J.J. Abrams Explains Trailer Scenes Cut From Star Wars: The Force Awakens

SPOILERS For Star Wars: The Force Awakens ahead!

It happens to any movie, especially when trailers hit as much as a year (or even a hair more) before a movie comes out. Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a great example, with trailers that featured scenes and even entire characters that never made the film. Even signature moments didn't hit the big screen. So what happened?

"There's a shot where Kylo Ren turns on his lightsaber, which was also not in the movie," director J.J. Abrams told EW when they first asked about Constable Zuvio. That character even got an action figure, then wasn't part of the finished film. "There were a bunch of things we ended up not using."

Maz Kanata also never handed the fabled lightsaber once owned by Anakin and then Luke Skywalker to Leia as seen in the trailer, nor did she go back to the Resistance base, a scene Abrams originally had written and shot with actress Lupita Nyong'o.

"Lupita did film scenes on set for that sequence, but it felt like going right just to go left, and it was unnecessary," the director said. He did assure fans that they didn't put anything in the trailer as a purposeful misdirect, though, rather, some of them just didn't fit.

"Sometimes you discover that things you would have cut off a limb to shoot on the day are absolutely inconsequential, and in fact less impactful than if you were to remove it."

So don't expect those scene to show back up in the blu-ray or some kind of "director's cut." Maybe if J.J. lets it sit for twenty years, he'll want to come back and retool it (we kid, we kid).