Thank You, Mark Hamill

Mark Hamill - thank you.

I have been a fan of your Star Wars work from the moment you stepped on screen, and I will admit, I felt cheated at the end of The Force Awakens. Your entrance just 58 seconds before the end credits started rolling left me stunned; just what the hell was happening?

Seeing your thoughts about that epic re-introduction of one of the galaxy's greatest Jedi Knights during your press interviews for The Last Jedi made me laugh and appreciate a new perspective, which is, in some respects, what I think the Star Wars franchise is about. Certainly, this new trilogy of films has given us a new perspective on our favorite stories, and through fresh lenses, thanks to the work done by JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson, among others, thus far. Certainly, The Last Jedi is a story about shifting perspectives, but you knew that already.

What I am thanking you for is one of the finest performances I've seen in a good long while. I'm not going to get into a scene by scene breakdown of your work in The Last Jedi—I'm not down with spoilers for any movie, let alone my favorite franchise—but suffice it to say, your turn as Luke Skywalker is fresh, heartbreaking and heartwarming at various turns throughout the movie, and you kept me on a hell of a roller coaster throughout the film's two and a half hours.

There were elements of both the innocent boy we all met in A New Hope and the emotionally broken warrior that we ultimately figured out Luke had become thanks to whatever happened between him and Ben Solo, a.k.a Kylo Ren. Luke in The Last Jedi is like nothing Star Warshad ever seen, but then, the last time we all really saw Luke, he was still a hopeful if battle-weary Jedi who was still hoping to turn his father back to the light. Without saying a word at the end of The Force Awakens, you even showed all of us that some of that light—that hope that had so defined Luke throughout the original trilogy of films—had died inside Luke, and all of us wanted to know why it had and whether our favorite Jedi Knight would ever recover.

When you said, "It's time for the Jedi to end," a line which garnered a significant amount of speculation when it dropped in one of the trailers, the exhaustion and the foreboding in those seven words gripped all of us, and we wondered what could have possibly happened for Luke—the biggest keeper of the intergalactic faith known as The Force—to be so shaken and so hardened. There was a part of me that wanted the optimism that was so much a part of Luke's character back, but I realized that not only is change inevitable, it also helps foster growth, even in beloved characters from my favorite film.

I thank you, sir, for making Master Luke Skywalker so very real, perhaps even in a way that he wasn't in the original Star Warsseries. Even our biggest heroes sometimes have missteps or events that shake them to their core, and in the case of Luke, he needed to become more human. The transition Luke goes through between the original trilogy of films and The Last Jedi reminds me in some respects of when we first realize our parents are human and not infallible; Luke needed to become more human instead of just the legendary Luke Skywalker, and we as his fans need to see his journey. It's never an easy one, and I can only imagine how challenging it was for you as the keeper of the Skywalker flame, in so many respects, but you made our ride along the way an incredibly moving one.