Mark Hamill's Greatest Joy (And Greatest Gripe) About Making The Star Wars Saga

Before "Star Wars" came out in 1977, no one could have anticipated the change it would make to the entertainment landscape. The simple hero's story about a young man named Luke Skywalker set in space became as ubiquitous as sliced bread, and you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone in the world who hasn't at least heard of the franchise. More than four-and-a-half decades later, we have multiple films, TV series, toys, video games, comics, and more. 

Mark Hamill starred as Skywalker in six of the films (and a very odd episode of "The Muppet Show"). In the first three, he went from a kid working on his uncle's moisture farm to a padawan to a Jedi, learned that his father was Darth Vader (portrayed by David Prowse, voiced by James Earl Jones), lost a hand, discovered Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) was his twin, formed a bond with rogue pilot Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and his buddy Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew), and saved the galaxy. 

Back in 1988, Lucasfilm Fan Club Magazine #3 (via StarWarsNewsNet) spoke to Hamill about his greatest joy, and the hardest thing about being involved with the films. This interview occurred five years after the release of "Return of the Jedi," long before anyone knew the franchise would expand into two more trilogies and then some. In fact, Hamill said that in the first film, the British crew "thought we were all making the biggest piece of rubbish ever." I wonder what they thought after it took over the world. 

When the first film began shooting, the cast and crew didn't know what the reaction would be. This was long before it became the Star Wars saga. With the three films under his belt, Hamill told Lucasfilm Fan Club: 

"The biggest difficulty or problem is trying to remember the scope of the thing and where you fit in. Also, the movie was so technical in the sense that so much of it was dubbed and looped because of sound problems that it was difficult to go back into the studio and make it sound as natural as when you did it on the set."

It sounds funny now, with Disney+ shows, video games, comic books, and extended universe novels that go so much further into the galaxy far, far away, but even then, Star Wars was epic in scale. Luke Skywalker was fighting for the fate of the universe (no matter how that turned out later, as we've seen in "Andor" and the recent episodes of "The Mandalorian"). Remembering the place of one small person would be difficult if you're the one playing the role. Still, as far as gripes go with a franchise, that's not so bad. 

For Mark Hamill, the greatest joy was what the series meant to children. He said: 

" ... one of the greatest joys is the way that kids have taken it to their hearts. Young people just find it so magical. It surprises me because there are kids who weren't even born that have now taken it up. I guess there are other films like that, such as 'The Wizard of Oz,' that have this kind of cult following but it is really staggering.

"You forget about it and then you're suddenly confronted by it. You know, I'll drop my kid off at school, and something will happen, and I realize, 'Yeah, even to this day still has an impact.' And that surprises me because I haven't seen the films in a long time. But when I walk into a video store and there it is on a big screen, it's really kind of startling. It really doesn't seem that long ago and yet you look at yourself and say, 'Gee, did I ever look like that?' It's like looking at old high school pictures."

Hamill said that Star Wars was "unique in the sense that [he] had the opportunity to do three movies in the same storyline that covered that much time in actual chronological years." He related it to seeing a kid growing up on television, and that he grew up in the films just like Luke did. Little did he know when he did this interview in 1988 that we'd see him in the same role decades later, or that there would be a CGI version of him circa "Return of the Jedi" in "The Mandalorian." 

All the Star Wars movies are streaming on Disney+.