Mark Hamill discusses the long-lasting – ever-lasting we’d argue – appeal of Return of the Jedi as it’s added to the National Film Registry in the class of 2021, and as you can see he’s as proud of the film as he ever was.
The National Film Registry’s 2021 class is the most diverse in the program’s 33-year history, including blockbusters such as “Return of the Jedi,” “Selena” and “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,” but also the ’70s midnight-movie favorite “Pink Flamingos” and a 1926 film featuring Black pilots in the daring new world of aviation, “The Flying Ace.”
The 2021 selections, announced today, include movies dating back nearly 120 years and represent the work of Hollywood studios, independent filmmakers, documentarians, women directors, filmmakers of color, students and the silent era. Most pointedly, the inductees also include a trio of documentaries that addressed murderous violence against Blacks, Asians and Latinos, respectively, in “The Murder of Fred Hampton,” Who Killed Vincent Chin?” and “Requiem-29.”
Mark Hamill, who plays Luke Skywalker in the “Star Wars” series, was one of a dozen key players in this year’s class of films to join the Library for interviews about their work. He emphasized that at the time “Star Wars” made its 1977 debut, it was largely understood to be for children.
“It had a princess, it had a pirate, it had a wizard, a farm boy, a big bad boogie-man,” he said of the original “Star Wars” trilogy, of which “Return of the Jedi” was the third installment. “It was clearly a fairy tale, but just put in the context of, you know, a Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers-type space opera, serial play.”
One of the reasons the films have gone on to make such a lasting cultural impact, he said, is because they were so optimistic during an period of national disillusionment.
“It was an era of great cynicism in film,” he said. “Post-Vietnam, post-Watergate, action films usually had revenge and anti-heroes (as) the order of the day … so for George (Lucas, the films’ creator) to make something like this, he almost had to set it in a galaxy far, far away and put it forward as a fantasy, because you couldn’t tell a contemporary story with that sense of optimism. It just seemed too corny.”
