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- Rian Johnson on His 3-Hour First Cut of Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Rian Johnson on His 3-Hour First Cut of Star Wars: The Last Jedi
While Star Wars: The Last Jedi will be the longest Star Wars movie yet at just a hair over two and a half hours, the first cut of the film was considerably longer. Collider's own Steve Weintraub recently spoke with The Last Jedi writer/director Rian Johnson at the press day for the upcoming sequel, and the filmmaker revealed that his initial cut of the film ran over three hours. Almost every film gets shortened during the editing process as the filmmaker fine-tunes the story and pacing, but The Last Jedi marks a notable case given that Star Wars fans will want to pore over every single bit of footage available.
Johnson noted that while The Last Jedi's final runtime is lengthy, the filmmaker knew this was always going to be a long movie ever since he put together the first cut:
We had a long movie from the start. It was well over three hours, the first cut It's much better at two and a half [hours] than it was at over three, but it was a cut I had put together, is where we started. And it was over three hours.