About a year and a half beforeStar Wars: The Force Awakenshit theaters,a report surfacedclaiming to have details on the opening sequence of the film. One part seemed especially odd as it statedEpisode 7opened with a severed hand clutching a lightsaber while floating through space only to land on the planet Jakku. Obviously, that didn’t happen, but a new interview withMark Hamillreveals that’s exactly what the sequence could have been.
Speaking with The Sun (viaBMD, which originally reported the news of the opening), the actor explained:
I can tell you now that in the original opening shot of 7, the first thing that came into frame was a hand with a lightsaber, a severed hand that enters the atmosphere, and then the hand and bone burns away and goes sticking into the surface of Jakku, and this alien hand comes in, don’t know if it was Maz but it was an alien hand who takes the lightsaber way, and then the movie proceeds as you see it.
What do you think? Should that have been the opening sequence, or are you gladJ.J. Abramsdecided to go in a different direction?
Elsewhere, fans have seen glimpses insidea variety of deleted scenesthat were filmed but didn’t make the theatrical cut ofThe Force Awakens, including Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) standing in front of a crashed Millennium Falcon in the snowy landscape of Starkiller Base, as well as Han Solo, Chewbacca, and Finn’s encounter with a squad of Stormtroopers in Maz Kanata’s castle. The latter was featured as an exclusive bonus feature on the Digital Download copy, while the Blu-ray combo pack featured it as a free download.
Hamill, meanwhile, has returned to the galaxy far, far away to filmEpisode 8under the direction ofRian Johnson.
