Rian Johnson’s First ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ Cut Was Three Hours, Had to Remove ‘Favorite’ Scenes

“Star Wars: The Last Jedi” opens nationwide in less than two weeks, and we already know it will make history as the longest entry in the franchise with a two-and-a-half hour runtime. 150 minutes is certainly long, but apparently it’s nothing compared to the first cut director Rian Johnson put together.

Johnson told Collider during a recent interview that his first cut of “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” ran over the three-hour mark, although he admits “the movie is much better at two and half hours then it was at over three.”

“A lot of really good stuff came out in the edit,” Johnson told Collider. “I just reviewed the deleted scenes we’re going to have on the Blu-ray. Some of my favorite scenes had to come out structurally. There’s a lot of really substantial, really good scenes [that were cut]. A couple whole sequences we lifted out, some of my favorite stuff in the movie.”

While the deleted scenes Johnson is talking about will be included on the film’s Blu-ray release, the filmmaker has no plans to put the scenes back in the movie for some kind of special extended edition release.

“I’m really not into that. I feel like the cut is what it is because it’s the best version of the movie,” Johnson said. “The director’s cut is the movie that’s going out in theaters. All the deleted scenes, no matter how much I love them, 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. The movie [at two-and-a-half hours] is definitely the best version of the movie.”

“Star Wars: The Last Jedi” opens December 15. Watch Johnson’s video interview with Collider below.