How Mark Hamill's Near-Death Experience Impacted 'Empire Strikes Back'

The Big Picture

• Mark Hamill nearly missed out on his role in The Empire Strikes Back after an accident.
• Director George Lucas creatively avoided showing Hamill's face post-accident during filming.
• Rumors suggest a face injury plot was added to explain Hamill's surgery scars in the sequel.

When the George Lucas science fiction epic Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope took the world by storm in 1977, it starred a relatively unknown Mark Hamill in the lead role of a young Luke Skywalker. Hamill may not have been the established performer and voice actor that he is now with credits including Batman: The Killing Joke, Kingsman: The Secret Service, and Mike Flanagan's Netflix series The Fall of the House of Usher, but he was about to be put on everyone's radar. After the success of the game-changing epic, talks were immediately turning toward a sequel, and Hamill was all set to reprise his star-turning role as Skywalker in Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back. But sometimes things don't go according to plan, and after a harrowing single-car accident on January 11, 1977 in California, Hamill was lucky to be involved in the sequel at all.

Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back

After the Rebels are overpowered by the Empire, Luke Skywalker begins his Jedi training with Yoda, while his friends are pursued across the galaxy by Darth Vader and bounty hunter Boba Fett.

Mark Hamill Got Into an Accident After the First Star Wars

Mark Hamill has always been very candid about what happened to cause the near-death experience that contributed to the noticeable change in his appearance between the two films. In 1978, he told Gossip Magazine:

“What happened was that I was on the wrong freeway. I was way out in the sticks somewhere and there were no cars and no traffic, thank God. I was going about 65-70 mph … I was speeding, going too fast … and what happened, I think, was that I tried to negotiate an off-ramp and lost control, tumbled over, and went off the road.”

It left the actor with a fractured cheekbone and a severely broken nose that required pieces of cartilage from his ear to be used during reconstructive surgery. The difference in his appearance wouldn't be considered terribly drastic, but when you're an overnight heartthrob starring in the biggest and most anticipated sequel in the history of film, even the slightest change in a performer's facial features is going to be magnified.

George Lucas Had To Get Creative for ‘Empire Strikes Back’

Hamill also stated in The Gossip interview that he was supposed to be on set the next day for some post-pick-up shots. Lucas used a double and none of the shots showed young Skywalker's face. Fortunately, most of the principal photography for Star Wars was complete by the time of the accident, and the film wouldn't even be released until four months later, but when Hamill returned for shooting two years later in 1979, he had a pronounced scar that ran from beneath his right nostril to the right corner of his upper lip. His nose was also a bit misshapen and broader than it was in the prior film. The surgery also seemed to have an unanticipated side effect as Hamill appeared to have aged a great deal more than the real-life three years between the two hit movies. Naturally, everyone, including director George Lucas, was relieved that Hamill survived to tell the tale, but he knew that he was also going to have to make some changes to the script to account for the noticeable alteration in his leading man's appearance. Or was he?

Was Mark Hamill Almost Recast for 'Empire Strikes Back'?

Lucas never considered recasting the relatively unknown Hamill, and it is believed that he started taking measures immediately to keep him on board for the sequel. There are a couple of rumors still floating around whether Lucas, along with co-writer Lawrence Kasdan, added a scene at the very beginning of The Empire Strikes Back to explain away the golden boy's post-accident surgery and scarring. In the first scene where we see Hamill's face, Skywalker is famously engaging the wooly, cave-dwelling Wampa on the frozen planet of Hoth.

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George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are at it again.

It's during this sequence that Lucas and Kasdan allegedly decided to have Luke sustain an injury to the face when he wasn't originally supposed to suffer the blow. Before he is rescued from the hostile environment by Han Solo and inserted into the dead Tauntaun's innards for warmth, the injury he had sustained during the attack would serve as the perfect cover. By the time Solo gets his friend back to the Echo Base hospital, the young Jedi in training has the entire right side of his face covered in gauze. According to The Huffington Post, there is evidence to suggest that the rewrite is just another one of the many myths about the ever-expanding Star Wars universe. Leigh Brackett had already completed a script for the sequel in February 1978. That script already included the Wampa scene as it appeared in the cinema release a year later. It is also worth noting that Mark Hamill had already completed another movie in 1978 called Corvette Summer after the accident without any upheaval about his altered face.

This begs the question, why would Brackett, who tragically passed away before the film's release a year later, have speculated about a contingency scene for what Hamill's appearance would look like a full year prior to the film's debut and after he had been seen on the big screen post-surgery in Corvette Summer? Yes, our brain is beginning to hurt, too. Whatever the case, there is no debating that Hamill suffered very serious injuries from a car accident and had reconstructive surgery involving cartilage from his nose to reconstruct his nose, and we are all better off for having the multi-faceted star as the face of the biggest franchise in film history, no matter how he looks.

Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back is available to watch Disney+ in the U.S.

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