'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' Deleted Scenes Teased In New Blu-Ray Trailer
It took decades for the deleted scenes from the original Star Wars trilogy to eventually emerge from the Lucasfilm vaults and watching them was a surreal experience. Here was new Star Wars footage, original trilogy footage, that we hadn't seen a hundred times before. We can sit around all day and complain about the failings of that big Blu-ray box set, but those excised scenes made it all worthwhile. Deleted scenes are usually deleted for a reason, but watching them is often key to understanding how a film is shaped in the editing room. Here's what simply had to go, for one reason or another.
Thankfully, fans won't have to wait thirty-something years to watch deleted scenes from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, as they will be included on the upcoming Blu-ray and DVD release. In fact, a new trailer has arrived teasing these scenes, because those monsters at Disney know just how interested we are in watching any and all additional footage.
On one level, a teaser trailer for bonus features feels like we're being trolled. There mere existence of this preview is mildly infuriating – they already teased these scenes yesterday! We were all going to buy this disc in less than two weeks anyway, even the guy who's seen the movie twenty times. But your icy heart will melt just a little when you click play below. These sequences were surely deleted for a reason, but seeing glimpses of this footage is undeniably fascinating.
The deleted scenes on the disc are titled "Finn and the Village," "Jakku Message, "X-Wings Prepare for Lightspeed," "Kylo Searches the Falcon," "Snow Speeder Chase," and "Finn Will Be Fine." And additional deleted scene, titled "Tunnel Standoff," can only be accessed by redeeming the digital copy of the film that will be included in the Blu-ray combo pack.
The names of those deleted scenes align with the glimpses we're given in the video above. There appears to be an entire sequence where Kylo Ren visits the Millennium Falcon on Starkiller Base, which feels like a big cut. And that "Tunnel Standoff" seems to be a deleted action scene where Han Solo and the gang encounter some First Order Stormtroopers in the tunnel underneath Maz Kanata's cantina. However, "Snow Speeder Chase" is the one that's grabbing me the most right now because certain toys and merchandise depicted an action scene on the surface of Starkiller Base that was not in the finished film and I couldn't help but wonder what happened to it. Well, here it is.
The one downside to this is that there is most certainly additional footage that was shot and excised that will not be on the final disc. It's no secret that this film was massively restructured and went through a number of reshoots, particularly all of the scenes with Maz Kanata. Maybe those scenes will surface in a few decades...
Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be available on Blu-ray and DVD on April 5, 2016.