7 Star Wars Scenes Deleted For The Dumbest Reasons
Why were these moving or intense Star Wars moments stupidly erased?
Scenes being deleted during the editing process is a standard part of the moviemaking process, with directors sometimes just feeling that stuff they felt would work on the day of shooting simply doesn't fit in their feature anymore after piecing the whole story together.
And the same goes for the Star Wars franchise, with a ton of intriguing scenes landing on the cutting room floor for a number of reasons.
Some are quite understandable, like when J. J. Abrams noted that he had to erase Maz Kanata handing the Skywalker lightsaber to General Leia Organa in The Force Awakens, because the former would have had nothing to do once she made her way to the Resistance base (via EW).
However, others just feel a little dumb in hindsight.
Which brings us nicely to this very list, which features a collection of scenes that were foolishly erased from the galaxy far, far away because of everything from apparent pacing reasons - in films that boasted other way more unnecessary or unwanted moments - to certain actions making iconic smugglers appear too ruthless.
Buckle up, folks, things are about to get stupid.
7. Rose's Scenes Were Cut For Technical Reasons - Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise Of Skywalker
Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi saw the debut of Kelly Marie Tran's Rose Tico in the galaxy far, far away, with the actor becoming the first-ever Asian-American woman to appear in a major live-action role in Star Wars.
But her first appearance as the brave Resistance hero also brought with it a ton of horrendous online abuse from sexist and racist trolls.
Rather than making a statement by having Tran continue on as an important figure in Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker, the likes of J. J. Abrams and Chris Terrio opted to only include Rose in a noticeably smaller role.
The dumb reason for that reduced part?
Well, according to Terrio, the part Tran was originally supposed to play in that movie was a lot bigger. As he'd tell Awards Daily, they wanted Rose to be "the anchor at the rebel base who was with Leia," and they felt they couldn't leave the iconic General - whose presence was replicated using cut footage from The Force Awakens - at the base alone without any of the principal characters.
In the end, though, Leia barely spent any time interacting with Tico in that picture, with it being revealed that a few of the additional, and eventually deleted, scenes written involving the two "turned out to not meet the standard of photorealism that we’d hoped for."
Terrio would then go on to tell Vulture (via CBR) that one of those moments was actually cut due to Leia's emotional state in Episode VII apparently not matching what they wanted from the character in a scene written for Episode IX, with the team then deleting it at the script stage.
Firstly, having Rose not join Finn and the gang for the majority of their adventure was already a rather stupid move, with her reasons for staying behind - she just had to study Imperial Star Destroyer specs to help stop the Final Order fleet - being jarring at best.
And if Rose was such an "anchor" at the Resistance base, surely the team would have found another way to get her on-screen more in the wake of losing those other Leia moments?
So, it's not hard to see why those #RoseTicoDeservedBetter supporters weren't impressed with this particular explanation.