Star Wars: The Force Awakens played it safe in 2015, delivering a movie that had a lot in common with A New Hope. It got fans talking about the franchise again, and there were countless theories—was Rey secretly Han Solo's daughter?—but filmmaker J.J. Abrams made one huge misstep.
After convincing Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher to return to the Star Wars franchise, the trio never actually shared the screen. Han Solo and Princess Leia's relationship had ended, while Luke Skywalker had vanished. Ford and Fisher did have a couple of brief moments together, but Luke never even spoke during his brief appearance in the movie's final moments.
Not seeing the iconic trio back on board the Millennium Falcon together was a missed opportunity, and following Fisher's passing in 2016—and the fact that all three characters are now canonically dead—the moment has obviously passed to make it happen.
During a recent Actor Roundtable with The Hollywood Reporter (via SFFGazette.com), Hamill revealed what he was told when he questioned Abrams' decision.
"I said, 'Aren't we going to have a moment where all 3 of us get together to raise the roof? It'll only take 30 seconds,'" the actor recalled. "And JJ said, 'Well, Mark, it's not Luke's story anymore."
While the spotlight had shifted to Rey, Finn, Poe Dameron, and Kylo Ren, this still feels like a missed trick and a waste of the Star Wars franchise's most iconic actors.
Unlike the Star Wars prequels, love for the sequels hasn't exactly increased over the past decade. The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker proved even more divisive than The Force Awakens, though Hamill did get a second chance with The Mandalorian. That used VFX trickery to de-age the actor, and in another interview with Variety, he addressed the possibility of allowing his likeness as Luke to be used even after he's gone.
"I haven’t seen [any of those fan films]. It’s one of those things where there’s a disconnect between the fan world and myself, in the sense that every actor does the job, and when the job is completed, they move on to the next project."
"It’s fascinating to see [this technology] develop, and I’m also apprehensive about how it will be used," Hamill said of AI usage both in fan-made and Hollywood movies. "It’s obviously hard to predict the future, but I guess I’m gonna have to talk to my family about if they want me to be in a Star Wars movie 30 years from now after I’m gone."
As of now, it appears Lucasfilm is moving on from the classic Star Wars characters. However, the hope is that Luke might join the fight against Grand Admiral Thrawn when Dave Filoni's long-awaited crossover movie finally becomes a reality.