Short of appearing on the side of milk cartons and generating a search party to go on the hunt for him, the curious absence of Luke Skywalker has sent the Star Wars fandom into something of a tailspin in the past weeks and months, with rumors and unfounded theories emerging left, right and center.
But now, with Star Wars: The Force Awakens exactly four weeks – four weeks – from release, we’re inching ever closer to getting some bona fide answers regarding Skywalker, and during an interview with Empire, Mark Hamill himself offered some new details.
[zergpaid]Describing what it was like to return to a role that had been placed on the shelf for more than three decades, Hamill noted that The Force Awakens will introduce a Luke Skywalker at a very different time in his life:
“Obviously you’re seeing him at a very different time in his life. There’s lots of surprises in this movie. You’re going to love it.”
Remaining tight-lipped about the vast majority of story details, the actor instead cast his mind back to the seminal scene from Star Wars: A New Hope, which witnessed Luke emerge from his humble abode against a skyline that was rendered aglow by a binary sunset. It’s a shot that has gone down in cinema history, and recently the actor was reminded of that presence whilst filming The Force Awakens.
“It reminded me of when I was in Tunisia on the salt flats [shooting the first Star Wars]. If you could get into your own mind and shut out the crew and look at the horizon, you really felt like you were in a galaxy far, far away. I had that same wave of emotion happen to me when I was on Skellig Michael in Ireland. I wasn’t anticipating it.”
We’re now exactly four weeks out from the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and we can hardly wait to see what both Mark Hamill and J.J. Abrams have in store.