I’m kind of new here but I have some ideas on how to edit Rise of Skywalker. Before that, it’s starting to seem to me that how much people enjoy this movie is inversely proportional to how much they liked Last Jedi. Those who hated Last Jedi seem to really like this one while those who loved Last Jedi seem to hate this movie. I seem to be an outlier where I loved Last Jedi, it’s my second favorite, but I also loved Rise of Skywalker. There might be more deleted scenes to work with, I hope so, but as of this moment here’s what I would do.
First off I’d like to see if we can remove Chewbacca’s fake death. It’s a cheap attempt at emotional manipulation that almost completely ruins the tension in the final battle. This might also necessitate the removal of the Force battle between Kylo Ren and Rey with the transport. I’d like to remove this because people die and come back to life way too often in this movie. In keeping with the removal of Chewie’s fake death, I’d like the remove Zori Bliss from the end of the movie. I don’t think this would be too difficult, as I don’t remember too many shots of her in the final battle/ending. Having her actually die on the planet when it blows up actually gives some more emotional weight, even though she’s an extremely minor character I’d leave in the stuff with C3PO because they mine it for the best comedy in the trilogy. I’m fine with it because he’s a droid and not a human, so the explanation they use makes sense.
Another change I’m flirting with is removing Han from the film. Mostly because it’s literally just Harrison Ford and Adam Driver repeating their lines from the Force Awakens. We can just have a shot of Ben looking pensive and then throwing away his saber. Again I may or may not cut this because I’m not opposed to having this in.
My most controversial change would be removing Rey being Palpatine’s Granddaughter. It just raises way more questions than it answers, and it just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It’s also way too similar to Kylo Ren’s arc for my liking. I’m not sure how doable this would be, but I’d love to see this as I loved how she was a nobody in Last Jedi
I also like the idea of removing the opening fight scene between Kylo Ren and the villagers provided deleted scenes don’t flesh this out more.
I might also see if we can remove Ben bringing Rey back to life. That would remove their kiss which I do like, but I don’t like the idea of bringing another character who we thought was dead back to life. The film does this way too often already. I’d just change it so Rey doesn’t die at the end, and the last we see of Ben is him getting flung off the cliff by Palpatine. As I’m typing this the idea is losing its appeal because it makes Ben’s arc feel incomplete. I don’t think I’ll do this, but I’ll leave it in in case anyone wants to try and go with this.
One other change I’d like to see is the removal of Rey’s healing abilities. I’m not sure how doable this would be, but I do have an idea of how to pull it off. Just have Rey not stab Kylo Ren with the saber. After Ben stops, I’d like to see if there’s a shot of him sitting down, and then we could immediately cut to Rey’s conversation on how she did want to take his hand.
A final change I’d like to see is the removal of the final scene on Tattooine as it’s really unnecessary and only serves to justify the lackluster and overly silly title. I’d have the film end on the fade to black after Rey, Finn, and Poe hug. This would also prompt a change to the title of the film. Maybe it could be called Rise of the Jedi instead.