In a recent interview, Luke Skywalker actor Mark Hamill discussed one clunky line that almost made its way into A New Hope, revealing that dialogue certainly isn’t a new struggle in Star Wars. Star Wars is a cultural phenomenon now, and A New Hope continues to be seen as one of Star Wars’ best movies, but when it was first released, many of George Lucas’ ideas were experimental and somewhat risky. It seems dialogue was among those early kinks that needed to be worked out.
One line in particular gave Mark Hamill a fair bit of trouble during his screen test as Luke Skywalker before it was (thankfully) ultimately cut from the movie. In an interview with the Politickin’ with Gavin Newsom, Marshawn Lynch, and Doug Hendrickson podcast, Hamill explained:
“There’s a line in the screen test. Thank God it’s not in the movie. To show you how difficult it was to make it sound like it was natural dialogue spontaneously coming out of your head. Because at one point Han said, ‘Hey kid, I’ve held up my part of the bargain. And when I get the chance, you and the droids, I’m dumping and moving on.’ And my line in the screenplay was, ‘But we can’t turn back, fear is their greatest defense, 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.'”
In addition to providing some insight into what the early days of working on Star Wars were like, this story from Mark Hamill confirms that Star Wars had some difficulties with dialogue long before the prequel trilogy.
Mark Hamill Was Right To Want This Cut From Star Wars
This Line Was Simply Too Clunky To Ever Work
Mark Hamill has discussed pushing for this line to be removed before, and he was right to do so. As Hamill made clear in his comments during the podcast interview, there was just no way for this line to sound natural. It simply wouldn’t have been believable for Luke to have said all of that—and that’s if the line could have been delivered in the first place.
What’s truly a shame is this line could have worked had it just been edited down. “Fear is their greatest defense” is a perfect parallel to “Rebellions are built on hope,” which is one of the best lines in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. It would also have been a profound and accurate point for Luke to make about the Empire. The Empire absolutely weaponized fear and used that as a measure of control, and this would have been a perceptive comment had it been worded differently.
George Lucas’ Dialogue Didn’t Improve In The Prequels
The Dialogue Was One Of The Biggest Complaints About The Prequels
Mark Hamill’s comments also confirm that dialogue was an issue even before the prequel trilogy. Among the complaints about the Star Wars prequel trilogy was the dialogue, which many found too on the nose, overstated, or (in some cases) a bit absurd. Admittedly, as a massive prequel trilogy fan, I don’t have an issue with many of the lines in the prequels, especially those that are true to Anakin Skywalker’s character.
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Even so, it’s clear that many viewers disliked much of the dialogue in the prequels, Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith in particular, for many of the same reasons this line from A New Hope didn’t work. This suggests George Lucas continued to have a bit of an issue with verboseness throughout the first six Skywalker Saga movies. Luckily, though, this cut Luke Skywalker line didn’t make it into Star Wars.
Source: Politickin’ with Gavin Newsom, Marshawn Lynch, and Doug Hendrickson
