be in complete sync. So, we’re both in harnesses; they hooked us together, and we did the swing across. So much fun. I was ready to do it again, but they had four cameras and got it in one take. Everything else takes five, six, seven takes. I was so disappointed. Someone said, “You really want to fly? Unhook him from Carrie.” They flew me all around the set. It’s the closest to playing Peter Pan I’ll ever get. Of course George Lucas was appalled because I’m a commodity. I smack into the wall like Wiley E. Coyote and slide down. He said, “No, no, get him down.” It’s those kinds of moments.
It’s just one after another. I loved all this adventure as a child anyway and to have this amalgamation of all these films—westerns, WWII movies, cowboys, pirate movies—all mushed together in this new way day after day was wonderful. I couldn’t believe I got to do it. Is there one moment? No. There are a million moments.