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.
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.
