To say that George Lucas has foresight is an understatement. The Star Wars creator, who had planned nine total films in the galactic movie franchise, decided early on to see whether Mark Hamill would be available three decades later for one of the films.
In the early 1980’s, Hamill was a guest on numerous talk shows promoting the Star Wars films and a 1983 clip presently on YouTube from one of those on-air interviews — though exactly which talk show can’t quite be determined — is of Hamill explaining a question that Lucas asked him presumably while making Return of the Jedi.
Aware that Lucas had wanted to make the next trilogy a prequel to be filmed mostly in the 1990’s, Hamill also knew that the sequel to Return of the Jedi would be the first of the final trilogy, and would film in the early 21st century, if things went as Lucas planned. So, Lucas talking about those future films wasn’t too surprising, but then he asked Hamill if he would be in one of those films as a sort of Obi-Wan Kenobi type of character who passes his Jedi wisdom to the next generation.
Hamill’s initial response was to ask, “When would that be?” to which Lucas replied, “Around 2011.”
To put that into perspective, it’s like someone asking that question in 2024 and saying they’ll start filming in 2054. Understandably, Hamill couldn’t exactly commit to the role and began answering, “As much I’d like to have a job lined up at the turn of the century,” before trying to figure out how old he’d be and then settled on simply telling George, “Well, I don’t know.”
It was a less entertaining conversation then the time George called him pretending to be someone who was trying to buy the script of The Empire Strikes Back from him, but it was something of a prophetic one.
Despite Lucas selling his beloved space opera franchise to Disney, Hamill did, in fact, return to play Luke Skywalker in the sequel trilogy some three decades after Lucas asked him. The Force Awakens was released in 2015, thus pre-production obviously began a couple years earlier. 2011 wasn’t too far off. Hamill even reprised the Skywalker character as a Jedi teacher, like Lucas had said he would be.
Hamill talking briefly about the film 30 years in advance is not exactly a spoiler like Billy Dee Williams’ Today Show interview was, but it does make me wonder if I should look forward to seeing Daisy Ridley revive the Rey Skywalker character in the The Force Reawakens in the 2050’s.
