Fans spent pretty much every second of Star Wars: The Force Awakens waiting to see Luke Skywalker, but he was saved for the final few seconds of the film and didn’t say so much as a single word. Thankfully, he’ll return in Star Wars: The Last Jedi this December with a leading (speaking) role, but it sounds like the work the iconic actor will deliver is going to be even more impressive than any of us could have imagined.
During a speech given at the Oscar Wilde Awards, producer J.J. Abrams revealed that he believes Mark Hamill could win an Oscar for his performance as Luke in the highly anticipated release, which is directed by Rian Johnson.
“I think we are all going to be very upset if he does not win an Oscar, and no one more upset than Mark.”
The Star Wars franchise has an interesting history with the Academy Awards. Alec Guinness was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for playing Obi-Wan Kenobi in A New Hope, but the franchise has mostly been nominated in technical categories and has no Oscar wins at all since Return of the Jedi.
It would pretty damn impressive if the next instalment in the saga were to buck that trend then, and Hamill scoring a Best Actor nod would be incredibly exciting. Of course, the Academy rarely acknowledges blockbusters like this, so we probably shouldn’t get too excited just yet. At the very least though, Abrams’ comments indicate that we should expect a strong performance from the actor and give us even more reason to look forward to seeing Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
