Force Awakens‘ original opening was handily chopped from the end Rey-sult.
[dropcap size=small]I[/dropcap]n the months leading up to the release of Force Awakens, rumours and theories about the film were spreading across the inter-web like wild fire. Some were way off base, whilst others were closer to the mark, but there was one report in particular – which regarded the opening scene of the movie – that seemed to have credibility behind it.
Back in July 2014, Devin Faraci (of Birth Movies Death) claimed to know the plot of Force Awakens, and divulged a tasty scoop of info about the sequence of events the movie would follow. In a bid to be as spoiler free as possible, Faraci kept it as vague as he could, but revealed that the opening scene would feature a severed hand and a lightsaber:
Imagine the standard Star Wars crawl, and when it ends the camera pans up to the stars. But instead of a spaceship zooming into frame we see… a hand! A severed hand, tumbling through space. A severed hand gripping a light saber.
That hand falls onto a desert planet, where it is discovered by characters who will be our heroes. One is Daisy Ridley. The other is John Boyega, who is playing someone trying to change his path in life (again, I’m keeping it vague here). They recognize the lightsaber as a Jedi relic and decide to return it to the proper people.
Of course, we know this didn’t end up happening, and the opening of the film had no hands of the severed variety. However, even though Faraci’s opening scene wasn’t in the movie, it turns out he had gotten it right, and did actually hit the nail on the head.
Mark Hamill revealed in an interview with The Sun (via BMD) that the film’s opening scene was in fact what Faraci had reported:
“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.”
You’ve got to hand it to them – it certainly would have been a powerful opening.
Fans have been left wondering about Luke’s lightsaber ever since he had his hand lopped off and dropped it at the end of Empire Strikes Back. Since it would have to be Luke’s hand and lightsaber in the opening scene that never was, it would have tied it all together quite beautifully.
The lightsaber falls down into the void of space in Bespin, and where it ended up has always been a bit of a mystery.
Force Awakens didn’t really clear up the mystery. We first encounter Luke’s saber inside a chest in Maz Kanata’s basement, but the scene just gave us more questions.
What drew Rey to it? What’s the meaning behind the visions she has when she touches it? Why did Luke never get it back? How did it end up there? – See what I mean?
There are endless Reddit threads about it all if you want to get lost in a pit of Rey/Luke/Lightsaber theories, but for now, we’ll just have to wait and see if they’ll give us more of a hand next year when Episode VIII hits the big screens.
What do you think about the opening scene that could have been? Have your say in the comments below.
