It's official: 'The Force Awakens' almost started with Luke's severed hand

It was one of the wildest, most outlandish Star Wars rumors ever. 

In the summer of 2014, the Internet started buzzing about a report on a movie blog claiming that the script for The Force Awakens opened with Luke Skywalker's severed hand -- the one he lost when fighting his dad in Cloud City -- floating through space, still attached to his lightsaber.

At the time, plenty of Star Wars fans were extremely skeptical. But Mark Hamill has something to say to them: It's true. All of it. 

"I can tell you now, the original opening shot of [Episode] VII, the first thing that came into frame was a hand and a lightsaber, a severed hand," Hamill reveals in a video Q&A with The Sun timed to May the 4th. "It enters the atmosphere [of the desert planet Jakku] and the hand burns away."

The lightsaber landed in the sand, and an alien hand picked it up. Hamill says he doesn't know if that alien was Maz Kanata, the castle owner who has the lightsaber in a trunk in the movie. 

Then "the movie proceeds as you see it" -- presumably meaning we'd cut from the alien hand to a Star Destroyer above Jakku as Stormtroopers depart in shuttles, then Max Von Sydow handing the all-important map with Luke's whereabouts to Oscar Isaac.  

Hamill drops his bombshell at 1:55 in the video below:

Hamill didn't say why the original beginning of the movie was taken out, or whether the rotating hand was actually filmed. But it certainly seems, instinctively, to be a little off -- and might have gotten derisive laughter from audiences.

Even so, the aborted beginning might give us a clue about Rey's origins. Unless you think it a coincidence that the lightsaber just happened to land on Jakku, the same planet where she was left as an orphan by someone still unknown?