Mark Hamill will forever be known as Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars saga, but movie lovers shouldn’t sleep on the rest of his filmography, which contains more than a few gems.
No Hamill binge-watch would be complete without the two very different adaptations of a famous author’s works he’s in this very year. There’s also Hamill’s voice acting in acclaimed animated works, including a film hailed as one of the best superhero movies ever made.
Hamill’s done his share of small movies too, including an indie delight released as part of his 2017 comeback, a 1970s teen flick co-starring him with a future Ghostbusters actor, and even a sleazy 1990s sex thriller.
Child’s Play (2019)
Hamill was doing voice acting even before Star Wars made him famous. His true film debut came not in that sci-fi blockbuster, but in Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards as the voice of Sean. His vocal skill, honed over decades of roles big and small, made him the perfect actor to voice Chucky in 2019’s Child’s Play reboot.
Replacing Brad Dourif was no easy task, but Hamill pulled it off in suitably maniacal fashion, helping update horror’s legendary psycho toy-friend for the era of smart technology and AI. Child’s Play 2019 did well enough with critics (64% on Rotten Tomatoes) and was a box office success, grossing $44.9 million on a budget of $10 million.
Corvette Summer (1978)
Harrison Ford went from starring in George Lucas’ car-crazy American Graffiti to playing Han Solo. His Star Wars castmate Hamill went the opposite direction, swapping his X-34 for a ‘Vette in his first post-New Hope role.
Corvette Summer co-stars Hamill with future Janine Melnitz actor Annie Potts in a bit of piffle about a teenager trying to get back his stolen car. Turbo-boosted by Hamill’s fame, the $1.7 million movie grossed $36 million ($174 million adjusted for inflation).
Critics were not wild about Corvette Summer (it sits at 56% on Rotten Tomatoes), with Gene Siskel comparing it unfavorably to the aforementioned American Graffiti, while other reviewers knocked it for tailing off after a strong beginning.
Body Bags (1993)
Hamill is currently in theaters in his second Stephen King movie of 2025, but years before taking The Long Walk, he gained some valuable experience working with legendary horror figures, starring in Tobe Hooper’s segment of the Showtime anthology movie Body Bags.
If Luke Skywalker is a little short for a stormtrooper, then he’s really short for a baseball player, even the minor leaguer he plays in Hooper’s segment. Having injured his own optical organ in a car accident, Hamill’s near-washed journeyman gets a transplanted eye, and starts having terrifying hallucinations. The eye’s previous owner was a serial killer, we soon learn.
Body Bags is no classic, but it’s entertaining enough as a horror anthology, though it failed to launch an ongoing series as Showtime had hoped.
Black Magic Woman (1991)
One of the most obscure titles in Hamill’s filmography, Black Magic Woman is the kind of low-rent erotic thriller that was omnipresent in the ‘90s. Much of the film’s very small budget was used to license the Santana song from which it gets its title, and they get their money’s worth, playing it multiple times.
Most of the rest of the budget presumably went to Hamill, with a little left over for Prince protégé Apollonia Kotero. Though it barely saw release in theaters before hitting video, Variety deigned to review it, and praised it for its big twist ending.
Joe Bob Briggs perhaps summed the movie up best when he called it, “the story of what would happen if Luke Skywalker got into a Fatal Attraction affair with a voodoo witch, and she started hanging dead bloody roosters over his bed and really freaking out his dates.”
Black Magic Woman is perhaps nothing more than bargain-basement titillation, but some have found substance beneath its cheap surface, with Fangoria’s Alexandra Heller-Nicholas declaring:
If you are looking for an intriguing little film that genuinely has something quite profound to say about our own biases about race and gender politics, Black Magic Woman might take you by surprise.
The Life Of Chuck (2025)
The Life of Chuck offers Stephen King in three separate flavors: enigmatically bleak, sweetly whimsical, and broodingly creepy. Hamill stars in the creepy bit as an aged man haunted by terrible secrets somehow associated with a cupola he keeps locked up to protect his grandson Chuck.
Hamill plays the alcoholic Albie with the right note of haunted sadness, adding to the genuinely melancholy tone director Mike Flanagan elicits in The Life of Chuck’s third act, when the movie’s whole time-skimming, tone-shifting game begins to add up.
Flanagan’s film received mostly glowing reviews (it sits at 80% on Rotten Tomatoes), with Hamill being singled out for praise for his affecting performance, which may go down as his best on-screen work.
Brigsby Bear (2017)
Hamill is never out of work thanks to his voice acting prowess, but there was a period when it felt his time as an on-screen star was over. Then 2017 happened. Hamill returned that year as Luke in The Last Jedi (after a teaser of a cameo in The Force Awakens). His other 2017 movie takes place on Earth, and is better.
Brigsby Bear is about a man, kidnapped as a child, who is freed from years of isolation to discover that the children’s show he loves was made up by his captors. Hamill plays one of the captors, in a small but very important role that amusingly and touchingly incorporates the art of voice acting.
General audiences barely noticed Brigsby Bear when it came out in the summer of 2017, but critics latched onto it, and it currently sits at 82% on Rotten Tomatoes, with many praising it for its delicate and whimsical touch.
Batman: Mask Of The Phantasm (1993)
Any argument about the best cinematic Joker is bound to be dominated by Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger, and Joaquin Phoenix (notwithstanding the disaster that was Joker 2). But fans of the animated Batman have another contender in Hamill, who voiced the Clown Prince of Crime both in series and in one-off movies.
The best of those one-off movies is almost unquestionably Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. Meant as a direct-to-video release, it was rushed into theaters in late 1993, and managed to scrape together $5.8 million at the box office.
Not only is Mask of the Phantasm widely regarded as the best animated Batman movie, if not the best Batman movie period, as Empire has claimed, it’s been praised as one of the best superhero movies period. Rolling Stone ranked it 19th on their 2022 greatest superhero movies list, while its 83% RT score further testifies to its status.
Hamill’s Joker is a big reason why the movie has ascended to classic status not just among Batman devotees, but critics at large.
The Wild Robot (2024)
2024’s The Wild Robot utilizes Hamill’s talent for voicing intimidating characters in the role of Thorn, a feared grizzly bear who ultimately turns out to be a good guy.
Hamill’s small-but-key performance as part of The Wild Robot cast helped it become one of the most acclaimed movies of 2024, as demonstrated by its whopping 97% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences loved the movie too, pushing it to a worldwide gross of $334.5 million.
In an appearance at Comic-Con leading up to the movie’s release, Hamill made the perilous move of comparing The Wild Robot to a 1977 film whose cast he headlined:
It reminds me of back in the day when I was trying to describe Star Wars to people who hadn’t seen it. It’s sumptuous. It’s emotional. It works on so many levels. The kids will love it. The whole family will love it.
The Wild Robot is indeed emotional, and works on many levels, and can be loved by the whole family – just like Hamill’s career-launching blockbuster.
The Long Walk (2025)
Mike Flanagan has replaced Rob Reiner as the director most associated with Stephen King, and Hamill, at least for 2025, has become the king of King movies from the acting side, having appeared in both The Life of Chuck and The Long Walk.
Hamill is a supporting player in both 2025 King movies, but his contributions are vital. He lends soul to Life of Chuck, and in The Long Walk, he embodies soullessness as the ruthless Fascist thug, The Major.
Hamill recently admitted that The Long Walk’s violence initially made him balk at signing on, but he ultimately took the role because of director Francis Lawrence.
The Long Walk’s dystopian story can serve as an allegory for a lot of things, but there’s little doubt what Hamill has in mind in playing the villainous Major (a check of his social media should clear things up for anyone with doubts).
Francis Lawrence’s horrifying tale of child sacrifice made into shocking entertainment continued a troubling King movie trend by going cold at the box office, but critics caught onto the movie’s brutal game, and it sits at 89% on RT.
The Big Red One (1980)
Samuel Fuller had always wanted to make a movie about his wartime experiences as part of the vaunted U.S. Army 1st Infantry Division. It took him until 1980 to realize his dream. He didn’t quite have an epic-sized budget, but he stretched it as far as it would go in realizing his autobiographical tale of World War II.
The Big Red One stars Hamill as Private Griff, a grunt whose luck in surviving battles wins him a place among the division’s legendary Four Horsemen, a quartet of seemingly indestructible soldiers. But is Griff really lucky, or just lacking the kind of courage that could get a man killed, or make him a hero?
Griff’s aversion to killing is finally overcome when the men encounter the horrors of a concentration camp, and his anger boils over until he shoots a guard who refuses to surrender.