Star Wars: The Last Jedi Deleted Scenes: Everything We Know
The first cut of Star Wars: The Last Jedi was three hours and ten minutes long and writer director Rian Johnson has said they are preparing to release 20 minutes of deleted scenes on the future Blu-ray/DVD release. We have the exclusive details on a number of deleted scenes and reshoots from the latest Star Wars movie.
Read on to see what we've learned we've learned about the Star Wars: The Last Jedi deleted scenes.
Luke Skywalker's Last Lesson To Rey
One of the biggest deleted scenes involves another lesson Luke Skywalker gives to Rey, taking place chronologically after they talk inside the cave where Luke mentions Darth Sidious. Rey notices boats arriving at the island and there appears to be a big fire from where they're landing. Luke tells her that it is a group of bandits who regularly come back to the island to plunder and kill the caretakers. Rey is very concerned and wants to help them, but Luke tells her that if you help them now, the raiders will come back stronger and it will make things worse in the future. He asks Rey if she is always going to be here to protect them, saying that a true Jedi Knight would do nothing and would only act to maintain balance, even when people get hurt.
Rey, furious at his reasoning, ignites her lightsaber and runs really fast, a Force-powered run that we glimpsed in one of the featurettes about the making of the film (see the screenshot at the top of this article). She runs over rocks on shallow water and bursts through a door with her saber into the village square ready for battle. Luke yells for her to wait, but she doesn't stop.
She is surprised to learn that it's not a raiding party, but an actual party, with caretakers celebrating and swinging glow sticks. This piece of concept art from The Art of Star Wars: The Last Jedi shows what the scene looks like. The caretakers all stop and look at Rey, confused. One of the caretaker motions her her glow stick and Rey swings her lightsaber, imitating her movements, and sighs. The caretakers resume partying. Rey spots Chewbacca sitting at the party with a bunch of Porgs and R2-D2 (wearing a festive necklace). "Seriously?" Rey says to Chewie before storming out to find Luke.
Rey is mad that Luke lied to her and she confronts him. He admits that he's sorry, but that she ran so fast and he couldn't stop her. Rey says that she thought they were in danger and tried to do something. Luke responds, seriously this time, that that's exactly what the resistance needs – not some old husk of a failed religion. He was again trying to teach her a lesson. Rey cries, explaining that her real friends are really dying and "that old legend of Luke Skywalker that you hate so much, I believed in it." Luke is in shock. He realizes that he pushed her too far. Rey tells him she was wrong about believing in him and storms away.
The scene gave a further motive for Rey to want to leave the island. The caretaker party joke apparently wasn't very funny, but the real reason the scene apparently didn't make the final cut is that Luke ended up coming off like an even bigger a**hole. Even though the basic details were approved by the Lucasfilm Story Group, it somehow didn't feel authentic to the Jedi "code".
Canto Bight Changes
Canto Bight had a lot of little bits cut out and some of the story was changed with reshoots, but it's not like a substantial set piece hit the cutting room floor. Here are some examples of post-production changes to the Canto Bight sequence:
Snoke's Ship
On the First Order ship, there was an extra shot of Finn arranging their First Order uniform disguises on an elevator before they walk out with BB-8 in the trash can. Finn tries to flatten Rose's hair, but it keeps curling up. A First Order officer follows them and they quickly head to another elevator. They frantically push the button to close the door, which takes forever and they nearly got caught.
Actor Tom Hardy originally had a cameo as a First Order stormtrooper in this sequence. A group of stormtroopers get in the elevator and our heroes are nervous they are going to get caught. One of the stormtroopers slowly turns to Finn and gives him a look. Finn turns around in his Imperial officer uniform and asks him what his problem is. The stormtrooper, played by Hardy with a southern accent, says "I know who you are.... FN 2187! Damn boy, I never took you for officer material!" The tension is cut by the reveal that the two grew up together, but the troopers are somehow unaware of FN's treason. While Finn's act of desertion is a legend in the Resistance, maybe the First Order hid that information from their army so others might not get the same idea. (This scene could be where Prince William and Prince Harry shot their cameos as stormtroopers, but we were unable to confirm.)
Later in that same sequence, after it is revealed that Benicio Del Toro's DJ has sold out Finn and Rose, there was originally a funny exchange where Rose yells "How could you?!" To which DJ rolls his eyes and scoffs "I'm sorry I turned out to be exactly what I said I was."
Phasma's Lost Badass "Sergio Leone" Moment
Phasma originally had another badass moment. The scene took place chronologically after she battled Finn on Snoke's ship, right after he smashes the hole in her helmet. A group of stormtroopers corner Finn and he tries to get them on his side, saying that they can join him and escape Phasma's grasp, just like he has. Finn says that she's really a coward who sold out the codes to Starkiller Base. He pleads with the First Order squad to escape with him. The stormtroopers all look at each other...and in a moment borrowed from a Sergio Leone western, Phasma pulls out her blaster and guns down all six or seven stormtroopers herself before they have any time to react. It felt like a tribute to a classic western shootout, but for whatever reason, it didn't feel right in that moment of the movie.
Admiral Holdo Reshoots
Other reshoots involved Laura Dern's character Admiral Holdo, who was originally way more condescending to Poe, calling him "honey" and "flyboy." Her character and story arc remain the same, but they made her character a little bit less abrasive so that audiences could come around to her character later in the film. If you watch some of the over-the-shoulder shots of her in the film, you can clearly see that her lips are not moving to her ADR'd dialogue.
Another Moment Between Poe and Finn
When we talked to editor Bob Ducsay about the deleted scenes, he told us about a few other moments that got axed (and elaborated on the caretaker scene mentioned above):
There's a scene where Poe first meets up with Finn after he's sort of recovered. And this, it goes right before Leia slaps Poe. After they come out of hyperspace. And it's really just a buddy scene. And he basically is bringing him up to speed. And it's a really, really good character scene. And the only reason it's not in the movie is just because of time. I really love that scene. But it's the sort of thing you can just put in, you go ah that's good. But there's nothing we took out of the movie that shouldn't be taken out of the movie. Because the thing is ultimately you put this thing together and it's the screenplay of the movie and then you go yeah, okay, so now we're on this new stage, which is now we have to tell the best story, which isn't everything that's in the screenplay or everything that was thought of. There's another sequence, it's basically like the third lesson where Rey has a big scene with the Caretakers, which are those sort of Nun like fish characters, the people who take care of the island. And that's a very elaborate, involved scene. And it's very funny and it's very good. And we cut it, I mean, it had actually progressed quite a bit. And it's very, very good.
There's one scene that we had to move. It's a kind of a small scene. But it's a scene with Poe in the hallway. And he's talking to Finn. And if we were able to move the scene from here to here, it made it better. But where the scene actually took place was in a different, was in a place it couldn't take place to be in that spot. Because Poe wasn't on the bridge yet. And we wanted it to be earlier, right? And so we mocked it up and we did it. And what we did was we reshot that moment. It's a tiny, tiny moment. It's not the sort of thing you'd ever think, why would you reshoot that? Literally the only reason we reshot it is because we moved it. And it now had to take place in a different place. And he's walking down a hallway and he's talking to Finn on the communicator. And that's an example of the sort of thing that happens in post-production on films like this. If you're able to do such things. Because obviously on a smaller film you can't afford to do that, because you just live with the structural problem. Anyway, it's fascinating because it's really wonderful the things that you can do in post. Like that. And it made the movie better because we did it. It made a, it's all, like if you were to take this chunk of the movie and all we did was remove this one thing, take this chunk of the movie, it's exactly the same length as it was before. Except it feels faster. And it's just because the scene is in the right place now.