Luke Skywalker is arguably the most famous fictional hero of all time. Decades of films, books, games and merchandise cement not only his story, but his image in the minds of millions. He’s become a modern archetype, the word “hero” almost unconsciously bringing to mind the boyish smile, the lightsaber, the slight tack of fingers on action figure plastic.

Presented as a shining counterpoint to a galaxy at war, and even the roguish friends he makes along the way, he begins pure to the point of naivety, is muddied by pain, and comes out stronger but fundamentally unchanged by the time he’s faced his demons. It's so classic it's almost clichéd.

And then, 30 years later: “Luke Skywalker Has Vanished”.

“There's just such a huge gap between Return of the Jedi and Force Awakens - I had to really contemplate that,” Mark Hamill tells me in an interview. “I said ‘hey, how did I go from being the most optimistic, positive character to this cranky, suicidal man who wants people to get off his island?’”

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Unlike most heroes, Luke’s journey didn’t end in a three-act quest. In The Force Awakens, his story has become a corrupted myth, absent in a time of need, forcing a new hero to go looking for him when she might have been better served fighting the actual war she’s found herself a part of.

Writers Abrams and Kasdan made a subversive - even cruel - decision here. That yawning, decades-long gap tells us that the hero never got the things traditional stories tell us he should have been rewarded with: never got the girl, never built a family, history doomed to repeat itself.

Rian Johnson’s decisions for Episode VIII take that further. Luke isn’t just a victim of time in The Last Jedi, he’s actively - sometimes aggressively - rejecting his past. By extension, he’s practically pouring scorn on fans for idolising him as a younger man.

Undercutting a character this iconic feels enormous - the bigger they are, the harder they fall - and in retrospect, it may be one of blockbuster film history’s more audacious moves, not least for how divisive a decision it’s proven to be.

“ Hey, how did I go from being the most optimistic, positive character to this cranky, suicidal man who wants people to get off his island?

Star Wars feels familiar - the brassy blasts of score, the eyebrow-raised quips, the wobble of latex on an alien extra - Star Wars’ greatest actual icon suddenly feels so different.

In fact, the Luke actor has been famously unsure, even critical of that shift, and clearly still has conflicting emotions on the subject: “It was a radical change, but I think sometimes being pushed out of your comfort zone is a good thing [...] Although a part of me said to Rian, ‘but you know, a Jedi would never give up’. My concept of the character was that even if I chose the New Hitler thinking he was the New Hope, yeah I'd feel terrible, but I wouldn't secret myself on an island and then turn off the Force.”

As it happens, the initial plan for Episode VIII doesn’t seem to have been quite as extreme a shift as Johnson’s version became. Discussing The Force Awakens’ final scene - Rey standing before a stony-faced Luke on Ahch-To - Hamill explains that Abrams originally intended for there to be a show of Luke’s now-huge power:

“J.J. said, ‘Oh and by the way I'll probably put in a couple of floating boulders to show the Force emanating from you, as strong as it is.’ So I'm thinking for VIII, I'm going to have Force Lightning coming out of every orifice of my body. You know, lifting an eyebrow and toppling AT-ATs like dominoes. That would have been fun to be that powerful! Plus, I wouldn't have to do much. They wouldn't have to teach me choreography to do lightsaber duels. I'd just have to do this,” Hamill points across the room, “and let the special effects guy do everything.”

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When The Force Awakens was released, with The Last Jedi in pre-production, that choice was noticeably absent from the former’s final cut and the latter’s script - no orifice lightning for Mark. It’s perhaps that uncertainty in the creation of the sequel trilogy that’s led Hamill to voice his own uncertainty about where Luke’s ended up, particularly in comparison to his original portrayal of the character.

“Remember, George had an overall arc [in the original trilogy],” he explains. “If he didn't have all the details, he had sort of an overall feel for where the three were going. But this one's more like a relay race. You run and hand the torch off to the next guy, he picks it up and goes. Rian didn't write what happens in 9 - he was going to hand it off to, originally, Colin Trevorrow and now J.J.”

Say what you want about how that “relay” approach has affected the series as a whole, but it’s certainly made for a more unexpected, and I’d say interesting, take on Luke. When it became clear that Hamill was returning to the role 30 years on, you’d have gotten long odds on him losing, in one way or another, his nephew, his best friend, and his life within two movies. And that’s on top of his parents, his adoptive parents, and his mentors in the previous trilogy.

The more you look at it, the more this Hero’s Journey has turned into a tragedy - and that’s exactly what Hamill drew on:

“ When I was a teenager I thought: ‘By the time we get in power, there will be no more war, no racial discrimination, and pot will be legal.’ So I'm one for three.

“I thought at that time, when I was a teenager: ‘By the time we get in power, there will be no more war, there will be no racial discrimination, and pot will be legal.’ So I'm one for three. When you think about it, [my generation is] a failure. The world is unquestionably worse now than it was then.”

There’s definitely some questioning to be done about whether that’s unquestionable, but rewatching The Last Jedi knowing this is Hamill’s feeling lends the role extra pathos. ‘Luke as horrified baby boomer’ not only makes his retreat from a disappointing world (well, galaxy) more understandable, but helps bring his bittersweet last decision into focus. Luke sends a Force Projection to distract Kylo Ren and the First Order assault. But it's not a facsimile - he's been de-aged. This isn't just the final swing of a dying hero, but a literal look at his past.

When I first saw the movie, that well-groomed projection felt like the first time I was truly looking at Luke - as opposed to Mark - again. It’s the closest the character can get to being that swashbuckling flower child again, in both look and deed. That it’s not to vanquish the villains, but simply to let his remaining friends and family live another day is the final tragedy - the New Hope became simply a Last Stand.

Joe Skrebels is IGN's UK News Editor, and he really would like Mark Hamill's force ghost horror movie to be made. Follow him on Twitter