With Justice League now in the rear view, there is one more blockbuster set to arrive in theaters before the New Year. Rian Johnson's Star Wars: The Last Jedi will continue the main narrative of the franchise, following the events of 2015's The Force Awakens. Fans are eager to see Luke Skywalker get back into the equation, and Johnson's script has been teased as complicated and a real game changer for the franchise. But with such a wealth of exciting content, there are apparently a ton of great scenes that ended up on the cutting room floor. The director himself recently opened up about this process, revealing that the dropped footage should be expected upon home purchase.
A lot of really good stuff came out in the edit. I actually just reviewed the deleted scenes we're gonna have on the Blu-ray. There's a bunch of---some of my favorite scenes ended up having to come out just structurally... There's a lot of really substantial, really good scenes. There's a couple whole sequences actually that we lifted out. It's weirdly---and this always happens---it's like your babies you have to kill. It's some of my favorite stuff from the movie.
It sounds like Rian Johnson's FOMO is through the roof, despite having so much control over The Last Jedi as a writer and director. Still, there wasn't room for everything, so deleted scenes will be a feast for fans once they're available.
Now the question is whether or not The Last Jedi would have been better with the cut scenes included; we've seen how worrying too much about the runtime can have disastrous results. Zack Snyder's Justice League was severely cut down before its release, with the studio apparently determined for it to land under two hours. And while Snyder's work can often run a bit long, Justice League definitely would have benefited from a more substantial runtime, considering how much world building it was doing for the DCEU.
Then again, Rian Johnson revealed to Collider that the original cut of The Last Jedi was around 3 hours long, which is certainly too long for an installment in the beloved space opera. Cuts needed to be made, so it's just a matter of whether the right scenes got the chop during the editing process.
While it sounds like there will be a wealth of deleted Last Jedi scenes, this isn't necessarily unique to Rian Johnson's upcoming blockbuster. Plenty of scenes were similarly cut in J.J. Abrams' The Force Awakens, especially those revolving around Lupita Nyong'o's Maz Kanata. And releasing deleted scenes is a great way to keep the fandom invested in the film, months after its original release. Because if there's one thing we know about Star Wars fans, it's that they're passionate and can't get enough.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi will arrive in theaters on December 15th-- pre-order your ticket here. In the meantime, check out our 2018 release list to plan your trips to the movies in the New Year.
