'De-Feminised' Star Wars: Men's Rights activist creates 45-minute cut of The Last Jedi
It's a complete mess.
Angered by the the existence of strong female characters in Star Wars, one so-called fan has decided to create his own male-empowering cut of LucasFilm's latest sci-fi adventure The Last Jedi. As you might guess, it's a complete mess.
The anonymous user cut down a pirated version of the film and uploaded it to a widely-banned torrent-sharing site where he describes it as the "De-Feminized Fanedit" and, to make the point entirely clear, "The Chauvinist Cut".
"Basically The Last Jedi minus Girlz Powah and other silly stuff," reads a description.
The 46-minute cut doesn't remove every female character from writer-director Rian Johnson's film entirely, but does go out of its way to undermine the ones that remain and render them secondary to the film's male heroes and villains.
It also removes, and in its own view 'rectifies' some of the plot developments in the sequel that angered a vocal minority of fans.
A detailed description of all the major changes made speaks volumes.
Warning: Spoilers for The Last Jedi follow.
Luke Skywalker's arc is cut down so there's no evidence of him being "whiny" or "reluctant", the character of Vice Admiral Holdo (misspelled 'Haldo') is cut completely, the entire Canto Bight casino sequence is cut and there's "no superpowered Rey".
Leia no longer "scolds, questions or demotes" Poe Dameron after he goes against orders, resulting in numerous deaths. Poe also dies in place of Holdo during a pivotal scene.
A fight between Finn and Captain Phasma is cut short as the former finishes off the latter with a single blow. As the description reads: "Women are naturally weaker than men, she isn't force-sensitive, and we know nothing about any exo-skeleton in her suit."
There are references to Kelly Marie Tran's character Rose and her sister Paige as "Asian chick" and "China girl".
Hilariously, the cut also makes an effort to make Kylo Ren less villainous, casting him as "less conflicted and volatile" and reediting an important action sequence so his efforts are more impressive and heroic than those of Rey.
Luke's fate is also re-cut so he's not a force projection on Crait during the finale and dies under the hail of missiles sent by Kylo Ren and the First Order.
"Obviously, it's far from perfect," the editor admits. "For what it's worth, [the film] can now at least be viewed without feeling nauseous about most of the terrible big and small decisions they made in this film.
"Also, at least the intro sequence is now very watchable and actually much cooler without all of Leia's nitpicking. Now it's all one united Resistance fighting without inner conflict and that's much more satisfying to watch."
It's dreadful, obviously, missing the point of a film that goes out of its way to deconstruct the series' mythology by embracing a more complex view of morality that has long-existed in the franchise.
There's a chance that the cut was created as a joke sparked from the backlash the film received upon release from a minority of viewers angered by the direction Johnson took the series in after 2015's The Force Awakens.
Said complaints were amplified online while the film went from strength to strength at the box office, managing to become 2017's highest grossing film after just two weeks in cinemas.