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Mark Hamill Describes His Emotional Return To The Millennium Falcon

Published Mon, 20 Nov 2017 11:40:17 -0600

The scene in one of the recent trailers for Star Wars: The Last Jedi where Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) walks into the Millennium Falcon for the first time after more than 30 years was a touching moment for fans. It was the similar to the "Chewie, we're home," scene from the The Force Awakens. It looks like it's going to be an emotional scene, and it turns out that it was also an emotional one to film. Hamill recently spoke to Entertainment Weekly about the first time he stepped onto the Falcon.

"I'm telling you, I didn't expect to have the reaction I had," Hamill said. "I was there with my family, with [my children] Nathan and Griffin and Chelsea and my wife Marilou, and [Lucasfilm] asked if the documentary crew could be there when I came back on the Millennium Falcon. I mean, this was not on the shooting day. I was just street clothes and going to visit that set. And I said, 'Sure.' It was sort of like visiting an old house that you lived in when you were a kid," he says. "I mean, I just welled up with emotion and I said, 'I need to be by myself.' "They had recreated it down to every last detail that I remember. The oil drips, the hanging pipes, just everything. The dice in the cockpit," he said.

Hamill wasn't the only one who found the scene hard to take in. Director Rian Johnson recalled filming the scene when Luke walks into the cockpit:

"God, I remember so vividly getting that shot of him turning on the lights in the Falcon cockpit," Johnson says. The cockpit set is an enclosed space, so every crew member on set was huddled around the video monitors to see it unfold. "And we all kind of looked at each other, just like, 'Oh my God.'

While fans might have found the scene exciting, Johnson said that for the character, it's not exactly a happy moment.

"There's a lot of melancholy," Johnson says. "You know, that ship is just filled with ghosts for Luke."

This beat-up old ship means a lot to people, it has impacted their lives in significant ways, and the reality of that really hit Hamill all over again.

"All of this, happening to me again was… it's hard to put into words," Hamill says. "I figured when the prequels came out, plus a few years, people would forget about us. But it never really went away. People have these stories they tell you, you know, about how [Star Wars] helped them through hard times. Or they met their wife in line for this [movie], and were married by that one, and had a child by that one."

It's going to make hearing those stories even harder for Hamill to hear now.

"I feel like, you know, I need to calm things down because it's one of those things that if you start crying, I'll start crying," he says. "So, stop it."

There are a lot of reasons why people are going to be crying through The Last Jedi, so it's good to know some members of the cast are right there with us.

Summary: Having taken her first steps into a larger world in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), Rey continues her epic journey with Finn, Poe and Luke Skywalker in the next chapter of the saga, Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi, directed by Rian Johnson, stars Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Mark Hamill, Oscar Isaac, Carrie Fisher, and Adam Driver. It will be released on December 15th.

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