As Star Wars mania tightened its grip on the Internet leading up to December 15th, it became apparent that at two hours and 32 minutes, The Last Jedi was on the verge of becoming the longest chapter in Lucasfilm’s beloved Skywalker Saga.
But the Rian Johnson sequel could have been longer still. As we learned last month, the director’s initial cut of Star Wars: The Last Jedi ballooned past the three-hour mark, resulting in some seriously strict editing in order to trim off the fat.
However, as this is a Star Wars movie, fans will be curious to know the content of each deleted scene, and thanks to Collider, today brings forth some precious (and relatively spoiler-free) intel about those sequences that didn’t make the cut. And it turns out there’s quite a few.
Speaking at a recent press day for The Last Jedi, both Johnson and the film’s editor, Bob Ducsay, gave a candid overview of those scenes, which seemingly include a big moment between Rey and Luke Skywalker. All scenes will be included in the inevitable Blu-ray release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, too.
Again I will give the caveat that the movie is better as a whole without any of them, but yeah man, there was some great stuff. There’s a whole extended sequence where Finn and Rose and DJ sneak through the Mega Destroyer when they’re kind of, after they sneak in with DJ and they’re trying to find the tracker. There’s a whole extended sequence. It’s a full sequence of like stuff with them sneaking through this big office area of the Mega Destroyer and then having to fake out these Stormtroopers.
Johnson continued:
And then on the island, there’s a massive sequence that we shot with Daisy and Mark, which is kind of an additional sort of trial/test that she goes through, that involves her and Mark, and then a big emotional scene between the two of them. I mean, it’s big stuff, it’s like actual real scenes.
Ducsay then went on to elaborate on the Rey/Luke scenes, including one that involved those Nun-like caretakers populating the islands of Ahch-To:
There’s an extended sequence with Rey and the caretakers, which are the Nun-like fish creatures. That’s actually one of the biggest things that was taken out of the movie. And there’s this incursion on Snoke’s ship, I mean there’s a lot of stuff that was cut out of that, with Rose and DJ and Finn, and some of it is particularly fun.
Based on Ducsay’s estimates, there’s around 20 minutes’ worth of additional footage locked away in the Lucasfilm vaults, meaning that The Last Jedi‘s home video release will be a must-own for any Star Wars fan. As for why the scenes were scrapped, the editor admitted that the extra footage of Rose, Finn and DJ was nixed pretty early on in the creative process.
There’s some really nice stuff in there, but we actually cut that stuff pretty early because it was very clear that that section of the movie was completely lopsided in favor of those three, and it just didn’t support it. But it’s good stuff. It’s really good stuff. I assume when you’ll see it, you’ll enjoy it because I mean, we all did. It was cut early, and how you always know is like my staff, there’s a decent number of assistants and collaborators that work in the cutting room, and they were all complaining when we cut the sequence. And that’s how you know that it was something that people like.
Last and certainly not least, Rian Johnson revealed that The Last Jedi originally included another scene featuring Poe and Finn, after the latter woke up from his bacta tank without the faintest idea of what’s going on.
There’s a couple Finn scenes that—there’s one great Finn/Poe scene that’s kind of a setup scene at the beginning when Poe was kind of bringing Finn up to speed after he comes out of his coma. God, there’s a bunch of really fun stuff. Yeah, anyway, we talk more about them when the Blu-ray comes out, but I’m excited for folks to see them.
As if Star Wars: The Last Jedi wasn’t lengthy enough, expect another 20 minutes to be included in the upcoming Blu-ray release when it arrives in 2018.
