Interesting question regarding Mustafar that I thought I’d throw out:
Is the primary utility in keeping it simply that it works as a placeholder? Everyone seems to agree it doesn’t work as a scene or a sequence on its own, and that it’s more or less fundamentally broken, and the information it imparts isn’t necessary (or even understandable without extra-film context).
What is it about the scene that is prompting people to work so hard (and that work is pretty amazing, too!) in saving it? It doesn’t serve a particularly good story purpose, and the primary reason people seem to want it saved is because if it’s gone, the movie “moves too fast.”
The question seems to be this: Do we remove confusion and unnecessary complication by streamlining the film at its open with a Mustafar-free beginning - or - do we try to add more to the sequence for the sake of its providing “breathing room” at the beginning of the movie.
The aesthetics of it, and its ability to “take up time” seem to be its only real selling points. And that’s not a disqualification, either! Star Wars often has moments that exist solely because they look cool (Lightspeed Skipping is a great example from this very movie, in fact) so if Mustafar really looks that cool, then it’s fulfilling its only real purpose, and should be left in.
we really can’t cut alot of this movie out because we don’t have deleted scenes to fill in the time.
Is the point of an edit to make the story better, or to fill time? Why is hitting a pre-determined runtime a goal? Isn’t precisely the same instinct that led to this film’s problems in the first place? it’s possible that the flow and pacing of the movie actually feels better even if the movie is a fair bit shorter than its theatrical runtime was. It’s hard to judge without trying a bunch of ideas in their filmic context and getting a real sense of how that moves from scene to scene through the movie.
Also: reminder that yesterday, Neerb pointed out that removing Mustafar actually cleans up REY’s motivations and actions later in the film
I mean the big thing against Mustafar being in the film is that it isn’t explained but Hal’s edit of the crawl specifically states why Kylo is at Mustafar… how is this scene still confusing, all of the questions are answered… why is Kylo here? Oh he is looking for a weapon to solidify his power, which leads him to the Wayfinder (sound bite of Palpatine now added saying “Find me”) this incident sets off the plot. A lot of people have been letting their knowledge of what the scene could have been prevent them wanting to work on salvaging the scene at all.
A lot of people (including myself, so bias) have worked on keeping this portion of the movie in… so if we remove it all together… all that work we did goes into the trash. Just so we can cut a minute out of the movie.