Mark Hamill Has Revealed His Pitch For Luke Skywalker's Arc In 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' And It's Absolutely Crazy!

Mark Hamill — the man behind Luke Skywalker — caused concern for Star Wars fans several months ago, when he revealed that after reading the script for Star Wars: The Last Jedi, he “fundamentally disagreed with everything” that was happening to his most famous character.

What about the reportedly “broken” Luke had caused Hamill to react this way? And how would Hamill himself have tackled his character’s gloom-laden arc? Well, thanks to a recent interview, we now know the answer to the latter question, but its sheer wackiness is sure to create a great disturbance in the Star Wars fandom.

Mark Hamill Has Revealed His Crazy Pitch For 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi'

Morose, cloaked and brooding, the Luke Skywalker that we last saw at the end of Star Wars: The Force Awakens stands in stark contrast to the the young and fulfilled Jedi Knight that we saw at the end of Return of the Jedi. So what could have caused this change?

Of course, we now know that the loss of his Jedi Academy and the betrayal of Kylo Ren (#AdamDriver) are weighing heavily on Skywalker's mind. Yet, when Empire Magazine caught up with Mark Hamill for their latest issue, he was only too eager to disclose his alternative explanation for Luke’s languidness in #TheForceAwakens and The Last Jedi — It wouldn't have been the real Luke!

“Oh baby, would I [have loved] to play my own evil twin!”

Yup, someone better call Spider-Man because it seems that Hamill wanted #StarWars to go the way of the wall-crawler’s infamous 'Clone Saga', complete with dodgy doppelgangers and Machiavellian scheming to boot. Whilst Hamill doesn’t specify how exactly the phony-Luke would have originated, he did have quite a bold plot-line in mind for Skywalker following his stint on Ahch-To:

“It'd be great because you could maybe not reveal its Evil Luke until the real Luke shows up. We could watch this guy undermining the good guys secretly, maybe even killing a supporting character out of everyone's sight so they all go 'What's going on? He's crazy!' And then, of course, the good Luke shows up.”

An evil Luke Skywalker is certainly an interesting proposition — especially given that The Last Jedi is erring that way — but we here at Movie Pilot are less keen on the whole killer clone thing. Pop-culture is filled with countless cases of evil twins and duplicates, so it might have felt a little rote to see this play out once again. However, this wasn’t the reason that Lucasfilm gave to Hamill when they declined his idea:

“When I suggested that storyline they said, 'Well, it's been done.”

It’s true! Star Wars has already explored what an evil duplicate of Luke would look like before. As Hamill himself explained to Empire, his once-whining farm boy encountering his diabolical double Luuke Skywalker (yup that’s the clone’s name, not a typo!) in Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy, which charted the New Republic’s struggles post-Return of the Jedi.

Mark Hamill's Helping Hand

Remember how Luke lost his hand and lightsaber on Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back? Well, in The Last Command, it’s revealed that Darth Vader recovered both items after their saber-scrap and following a debate with his master, Luke’s severed mitt and blade soon ended up in the Emperor’s secure storage facility for use in the future. Years after the fall of the Empire, they fell into Grand Admiral Thrawn’s possession and a mad Jedi clone Joruus C'baoth created his own Skywalker from the preserved genetic material. Using Luke’s old lightsaber (how rude!), the deranged duplicate later engaged in a heated battle with Luke, before Skywalker’s future wife Mara Jade managed to dispatch him. As we know now though, this reality was scrapped in Disney's takeover.

Whilst it would have been — ahem, interesting — to see these events unfold on our cinema screens, many readers will no doubt be pleased that Rian Johnson didn’t go with this idea. After all, the promise of seeing a downtrodden and dejected Jedi Master holds more dramatic depth than just another crazy clone. And who knows? We might just get to see an evil Luke anyway!

It must be noted however that Hamill doesn’t bear any ill will towards Rian Johnson or Lucasfilm for not following his ideas. In fact, like the classy and considerate guy he is, Hamill even referred to himself as “a fountain of really terrible ideas” and went on to again clarify his earlier disapproval of Luke’s direction in the upcoming film.

“Being the caretaker of the character I have a possessive attitude towards him, but even though it’s not the way I would have gone, the more I got into the work, the more I realized I was wrong.”

Promising stuff indeed, but now, only one question remains; does #MarkHamill also regret petitioning George Lucas to have Boba Fett revealed as a double agent...and Luke’s mother, no less?!

On the back of these revelations, fans will probably be really happy that Hamill — beloved as he is — was not involved in the script-writing process of our treasured Star Wars films. However, it is interesting to ponder what our favorite galaxy far far away would look like now if Hamill’s ideas had been utilized. Nevertheless, fans are already eager to see Mark Hamill return to the Star Wars saga. #TheLastJedi will see Mark Hamill in a more considerable role, bringing balance — and possibly even Oscar glory — to the saga once more.

(Source: Empire Magazine)