I hadn't watched TLJ since it was in the theatres cause it left such a bad taste in my mouth and that sapped any motivation I had for this movie, but since I do plan on seeing this I had to rewatch TLJ eventually. Just for the fun of it I took a rip of TLJ and using iMovie removed all references of the casino world sidequest and by extension almost all scenes with Finn, Rose, and Benicio del Toro and it's actually quite watchable. With 30 minutes of unnecessary fluff shaved off, it actually flows a lot better.
Is it perfect? No, and some things don't make sense, but in my defense neither did parts of the theatrical cut haha
I finished watching it on the weekend and a few funny things in my re-cut:
- Finn first shows up just after the Rebels escape in the beginning and right before they realize they were tracked through lightspeed and doesn't appear again until the final dogfight is about to begin. In fact, Laura Dern and Billie Lourd have much larger roles in my version. He's basically an extra with a bunch of lines.
- Poe isn't even hauled off to the brig for insubordination in my re-cut (cause there's a lot of radio contact between him and Finn during this scene). He just gets in an argument with Laura Dern and pulls a gun on her, along with a bunch of mutineers that come from nowhere
- Rose is just a fighter pilot in the final dogfight and with that cringeworthy kissing scene removed, the hug he gives Rey is a lot less awkward. Like Finn, she's basically an extra too haha