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For nearly 2 years, I have been re-editing The Last Jedi. It is now Released!

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 (Edited)

Since Episode VIII released on Blu-ray and digital, there have been several “The Last Jedi” fan edits. It might be the most fan-edited film since the prequels. Some of these edits have been better than others, but I generally believe some of them to be improvements on the theatrical release for various reasons.

They have contained less poorly placed humor. They have removed the Canto Bight subplot, reduced Holdo’s role, and taken away Leia’s brief flight. Some edits have been more ambitious than others. YouTuber Hal9000 released a decent edit, as did Reddit users u/noodle-flinger and u/ClarkZuckerberg. I used their edits as a spring board for my own, lifting some alterations and continuing to rework the film in its entirety.

Over these past nearly 2 years, I have spent a lot of time editing and revising my own version of the film. It is the highest possible render quality taken from the Blu-ray version, and has a runtime of 1 hour and 35 minutes, 39 with credits. I am very pleased with how it has turned out.

I worked on this edit, specifically with those in mind who didn’t care for The Last Jedi and those who had a lot of issues with it, either as fans or just as audience members (like myself). I want to provide a version of the film which respects the audience’s time, in case they want to revisit it before viewing “The Rise of Skywalker” which comes out in two weeks.

If you would like a copy, let me know.

A preview of the various edits can be watched here, although there are many more changes in the actual film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S15MehypNpo

Alterations include…

My edits:

  • Recut opening sequence as Poe and BB-8 approach Hux, cutting out comedic beats

  • Cut Hux facing Snoke’s hologram comedic beat

  • Inserted and re-edited Luke mourning deleted scene

  • Inserted Poe and Finn deleted scene

  • Cut Leia slapping Poe

  • Cut Finn trying to leave the Resistance

  • Cut Canto Bight scenes

  • Cut the majority of Holdo’s subplot, as Leia is no longer knocked unconscious in this version

  • Cut the fish nuns entirely, as they were included originally for comedic gags and interrupted serious moments

  • Cut repetitive dialogue between Rey and Luke about where she came from

  • Cut Chewie’s porg/campfire gag, as I thought it felt more akin to a Lego Star Wars video game than an actual movie

  • Cut a brief line from Luke to R2 on the Falcon about how he would never return, improving the flow of the scene

  • Cut Rey’s line to Kylo telling him, “Put on a cowl or something.”

  • Cut repetitive dialogue by Rey asking Luke if he was responsible for Kylo Ren (while re-editing, it seemed as if these lines were to over-explain information to the audience)

  • Inserted the Emperor’s laugh in the flashback as Luke reads Ben Solo’s mind

  • Cut Rey’s line, “Then he is our only hope” as well as the following shot of her pulling back the lightsaber and walking away

  • Cut dialogue from Kylo Ren to Rey in the elevator as he brings up her parents, as a way to improve the flow of the scene

  • Cut Snoke’s dialogue as Kylo prepares to execute Rey and replaced it with the score, also cut and rearranged shots to build suspense

  • Inserted a Wilhelm scream, as this was the first Star Wars film to lack the iconic sound effect

  • Cut Kylo’s dialogue to Rey about her parents, as I believe this to be an underdeveloped and weak plot point that does not advance the story or even the trilogy as IX seems to have something to retcon about that conversation

  • Cut Poe’s “big ass door” line

  • Cut Rey’s reaction to shooting down Tie Fighters, as a moment earlier she was in distress

  • Cut the porgs aboard the Falcon on Crait

  • Cut Leia line to Luke, “I changed my hair.”

  • Cut Luke brushing off his shoulder

  • Cut C-3P0’s “to one” line after Poe tells him to “shut up”

  • Cut Hux asking Kylo, “Are you done?”

  • Cut Kylo throwing Hux, and the comedic beat from the driver which follows, “Right away, sir.”

  • Cut slow motion shots of Luke dodging Kylo’s lightsaber

  • If you would like to know why I made the alterations which I made, I wrote a piece all about it.

u/noodle-flinger’s edits:

  • Rewritten opening crawl to give more political context:

A galaxy in chaos! Both the evil FIRST ORDER and the brave RESISTANCE have been catastrophically decimated, each desperate to snuff out the other and fill the power vacuum left by the extinction of the Republic.

Leader of the Resistance, General Leia Organa, lives in hope that her brother, Jedi Master Luke Skywalker can return to restore peace and order to the galaxy.

As the First Order speeds toward the Rebel base, the fate of the galaxy rests on their escape….

  • Removed the flute run at the beginning that’s the same as ANH. Replaced with the start of the First Order theme cut from TFA.

  • Removed Kylo Ren’s theme when the First Order arrives at D’Qar because Kylo Ren is not present. Replaced with First Order leitmotif from the end of “Main Title and Attack on the Jakku Village” from TFA.

  • Tone down the humor in spots where it doesn’t fit tonally, e.g. Poe and Hux prank call and the Ach-To nun getting hit with the rock are both gone.

  • Cut Leia slapping Poe.

  • Cut the green milk scene from Rey following Luke montage.

  • Trim Finn’s fake-out sacrifice so that it doesn’t give you a chance to root for him to go for it.

u/ClarkZuckerberg’s edits:

  • Cut Poe joking with Hux at the beginning

  • Cut Finn/Rose side arc altogether including Maz as it served no purpose and was just fat. Rose thus turns into just another Resistance member like Connix.

  • Cut Luke tossing lightsaber over shoulder. He now drops it.

  • Added Finn and Poe deleted scene to give Finn more screen time

  • Cut Poe/Holdo “fuel” arc as it also served no purpose and felt wasteful in it’s time. This includes cutting Leia being blown into space and subsequent “Carrie Poppins” scene. Thus the last we see of the Resistance until evacuating the small ships and Holdo sacrificing herself, is after Kylo decides NOT to shot and neither do the tie fighters (in this version). This leaves Finn/Rose with the resistance for the whole movie without leaving any continuity errors. Holdo role significantly changes from admiral to close friend of Leia who sacrifices herself for the Resistance.

  • Added “Luke mourning Han” deleted scene

  • Cut Ach-To nuns, and removed Luke saying “what is that?”

  • Cut Luke/Rey joke bout “reaching out” and slapping on the hand

  • Cut Holdo/Leia awkward joking about “may the force be with you” and just let Holdo say it.

  • Cut Snoke laying on the floor

  • Cut Finn trying to crash into the battering ram and Rose saving him. They are presumed to turn back with the other ships when Poe tells them to as Finn does not argue otherwise. This also removes him dragging Rose back.

  • Had to zoom/scale the explosion to crop Rose and Finn out when the battering ram blasts the giant door open but it looks quite natural IMO.

  • Removed broom boy ending as it felt like an epilogue which felt out of place for the middle movie of a trilogy, and especially in a Star Wars movie.

  • Added 2 wipes (diagonal and left-to-right) where needed and a custom end “close out” circle to fit the end of the movie

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 (Edited)

Morning TiMartin

Thanks for the link to this yesterday.

So I’ve watched it through and thought I’d give you some feedback on your excellent work:-

Firstly - The editing/soundmixing/quality surrounding all things technical is absolutely top notch!! It’s all Seamless and well executed. The new musical cues are also excellently mixed so a full 10/10 for this side of things, I can totally see that you’ve spent a lot of time just working this into a finsihed product. Amazing work!

Now onto the actual Story, now there are probably lots of little beats and changes that I’ll fail to mention. So what I would say is this, if I don’t mention it below then the changes were so seamless they escape all scrutiny for good or bad…so that in itself means it’s good, right? 😃

Ok, so:

  1. Poe’s new entrance. EXCELLENT!

This is obviously quite an aggressive edit, and I’ve seen a few edits that have omitted the humour but kept the original idea of Poe stalling Hux.

This version where we jump straight in to Poe’s assault REALLY works. Especially as we don’t know it’s Poe until we get the close up of him ‘Wooooh’ing’ it’s a really solid ‘hero’ moment and really captures the character but also carries the breakneck pace from TFA over into the beginning of this movie.

Love it!

  1. Luke’s saber drop. I really like it!

Technically it’s totally sound but obviously due to the limits of the source material, I think it’s just missing something. Whether it’s a pause, or a shot of the saber hitting the floor, I don’t know…I think the footage just needs to hold somewhere for another second or two to reflect the drop.

I know that this isn’t really possible considering the source material and that such a change takes some serious work in itself, let alone trying to make something else out of nothing.

  1. The Kylo not firing/no bridge explosion edit. I like this, it works around the ‘Leia Poppins’ problem but from this point I think this choice is the start of revealing the compromises you had to make with regard to cutting out and subsequently around larger pieces of the story.

  2. The Rose/Fin/Leia/Holdo cuts- The Resistance Storyline

Ok before I dig in to this, please let me tell you how (as above) all of the technical elements totally sell the edit, but from a story perspective the aggressiveness of this edit starts to make the overall movie feel like there are fundamental pieces missing (which of course they are) but I would say that the bits you have cut (although they are the most openly criticised creative decisions within the original cut, are so fundamental to the structure, now that they are gone, leave holes in the narrative that are too big to cut around) I totally acknowledge why and the job you have done to get it to where it is, is AMAZING. But I think the aggressiveness of this edit is probably a touch too much for it hold it together and not present new questions to the audience - Who? Why? What?

I know why you cut Rose and Fin and everything that relates to their trip to Canto-Bight (the lead in, the trip itself and the aftermath) and it’s all fine, but now we just have major characters that disappear for such a long part of the movie (this includes Leia, Poe and Holdo) that when we do catch up with them, as an audience member it’s jarring and everything about where, they’ve been, why they are evacuating, who Holdo is and why she might be important (because she is played by Laura Dern and all of a sudden gets such an massively dramatic death scene) left me with more questions than the frustrating part of the original plot relating to her inherited leadership and her relationship with Poe.

As I’ve said, I know why all this has been cut, I would just offer that maybe it’s just not fully possible to be this aggressive, structurally speaking?

None of this is meant as criticism of your work. I hope I’ve already explained enough above to outline that your editing skills are top drawer!.

I also totally acknowledge that maybe my own personal view on what constitutes the lesser of two evils between keeping the story elements that generate so much debate or the questions presented by their removal sadly falls in favour of the original cut?

However, I fully recognise that it’s all subjective, but maybe there’s a middle ground somewhere?

(Some of the most interesting edits I’ve seen to get around some of the issues with the original creative decisions or structure/pacing of the movie are:-

  • Luke using the Force the rescue Leia after she is sucked into space - although I’d like to this in better quality and with a less bombastic - more John Williams-esque score.

  • Edits that deal with Canto Bight in a ‘they get in and get out’ manner before heading off to meet the First Order in a similarly less bloated manner - These versions seem to keep the movie from having large holes where the audience then has to fill in the gaps, but also just get the worst parts of this movie out the way in a quicker and more efficient manner)

  1. Snoke’s death

This worked, I’d argue it was a little too aggressive? But there is nothing here that doesn’t work. It’s definitely on the more aggressive side of what a lot of people have been doing with removing all of the telegraphing that Kylo is about to kill snoke, and maybe it lacks a little bit of the tension due to it occurring a lot quicker with less smack talk from Snoke, but it’s efficient and it certainly works.

  1. The battle of Crait.

This was another part of the movie where I just felt that the omission of Fins sacrifice left a hole somewhere.

What you did worked from an editing point of view, but there was no crescendo to the action.

  1. The Porgs on the Falcon

The reveal of Chewie as he roars is clearly cut a moment short in order to remove the Porg and it’s own battle cry.

The shorter cut is the one cut in this movie where I feel I noticed the edit itself due to the placement and pacing of the shot. A bit like Luke dropping the saber at the beginning, it’s the abruptness of the shot ending that makes it stand out.

  1. The ending/Final shit

I really LOVE your new ending shot, just the remainder of the heroes on the Falcon, rather than the ‘broom kid’
The composition reminds me of the final shot of ROTJ, and so the iris out feels totally right here and is a lot better than the original version IMO

There is a LOT to love here, I love your pacing, to get all of the major/important beats into a concise 1.5hr movie is a tremendous feat, and you should be really proud of the job you have done, especially from a technical perspective.

There are some compromises within the structure and story, but this plays like a TLJ greatest hits, all of the fun, none of the dross with some serious improvements in there too.

I’d love to see your approach with a slightly more conservative cut just to balance it out a bit, but otherwise this is a really really solid and accomplished effort and I really enjoyed watching it.

Many thanks for all of your hard work, you are a really talented and accomplished editor to do what you did with it.

Thank you so much.

Kindest regards

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smpearce1981 said:

Morning TiMartin

Thanks for the link to this yesterday.

So I’ve watched it through and thought I’d give you some feedback on your excellent work:-

Wow. Thank you so much.

I have not received such an in-depth review. Just as you thanked me for my time, now I thank you for yours. I truly appreciate your feedback and honesty.

Since I am not the writer/director, I can accept all of your criticisms related to story. I set out hoping to respect the audience’s time, knowing their own criticisms and the fact that they’ve seen this film at least once before. My main challenge was: how can I make this look like its own cut, and not just one of the billion fan edits out there? So, your compliment means a lot.

Next year, I will have released a new cut of Revenge of the Sith, encapsulating moments of other prequels, as a sort of tribute to the film’s 15th anniversary. The intentions are completely different from this Last Jedi cut, as I won’t be removing much - only adding and recutting select sequences. I hope to make a tribute to something I grew up watching, having been the first Star Wars movie I ever saw in a theater. Looking forward to sharing it with you!

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This sounds right up my alley, Possible i can get a link? 😃

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Tarog said:

This sounds right up my alley, Possible i can get a link? 😃

Thanks for asking! Look in your messages!

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TiMartyn said:

Tarog said:

This sounds right up my alley, Possible i can get a link? 😃

Thanks for asking! Look in your messages!

Thank you very much 😃

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the las jedi is the worst sw movie ever.holiday special rocks!
cut them down to 30min.more wouldn watchable.

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Sounds great. Can I get a link?

Thanks in advance

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Could I get a link as well please?

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Could I get a link as well? This sounds amazing!

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I would love a link of this!

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Would love a link from anyone who has this, sounds interesting!

“You will find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view” — Obi-Wan Kenobi