Mark Hamill Explains the Difference Between Current STAR WARS Films and the Originals

Mark Hamill has been a part of Star Wars since the beginning. That’s why it’s interesting to hear his take on anything related to Star Wars. He has now decided to explain the main difference between working on the original trilogy and the latest trilogy of Star Wars films. Hamill was recently talking to IGN about Luke’s character arc and he brought up the biggest difference between the two trilogies that he has been a part of.

“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.”

This relay style certainly has its advantages though. For instance, we got a completely shocking take on what happened to Luke. It's been said that Abrams planned on having rocks floating around Luke and such at the end of The Force Awakens, but then Johnson came in and asked for that to not happen so we could get what I consider to be a very interesting twist. The relay-style is probably less predictable than a more planned out approach, but I think that there's a balance that could be maintained to provide better cohesion while still giving us surprises.

For example, I really enjoyed The Last Jedi. It’s probably my favorite of the new Star Wars films. However, I do think that Lucasfilm should’ve gotten all the directors (J.J. Abrams, Rian Johnson, and Colin Trevorrow) together before any filming happened to make a plan of the core stories they wanted to be told in the movies. Each director could then put their own spin on things, explore different subplots, and play with things between the start and end, but they would know exactly where each movie needed to start and where each one needed to end. It's just my thought on how they could've maybe improved things. Then again, maybe it would've made things worse. I also think that they should’ve filmed all three movies at once like Lord of the Rings, but no one asked me.