Before the release of the highly anticipated Star Wars: The Force Awakens, theories were rampant about the films story. One such theory involved how the film would open; Luke's severed hand from The Empire Strikes Back, holding his lightsaber, falling through space to Jakku. Of course, the finished film opened with a Star Destroyer instead, proving the theory wrong...or did it?
According to Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill, the film actually was supposed to open that way, only to be changed later. "When I first started reading the websites and you read the leaks, and you go 'Oh, that's rich. Completely wrong.' And then, one day, I read the first fifteen minutes of the film completely accurately. And I can tell you now, the original opening shot of VII, the first thing that came into the frame was a hand holding a lightsaber, a severed hand. And in the atmosphere the hand burns away, and the bone burns away and it goes sticking into the surface of Jakku, the desert planet that Rey lives on. And then this alien hand comes in - I don't know if it was Maz [Kanata] - an alien hand takes the lightsaber away, and then the movie proceeds as you see it." Hamill doesn't elaborate on why the opening was changed, but it's not uncommon for scripts to be altered on the go. The original script for The Empire Strikes Back's twist revealed that it was Obi Wan who killed Anakin Skywalker, only for Hamill to later learn, secretly, of the real twist.
The lightsaber was still used in The Force Awakens' plot, albeit much later on. Of course, there's still a mystery as to how it came into the possession of Maz Kanata, but hopefully Rian Johnson's Episode VIII addresses that storyline.
What do you think of this? Would you have preferred this opening to what we got? Be sure to check out the full interview with Hamill below!