In their own words: Rian Johnson and Mark Hamill on Luke's journey in 'The Last Jedi'

"It's time for the Jedi to end," Luke Skywalker says in the Last Jedi trailer, his brittle voice dripping disdain for the knights who once protected the galaxy and saved so many lives, including his own.

Actor Mark Hamill and Last Jedi director Rian Johnson reportedly butted heads over this cynical new take on the once starry-eyed Mr. Skywalker, and they recently told Mashable how they resolved their differences over such a drastic character shift.

"'It's time for the Jedi to end?' Are you kidding me?" Hamill told Mashable at the Star Wars press day in Los Angeles a few weeks before The Last Jedi released. "I'm just saying, what could have happened between the last time we saw him and now for him to be that way? Even if it was the worst thing in the world, I said to [Johnson], 'Jedis don't give up.'"

Hamill insisted that a Jedi will make amends or try to rectify a mistake, to "work until it's right again." Luke's jaded attitude, his reclusivity, were tough to come to terms with.

"Mark, he's had however many years...what is it, about 30 years since Jedi? [Editor's note: It's 40]... to think about where he thinks the character would go, and if Luke came back, how he would be," Johnson said at the same junket. "The idea that I would...show up and plop a script in his lap and say, 'And now it's this,' and he would read it and say, 'Yep, that's exactly what I had in mind' – That was not going to happen."

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

"It was inevitable there were things that were not going to line up about what he expected and what was on the page," Johnson continued. "But once we got into and we talked and we argued and we went back and forth and we explained and we pleaded and we did everything, it was a really, really good process, first of all just because it brought us closer. We formed a really good relationship during the course of it. And second, because I know for me, it made me really dig in and justify the choices I had made to bring Luke to where he was at. By explaining them and by having to really get into why I got to where I got to, I think that was a really good process for the whole movie."

Hamill said he didn't necessarily disagree with the new interpretation of Luke, but it threw him. An old, comfortable Luke, he said, was too reminiscent of Obi-Wan Kenobi, and we've already seen that character. The process of figuring out the Luke's evolution was "highly collaborative," and Johnson never overruled him on the basis of on-set hierarchy.

"He gets everyone on his side and by the time you start on day one, you're already a bonded family," Hamill said. "Like I said, 'Look, Rian, I've said this to you just to get it off my chest. Now that's off my chest, my goal is to do my very best to realize your vision, regardless of whether I agree with it or not.'"

"It's not my story to tell. It's Rian's story to tell," Hamill added. "I thought the worst thing I could do was burden him with, 'Luke wouldn't say this. Luke wouldn't do that,' blah, blah, blah. Think, clear the slate and pretend it's like almost like an entirely new character that's not locked into what you did before."

Interviews by Laura Prudom.