Watch Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford’s first screen test for Star Wars
A long time ago, in a city not that far, far away, Star Wars was starting to come into being, and George Lucas needed actors to play a lovable rogue and a young idealist taking his first steps into a wider world.
At the time, Lucas had Harrison Ford standing in for the rogue, and in the other role, he was looking at a young actor named Mark Hamill, who was auditioning on the advice of pre-Nightmare on Elm Street Robert Englund (seriously).
He gave them both a scene, turned the cameras on, and behold:
My screen-test for @starwars w/ Harrison on the 1st day I ever met him. Neither 1 of us had read the script at this point, only this 1 scene. I asked George what kind of movie it was-"Let's just do it, we'll talk about that later" We never did talk about it later-we just did it. https://t.co/e7cHWoLmJk
— Mark Hamill (@MarkHamill) July 28, 2019
This surfaced on Twitter over the weekend, and Hamill, as seen above, tweeted to confirm that it was actually his first screen test. You can hear them talking about finding the rebellion, and that there’s nothing to be found.
If you’ve watched Star Wars, you can guess where they’re meant to be: Alderaan, which has already been destroyed by the Death Star, and the planet that Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi hire Han Solo to take them to. Granted, there’s no Obi-Wan here, but Obi-Wan’s death was actually a late addition to the script anyway.
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Note that Han doesn’t call Luke “kid,” though, as he does in the film. It’s “son” instead. Also, there’s no mention of Leia, as if she hasn’t been rescued yet. One thing is clear, though: even in this earlier version of the story, Han does have a lot of concerns about his money. (To be fair, there is a price on his head at this point thanks to the whole dumping Jabba the Hutt’s cargo thing.)
Regardless, this is a piece of cinematic history. And just think: what if Lucas had cast some of the other people who were in consideration? Would we still be talking about Star Wars 40 years later?
Next. ‘Star Wars—Thrawn: Treason’ is short but no less sweet than its predecessors. dark
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