Before he became a Stephen King favorite, Mark Hamill gave a better character-actor performance in Brigsby Bear

For the second time this year, the erstwhile Luke Skywalker has contributed a character actor turn to a Stephen King adaptation. In The Long Walk, Mark Hamill equips himself with dark shades and cruelly ironic pep talks to play The Major, an architect of an unspecified fascist regime in the film’s fictional (for now) dystopia. He supervises an annual contest where young men are selected to compete in a long-distance walk. Failure to keep pace results in death, and the last man standing wins a lavish prize. The Major rides alongside them, occasionally offering macho quasi-encouragement, decidedly different from the pragmatic advice he gives out as Albie, alcoholic grandfather to the main character in The Life of Chuck. These two otherwise disparate men share one major commonality: Hamill giving a mercilessly hammy performance in both films. However, neither use Hamill as well as a more obscure movie that combines fatherly advice and twisted villainy: the little-seen dramedy Brigsby Bear.