It was a great shot in the trailer, but why wasn’t it in the film?
If you’ve seen The Force Awakens, then you probably have a few questions. Two big ones that may have popped into your mind might have been “Where did Maz Kanata get Anakin’s lightsaber?” and “What happened to Maz after the First Order attacked her bar?”
Well, it’s very possible that there were answers to those questions… they just weren’t in the movie. They were cut along with the shot above.
So… what happened to them?
According to an interview with J.J. Abrams, Maz Kanata joined our heroes to the Resistance base. It was there that she gave Leia her father’s lightsaber. Alas, the scenes had to be cut for the sake of pacing.
“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.”
“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 be sitting around.”
“Lupita did film scenes on set for that sequence, but it felt it unnecessary. So we ended up leaving those things out.”
What happened in the scene?
We don’t know. We’re fairly certain that it’ll be on the blu-ray as an extra. It’s too bad, because the scene had the capacity to be very emotional. However, it seems they took it out (along with Maz in the third act) for the same reasons that George Lucas wrote out Obi-Wan Kenobi out of A New Hope‘s third act.
Wait, Obi-Wan Kenobi wasn’t supposed to die?
Nope. He was supposed to train Luke in The Empire Strikes Back, but Lucas realized Obi-Wan had nothing to do in the third act of the film. Thus, he killed him in order to heighten the emotion for Luke’s character. Yoda was introduced because the filmmaker needed someone to train Luke.
Lucky for us, Maz Kanata is still very much alive and is able to return. Hopefully, we’ll see her flirt with Chewbacca face to face in Episode VIII!
