Jonathan101 wrote: ↑Thu Jan 17, 2019 6:15 pm
Mark Hamill was very outspoken about his misgivings about the direction that Rian was taking Luke, and your version doesn't seem much different.
Mark Hamill never quite understood Luke. Luke is a fascinating character because he was born out of metatextual friction.
In the original STAR WARS, Luke sees his uncle and aunt incinerated. He watches Obi-Wan slice off a man's arm. He's aboard the Falcon when it comes out into Alderaan's orbit and they find scattered rubble where there were once several billion people. Luke shoots at least 50 stormtroopers. There is no reaction that you'd expect for a boy making his first kill. Later, Luke sees all his comrades in Rogue Squadron aside from Wedge killed by TIE Fighters; Luke then blows up the Death Star, presumably killing about 800,000 to 1 million people.
And there is no trauma, no survivor's guilt, no discomfort with taking life. On one level, Luke was very thinly written. He wasn't a character in STAR WARS; he was an audience surrogate and that audience, as envisioned by Lucas writing STAR WARS as a FLASH GORDON knockoff, was adolescent boys who wanted to imagine themselves having all these adventures and engaging in all these battles. But looking at Luke more seriously, the simplest explanation is: Luke is a killer.
More specifically: Luke grew up in a desert wasteland with little law enforcement, predatory wildlife and people looking to rob, steal and kill their victims. So, at an early age, Luke probably had to learn to defend himself. He had to learn how to hunt, how to fight, how to carry a weapon and how to survive -- and, living in the desert, Luke also became acclimatized to violence and death and accepted it as the cycle and circle of life. Luke probably had to kill people who attacked the farm for its equipment. He must have seen friends and neighbors die. Luke specifically says he used to "bullseye womprats," which could have been for sport -- but I think it's more likely that Luke was hunting for food. Luke must have killed people long before he shot his first stormtrooper.
However, because none of that is in the scripts and George Lucas does not direct actors, Mark Hamill couldn't and doesn't see any of that. Luke Skywalker was a blank slate in the scripts, so Hamill's attitude was to project his own personality into the role. Mark Hamill is a gentle, thoughtful, sweet-natured Californian, so he played Luke as himself. And the result is a fascinatingly multi-faceted character because through Mark's performance, Luke becomes this young survivalist who has developed combat and piloting skills simply to stay alive, but his innate personality is the warmth and tenderness of the actor playing the character. The warrior is who he had to become, but the vegetarian charity worker is who he is inside.
We have an interesting conflict in EMPIRE STRIKES BACK where Luke severs the arm of the wampa with his lightsaber. Mark Hamill was furious when he saw the movie; he'd been told on set that the lightsaber would merely scare the animal away. But the slashed-off-arm was added in editing to liven up the scene. "Luke would never do this!" Hamill protested, worrying that the poor wampa would be maimed, die of an infection or worse, be unable to hunt for food or defend itself against other predators. But Hamill's wrong; Mark Hamill would never hurt a wild animal. Luke would. Luke has had to kill to survive and STAR WARS would indicate he killed people long before he brought the droids to Obi-Wan.
And Hamill not really being in tune with the Luke Skywalker character is precisely why he's the best actor to play him. He's a very nice man in conflict with a very violent role and that, onscreen, produces a fascinating personality conflict between the farmer and the soldier inside Luke and it's what made him so iconic and memorable.
