Mark Hamill thought that Star Wars was a parody of Flash Gordon when he first read the script.
The 73-year-old actor played Luke Skywalker in the original film, A New Hope, released in 1977, but he admits during the first read-through he was convinced that creator George Lucas had written a spoof, inspired by the 1950s TV series based on the Flash Gordon 1930s comic strip.
Mark went to Harrison Ford, who played space smuggler Han Solo, the pilot of the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars, who had worked with Lucas before on American Graffiti for some insight, but his co-star didn’t offer a theory, so he then went to Lucas who provided even less clarity on his vision.
Discussing Star Wars during an interview on UK TV show This Morning, Hamill said: “The thing is I didn’t get the whole script, for the screen test it was only eight pages. I thought, ‘Who talks like this?’ So I spoke to Harrison and you know what he said? ‘Hey kid, let’s just get it done.’ He was no help at all.
“I went to George. I said, ‘George this is sort of like a send up of Flash Gordon.’ He went, ‘Let’s just do it and talk about it later.’ Translation: let’s just do it and never talk about it later.”
“He’s not a director who likes to talk about motivation and backstory. He casts people that are so close to what he wants that he doesn’t have to direct us. I was wide-eyed and energetic and all these things.”
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Hamill also didn’t expect Luke to be the hero of the film, and was pleasantly surprised when he got the full script and realized Luke, who was originally called Luke Starkiller, was going to be the main protagonist.
He added: “When I was filming, Harrison, to me, was a leading man, I just assumed he was the lead character and I was his annoying sidekick. Then I get the movie, and Harrison must be Luke. He was called Luke Starkiller at that time. Then I started reading it and I was like, ‘Oh my god, it’s from my point of view,’ which is really unusual to tell it through a teenager.”
Hamill admits he made Luke “as juvenile as I could so I could have some growth” but he was disappointed by the name change to Luke Skywalker because he felt his alter ego needed the more macho moniker.
He said: “We shot the scene, ‘I’m Luke Starkiller I’m here to rescue you.’ I came back the next week and said, ‘Why are we doing that scene again?’ They said, ‘Oh, they’ve changed your name.’ I said, ‘To what?’ They said, ‘To Skywalker.’ Let’s face it Luke could use a little macho-ing up. It sounded like Luke Flyswatter, I hated it.”
Hamill has reprised his role as the Jedi Knight in the two original sequels, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, as well as the three Disney sequels and spin-off TV shows, admits he has nothing but fond memories of making the original, which also starred the late Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia, British screen icon Sir Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anthony Daniels as droid C3PO and Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin.
Hamill, who can currently be seen in Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck, an adaptation of a Stephen King novella, said: “We had fun, that’s for sure. It was really odd, because you were being paid for being in your backyard when you were 10 years old and pretending that you were Zorro or whoever. It was all a blast.”
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