Mark Hamill: Not having Carrie Fisher around to see 'The Last Jedi' is 'unspeakably tragic'

Carrie Fisher's death will always sting for Star Wars fans, but The Last Jedi is the first film in the franchise to release into a world without her. Even a year after her passing, costar Mark Hamill and director Rian Johnson struggled to find the words to describe her performance as it connects to the past, present, and future of Princess Leia.

"Listen, it's one of those things where it's unspeakably tragic," Hamill told Mashable at a Last Jedi press junket. "She's irreplaceable. She made my life so much more fun. I'll never stop loving her. I'll never stop missing her, but I know that she would want us to be happy. She really would."

"She's absolutely wonderful in the movie," Hamill said. "She's not sort of the wise-cracking, adorable, pint-size princess that she was. She's been through such heartache. When you think about it, we've had really horrible lives," he added. "We're orphans. My aunt and uncle get burnt to a crisp. Darth Vader's my father. I mean, it's just one thing after another. Carrie said, 'Well, it's the story of a family.' We say, 'A dysfunctional family, like you wouldn't believe.'"

In The Last Jedi, Leia is dealing with the death of Han Solo, as well as the ongoing fraught existence of their son Kylo Ren, who she may think dead after the last film's events. She still doesn't know where Luke is or that Rey's found him; she continues about her duties as General with aplomb.

"There were things in there that she pushed back on, and then she said, 'Yeah, absolutely,'" recalled Johnson, who worked with Hamill and Fisher to plot their character arcs since Return of the Jedi. "You don't get defensive. You don't argue.

"Also, because it's Carrie and Mark, they know these characters. You'd be a fool if you didn't listen to them. You say, 'What didn't make sense to you? Why?' You start getting into it and that's when the conversation begins, and that's the real work."

If each film in the new Star Wars trilogy has a focal point from the originals, then it's Han Solo in The Force Awakens, Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi, and would have been Fisher's Leia Organa in Episode IX. That all changed when the actress passed away in 2016 and the filmmakers had to decide where to direct Leia's legacy.

"In terms of closure, I want to wait and see, to see it as an audience member what J.J. [Abrams] is going to do with the next film," Johnson said. "I wouldn't say there's closure in this movie, but I think that her performance is really going to emotionally mean something, especially for the fans who, they're going through their own type of loss. Losing this character they grew up with. It's a beautiful performance. I think for me it always gives me some real emotional satisfaction, I guess, watching it."

"I think about Billie Lourd, her daughter, losing her mom and her grandmother within the space of two days," Hamill added. "Every time I get selfish and think, 'Darn it...See, if she was on this junket right now, she'd be behind me making faces, giving me the finger, anything to have fun'...Instead of saying, 'Gee, I'm mad that she's not here,' I just have to appreciate the time we had with her."

Star Wars: The Last Jedi releases officially Dec. 15.