Mark Hamill’s 10 Greatest Post-Star Wars Roles
Posted at 5:06 AM Jul 28, 2008
By Todd Ciolek
We’ve all heard of Mark Hamill’s unique struggle to escape the shadow of Luke Skywalker, and you might think that he’s had a stagnant career since Return of the Jedi. Well, you’d be wrong. Hamill’s been busy in all sorts of films and TV series: some good, some hilariously terrible.
So we dug through Hamill’s history, setting aside his acclaimed Broadway turns and any parts he had in between the Star Wars movies. We were after his ten most memorable performances since then, and, surprisingly, not all of them turned out to be voice-overs. Oh, and his bit on Stripperella isn’t here, so don’t look for it.
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10) Jonathan in Amazing Stories
Here’s a gyp: fellow Star Wars lead Harrison Ford became the focus of Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones films, while Hamill got only a starring role in an Amazing Stories episode called “Gather Ye Acorns.” As a young man, Hamill’s character encounters a hairy, capering troll who advises him to buy himself a car and hoard all of his beloved childhood possessions. Hamill takes this advice to the extreme, running away from his disappointed parents with a new car and a heap of toys, comics, and other juvenile things. Decades later, he’s a friendless hermit in the desert, feeling just a bit bitter that he’s wasted his life collecting junk. A few more decades pass, and he’s now a lonely, suicidal old man trying to trade a jar of pennies for one last tank of gas, but a chance meeting with an antique dealer reveals that all of his accumulated kitsch is, in fact, priceless collectibles. The last scene finds Hamill at an auction where his treasures are bringing him wealth and significantly younger girlfriends. Yes, the troll was right all along. He was just a dick about it.
In some ways, “Gather Ye Acorns” was prescient advice to the Star Wars fans out there: buy all the toys, preserve them, and they’ll be worth a couple thousand in about 20 years. Unfortunately, some fans missed the more cogent point of the piece: you can collect crap without becoming a bearded old shut-in.
9) The Trickster in The Flash
Several superheroes got terrible live-action films in the late ’80s and early ’90s, but the cruelest hand was dealt to the Flash, who had a CBS TV show parading its shame each week. The low-aiming scripts and costumes were awful, but the Flash was a gimmicky second-string DC hero in the first place, and the series struggled to find worthy villains. Hamill’s turn as the Trickster was the best part of the show, even if the character’s look shows us how the Joker would’ve turned out in Joel Schumacher’s Batman movies.
Hamill’s Trickster would survive the mercifully canceled Flash TV series, as he reprised the role for an episode of the Justice League Unlimited cartoon. It was only one episode, of course, because no one really likes The Trickster.
8) Tobias LeConte in Seaquest DSV
For SeaQuest DSV, Hamill’s character was a walking example of just how desperate the show became during its second and third seasons. In a series that initially explored the undiscovered depths of a semi-realistic ocean, Hamill played a brilliant professor who’d been blinded by a comet as a child and, in the process, merged with an alien from the warlike planet of Hyperion. He aided the Seaquest’s crew in fighting off an alien invasion and later plunged them into a war on Hyperion itself, but the Tobias helping the Seaquest turned out to be a clone and so they had to rescue the real alien-human professor and…oh, the hell with it.
Despite all of that, Hamill put in a solid performance, proving that a role seemingly pulled from a rejected Far Out Space Nuts script is only as terrible as the actor playing it.
7) Muska in Castle in the Sky
When Disney began bringing over Studio Ghibli films in the ‘90s, they insisted on recruiting well-known actors for the English version, hoping to avoid the mediocre returns that often came with dubs during that decade. For the most part, it paid off, though Castle in the Sky is perhaps the roughest. Someone apparently decided that James Van Der Beek’s turns in Dawson’s Creek and Varsity Blues made him ideal for voicing a 10-year-old boy.
For the most part, though, Castle in the Sky dub is quality stuff, with Cloris Leachman as the motherly harridan leader of a sky-pirate gang and Hamill as Muska, the scheming, balding villain of the picture. Whether he’s yanking the heroine’s braids or dumping an entire platoon of soldiers to their deaths, Muska sounds even more villainous than his original Japanese actor, Minori Terada, and Hamill even gets to hurl a few crazy screams toward the end.
6) Donald Swan in Comic Book: The Movie
Hamill has never made a secret of his fondness for comics, and there’s no more open example of this than his 2004 “mockumentary” (the quotes are there because I hate the word) called Comic Book: The Movie. Hamill plays Donald Swan, a comic geek making a documentary about his favorite superheroes, Commander Courage and Liberty Lad, to coincide with a big-budget movie adaptation that transforms his beloved characters into examples of everything wrong with modern entertainment. Amid appearances from Kevin Smith, Stan Lee, Bruce Campbell, and voice actor Billy West, Hamill plays an old-school fan striving to preserve his manchild roots, with his haircut and beard evoking that world-weary William H. Macy look.
Comments
I can't even picture anyone but him doing the Jokers voice anymore. Whenever I hear anyone else it just seems wrong and out of place. Best Joker ever. Same goes for Kevin Conroy as Batman.
Posted 07/28/2008 at 05:30:49 AMCan't believe you don't have his performance in Slipstream...the first clue that I had that he could shake out of the Star Wars role. No, not the Anthony Hopkins one, no, not the the time travel one, either. The runaway robot murderer one. You know, with Bill Paxton and Ben Kingsley in it.
Posted 07/28/2008 at 07:03:04 AMDUDE.
How could you leave out Senator Stampingston on Metalocalypse?
http://tviv.org/Metalocalypse/Senator_Stampingston
Myezzz....
Posted 07/28/2008 at 07:32:27 AMHow can you leave off CockKnocker in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back?
Posted 07/28/2008 at 07:54:06 AMAlso: Corvette Summer (which I believe was shot before Star Wars, but released after) is a fine piece of 70s "car fetish" summer entertainment...
Anyone who saw Mark on Broadway in "the Nerd" with Peter Riegert and Robert Joy was also treated to one of his best efforts, albeit not on film.
Having met Mark a few times - once just walking down Broadway, another time at an autograph session at the WB Store - I can attest to what an all-around nice guy he is; he'll sign your autographs, pose for pictures, answer your Star Wars-related questions, etc, all with a smile on his face (despite years of being hounded by overweight geeks with light sabers, 3D dioramas, and bent Wookiees).
Take that, Harrison Ford!
Posted 07/28/2008 at 08:23:53 AMI always wondered if Harrison Ford would still be the giant asshole he is now if his career got destroyed like everyone else's in the Star Wars movies. But, I suppose his acting (which is fucking good I can't deny that) makes up for him being such a prick. As long as I never have to talk to him, that is.
Posted 07/28/2008 at 09:43:40 AMGee, thanks for bringing back memories of the Guvyver live action film :p
Seems like he's done alright for himself though.:) One of the luckier ones.
Posted 07/28/2008 at 10:43:15 AMHell yeah Wing Commander! I liked him the best from WC5 as the elderly mentor type in rather than the protagonist.
Posted 07/28/2008 at 11:08:44 AMAs previously mentioned, you forgot Corvette Summer, which IMO should have been #1 for his best "bad" film, he was actually really funny in that role (I saw it at the drive-in as a kid). Also The Big Red One, a fairly major WWII film he co-starred in.
Posted 07/28/2008 at 11:32:54 AMI saw him on Broadway YEARS ago in Amadeus. He was very good!
Posted 07/28/2008 at 11:42:17 AMI saw him once in an off-broadway play. I think it was called, "Nuts" or something like that. He was ok, also I agree that Slipstream should have been on this list.
Posted 07/28/2008 at 11:43:15 AMI saw him once in an off-broadway play. I think it was called, "Nuts" or something like that. He was ok, also I agree that Slipstream should have been on this list.
Posted 07/28/2008 at 11:43:30 AMMark Hamill had roles after star wars?
Posted 07/28/2008 at 11:46:40 AMCorrection, it was "The Nerd" that I saw him in.
Posted 07/28/2008 at 11:49:58 AMCock Knocker.... best role ever!!!
Posted 07/28/2008 at 11:54:01 AMI'm with Joe on the Cock Knocker omission.
But I was waiting the whole list for Joker to be #1; everything else is immaterial, so long as that held true, and it did.
Posted 07/28/2008 at 11:55:04 AMWhat about starsiege game, he played harabec, i thought it was pretty damn good
Posted 07/28/2008 at 12:06:24 PM+1 for Cock Knocker in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back... how can that not be on the list!
Posted 07/28/2008 at 12:06:39 PMYou left off him playing himself playing Luke Skywalker as Nathan Detroit in a musical version of "Guys and Dolls" on The Simpsons??
Best. Role. Ever.
"Luke, be a Jedi toniiiiiight...."
Posted 07/28/2008 at 12:09:07 PMUmmmm....you forgot Metalocalypse.....
Posted 07/28/2008 at 12:29:56 PMwhat, no Cock Knocker from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back...? now thats a classic role...
Posted 07/28/2008 at 12:47:44 PMHe did some excellent voice work in the audio book of World War Z I was really impressed.
Posted 07/28/2008 at 01:10:34 PMi'll ignore the fact that you left off Cock knocker because you put Ozai at 3. fucking love avatar. THAT is a shohen done fucking awesome.
Posted 07/28/2008 at 01:50:43 PMWow dude. That is very interesting indeed. Pretty cool stuff.
JT
Posted 07/28/2008 at 02:49:20 PMwww.Ultimate-Anonymity
You're so wrong about The Flash: Quality show that
Posted 07/28/2008 at 07:26:18 PMdeserved better treatment than it got. Knocked off
the air by Desert Storm and Basketball if I recall
correctly.
The story about Tim Curry being in the role is false. The first Joker episode (Christmas with the Joker) was made before He ever appeared in the Mr. Freeze one (Heart of Ice). "Heart of Ice" aired first, though.
And what about the Robot from from TimeSquad?
Posted 07/28/2008 at 10:42:49 PMRemember TimeSquad? Anyone?
He also acted in the movie The Big Red 1, a WW2 movie as Pvt Griff. That was a good war movie which also starred Lee Marvin from the Dirty Dozen.
Posted 07/29/2008 at 01:24:28 AMWHY ISN'T COCK-KNOCKER #1 ON THE LIST?
Posted 07/29/2008 at 03:57:59 AMLet's not forget the Chanukuh zombie in the Futurama movie..
Posted 07/29/2008 at 06:51:17 AMYay for including CASTLE IN THE SKY--I really love this film, especially Hamill as Muska. He really gets into the role, and he, along with Leachman, more than make the dub worthwhile (the leads are probably too mature sounding, and the dialogue chattier than necessary, but these flaws are ultimately cancelled by the aforementioned pluses).
Posted 07/29/2008 at 08:42:48 AMLet me chime in for Corvette Summer deserving an honorable mention. I saw that movie as a kid, solely on the strength of Luke fucking Skywalker starring in it. That gold-painted monster Vette permanently deranged my idea of "cool car," I'm certain of it.
Posted 07/29/2008 at 11:11:35 AMI also saw him in Amadeus on Broadway. He was fantastic to the point that the guy in the movie didn't seem right (and he was great).
Posted 07/30/2008 at 04:27:36 PMHe also does a great VO job for Wolverine on the Playstation Game.
Posted 07/31/2008 at 06:45:46 AMApparently nobody saw or remembers the over 90-half-hour episodes of the poorly distributed ' .COM ' TV series Mark hosted for TV Interactive 1996 - 2001 ..... The show exposed the rapid deployment of the late 90s internet boom years...and was co-hosted by Ex-MTV-Radio correspondent,Cory James.
Posted 07/31/2008 at 10:00:15 AMgod yes, you put in avatar, but seriously, whats with insulting Zuko? he's not whiny, goody-goody, (he was the main villain for most of the show, and even after he turned good he completely kicked ass) or annoying. even if he was, he would be entitled to it. his own father burned half his face to hell, then banished him, all at the age of thirteen. and why? cause he spoke out against a general for condoning the slaughter of rookie troops who were to be used as a diversion. He's like anakain sky walker in reverse, plus he isn't a total dipshit, and his scar is a giant frigging burn, not some vague scratch. He can weild dual broadswords, and shoot fire out of his hands. oh, and he's a 16 year old grandmaster of northern shaolin, who knowcked ozai on his ass by redirecting a bolt of lightning his father fired at him. Oh, and ozai later got his ass kicked, and was stripped of all his powers, by a 13 year old monk kid. So fuck you.
Posted 08/06/2008 at 07:37:54 PMThe Big Red One is absolutely his best role...
Posted 08/09/2008 at 01:10:11 PMI also really liked Mark in The Night The Lights Went out in Georgia and Earth Angel as well. I've met Mark in person and he was so sweet to me.
Posted 08/09/2008 at 01:40:43 PMAren't we forgetting The Cocknocker?
Posted 08/09/2008 at 01:42:42 PMYEAH!! Why not The Cock Knocker??!!
That was freakin hysterical!!
Posted 08/10/2008 at 07:07:57 AM"...spastic cat-puppet-things resemble some community-theater Babylon 5..."
You know, the Kilrathi puppets were designed pretty well. Especially when compared to the one they used in Wing Commander IV.
Posted 08/11/2008 at 10:13:08 AMI would have to say one performance other then Star Wars that Mark Hamall was great in, that should be on the list, is the 1995 horror remake film,"Village of the Damned." He co-started with Kirsti Alley, Christopher Reeve and Linda Kowsloski about a village of alien children with psychic power that is taken over from the cause of an unnatural chain of events.
Posted 08/11/2008 at 09:55:54 PMI would have to say one performance other then Star Wars that Mark Hamall was great in, that should be on the list, is the 1995 horror remake film,"Village of the Damned." He co-started with Kirsti Alley, Christopher Reeve and Linda Kowsloski about a village of alien children with psychic powers that is taken over from the cause of an unnatural chain of events.
Posted 08/11/2008 at 09:56:09 PMI would have to say one performance other then Star Wars that Mark Hamall was great in, that should be on the list, is the 1995 horror remake film,"Village of the Damned." He co-started with Kirsti Alley, Christopher Reeve and Linda Kowsloski about a village of alien children with psychic powers that is taken over from the cause of an unnatural chain of events. He played the priest in,"Village of the Damned." If mark returns as Luke Skywalker for a possible Star Wars: 7,8,9. I'll die a happy man. It look like it won't happen though. George is done with Star Wars in film.
Posted 08/11/2008 at 10:06:12 PMGeorge is done with Star Wars in film.
Done taking a giant dump on it I hope you mean?
You missed out Watchers Reborn. I grimaced so hard watching that I think I may have broken my jaw.
Posted 09/14/2008 at 05:52:44 PMAll this, and no mention of his side-kick role as Detective Mosley in Gabriel Knight (opposite Tim Curry, none-the-less!)
Ah well, I'd definitely have included it.
If you're a fan of Hamil's voice-acting, you should try to find a copy of the game. Extremely low-res graphics by today's standards, but still highly enjoyable.
Posted 01/25/2009 at 09:59:05 PMdear mark hamill I love star wars I think you were always the hero. because you were the bravest you fouht the rancor darth vader 2 times.
Posted 02/25/2009 at 01:40:28 PM