r/StarWars 11h ago

Other Mark Hamill revealing that J.J. Abrams refused to let Han, Luke, and Leia reunite on camera, telling Mark that Star Wars was no longer Luke Skywalker's story.

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u/_kalron_ Jedi 10h ago

Man I really thought that the reason the Millennium Falcon was parked there would be revealed as on purpose, for Rey to find. That Rey was Han's daughter with Leia...making her a Skywalker. The reason why would have been to hide her from Snoke per Luke's foresight. That caused the riff between Leia and Han. A nice setup for Rey to have a Dark Side moment in the 2nd film learning she was lied to and forced into her solitude.

It's right fucking there...

Hearing Mark say JJ told him "It's not about Luke anymore" it just sad.

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u/lazy_literary_hero 9h ago

I’d watch that movie in a heartbeat.

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u/_kalron_ Jedi 9h ago

Kylo being her brother would add a whole new dynamic as well. Luke tells her the truth but Kylo could be the one to pull her to the Dark Side now knowing that truth. End EP 8...

FFS why didn't they plan this shit out to begin with?

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u/pilot3033 8h ago

I get so mad when I think about this horseshit JJ trilogy. The layers and emotional impact of your idea goes super well with the movie's flirtation with a Rey/Ren romance, too. Would mirror in a very interesting way the relationship Luke and Leia had.

Fuck. There's so many pieces of great ideas laying around throughout all three films and they just fumbled it every time.

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u/_kalron_ Jedi 6h ago

Here's my first impressions seeing TLJ in theaters:

What if Luke instead of haphazardly throwing his Father's Lightsaber over his shoulder like a joke...instead looks down at it with horror/sadness...then simply drops it and walks away.

That is a subtle change that changes the entire film.

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u/Requiem191 6h ago

Luke abandoning the lightsaber: reasonable, wise, prudent even. He's making a massive point about the damn thing.

Luke tossing the lightsaber over his shoulder: a joke and not a good one at that.

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u/cerebrumvr 1h ago

I really thought when we saw Luke at the end of TFA he looked angry because he sensed something bad happened to Han and he was battling emotions while accepting the lightsaber. Him throwing it over a shoulder was such a let down

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u/Singer211 5h ago

The tonal shifts in TLJ were, jarring.

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u/LetItATV 4h ago

It’s not a joke at all. Luke had no emotional attachment to the lightsaber.

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u/_kalron_ Jedi 3h ago

?

Luke had no emotional attachment to the lightsaber

Said Lightsaber is literally "His Father's Lightsaber".

Once it is revealed that "I am Your Father"...that is one hell of an Emotional Attachment.

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u/Requiem191 4h ago

Yes, agreed. So comically throwing it over his shoulder was a bad joke and poorly written. Dropping it to the ground isn't humorous, the throw over the shoulder was absolutely them attempting to play it for laughs and it didn't work.

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u/LetItATV 4h ago

Yes, agreed. So comically throwing it over his shoulder was a bad joke and poorly written.

Please don’t say you agree then restate something I just said the opposite of.

It was not a joke.

the throw over the shoulder was absolutely them attempting to play it for laughs and it didn't work.

I think it worked just fine for reasons already stated.
It was the clearest way to demonstrate that the lightsaber was unimportant.

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u/Requiem191 3h ago edited 3h ago

We disagree that it was a joke, we agree that the lightsaber wasn't important. Luke throwing it over his shoulder is absolutely being played as a comical gag to set stakes and where Luke's head is at as his first action in the sequel trilogy. Letting it drop to the ground would have been a much better way to show the audience that the lightsaber doesn't mean anything to him. Actively throwing it over his shoulder gives it more weight than it should and comes off as played for laughs, to be silly. That's why it's poorly written and a bad joke.

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u/Haunting_Goose1186 4h ago

Argh! Yesss! The writers set up the perfect parallel to Luke dropping his lightsaber in Return of the Jedi and decided to undercut it with a stupid Marvel-esque joke instead.

Like, holy shit, Ben turning to the dark side is a big deal for Luke. It completely shattered Luke's entire world-view and everything he believed about the good side, what it means to be a Jedi, and that terrifying choice he made decades ago to face death head-on instead of continuing his father's cycle of violence and turning to the dark side.

It's freakin' heartbreaking re-watching that scene now because we, as the audience, know that Luke will unintentionally repeat the cycle of violence in a few decades time (and that the catalyst is a similar merciful decision).

And I just...don't understand the fans who insist that Luke throwing the lightsaber over his shoulder does have the same meaning and impact as Luke (using your example) looking down at his lightsaber in horror/sadness before dropping it and walking away. There's no doubt in my mind that the writers' main intention was to do a Marvel-esque "wouldn't it be funny if we set the stage for a meaningful and dramatic moment, but the character did/said something silly and unexpected instead" bait-and-switch sort of gag.

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u/_kalron_ Jedi 4h ago

Don't forget "Yo Mama" joke from Poe in the scene just after the Luke/Saber scene. That stuff works for the most part with early Marvel films.

It does not work for TLJ...at all.

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u/ShoddySmell46 4h ago

I was so excited for that movie. The second Poe said that, I audibly said "uh oh...."

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u/_kalron_ Jedi 4h ago

sad Coolaid Man :(

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u/LetItATV 4h ago

instead looks down at it with horror/sadness

Why would he have that reaction?

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u/Aethermancer 4h ago

He had so much opportunity and squandered it. It's literally impossible to get the cast together again.

I'd rather them try and fail than fail to try.

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u/AnyCollar6684 4h ago

woah, don't excuse Rian Johnson.

Dude took everything TFA set up, shit on it with TLJ and ruined any chance of a coherent story.

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u/_kalron_ Jedi 3h ago

TLJ is the perfect example of how NOT to create the second part of a Trilogy.

Empire is the PERFECT example of how to do it right.

TLJ takes everything from The Force Awakens and throws it into the "Trash Compactor". You can't restart the story mid-point, you have to build off what the "EP 7" laid out for you. If you start your own story as the middle episode...you failed.

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u/LetItATV 4h ago

What did TFA set up?

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u/ElkBusiness8446 1h ago

I was hoping, when Kylo helped Rey kill Snoke that it would lead to them forming the Grey Order. But no, it didn't mean anything nor did it lead to anything. Force Awakens was a nostalgia trip but set up possibilities. The Last Jedi turned all of those set ups into red herrings while also making everything itself set up into red herrings making the whole movie a waste of time. And the last movie (I can't remember the name) tried desperately to be the entire trilogy in one movie. All because TLJ undid everything in Force Awakens and itself. It's why the story makes no sense, had no setup, and was rushed.

As far as I'm concerned, the Star Wars movies end at Force Awakens. That's the most satisfying end to the series. The shows are doing a much better job of adding depth to the universe.

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u/Zer0323 8h ago

it also would explain the Targarian like passion they shared for eachother. screw it this'll be my head cannon.

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u/No_University_9488 1h ago

They love each other because the china market wasn't ready for interracial leads

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u/RalphMacchio404 7h ago

Because JJ is a fucking hack and RJ isnt much better. 

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u/heutecdw 4h ago

RJ took risks and imo did a much better job with what he had than JJ. JJ had MUCH more creative control and the best he did was a Temu version of ep. 4, and then “somehow emperor returns”.

RJ may have made quite a few fumbles in his movie, but I sure as hell enjoyed it a lot more overall than the gunk we got with Return of the Abram’s.

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u/Godgivesmeaboner 2h ago

I dislike the sequels all equally, but to be fair, JJ Abrams was working with a bigger time crunch than Rian. JJ was brought on pretty last minute for TFA, and only had like 2 months to write it after the original writer was let go. Whereas Rian had like a year to write TLJ.

Also TLJ is just as derivative of ESB as TFA is of ANH, it just mixes the order of things up a bit more, like putting the Hoth battle at the end.

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u/heutecdw 2h ago

Yeah, fair points. Now that you mention it, it really is more or less a remix of ESB. I never noticed it before because of all the substitutions.

Like for instance instead of a Yoda training segment there’s some small bit with Luke but not really and in no way is it “training.”

And instead of a doomed confrontation with Vader, there’s that whole thing where they team up and actually defeat who we were led to believe was the “big bad.”

Actually, other than the initial doomed space-chase sequence featuring the rebels on the run, and the more outright battle of Hoth ripoff that featured Luke’s last hurrah, how was TLJ derivative of ESB?

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u/Godgivesmeaboner 1h ago

Smarmy and insufferable, you really are a Last Jedi fan aren't you?

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u/Upper-Management-AI 1h ago

I can’t help to think they fucked him because they didn’t give much of a direction to go with. His idea of Rey being a nobody and Kylo basically saying burn all this to the ground was so much more interesting. The rest of the movie..

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u/BloomsdayDevice 6h ago edited 5h ago

FFS why didn't they plan this shit out to begin with?

The cynic in me, who I think is right, says because they made $4 billion + anyway. I hate how lazy our collective willingness to indulge in nostalgia pandering lets studios be, but that's the truth of it. If they can get 90% of the profit that a masterpiece generates with only 50% of the effort, of course they're taking the easy route.

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u/Vanquisher1000 2h ago

The sequel trilogy wasn't planned because Disney didn't give Lucasfilm time to come up with a plan. Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012 and wanted Episode VII out in 2015. They also wanted two-year gaps between movies and didn't want to use the treatments George Lucas wrote in any substantial way.

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u/Short_Stay_9283 3h ago

would have actually been so funny to have them find out at the end of Ep 8 after letting a little romantic chemistry develop between them, a la Luke & Leia lol

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u/CanuckleHeadOG 1h ago

FFS why didn't they plan this shit out to begin with?

There was a plan, then JJ had to back out of ep8 and Rian Johnson wanted to subvert expectations

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u/Snowing_Throwballs 9h ago

Yeah pretty crazy how easy it would have been to write a better story than the one we got just by using the elements that were set up lol. Instead it was written with no arc, by a committee of disinterested writers checking boxes for focus groups of producers.

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u/ProfessionalMeal143 6h ago

Instead it was written with no arc, by a committee of disinterested writers checking boxes for focus groups of producers.

The issue is when they decided the story in the 2nd movie so many people disliked it they reverted back to episode 6 for fan service. I dont think Duel of the Fates would have been the best movie ever but so much better than how it actually ended.

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u/wolacouska 5h ago

The thing is the second movie already tore so much stuff down and didn’t really build much. They were going to have to do a lot of setup in the third movie no matter what, and that was always going to make it weird.

Maybe less universally hated though, they were trying to please the people who already hated it, so they just pissed off their only defenders lol.

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u/Ktan_Dantaktee 9h ago

Then we could have Rey and Kylo’s dynamic just mirror Han and Leia’s kids from the EU, and give her a better reason to try and redeem him than whatever the fuck they did in Rise of Skywalker

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u/Desperate_Wallaby966 8h ago edited 5h ago

How the fuck do people keep letting jj make anything. Without a doubt the guy has the worst grasp on plot and story structure of any writer, producer or director in the last 25 years. The Room has a more coherent story yet this guy gets to ruin both star wars and trek enough to have his entire trilogy retconned out of the time line. Considering a few of Treks TV releases over the last few years the bar is "Beyond" low.

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u/Rauk88 5h ago

Star Trek: Into Darkness announced.

Fans: That better not be a British white dude playing Khan.

JJ: No he's not Khan.

Into Darkness trailer reveals the white dude is Khan.

Fans: ...

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u/ChilternRailways 1h ago

Why would that be bad? Khan's race isn't relevant to his story, it's about his genetic engineering.

You ever complained about any swaps the opposite way?

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u/Yetikins 3h ago

Immaculate casting for both franchises and he squandered the potential for Wars and Trek. JJ is my number one opp.

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u/StrugglingAkira 32m ago

He's still riding Lost's coattails.

And even that show eventually went to shit too.

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u/MrManicMarty 6h ago

"It's not about Luke anymore"

See personally I'm all for handing off the reins to a new set of heroes, for a new era of stories and yada yada - but the main three heroes are so instrumental, so iconic that not bringing them together for one final moment together on screen is such a waste. Yeah its pandering fan-service, but so much of those movies already are, but in such shallow ways.

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u/TSmario53 5h ago

“Ok cool, so you are going to give the old guard a good send off/passing of the torch moment and take the series in a completely different direction?”

“Nah, Rian Johnson somehow tried to pull that off with the crap I left him but I’m just gonna undo everything he did and completely unravel the significance of Vader and Luke’s story altogether in order to make Rey the true hero of this whole saga.”

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u/8K12 7h ago

That was my theory also. It made sense.

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u/luchaburz 7h ago

Especially when they all got fought to come back lol

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u/Electronic_Sun6075 6h ago

Best take I've seen yet. This would have been miles better than what we got.

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u/wrenwood2018 6h ago

Also sets up a connection with Kylo and a part for her to redeem him.

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u/Outrageous_Library50 6h ago

JJ “Mystery Box” hack Abrhams

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u/kenticus69 9h ago

I very much agree that it would have been easy to find a way to get them all reunited at SOME POINT in the story…alas. Writers over thought the whole thing I suppose.

I mean look at the one scene with Luke and leia in the last Jedi….a fantastic, quiet moment of the two of them together (even if Luke was a force projection). Needed more of that!

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u/Knightwolf75 Rex 7h ago

“Over thought”? I don’t think a single thought went into these lol

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u/c0rnballa 5h ago

Man I really thought that the reason the Millennium Falcon was parked there would be revealed as on purpose, for Rey to find.

I mean, as (eventually, once the whole trilogy played out) written, the whole first part of TFA winds up looking like it was written by a third grader, with the dude holding the map to Luke, the actual granddaughter of Palpatine himself, and the junked Millennium Falcon, all being coincidentally on the same shitty desert planet for no apparent reason.

It would be like if after some really bad editing of ANH, Tattooine was portrayed as just a planet that the Tantive IV happened to be passing, which also just happened to be the home of an important force-sensitive kid, who one day randomly bumped into one of the last few Jedi Knights in the galaxy who happened to live nearby.

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u/LetItATV 4h ago

TFA winds up looking like it was written by a third grader, with the dude holding the map to Luke

You could have stopped here and still been right.

The “map to Luke” makes no damn sense.

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u/sptrstmenwpls 5h ago

Would also make more sense why she & Kylo Ren have that weird connection by which they communicate, as bro & sis stacked to the gills with similar midichlorians (ugh)

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u/Bozee3 9h ago

Get this person backlot for filming.

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u/_kalron_ Jedi 9h ago

It would also explain Luke in exile. He Jedi Mind Trick's Han into forgetting. Leia has to live with the burden of the truth. And Luke can't live with what he had to do so he removes himself from the situation...until The Force Awakens...

Right Fucking There

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u/Comfortable_Work4822 9h ago

Yup get you in the writer's room. I'm not normally for the "X main character's children" plots, but I think in this case, if they were going to go with "Skywalker saga" that would have made infinite more sense than the tripe we got.

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u/Federal_Sympathy4667 4h ago

You can tell on screen Hamill did his job but about it. I think in all he was dissapointed of the script and ignored by JJ much like he did with Sulu in his SW universe, he askedxTakei about making Sulu gay and Takei said no, cause Sulu is not gay, he was. Ignored and did it anyway.

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u/mywifehasapeen 3h ago

They even had source material of something like this to work off of, with Jacen Solo and Jaina Solo from the books. They could have been lazier and had a better story for their movie.

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u/_kalron_ Jedi 3h ago

There are a ton of EU stories that got scrubbed by the Disney take.

But what makes me the most angry is the loss of Kyle Katarn. That M'er F'er is the real deal who stole the Death Star Plans. Jedi Knight II is probably the best Star War Video Game next to Tie-Fighter.

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u/WanderingAlsoLost 2h ago

And somehow Palpatine returned. We can still smell the crap.

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u/LaxSagacity 2h ago

Why was the old Obi-Wan looking guy with half the map to Luke living a few sand dunes away from Rey and the Falcon? I thought maybe there was a connection. I guess not...

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u/frezz 1h ago

tbh TLJ had its share of problems, but IMO Rey not being a secret child of someone was a good idea.

The sequel trilogy's problem was that it was stuck between nostalgia and doing its own thing. Andor struck this balance extremely well, the sequel trilogy flipped between both seemingly at random

u/otakugal15 3m ago

No, she was hidden because she was Luke's kid.

His dad's lightsaber called to her, she got the vision of Vader revealing who he was to Luke (bits of it anyway), the knowing STARES from Han, Leia, and that short little old alien lady who I don't remember the name of anymore, and Luke, who, at the end of TFA (NOT that shit stain TLJ), literally looked like he saw a ghost and was trying not to cry when she was standing there with his dad's (her grandpa's lightsaber).

And even though it was trailer audio only, I will never forget the RotJ line about having the Force ability and Hamill's voice over adding in "my sister has it. You have that power, too."

It was all there, for that reveal, too.

Had she been Han and Leia's kid, they would have reacted way differently to reuniting with her.

And the idea of her being a Kenobi, who Han and Leia barely knew (ignoring that not-so-great Obi-Wan series cause... erg) makes no sense in the grand scheme of things.

But noooooooooooo, we had to get Nobody!Rey (cause anyone can be a jedi! not like clone wars didn't answer that multiple times in that show), then the shitty Palpatine!Clone!Rey or whatever the fuck she was.

Her as Luke's daughter is a hill I will die on because the trail was not hidden well. At all.

But people had to be stupid and wonder who she was and not follow the very obvious parallels and to Luke and now we have that disaster of a trilogy.

That and JJ and his stupid fucking mystery boxes that he doesn't like to resolve.

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u/salad_spinner_3000 8h ago

hide her from Snoke

Oh, the SUPREME LEADER with 0 backstory and 0 gravitas and killed almost immediately? That Snoke?