When they were filming A New Hope, many of the cast and crew thought that this strange movie wasn’t going to be anything special. Alec Guinness famously hated the experience, saying: “Can’t say I’m enjoying the film – new rubbish dialogue reaches me every other day and none of it makes my character clear or even bearable.”
Since then, however, Star Wars has become a global phenomenon, the “rubbish dialogue” is legendary and the Original Trilogy among the most iconic films ever made. All of which makes it fun whenever we get a glimpse behind the scenes of the cast hanging out and having a good time making the movies. This week, Mark Hamill retweeted one of the most interesting I’ve seen in a while, showing himself, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford shooting scenes for Return of the Jedi.
This is an excerpt from the documentary From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga, available in full on the official Star Wars site. We see Hamill and Fisher lounging against the rubber Jabba puppet and discussing stunts (apparently a Gamorrean falling on you is very hazardous) and Hamill, Fisher and Ford debating how to deliver a line during the Ewok village shoot.
Hamill added his own perspective on this, too, saying the clip disproves the theory that Ford was lazy on set. Instead, he describes him as “laid back,” but says that figuring out how to perform George Lucas’ dialogue means he’d be a great director.
"Harrison would make a great director if he wasn't so lazy."-mh Half this statement is true. Calling him lazy was false & a snarky remark, based on his well known "laid back" personality. Watch the great director in him teach us how to nail the laugh in this scene from #ROTJ👍🤣 https://t.co/8jqx9PW2uh
— Mark Hamill (@MarkHamill) May 27, 2021
It’s as yet unknown if Hamill is done with Star Wars as at one point, it seemed his ghostly appearance in The Rise of Skywalker would be his swansong, but he surprised everyone by returning as a digitally de-aged Luke Skywalker in The Mandalorian. Since then, there’ve been rumors of a show focusing on Luke’s doomed Jedi Academy, but no confirmation as to whether it’ll happen. Even so, The Mandalorian‘s third season is likely to feature Luke in some capacity, even if just in a very brief scene to hand Grogu back to Din Djarin.
In the meantime, Hamill remains among the best value celebrity Twitter accounts to follow, particularly if you want some cool insight into what it took to make Star Wars into the behemoth it is today.
