Check out our first look at Rey’s deleted Ahch-To scene from Star Wars: The Last Jedi
By Buckie Wells
Star Wars: The Last Jedi cut a scene that included Luke’s final lesson with Rey on Ahch-To and here’s our first clip of how it would’ve looked in the film.
We’ve already talked about Star Wars: The Last Jedi‘s weird time management problem and continue to wonder why Rian Johnson made the choices that he did. Though Rey certainly grew as a character in the second installment, there’s still a lot more that we could’ve explored, some of which was shot and ultimately cut from the final version of the film.
If you noticed in the trailers, there’s a shot of Daisy Ridley running on Ahch-To, which we later discovered was part of a deleted scene that the director decided painted Luke Skywalker as too much of a jerk.
On Wednesday, The Star Wars Show gave us our first look at the scene. Check it out below:
As part of the show, Rian Johnson was explaining the difference between The Last Jedi and its novelization and how Jason Fry’s written edition of the film has more room for exposition. Most of the time, I don’t feel the need to read novelizations, but for the sake of really digging into the film and perhaps gaining a little more satisfaction with the final product, I’ll probably read this one. At the very least, I hope it’ll make me appreciate the film more.
I mean, it’s a great sci-fi film. I just still can’t make up my mind whether it’s a great Star Wars film, specifically.
To be fair, though, I don’t think the above Rey scene would’ve made much of a difference. While I’ll never complain about more Daisy Ridley screentime, I prefer my Jedi with smiles on their faces as opposed to angrily shouting about being misled and losing faith in one’s heroes. Her overall disposition in the film was filled with sadness, and maybe that’s why I have such a hard time reconciling the tone of this film.
Related Story: 5 genre performances that deserve better from the Oscars
More importantly, the running gag of Rey ruining all of the Caretakers’ stuff worked perfectly. In the deleted scene, she’s ruining their party, but her intent is to save them and it doesn’t jive with the overall gag.
So my final verdict happens to be that this cut was a good call. But I’ll be curious to see the rest of it when Star Wars: The Last Jedi comes out on Blu-ray this spring.