Why Mark Hamill Initially Didn't Want To Be in Star Wars: The Force Awakens

In addition to discussing about Rey's parentage at the Tribeca Film Festival, J.J. Abrams has also been discussing the problems in the Star Wars: The Force Awakens set, explaining why The Force Awakens is similar to A New Hope, and revealing why Mark Hamill was resistant at returning as Luke Skywalker.

Abrams revealed that when Hamill realized that his role would be limited to just the final scene, Hamill was initially hesistant to return as Luke: "We knew that getting to Luke was the whole story, and I was desperate to do the next chunk that we knew would not fit into this one movie. But, we knew that we had that ending, but it was a frightening and tricky thing to do, but at first and in all honesty, Mark Hamill was a little resistant."

"Imagine reading Star Wars, imagine being Mark Hamill and you get the script for the new Star Wars. 'Oh the opening is good, page two, oh, three and so on - what the f**k is the going on, I'm three pages before the end, the last page, what?' He was so kind to do it, and at first he was like, 'Will it seem silly, will it be a joke that he is standing there?' I said to him, ‘I don't think it will.' I said because the whole movie is about that, it could be a great fun drum roll, up to seeing this guy."

While Abrams was filming the final scene on an island off the coast of Ireland, he realized that "Hamill was the exact same age as Alec Guinness was when he played Obi-Wan. I'm looking at him in the robes, and with the John Williams music, I start to tear up, and I know that this ending could really work."

Abrams also revealed that Harrison Ford's injury on the Millennium Falcon set was a blessing in disguise, because it gave him the time to work on the chemistry between John Boyega and Daisy Ridley, which he felt had been flat.

"When I was on the set of the Millennium Falcon and we started to do work with Rey and Finn, the first time we did it, it didn't work at all," explains Abrams. "It was much more contentious. I didn't direct it right. It was set up all wrong, and when Harrison Ford got injured - which was a very scary day - we ended up having a few weeks off, and it was during that time that I really got to look at what we had done and rewrite quite a bit of that relationship. So when we came back to work again, we actually just reshot from the ground up, those scenes. It was an amazingly helpful thing to get these two characters to where they needed to be."

Star Wars: Episode VIII is set to release in theaters on Dec. 15, 2017