2017’s highest-grossing movie Star Wars: The Last Jedi (and it was still considered a financial disappointment) comes out digitally on Disney Movies Anywhere on March 13, with a Blu-ray and DVD release to follow on March 27. There won’t be any porg-slicing bonus features, but there will be 14 deleted scenes, which weren’t cut from the film because they didn’t work, according to director Rian Johnson, but rather, “the movie as a whole was better without it.”
Entertainment Weekly has the run-down on five of the deleted scenes, including more Rey among the Caretakers and Finn, Rose, and BB-8’s mission aboard Supreme Leader Snoke’s star destroyer, but there are two in particular that stand out. One of the chief criticisms of The Last Jedi is that Rey and Finn, who spend a good chunk of The Force Awakens together, are apart for almost the entire film. A deleted scene wouldn’t have fixed this, but it would have allowed an emotional moment (with that rascal BB-8) between the friends.
Finn is struggling with whether to abandon the Resistance. That’s when BB-8 rolls up on him with a hologram of Rey saying an emotional goodbye to Finn while he lay unconscious in his recovery pod, gravely wounded by Kylo Ren’s lightsaber attack. (Via)
“I was looking for any opportunity I could to emotionally connect those two,” Johnson said. “I thought it was a really sweet little scene. I loved John Boyega’s performance in it. Ultimately it was meant to explain his motivation for going [to find Rey and quit the Resistance], but we realized that you understood his motivation, because he tells it to Rose. Once we realized we could get away without it, it was something that just naturally fell away.”
Another scene that fell way: Luke and Leia’s goodbye to Han Solo.
Luke goes to his stone hut alone and sits quietly, eyes welling with tears over the old friend he will never see again. As he grieves, the film cuts to Leia in a similar pose, far away. She is sitting beside a window on the Resistance starship Raddus, and the cut is meant to suggest she and her brother are sharing a moment of grief. (Via)
It’s peculiar this poignant moment between siblings was left out of the film, but Johnson “realized just for pacing in that section, we had to stick with Rey and Luke… I was very sorry to lose it. I think it’s a beautiful performance from Mark Hamill.” It’s not his most beautiful performance, though. That was left in.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)