AArrre!
Dribble.
Mark Hamill will make his first foray into big screen directing by taking the helm for a film adaptation of his own comic book Black Pearl, AP reports. Hamill, 58, was at Cannes to promote the project with Black Pearl co-author Eric Johnson, who helped create Luther Drake - an "ordinary man who saves a woman from abduction …
He also starred in the later Wing Commander games cutscenes, which to me showed how well he could act as he had to do the same scene several times with different dialog/emotions depending on how the story was going (In an interview about it he mentioned the shooting script for a computer game was about 3 times the size of any movie script he ever did).
His voiceovers of the Joker were stunningly good.
The problem really was that he didn't have an acting career. His time in front of the camera in Star Wars doesn't really qualify as acting. Subsequent experience means he now knows what he's doing, but initially he was a godawful liability. Keanu Reeves has followed the same kind of skills progression, except that he's been lucky enough to get some decent films along the way. Same with Orlando Bloom.
Why film-makers continue to put these pretty-boy "stars" in A-list films when they can't act, I don't know. Surely there must be plenty of good-looking young people around who *can* act? I mean, the Harry Potter series managed to recruit a dozen or so kids aged 10-11 who could all act reasonably well even at that age, and who've all held up and become reasonably good at their jobs. Oh, and rather good-looking too...
I happen to have really liked that one - all the inside jokes, cheesy (yet kinda good for the day) monsters, and Dr. Eastman (West)... hehehe.
It was designed as a B-Movie with a budget, and pulled it off well. Hamill was a supporting actor as a seedy (good guy) detective that becomes a cockroach. I don't think the irony was lost on him.
For all those wishing he had "real" acting skills when he did Star Wars - remember, NO ONE had any real idea how big a hit Star Wars would be. I mean, Lucas wasn't a true heavyweight director, the story was vapid, and most of the budget went for SFX. So Lucas used who he could _afford_. He took risks on unproven talent, got hugely lucky with Harrison Ford (remember his role in Apocalypse Now? Thought not...),a little less lucky with Hamill. But overall - really an impressive bit of casting, and Hamill made the role his own - there was something very unsophisticated about him, very boyish, that was really believable in the role, especially in the first film.
And remember, in Lucas's world, the SFX were supposed to be the stars...