Star Wars: Mark Hamill Compares His The Mandalorian Return to James Bond

The original trilogy of Star Wars movies concluded with Luke Skywalker helping bring his father back from the Dark Side to overthrow Emperor Palpatine to end the Galactic Civil War, making whatever adventures that were to come potentially being far less daunting than this ordeal, though Mark Hamill recently compared his character’s journey to that of James Bond. In Disney Gallery: Star Wars: The Mandalorian – “Making of the Season 2 Finale,” Hamill noted that he thought only witnessing Luke’s journey to becoming a Jedi would be like denying audiences the opportunity to see Bond at the height of his abilities.

“I remember joking with George [Lucas], I said, ‘You know, when [Star Wars:] Return of the Jedi ends, it’s all over for me. That would almost be like taking three movies to tell you how James Bond earned his license to kill — and then it’s over. No Dr. No, no Goldfinger. No From Russia with Love,‘” Hamill shares in the special of his desire to reprise the role. “And I was joking, but it did occur to me that he went from a farm boy, then to a trainee to a Jedi, and then it’s over. So it was nice to have a rare look at what he would be doing prior to establishing the Jedi Academy but post-Jedi.”

As most Star Wars fans could tell you, even though Luke’s live-action journey might have concluded for decades with Return of the Jedi, a series of novels, comic books, and video games delivered fans his further exploits. Given that these stories weren’t directly crafted by George Lucas and would sometimes contradict other stories, they weren’t officially canon and were instead known as the Star Wars Expanded Universe. When Disney purchased Lucasfilm in 2012, the studio solidified that the official canon was only comprised of the six live-action films and the animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars series, relegating the SWEU to the “Legends” corner of the mythology.

The next time audiences saw Luke in live-action was the final scene of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, while Star Wars: The Last Jedi explored without explicitly depicting that the Jedi’s adventures over the years saw him lose faith in the Force and the teachings of the Jedi, only to embrace those ideals in his final moments so he could help save the Resistance.

Disney Gallery: Star Wars: The Mandalorian – “Making of the Season 2 Finale” is now streaming on Disney+.

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