SPOILER ALERT: Why are you reading this if you haven’t already seen ‘The Force Awakens’?!

It’s quite common for scenes to appear in trailers but never actually make it into the finished movie.  And as some have pointed out, one such deleted scene appeared in the trailer for ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’.  In one of the trailers, the CGI character Maz Kanata, portrayed by Lupita Nyong’o is shown handing General Leia Organa Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber.  This sequence is not in the movie.

In the film, Maz attempts to give Rey the lightsaber, but she refuses.  In the trailer, there is a shot of Maz giving the lightsaber to Leia, but this scene doesn’t appear in the film, despite Nyong’o filming the scene with motion capture technology.

Why was this sequence cut from the final movie?  As director J.J. Abrams explains, it was basically because nothing much came from it:

“Sometimes you discover that things you would have cut off a limb to shoot on the day are absolutely inconsequential, and in fact less impactful than if you were to remove it… As much as you try to kick the tires and write and shoot only what is necessary — no one wants to waste anyone’s time — when you’re in the editing room you realize, for instance, that introducing the character there actually diminishes their power. Or, giving that information actually distracts you from what you should be concentrating on. Or, having that moment happen concurrent with that moment actually gets in the way of both — things like that.

“That was a scene actually filmed, but we took out. At one point, Maz used to continue along with the characters back to the Resistance base, but we realized that she really had nothing to do there of value, except to have her sitting around… Lupita did film scenes on set for that sequence, but it felt like going right just to go left, and it was unnecessary. So we ended up leaving those things out.”

I doubt anyone was really sore about not seeing Maz sitting around doing nothing, especially since the door is left open for her to potentially play a larger part in Episodes to come.

Are you content with the amount of Maz Kanata in ‘The Force Awakens’?  Or would you have liked to have seen a bit more?

Source: Collider