'Star Wars' Star Mark Hamill Reminds Us How He Almost Played 'Luke Starkiller'
Mark Hamill in ‘Star Wars.’ At the time this scene was filmed, his character’s name was still Luke Starkiller. (20th Century Fox)
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, a young actor named Mark Hamill auditioned to play a character named Luke Starkiller. He got the role in a little movie called Star Wars, but midway through shooting, his character’s name was changed to Skywalker. During a Twitter Q&A on Monday, Hamill — who is set to reprise his iconic role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens — talked about the confusion of his sudden name change.
In response to a fan’s question, “What is a movie role that you tried out for that might surprise us?,” Hamill tweeted, “Luke Starkiller. My name in Tunisia & London, months into prod. Filmed the “I’m LS here 2 rescue U!” scene w/ it. sad.”
In other words: Hamill’s character was still named “Luke Starkiller” during the shooting of all the Tattooine desert scenes in Star Wars: A New Hope in Tunisia. The name was still attached to Luke two weeks later, when the cast began shooting interior scenes at Elstree Studios in London. And then, one day, George Lucas came in with script pages that changed “Starkiller” — a name that had remained constant through multiple drafts of Star Wars, one of which was called Adventures of the Starkiller — to “Skywalker.”
In his tweet, Hamill wrote that he was still “Luke Starkiller” when he shot his Death Star rescue of Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) — which includes the line, “I’m Luke Skywalker. I’m here to rescue you.” Does that mean he looped that line in post-production? (It’s the only time Luke actually says his last name out loud.) The Making of Stars Wars author J.W. Rinzler claims that the name change happened earlier, prior to shooting the Death Star scenes. Either way, Hamill was Luke Starkiller for more than a month of filming.
Luke Skywalker announces his name to Princess Leia in this scene from ‘Star Wars: A New Hope’
So what made Lucas finally change the name? “That I did because I felt a lot of people were confusing him with someone like Charles Manson,” he said in The Making of Star Wars. “It had very unpleasant connotations.”
Now the only mystery is, why does Mark Hamill find the name change “sad?” Maybe he got really attached the idea of killing stars — although walking on the sky doesn’t seem like a bad alternative. Regardless, the Starkiller name lives on: In The Force Awakens, members of the evil First Order (including Darth Vader worshipper Kylo Ren, played by Adam Driver) reside at Starkiller Base, a tidbit dropped by actor Domhnall Gleeson at San Diego Comic-Con.
