This article contains the mildest of spoilers for Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Mark Hamill has admitted that he isn’t the biggest fan of Luke Skywalker in the latest Star Wars movie The Last Jedi.

Luke opens the movie in hiding and almost totally disconnected from his Jedi past, which Hamill thinks just isn’t true of the character he played in A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.


In a number of interviews given ahead of the release, Hamill outlined his differences of opinion with director Rian Johnson about Luke Skywalker.

“Luke was so optimistic and so hopeful, cheerful, here he’s in a very, very dark place, one that I didn’t expect,” he told Spanish outlet SensaCine.

“I said to Rian, I said, ‘Jedis don’t give up’. Even if he 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.”

He continued: “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.”

Hamill then suggested that he saw a fundamental difference between the original trilogy and their prequels, and the reboot that started with 2015’s The Force Awakens.

“I’m talking about the George Lucas Star Wars – this is the next generation of Star Wars,” he said.

“So 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, but I still haven’t accepted it completely.”

But don’t let that suggest that Hamill isn’t a fan of The Last Jedi overall, as he went on to say: “I came to believe that Rian was the exact man they needed for this job.”

That’s more than we can say for some disgruntled fans, including those who signed a petition calling on Disney to strike the movie from the Star Wars cannon because they hated it so much.

Though the man who started the petition later admitted it had all got out of hand, he still said that he wasn’t a fan of the latest instalment in the saga.

While the movie has been critically acclaimed by the professionals, it has received a more mixed view from fans.

Director Rian Johnson has responded to the criticism, saying: “Every fan has a list of stuff they want a Star Wars movie to be and they don’t want a Star Wars movie to be.

“You’re going to find very few fans out there whose lists line up.”