“Who talks like this?”: the ‘Star Wars’ line Mark Hamill despised
Even though he was a complete unknown working under a filmmaker who’d seen their most recent movie land them Academy Award nominations for ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’, and ‘Best Original Screenplay’, Mark Hamill was forced to put his foot down when George Lucas scripted some truly terrible Star Wars dialogue.
Nobody can argue that when it comes to sheer imagination and world-building, Lucas is one of the most talented minds Hollywood has ever seen, with his sci-fi universe proving so dense and vast that it’s remained at the forefront of pop culture for almost 50 years. On the other hand, it would be a stretch to suggest that writing is one of his strongest suits.
It’s easy to forget that Lucas has two Oscar nods under his belt for his screenwriting abilities when so much criticism has been levelled at Star Wars over the years for its forced, clunky, and occasionally excruciating verbiage, which admittedly didn’t reach a head until the prequel trilogy focused so heavily on technological innovation that it felt as though the scripts never received so much as a second draft.
However, the cast of the sprawling saga had been fighting an uphill battle against Lucas’ words from the very beginning, and not only in the famous case of Alec Guinness openly denigrating the writing in his many letters outlining how dissatisfied he was during his time shooting Star Wars.
During an appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1977 when the film had only recently been unleashed on the cinemagoing population, Hamill admitted to the host that “the dialogue was difficult” before giving an example that mercifully ended up on the cutting room floor.
“I remember that there was one line that I just begged him to take out of the screenplay, and he finally did,” he said. “Boy, I’ll never forget it as long as I live. I sometimes dream about this line.” Could it really be so bad that it would have haunted Hamill forever had he been forced to say it? As it turned out, yes.
In an exchange with Harrison Ford’s Han Solo, Hamill’s Luke Skywalker was discussing tactics, and the scripted line was: “But we can’t turn back, fear is their greatest defence. I doubt if the actual security there is any greater than it was on Aquilae or Sullust and what there is is most likely directed towards a large-scale assault.”
It’s nonsensical word salad, without a doubt, with Hamill deciding then and there to take a stand. “And I thought, ‘Who talks like this, George?'” he continued. “This is really not fair, because you know we’re the ones who are gonna get vegetables thrown at us. Not you!”
Fortunately, the line was dropped and punters were able to keep their vegetables to themselves, not that woeful dialogue didn’t eventually end up becoming a fixture of Star Wars anyway.