The Force That Is Mark Hamill

If anyone had told me when I was a kid I'd have loved Mark Hamill, aka Luke Skywalker, more now than I did then, I would have laughed in their face.

Yet, here we are. It's 2018, I'm not a kid anymore (45 in a month, in fact), and I'm fairly convinced that Mark Hamill is probably one of the coolest people in the planet. Now, this opinion is not just because I think the man should probably get an Oscar for his performance in The Last Jedi - I've seen the film twice thus far, and as far as I'm concerned, he's absolutely remarkable - but because I've come to appreciate him as a fully real person.

That being said, I have never met Mark Hamill. I will probably never meet Mark Hamill, unfortunately - I'm a high school French teacher in Canada, and I'm seriously doubtful I would have the opportunity to run in the same circles as Hamill, who lives somewhere in the States and played one of the 20th century's biggest screen heroes. However, I follow him on Twitter, and especially in recent weeks, I have come to appreciate the man's humor, his respect and admiration for his peers and those involved in the causes he supports, and just the manner in which he embraces his own place in pop culture history.

Certainly, by his own admission, he is a pop culture aficionado, and the passion he has for pop culture is clearly evident on Mark Hamill's Pop Culture Quest, which he's hosted since 2016. The man hit the stage on Good Morning America in December, prior to the release of The Last Jedi, and when he saw that someone had a tattoo of a lightsaber emblazoned on his arm, he quite cheerfully posed with it, as though he was brandishing it.

This is the mark of a man who loves what he does.

Lately, I've been really captivated by Hamill's Twitter feed. He is clearly having a great time with social media, and is using his powers for good.

Take his response to Donald Trump's tweet regarding Fire And Fury author Michael Wolff. He referred to the book as being untruthful, and said that Wolff himself was a "loser." Trump is supposed to be the leader of one of the biggest superpowers in the free world, not a schoolyard bully who calls people names when they say something that he doesn't agree with.

Hamill's response was so deliciously dry that many individuals declared he had won the internet.

Hamill tweeted, "Congratulations, sir! This dignified, statesman-like tweet is the perfect way to counter the book's narrative that you're an impulsive, childish dimwit."

But it's not just Hamill's regular roasting of Donald Trump that makes me (and obviously others) chuckle, if not out and out laugh. It's also the relatively recent discovery by fans of Sebastian Stan - Bucky "The Winter Soldier" Barnes from the Captain America series of films - and of Mark Hamill that the two men seem as though they could very well be related because of their striking facial resemblance. Many fans have suggested that Stan could very well be Hamill's son, and both men have spun a lot of humor from that. Stan, for his part, even pre-recorded a video where he called Hamill "Dad" and said that he wasn't sure how he felt about the new beard.

There's celebrity, and then there's legend. Mark Hamill falls into the latter category, and not just because he starred in one of the biggest science fiction/fantasy blockbusters of all time. He's a legend because he is probably one of the most "human" celebrities out there. He strikes me as the sort of guy you could sit in Starbucks with and have a coffee and talk with for an hour or so about just about anything, and for me, that only serves to highlight just how awesome he is.

So thanks, Mark Hamill, for being one with the Force that is just being (from what I can tell via social media, anyhow) a funny, quick-witted and warm human being. While you're a celebrity - an icon, really - it's nice that you seem still so down to Earth. That's what makes you awesome.