The Last Jedi is a film with great ideas and themes that it doesn’t communicate clearly.
They don’t explicitly communicate them to avoid needless spoonfeeding. Imagine if J.J. explicitly had Kylo go up to the camera and spoonfeed us that he was injured and bleeding and that was why he lost to Rey.
Removed Tali and all introductions to the bombing fleet personnel - it’s more important to focus on Paige in this sequence.
It’s there to add weight to when Tallie and the others — some of Poe’s friends — are killed in the ambush.
Removed random insert shots of stuff in Luke’s hut; the scene cuts directly to his robes being folded.
It’s an establishing shot telling us that we’re inside “some kind of building”.
Reinstated the deleted scene where Finn gets his jacket from Poe, with scene transition by poppasketti and pleasehello (Hal).
It’s redundant. We don’t need to push it down our throats that Finn has to fight for the cause.
Removed Leia slapping Poe. That’s not how a good leader would act, not to mention it’s a double-standard; imagine if Han slapped Rey for something in TFA.
The difference is that Poe caused mass genocide.
Reinstated the “Luke Has A Moment” deleted scene (Hal).
I also think it’s redundant. It can be already be inferred he’s mourning Han in the Falcon scene.
Force Skype conversations: dialogue extensively trimmed. Only one line is spoken in the first one, which breaks the connection; in the second they manage to hold a short conversation; by the third, they can communicate freely; in the fourth, they touch hands.
Scene 1 re-establishes Rey saw Han as a father figure, foreshadows Luke’s death and (re-)establishes Kylo’s relationship with Luke. Don’t remember too much about Scene 2.
Cut the Robot Chicken style joke where Luke tickles Rey’s hand.
It’s to show that Rey is naive, especially when it comes to the Force.
Removed reference to Luke cutting himself off from the Force. This is such a massive idea that the KOTOR games were completely centred on exploring it, and here it’s tossed out as a throwaway explanation for something that doesn’t even need one. Having the Force was never like having a GPS tracker on you in the OT, so why would we suddenly need a reason that Leia and Snoke haven’t been able to find Luke with the Force?
Luke doesn’t want to use the Force anymore. He thinks he, himself, will make things worse. It also explains how he didn’t sense Han’s death and the NR’s destruction.
Luke’s first lesson has been pruned to focus on his opinion that the Jedi’s legacy is failure, and so is his own.
If you’re referring to the lesson about the light, that was to show that the light would still exist, even if the Jedi die off. Luke believes the galaxy doesn’t NEED the Jedi.
No shirtless Kylo japes. He just happens to not be wearing a shirt now.
It’s to show that Rey is actually seeing Kylo and not just sensing him.
Luke deactivates his lightsaber immediately in the third flashback; he doesn’t realise Kylo is awake and hears it, . VFX shot courtesy of SparkySywer.
He keeps it on because he was ashamed of what he was doing. It’s like in ROTJ when he sees his hand after catching himself harming Vader.
Removed iron/spaceship gag, using a deleted scene restored by poppasketti (Hal).
Then how are you going to explain how or where they got FO uniforms?
Used poppasketti’s editing of the buildup to Snoke’s death using musical score from The Force Awakens (Hal).
Snoke’s hubris blinds him from realizing Kylo was gonna kill him.
Removed the awkward kiss between Finn and Rose. There aren’t any romantic undertones in their story arc so it comes out of nowhere, and Finn doesn’t actually look particularly pleased about it.
That’s the point. Finn is so caught up in Rey he doesn’t realize Rose loves him, and even he rejects her because she sexually harassed him, which also reinforces that he’s still into Rey, even WITH caring for the cause.
Cut the Broom Boy scene from the ending, instead irising out on the small spark of the Resistance that the whole film has been about saving as they bond in the Falcon.
This removes the point of the movie - Luke’s sacrifice inspires hope in times of hopelessness. This also removes foreshadowing for the galaxy rallying on Exegol.