With Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, J.J. Abrams had to work around a limited runtime, which essentially meant that a lot of scenes weren’t going to make it to the theatrical cut.
In fact, it’s no surprise that three months into the movie’s premiere and even after several rewatches of the digital release, some people still think that Episode IX is a convoluted mess. Never mind the fact that the writers have crammed at least two movies’ worth of storytelling into a 132-minute runtime; Abrams’ last chapter in the Skywalker Saga doesn’t really go out of its way to explain the things that are happening on the screen, let alone give viewers some context as to what went on with the return of Emperor Palpatine, Rey’s lineage, or even her connection with Kylo Ren.
Consequently, there’ve been rumors that Abrams had to cut many crucial scenes to cater to the requests of shareholders at Disney, and the alleged “Abrams cut” of The Rise of Skywalker is still a hot topic to this day.
Now, Sequel Trilogy star Greg Grunberg, who played Resistance pilot Snap Wexley, has revealed in an interview that many amazing scenes were left out of the theatrical cut. As the actor put it:
“I’m excited to see the DVD extras, because there are some amazing moments that I have that I can’t wait to see. It was really, really difficult for them in edit to lose some of that stuff, and selfishly, I’m talking about my stuff.”
Previously, Dominic Monaghan had also claimed that many of his scenes were cut from the film, which makes us wonder just how much the producers had to remove in order to reach a final version, but according to several reports, Abrams had to make drastic changes to the movie, which might explain why the Mouse House doesn’t wish to release all of these extra scenes with the home release, as they’d contradict established plot elements in the theatrical version.
At any rate, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is now available on digital platforms and the Blu-ray edition will drop on March 31st.
