‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’’ 7 Deleted Scenes Revealed, More Surprising What Doesn't Appear

Even at two hours and 16 minutes, Star Wars: The Force Awakens feels cut to the bone, with hardly any time spent in hyperspace transit, Imperial bureaucracy, or Resistance speechifying. Instead, most of the runtime is breathless action, as The Force Awakens pushes Finn and Rey from one planet to another to another. Now, in advance of the April 1 digital release and April 4 Blu-ray release, Entertainment Weekly has the details on deleted scenes that will be included as special features. Many of the deleted scenes add back little bits of connective tissue that might have smoothed over the slideshow leaps from location to location, but it’s more surprising what isn’t included.

Here’s a quick description of the seven Force Awakens deleted scenes.

FN-2187 on Jakku

Instead of stumbling around aimlessly, Finn find himself pointing his stormtrooper blaster at a villager. Unless director J.J. Abrams imagined a much more haunted character, it’s safe to assume that Finn doesn’t pull the trigger.

General Leia Being A General

A big Force Awakens frustration for me was when Poe Dameron and Greg Grunberg get to do the bulk of the Starkiller Base infodump. Wasn’t Leia supposed to do the big General speech?

The Force Awakens’ deleted scenes include time for General Leia to actually act like a General, reacting to BB-8’s distress call after the massacre on Jakku.

Maz Kanata’s Castle Raid

Remember when the First Order blows Maz Kanata’s castle to pieces, but then we see Han, Finn and Chewie blasting away in the rubble, leaving us to imagine something like Buster Keaton’s house fall?

A deleted scene included in the digital release shows the heroic trio confronted in Maz’s basement by a squad of stormtroopers before making it outside.

Kylo Ren Investigates The Millennium Falcon

After crash landing on the surface of Starkiller Base, the Millennium Falcon is left behind in the snow. In this deleted scene Kylo Ren goes to investigate personally, prompting him to consider his father and childhood. It’s unclear from what EW has seen whether or not Ren will actually flashback to Han and Leia as parents.

Poe Dameron Among The Stars

One early complaint about Star Wars: The Force Awakens was its lack of stars. Where are the space battles? Instead, space seemed mostly like teleport tubes between action scenes on different planets.

This scene, with Poe and Black Squadron preparing for the attack on Starkiller Base, would’ve injected a taste of space.

Starkiller Base Speeder Escape

Finn and Rey escape from the Starkiller Base gangway (site of Han Solo’s death) to a forbidding, snowy forest for their big showdown with Kylo Ren. This deleted scene reveals that they get their on First Order snowspeeders.

Finn In Recovery

There’s already a moment of Rey watching over Finn as he recuperates from the lightsaber wound inflicted by Kylo Ren. One of the new deleted scenes will expand on this moment, just before Rey takes off after Luke Skywalker.

Many of the deleted scenes contribute to flow between planets and bases. They’re likely just a few shots each, used to move people from one place to another.

Unfortunately, none of the Force Awakens deleted scenes do much for some of the more obvious shortcomings in character development, which is surprising. For example, on first viewing it seemed like Captain Phasma’s disappearance down the garbage chute was most likely not intended to be her last moment in the script, but got condensed to a last laugh line for economy’s sake. How did she get out of Starkiller Base? We’ll have to wait for Episode 8, since it doesn’t seem to be in the deleted scenes.

Another big surprise is the complete lack of additional footage from Han Solo’s big salvage ship, where the Rathtars escape. One of the gangs who confronts Han Solo over his debts is Kanjiklub. Since Kanjiklub was made up of The Raid fight team, it seemed likely there was additional action footage cut for timing.

Of course, there’s definitely footage that was shot but won’t appear in The Force Awakens deleted scenes. For example, there’s still been no mention of Constable Zuvio.

It’s possible more deleted scenes will eventually emerge, but for now these seven new scenes on the upcoming Force Awakens release should give us more Star Wars to chew over until Rogue One: A Star Wars Story comes out on Dec. 16.