On Twitter today, CNBC contributor Carl Quintanilla shared an interesting piece of Star Wars history, with a young Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford reciting some lines about the destruction of Alderaan while wearing street clothes—which is to say, not a loose Tatooine shirt and a black smuggler vest. Hamill explained that it was a clip from his very first screen test with Ford, noting that it was before either of them had actually read the script and before George Lucas had actually explained what the movie was about. Basically, he’s saying that you shouldn’t go into this clip expecting perfection, because that is certainly not what it contains.
Ford seems to have a solid grasp on Han Solo already, capturing the character’s jaded attitude even without knowing the full scope of Han’s arc in the movie, but Hamill just seems like a kid in over his head—and not in a “Luke Skywalker just took his first steps into a larger world” way. Still, we know it all worked out just fine (Star Wars went on to become a pretty big deal), and Hamill’s line in the tweet about Lucas never coming back to “talk about it later” is pretty funny.