Most people have figured out by now Star Wars fans are a passionate bunch and often tend to want things a certain way. They’ve made demands in the past, like petitioning to have The Last Jedi removed as canon. Now some fans are demanding Disney release the extended Revenge of the Sith cut.
Star Wars fans have set up a petition on Change.org with the sole goal of having Disney release a four-hour extended cut of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. At the time of this reporting, the petition already has 17,287 signatures. Here’s what it has to say:
The original Star Wars: Revenge of The Sith (2005) cut was over four hours long, and we think that George Lucas should do the right thing and give the fans what we deserve and what is rightfully ours. We love democracy, and we hope he does too.
As of right now, there’s no evidence that a four-hour Revenge of the Sith cut exists, but there have been rumors it exists for some time. The current runtime for Revenge of the Sith is two hours and twenty minutes. It’s likely the creative team shot a ton of footage, but it’s hard to imagine they shot enough for a four-hour story that would be actually good.
We do know Revenge of the Sith had its fair share of cuts, but most of them were in pre-production or during filming. For instance, the writers of the script originally had planned a different ending for Padme where she put a knife to Anakin’s neck before Anakin killed her, but they changed it.
George Lucas also cut a complicated lightsaber scene during filming Revenge of the Sith. Ewan McGregor had been training for weeks to master the choreography to fight Grievous’ Magnaguards, but since production was falling too far behind, George Lucas cut the scene and had a container drop on them, instead.
Star Wars petitions to have a director’s cut or extended cut are not exactly new. Earlier this year, Star Wars fans had become more vocal about wanting a J.J. Abrams cut of The Rise of Skywalker. This comes after rumors hit the internet that scenes were cut, including a scene where Finn uses the Force. As of right now, that petition reached 8.736 signatures. On top of all this, Dominic Monaghan joined the chorus, saying he hoped they release a director’s cut.
One person who’s not interested in director’s cuts is The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson. He argued that his director’s cut is the theatrical version of The Last Jedi and that all the deleted scenes came out of the movie for a reason.
He makes a solid point. More often than not, movies are edited for fluff and bloat that don’t do anything to help the overall narrative. Longer movies don’t mean better movies. As for the Revenge of the Sith, there’s a strong case it doesn’t need to be any longer than it already is.
