Star Wars: The Last Jedi Director Reveals Why He Cut Rey’s Third Lesson From the Film

Despite Luke Skywalker telling Rey that he’ll teach her three lessons while she’s on the planet of Ahch-To, Star Wars: The Last Jedi only gets into three of them before Rey departs to return to The Resistance. What some fans may not know though is that writer/director Rian Johnson wrote, shot, and edited a scene with the third lesson, which was put on the home media releases for the film. One fan recently discovered this scene, which shows Rey being tricked by Luke into acting when no problem was actually present, and asked Johnson why it was removed and the director surprisingly answered!

“Mostly pace, and something about it always felt a little repetitive,” Johnson tweeted in response. “Coming at a point in the movie where we want to hit the gas and start escalating towards the finale. I love the scene, it was a tough (but ultimately good) cut.”

The full scene can be watched on Disney+, along with a commentary by Johnson where the filmmaker went into more detail about why the scene got cut and why he loves it so much even now. Johnson said that removing the scene was something they spent a lot of time going back and forth on, specifically because of how great stars Mark Hamill and Daisy Ridley are and because it offered a brief action moment on the island (which didn’t really have any others).

“Taken on its own I love everything in here but pacing wise there was always something about it that kind of stuck, and it just felt like at this point in the movie, you watch the whole thing in context and you felt like you just wanted to move past it,” Johnson says in the commentary for the scene. “Once we lifted it out and realized if we ended on that beat of her saying ‘Kylo failed you, I won’t,’ it worked just as well. In a different way, but just as well. It’s another one of those things where when you take something out, stick the two things together and realize it works. It’s really, really hard to come up with an argument for keeping it in, especially if it helps the pacing and especially if you have a movie that’s as big and long as this one. And especially if you know in the back of your head ‘well, at least they’ll be able to watch it in the deleted scenes.’”

Johnson remains on track to continue playing in that galaxy far, far away as the auteur was announced to be developing a new trilogy of films even before The Last Jedi opened. The development slate at Lucasfilm is in a bit of a flux for the time being though so it remains to be seen when those movies will eventually happen, but the next Star Wars movie is scheduled for a December 2022 release date by the studio. Even if he doesn’t make another Star Wars movie, a big book of his behind-the-scenes photos taken during the film’s production will be officially released “at some point.”

(H/T Cinema Blend)