After seeing it for a second time, I am set on the fact that I will be doing a pretty comprehensive edit of this. The stuff I like in this film, hits on ALL cylinders for me personally. But the Canto Bight stuff just made me so angry this time around and the runtime of the movie did wear on me. What the Last Jedi needs is a tight and focused edit.
My full idea for the ENTIRE finn/rose subplot is the following:
- Finn says that they surely cannot get past the shield. Poe raises his head as if he has an idea. We get the Maz scene. I really don’t have any problem with this scene like others. Maz is shown to always be caught up in something. It further connects both films and we get a great joke for me where she kind of gets sexual and just makes everyone uncomfortable. This stays for logic sense and for my appreciation of it.
- Then we have our first scene of Canto Bight. I would cut down as many weird shots of aliens, champagne, and jokes as possible. Sadly, the public property joke has to stay since that’s the reason they get put in a cell. I also would cut the entire part where Rose talks about the fathiers. Overall, just making this scene as quick as possible.
- Once they’re in the cell, cut the joke about not needing DJ’s help. Like RogueLeader suggested, we cut from DJ walking out the cell and them following, to the ship leaving. You would flip the shot of Finn and Rose leaving the cell to show that they went the same direction and axe her line of “This way” so it feels less like they went on some detour and rather that they followed him. This would get rid of the entire fathier chase sequence.
- We next see them on their way back. This scene stays intact.
- After this basically everything would be the same except cutting the ironing joke and cutting BB-8 in the ATST. Also I would cut them riding on top of the ATST with BB-8 and after Finn defeats Phasma, it would cut to their ship escaping the burning hangar bay.
Hopefully this would make for a much shorter subplot. If there are any ideas to make an even more radically cut down version of this that sacrifices less screen time then I would love to hear it out. Anything to mitigate this part of the film.
I think it can be cut down even more significantly.
– Cut Maz, cut all of the casino. Make it so Poe sends Finn and Rose off, continue with the Poe subplot, where he asks what’s going on, the next time we see Finn and Rose is on the stolen ship. “We got A codebreaker, not THE codebreaker”. I don’t remember if the scene where DJ steals from the ship is before or after that, but if it is, rearrange it so the conversation with Poe comes first.
– Show enough of the infiltration of the ship to get the gist, but cut Phasma entirely. She’s pointless. Show DJ’s betrayal “You’re wrong!” “…Maybe.” (I love that exchange). Cut everything after that, the next time we see them, they’re in the planet’s atmosphere on the ship.I honestly don’t think you miss much.
I actually like this idea except you still would need a trimmed down version of the Maz scene. She would say they need to find a codebreaker, she makes her “he can do everything” joke, and then you cut all of the stuff about the rose lapel or whatever about him on a high card table. This makes it more of a general “find the codebreaker” rather than all of this stuff about a casino. But I actually really like this idea. The more you cut, the better. And I kind of like the Phasma fight so I maybe would keep that. I consider it somewhat important for Finn to quite literally defeat his past.