Forget the Snyder cut of Justice League, there’s a hot new fan campaign in town. I’m talking about the push to get Disney to release J.J. Abrams’ extended cut of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. After widespread disappointment with the final installment of the Sequel Trilogy, fingers are being pointed at who’s responsible. Naturally, the blame first fell on Abrams. However, recent leaks have pointed to executive meddling from Lucasfilm and Disney over the form that the movie would take.
Now, a new petition seizes on the fact that Abrams screened a three hour cut of the pic to executives and even argued that the film was so plot-heavy it should be split into two. If you’ve seen the film and managed to make sense of its tangled, chaotic and confusing story, we’re sure you can see his point. In its theatrical cut of 2 hours and 22 minutes, Rise pinballs between locations, sends the characters on repetitive space fetch quests and tosses in crazy new elements (like a hundred-strong fleet of Star Destroyers equipped with Death Star lasers) without properly establishing them.
Hell, the film is so condensed that it doesn’t even bother to explain how Emperor Palpatine survived and his message to the galaxy that kicks off the plot ended up taking place in Fortnite. We kid you not.
The petition explains that the Abrams cut would have included the following and calls for Disney to release it:
“More LGBTQ representation, force ghosts, more insight in Rey and Kylo’s emotional struggle including a stellar performance by Adam Driver, more nods to other franchise movies, expanded context on crucial scenes such as Han Solo’s visit to Kylo as well as Rey killing Kylo/ healing Rey, justified knights of Ren, Force sensitive Finn, and a much more satisfying and mind-blowing ending.”
It remains to be seen how much of this footage actually exists, but I think Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker can only be improved by letting the narrative stop to catch its breath a bit. Whether Disney will ever admit that they got it wrong and actually release an extended cut is another matter entirely, but whatever the case, if you want to sign the petition, here’s where you can do it.