natedeug’s The Last Jedi Polished Edition Version 3 (FINAL)
I found The Last Jedi to be a pleasant surprise. It managed to be its own movie, shucking expectations in favor of actually telling a new story while still maintaining the feeling of the originals. The problems I had with it were minor, and now that we have access to the deleted scenes, I decided to see what my personal perfect cut of the movie would look like.
I used Pilusmagnus’s Extended Edition (available over in the FanEdit.org forums) as a base, which included the following additional deleted scenes:
• Luke mourns Han, and Leia feels his pain through the Force. A shot of Leia from later in the film is used for this.
• Poe gives Finn his jacket back and boasts about saving the entire fleet before being slapped by Leia
• BB8 shows Finn a recording of Rey, prompting him to desert the ship and find her
• Additional shots of the Caretakers being angry at Rey
• New Caretaker village sequence
• New infiltration sequence aboard the Supremacy with Ralph Ineson and Tom Hardy cameos
From these additions, I was able to make the following cuts:
- Cut the Poe/Hux exchange at the beginning
- Cut the second doughy eyed porg when Chewie sits down for a meal
- Reinstated the ‘Luke Has a Moment’ deleted scene (Audio transition tweaked slightly by poppasketti in V2)
- Cut BB-8 spinning around to get Finn’s attention before showing him the recording of Rey
- Also cut Finn thanking BB-8 for recording that moment, as a hand can be seen moving BB-8. Scene now ends on Finn’s thoughtful face looking at the transmitter, hard cut to black as he opens the locker and tries to leave.
- Cut a bit of Maz’s communication, no more gun stroking and fawning over the codebreaker
- Kept little casino character using BB-8 as a slot machine, but cut the belching. This is necessary because later we hear BB-8 rolling around with change in his innards.
- Cut BB-8 being tossed out of casino
- Cut BB-8 using coins as bullets
- Cut a few shots of the fathier escape, trimming the time we spend with them in the casino and on the streets
- Cut Rey asking if Ben can put on a cowl or something
- Cut clothes iron “landing scene”, now cuts from mutiny to deleted infiltration scene
- Infiltration scene lacks long room with Ralph Ineson following our heroes suspiciously. This removes the unfinished roof effect as well as the man moving BB-8 around. Also cut exchange between Stormtrooper and Finn in the elevator. Now Finn straightens the clothes of DJ and Rose, puts a waste basket on BB-8’s head, and the scene resumes as in the movie, on the long shelf next to the elevators with the black droid spotting them.
- Holdo says “May the force be with you, always” without the cute back and forth
- Trimmed the heavy, direct hinting before Snoke’s death, using musical score from TFA (courtesy of OT.com user poppasketti)
- Cut Rose taking way too long to duck behind cover
- Cut BB-8 controlled AT-ST running through wreckage
- Cut Finn saying “Oh, they hate that ship!”
- Cut second shot of porg yelling in Millennium Falcon when running through Crait’s caves
- Cut Ben giving order to open fire on speeders and Hux’s overenthusiastic echo
- Movie ends as in theatrical release. As much as I wanted to end on the Falcon shot and include a mid-credits broom boy, it just doesn’t work out. The ending is too fast.
Two of the above edits (Luke has a moment and the hinting before Snoke’s death) come from Hal 9000 and poppasketti.
My edit is not HD; my little laptop can only handle so much. Instead, this edit suits my needs and is of a fair quality. I’m more interested in getting these ideas out there to the community. Perhaps someone else will pick up on the little things I’ve done.
DVD9 and MP4 now available
