The Rise of Skywalker star Dominic Monaghan wants a “director’s cut” of the movie

Last week, #ReleaseTheJJCut started to trend on Twitter, suggesting the possibility that there might be some mysterious alternate cut of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker out there, and we have might have to hear about it for years to come.

Not especially helping, Rise of Skywalker star Dominic Monaghan — who played the Rebel codebreaker Beaumont Kin — talked to The Hollywood Reporter about all the footage that didn’t make it into the film. “Like a lot of Star Wars fans, I’m hoping there will be a director’s cut so we’ll get to see more and more of the stuff that was filmed,” he said. “I wasn’t there all the time, but even in the short time that I was there, there was so much stuff filmed that didn’t make it to the theatrical version…. Oh, man, there was so much stuff!”

Getting into details, Monaghan mentioned a scene during the climactic battle where his character, Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) and Connix (Billie Lourd, Carrie Fisher’s daughter) got a little extra screentime. “Another thing that we will hopefully see at some point in the future is that in the final battle, Connix injures her leg,” he said. “Obviously, myself, Rose and Connix are exiting the battle, and Rose has a weapon. While Rose is busy doing stuff, I grab Connix’s arm and put it over my shoulder to make sure that all of us come back as unscathed as possible.”

"I remember texting [director J.J. Abrams] at the end of certain days and saying, “Oh my God, I can’t wait to see that.” It was just extraordinary to even just be involved in that scene, and unfortunately, with the time constraints, they didn’t make it or they changed things around. So, I’m hoping that if and when the DVD comes out that maybe they’ll add extras or they’ll have deleted, additional scenes."

To be fair, what Monaghan is talking about sounds pretty standard — this isn’t like “the Snyder cut” of Justice League that would require that Warner Bros. master lots of unused footage; director’s cuts that reinsert interstitial scenes are very common. And thank goodness, because the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut movement is pretty exhausting.

If you’re like me, you did a double take when you saw Monaghan onscreen in The Rise of Skywalker, because it’s hard for me to not think of him as Merry from The Lord of the Rings or Charlie from Lost. As it ends up, working with Abrams on Lost was how Monaghan got this gig in the first place. “I remember making the pilot on Oahu [Hawaii] and in our downtime, J.J. and I would talk about Star Wars,” Monaghan remembered. “He’s obviously a movie buff and a movie nerd like I am. At one point, we were talking about Star Wars, and it was just the normal stuff that you talk about as Star Wars fans: favorite character, favorite planet, favorite villain, where would you go if you had the Millennium Falcon, favorite moment…. All those kind of questions. To watch him and hear his stories about the adventures on The Force Awakens was brilliant. I’ve been lucky enough to be friends with J.J. for 15 years now, so I’m able to have fun with him and playfully try and convince him to put me in a movie, which he eventually did.”

"J.J. got back to me quite quickly and said, “We’re attempting to cast unknowns,” which became Daisy (Ridley), John (Boyega) and to a lesser degree, Oscar (Isaac), who’d worked a little bit. He wanted people to identify with characters that had no history. With me, I think he thought that people might think, “Oh, there’s that guy from Lost and Lord of the Rings,” which could be a little distracting. When I found out he was coming back for this third one, I’m sure J.J. would say I was even more obnoxious. I was going, “Oh, c’mon, man. I have a Star Wars tattoo. We’ve been talking about Star Wars for 15 years. Please let me do something.” And it worked out."

Specifically, Abrams and Monaghan made a bet about a World Cup game, Monaghan won, and Abrams told him “You’re in.” And that’s how magic happens in Hollywood.

HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA – DECEMBER 16: Dominic Monaghan attends the Premiere of Disney’s “Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker” on December 16, 2019 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Rich Fury/Getty Images)

There’s no doubting Monaghan’s Star Wars bonafides, though. It sounds like the series really did mean something to him. Take what he did between takes one day:

"I went over and put my hand on top of R2’s dome and just silently whispered a few sentences in my brain as a way of paying tribute to how much of an influential, positive element he was in my childhood. That was a moment of emotion that was private and intimate and something that was for me. As I walked over to the set to shoot this other scene, I had a moment of feeling quite overwhelmed and grateful. It was beautiful and bizarre at the same time."

I also like how seriously he takes conversations about The Mandalorian. “I’ve gotten into light-hearted debates on Instagram where I’ve said to people that we can’t keep calling The Child ‘Baby Yoda,'” he said. “This story happens five years after the Battle of Endor, which means that Yoda has obviously passed on, and there’s no reason for him to come back in physical form as a child. It doesn’t benefit him in any way. It’s a creature like Yoda, and I understand that they have to call it something, and it looks like Yoda, but it’s not Yoda.”

"I think it’s important to have that conversation because everything is so specific in Star Wars, and we’re missing a trick if we consistently keep calling that character Baby Yoda. Maybe, that’s what [showrunner Jon] Favreau and his team wants us to do is get distracted or complacent calling the character Baby Yoda so that they can shock us with another revelation. But, for me, I’m always trying to work out why they want us to call this character Baby Yoda. How does that benefit the makers of The Mandalorian? I saw Favreau at the Star Wars premiere, and we talked very briefly about it. I said, “It’s ‘The Child,’ right? That’s what you guys call it?” And he said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, we call it The Child, but we’re totally fine with everyone calling that character Baby Yoda. It works because it creates a conversation.” And that’s what’s happening online. There’s some pretty passionate conversations online about Baby Yoda."

Are there ever. For the record, I always got the idea that Favreau and company would prefer people call Baby Yoda “the Child,” and that no one in the show is every going to call him Baby Yoda, but clearly the internet has created a pet name for him, so why fide the unstoppable tide?

Chapter 5. The Child in THE MANDALORIAN, exclusively on Disney+

You know, Monaghan sounds like the kind of guy who would love to be on The Mandalorian, which featured plenty of interesting guest stars in its first season. And he’s already in contact with Favreau. My bet is that we’ll see him in season 3 at the very latest.

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