Star Wars: The Last Jedi has the longest runtime in the history of the franchise, clocking in at 152 minutes. However, the film could have been much longer; according to director Rian Johnson, the movie’s first cut was over 3 hours long.
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“We had a long movie from the start,” Johnson told Collider. “It was well over three hours, the first cut… It’s much better at two and a half [hours] than it was at over three, but it was a cut I had put together, is where we started. And it was over three hours.”
“A lot of really good stuff came out in the edit,” Johnson continued. “I actually just reviewed the deleted scenes we’re gonna have on the Blu-ray. There’s a bunch of—some of my favorite scenes ended up having to come out just structurally… There’s a lot of really substantial, really good scenes. There’s a couple whole sequences actually that we lifted out. It’s weirdly — and this always happens — it’s like your babies you have to kill. It’s some of my favorite stuff from the movie.”
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While audiences will eventually be able to see those cut-scenes in the special features section on the home media release, Johnson explained that he doesn’t intend on releasing a director’s cut. “I’m really not into [releasing an extended cut],” he said. “I feel like the cut is what it is because I feel like it’s the best version of the movie, so the ‘director’s cut’ is the movie that’s going out in theaters. All the deleted scenes, no matter how much I love them, they came out for a reason and it’s all for the greater good of the movie itself. You can watch the deleted scenes on their own, I think that’s the way to watch them, but the movie is definitely the best version of the movie I think.”
As not every deleted scene will appear on the Blu-ray, there are likely some that will never see the light of day.
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Star Wars: The Last Jedi, written and directed by Rian Johnson, opens in theaters Dec. 15 and stars Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, Daisy Ridley as Rey, John Boyega as Finn, Adam Driver as Kylo Ren, Oscar Isaac as Poe Dameron, Andy Serkis as Supreme Leader Snoke, Domhnall Gleeson as General Hux, Gwendoline Christie as Captain Phasma, Anthony Daniels as C-3PO, Lupita Nyong’o as Maz Kanata, Benicio Del Toro as ‘DJ,’ Kelly Marie Tran as Rose Tico, Laura Dern as Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo and the late Carrie Fisher as General Leia Organa.