'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' originally had a much darker opening scene

Lucasfilm

"Star Wars: The Force Awakens" started off on the planet Jakku with Poe Dameron in search of a map leading to Luke Skywalker; however, the film could have started out a bit darker.

In an interview with The Sun, Mark Hamill recounted that the original script for "The Force Awakens" would have shed some light on where Luke Skywalker's first lightsaber has been in the decades between "Empire Strikes Back" and "The Force Awakens."

"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," said Hamill after spotting the first 15 minutes of the film accurately online far before the movie's set release.

It's not difficult to see why that was altered. Seeing a severed hand as one of the opening shots of a film meant for families probably would have been a difficult conversation to have with children too young to recall 1980's "Empire Strikes Back."

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According to Hamill, not only would we have seen the lightsaber in the sands of Jakku, but we also would have seen someone retrieve it.

"This alien hand comes in, don’t know if it was Maz but it was an alien hand who takes the light saber way, and then the movie proceeds as you see it," Hamill added.

The "Maz" that Hamill references is none other than Maz Kanata, the wise alien Han Solo, Rey, and Finn visit in the film who is in possession of Luke's lightsaber. When asked how she came into possession of it, she conveniently says it's a story for another time.

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Maybe we'll learn more about the lightsaber in Episode VIII now that Rey is returning it to its owner. "Star Wars: Episode VIII" will be in theaters December 2017.

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