Before Star Wars: The Force Awakens whizzed into theatres little less than a month ago, J.J. Abrams estimated that there were “about a dozen” scenes left scattered on the cutting room floor.
Now that some time has passed and the punishment for spoiling the film ahead of time isn’t quite as severe as it once was, details are beginning to emerge that illustrate some of those scenes in question that didn’t make the cut for one reason or another. And one involved Lupita Nyong’o’s Maz Kanata duking it out with Stormtroopers.
[zerg]In a similar vein to Yoda, The Force Awakens emphasized the ancient power of Kanata without necessarily thrusting her into the thick of battle. A wise move, of course, but learning that Abrams had at one point considered an action scene for Nyong’o wise old alien has piqued our curiosity. Outlining the creative process at work behind the scenes of TFA, SFX Supervisor Chris Corbould offered more information about the scene in question.
There was a particular part of a scene that never made it, where they go underneath the castle and they’re going into the underground passageways, and stormtroopers are coming down the stairs and Maz uses her powers to collapse the ceiling.
From my point of view, [that] worked absolutely brilliantly because you had all the main actors running up and then Maz does her bit and then the whole ceiling collapses in front of them, but that never made it. That was a shot I was quite proud of, actually, it worked really, really well.
Granted, while the eventual Blu-ray release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens won’t feature an extended cut of the space opera, it’s likely that Disney will bundle together said deleted scene and the remaining dozen when Abrams’ film plots course for its home video release.