Mark Hamill's Luke Skywalker nearly had twice the screen time in the seventh mainline Star Wars episode, The Force Awakens.The legendary Star Wars actor revisited a piece of trivia from the development of The Force Awakens, the 2015 Star Wars entry that kicked off the Skywalker saga's sequel trilogy. Hamill confirmed in 2016 that the original script for Episode VII began with Luke Skywalker's hand floating through space along with the original blue lightsaber he wielded in Episode IV: A New Hope and lost in Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. The actor shared the trivia once again on Twitter, offering more of his perspective on the matter, tweeting "Just imagine: Had this sequence been retained, I would've had bookended cameos, plus TWICE the screen time."RELATED: Star Wars' Mark Hamill Gets Over 350K Likes - For Tweeting His Own Name

In the final version of The Force Awakens, Hamill only returns to the role of Luke Skywalker for a brief cameo at the film's conclusion. While the cameo was celebrated as a powerful conclusion to the first of the Star Wars sequels, it only amounted to about 30 seconds of screen time. Doubling Hamill's screen time would still have only amounted to one minute of Luke Skywalker, but as the star pointed out on Twitter, the inclusion of the original first scene would have had the original Star Wars protagonist bookending the film, potentially adding some more dramatic heft to his role overall.

Instead of highlighting Luke Skywalker, The Force Awakens opens with a shot of a super star destroyer flying over the planet Jakku. However, as Hamill reaffirmed, this wasn't always intended to be the case. An early draft of the film's script envisioned the film opening with Luke's hand drifting through space, the Skywalker lightsaber still in its grip. As the hand entered the atmosphere of an unidentified planet, its remnants would have burned away, but the lightsaber would have continued to plummet until it crashed onto the planet's surface.

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In the final film and surrounding Star Wars media, this chapter of the journey of the Skywalker lightsaber was mostly left a mystery. After Luke lost both his lightsaber and his hand to Darth Vader in their duel in Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back, the saber was discovered by an Ugnaught worker in the industrial depths of the planet's mining colony. The lightsaber eventually found itself in the possession of The Force Awaken's Maz Kanata, who handed down the lightsaber to Rey in the film's final cut, but Kanata never explained how she obtained it.

While Hamill's role in The Force Awakens may have ultimately been brief, he said he worked hard on the first film, even serving as the Star Wars sequel's narrator in the script's initial table read. While the actor admitted he was initially "really scared" to return to the franchise, he returned for a much meatier role in Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, and he reappeared once again for the trilogy's conclusion in Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker. Hamill most recently portrayed the character in 2020 for the Season 2 finale of The Mandalorian on Disney+.

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Source: Twitter