We've been talking a lot about Mark Hamill lately, but not exactly because of anything he's done. With the new Star Wars movies in development, and pretty much no hard information on what they'll be about, it's been a speculation free-for-all for weeks now, with a whole lot of people hoping that Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford will reprise their roles but no hard evidence to say it'll happen.
As it turns out, even Hamill doesn't know for sure, though Luke Skywalker is at least a little bit more informed than the rest of us plebes. Talking to Entertainment Tonight, Hamill compared the experience to "like getting a pair of pants out of the closet you haven't worn in three years and finding a $20 bill in the pocket. It's just so unexpected." And while admitted that "they" have been talking to him and his fellow stars from the original trilogy, they're still in the boring phase of meetings and deals, and not quite cooking up new adventures for Han, Luke and Leia:
. We're in the stage where they want us to go in and meet with Michael Arndt, who is the writer, and Kathleen Kennedy, who is going to run Lucasfilm. Both have had meetings set that were postponed -- on their end, not mine. They're more busy than I am."
Hamill has been reading the same news you have, about the new franchise potentially focusing on the kids of the original three stars, but he's imagining a slightly larger role for himself than just a cameo-- and though he's not saying that comes form insider information, it seems fair to guess he knows it a little more certainly than he's letting on:
"I'm assuming, because I haven't talked to the writers, that these movies would be about our offspring -- like my character would be sort of in the Obi-Wan range [as] an influential character. … When I found out [while making the original trilogy] that ultimate good news/bad news joke – the good news is there's a real attractive, hot girl in the universe; the bad news is she's your sister – I thought, 'Well, I'm going to wind up like Sir Alec [Guinness]. I'm going to be a lonely old hermit living out in some kind of desert igloo with a couple of robots.'"
Essentially, Hamill wants most of the same things you do-- a return to the lighter tone of the original trilogy, a balance of CGI and practical effects, and hey, maybe a spinoff on a Wookiee planet. He actually has a whole lot of other speculation to offer in the ET article, but since many of his guesses are just as good as ours, we'll let you click over there to see it. In the meantime, let us know how big a role you're hoping to see from Luke Skywalker-- cameo at the beginning? Major supporting role as an all-knowing, Obi Wan-style mentor? I would start hoping for something in-between, but given how little we know for sure, hoping for anything at all just seems premature at this point.
