See the ridiculous way Star Wars: The Force Awakens almost opened

On Star Wars Day, Mark Hamill confirmed that Star Wars: The Force Awakens nearly had a different — and arguably not so hot — opening sequence. The intro, detailed by Hamill in an interview with The Sun, would have featured Luke Skywalker's severed hand floating through space, his lightsaber still clutched, just as it was at the end of The Empire Strikes Back. As the hand entered the atmosphere of Jakku, the planet where we first meet Rey, the flesh and bone would incinerate. On the planet's surface, an alien hand would recover the lost lightsaber. Hamill speculates that hand may have belonged to Maz Kanata, the millennium-old smuggler and tavern owner who we meet midway through the film on the lush planet of Takodana.

Of course, this scene was cut. But we wanted to picture what the intro might have looked like had it been made, so our talented team of animators and editors assembled the footage, above. Give them a hand! And let's give a hand to J.J. Abrams and the many, many other folks who made The Force Awakens. They could have done so much wrong, but instead they did so much right. The most recent episode of Movies with Mikey says it all:

• ViaPolygon Birth.Movies.Death
• SourceThe Sun
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