Last year, Mark Hamill rocked the news world when he he told Empire Magazine that a big change was made to the end of Star Wars: The Force Awakens for Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi. Hamill said that the change was made very last-minute, and that the change allowed a big situation to happen in TLJ. At the time, Hamill was unable to say what was changed, and how it affected the sequel, but now it can come out.
Speaking to Chinese press ahead of the release of The Last Jedi in China, Hamill spoke about the change. He says that when Rey went to Ahch-To to deliver Luke’s lightsaber to him, the Jedi Master would have been surrounded by levitating boulders. Hamill already had a copy of TLJ’s script and knew that this would contrast to Luke’s situation in the sequel. He called Rian Johnson up to get J.J. Abrams to remove the rocks:
When we were doing [The Force Awakens], Rian said, ‘We might have boulders floating to show your Force emanating’, so I was led to believe that I still had the Force and it was really strong in me.
When I read [The Last Jedi] before [The Force Awakens] came out, I said ‘what?!” and called JJ [Abrams] or Rian [Johnson] to say, ‘Are you guys aware of this? Have you seen a cut? Is there floating boulders?’ And they said, ‘No, we caught that and we worked it all out.’
It would have been a nice addition visually at the end of The Force Awakens, but it contrasted completely with Luke cutting himself off from the Force. It would’ve taken away from how long his exile from the Force could have been.
[Mtime via Digital Spy]
