So I first heard of this from Mundanematt, someone out there made a 47-Minute, ‘Womanless’ cut of The Last Jedi and the media got apoplectic over this. The Last Jedi: De-Feminized Fanedit (aka The Chauvinist Cut) has made its way around the internet and when I first heard this was a thing, I giggled, some including many of the stars of the film took the piss at it and many didn’t think it was that big of a deal…except the media who lost their shit. The Washington Post, Huffington Post, Inverse, Slate, The Wrap, AV Club …the vitriol was off the charts about this…So I had to watch it.

So here is the description of the film by the guy who edited it.

Basically The Last Jedi minus Girlz Powah and other silly stuff.

It would probably be easier to make a list of things that were kept instead of things that were changed. Hardly any scene got away without cuts.

The resulting movie is (wait for it …) 46 minutes long.

No whiny/reluctant/murderous psycho Luke. 

NO HALDO! She simply doesn’t exist. Her whole subplot doesn’t exist.

The Kamikaze is carried out by Poe. ( = Poe dies.) 

Leia never scolds, questions nor demotes Poe. 

Lea dies. Kylo kills her. 

Kylo is more badass and much less conflicted and volatile. 

Kylo takes on more of Snoke’s guards, Rey struggles with a single one. 

No bomber heroism by china girl in the beginning. 

No Canto Bight. 

No superpowered Rey. 

Luke is not a semi-force-ghost and is smashed by the first laser cannon shot.

Phasma is finished after the first blow by Finn. (Women are naturally weaker than men, she isn’t force-sensitive, and we know nothing about any exo-skeleton in her suit) –

Asian chick speaks less, doesn’t bully Finn, Finn doesn’t try to escape, she is never formally introduced. She is just there and occasionally smiles at Finn or screams “Finn!”. She has no sister. Serves her right for all the heinous stuff she did.

Lots of little cuts reducing the number of female facial shots. Too many to count. (Pun intended.) 

Quite a few scenes rearranged so that the flow of the shortened movie is still somewhat coherent.

So here are my thoughts on the edit

• All jokes aside, the opening is legitimately better than the real film. The first 4 minutes of this flows so smoothly that if you saw this in the theaters you would have been way more satisfied. The jokes are cut out, the oversaturation of characters are cut out, and it makes Poe look more like a hero and badass than the film did. Also without Leia telling him to pull out, it doesn’t come across as Poe is just a hothead idiot who disobeyed orders. So as far as the first six minutes go…
• The problem with editing out the women is that it seems like things are just happening with no context, even if the context is bad.
• Rey is seen already training with Luke, without all the story, however, this makes no sense.
• Despite nearly all context being cut out of the film, the DELETION of all the dumb scenes that everyone complained about is still an addition by subtraction win.
• So much of the ‘Disney comedy’ is cut out.
• Kylo Ren does come off as more menacing in this cut which is what should have happened in the real film.
• They cut out all the Porgs….a win
• They cut out the pointless trip to Space Monaco with all the Anti-Capitalism/Pro PETA stuff which no one liked and was completely pointless to the story…again a win.
• This edit basically makes all the Rey scenes pointless with no context. I actually don’t hate Rey, I just hate that Disney made her a Mary Sue and didn’t give her character enough heart.
• This version makes Luke Skywalker look better like a hero ….go figure.
• This edit makes no sense to how Rey ends up on Ren’s ship
• Where did Benicio del Toro come from?
• Without The Space Monaco Plotline and Her Sister, Rose Is Just A Pointless Character
• Benicio del Toro is 100% pointless in this edit
• lol Finn just one shotted Plasma
• Problem with the ending, if Leia and Poe are ‘dead’ why wouldn’t the rest of the group just escape, there is no reason to take out the cannon.
• C’mon son, this is your edit and you didn’t take Poe out of the ending when he is supposed to be dead?
• The Finn ‘sacrifice’ is edited out
• haha Luke just gets blasted…that’s kinda funny
• END!

Final Thoughts:

First off, the media reports about this fanedit are extremely misleading. They didn’t edit the women out of The Last Jedi, they edited feminism out of The Last Jedi. I know for a fact that everyone who wrote an article in the media about this edit didn’t watch it because this is a major driving point for the outrage over this but that is not what happened.

The guy who made this edit is blatantly trolling the people who praised The Last Jedi for its feminist undertones and the fact that these same people are now furious that someone simply cut out all of the crap they loved that audiences hated shows the disconnect they have with the people. Rey, Leia, and Rose are still in the film. What the film cut out was nearly everything that I and many audience members complained about the film. It goes to show you how much filler was in this movie considering the fact that someone cut out 104 minutes of the film and the story is still easy to follow (To a degree).

So the big question is, is it better than the actual movie…

I can’t sit here and pretend that somehow I enjoyed a 46-minute edit of a film less than I did the 2 1/2 hour original film I gave 1 star to in the first place. The Last Jedi is a bad movie to begin with so it’s obvious it wasn’t getting any better with a fan edit. But what did it get right?: it’s shorter, it cut out all of the stupid Disney humor, it cut out plot points that had nothing to do with overall story, it cut out scenes that Star Wars fans hated like Leia Superman and Luke drinking Blue Milk, the characters look must better because all of the scenes that made them unlikable are removed, and film doesn’t feel overbloated with pointless characters that balloon the runtime to 150 minutes without contributing to the plot.

Now yes, the fanedit has no context, no real story, and is very disjointed. The story makes enough sense to understand what is happening but not why it is happening. But that is a problem with the film itself, not the edit because once you add in the context of the original cut, it makes a bad plot that much worse. Like I mentioned earlier, the point of this edit isn’t to make The Last Jedi a great movie but simply make it better using the ‘addition by subtraction’ method. I give this guy credit for making the first six minutes legitimately better than the original cut and if you can find, I suggest you check it out despite what the media is telling you. However, at the end of the day, this edit only goes highlight the problems The Last Jedi had and I’m not interested in watching it again, but at least there is a cut of the movie that largely removes all the crap I didn’t like.

 

 

 

2/5

 

Don’t Forget to Like, Follow This Blog at Society-Reviews.com, and follow on Twitter For Updates.