Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker creative supervisor Neal Scanlan has opened up about why The Eye of the Webbish Bog was cut from the opening scene of Episode IX.
In an interview with Collider, Scanlan, who started working as a creature creator on Star Wars movies following the Lucasfilm-Disney acquisition, explained that the extended opening scene was probably cut down because “there was too much time being spent” on something that could be “explained much quicker”, though he confirmed that the “sequence exists.”
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“That was a character that was designed very early on in the day,” he said of The Eye of the Webbish Bog, described in The Rise of Skywalker novelisation. “Jake Lunt [Davies], who’s one of my concept designers, we were all playing around with this idea and talking about it and he did this drawing and J.J. saw it and went, ‘That is amazing.’
“It was one of those moments where it was like, ‘This has to be in the movie.’ So we actually did build it and we took it to a place called Black Park in the UK, which is close to Pinewood Studios, where we shot it in a lake on location, and that sequence exists. Unfortunately, it didn’t make it to the movie story, plot-wise, etc. It was a fully practical character shot in a location, and it is amazing.”
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Explaining why he thought the scene ended up on the cutting room floor, Scanlan added: “I think it maybe was too lengthy an explanation for something that [Abrams] was able to explain in the movie much quicker, eventually. J.J.’s movies move very quickly, don’t they? And it was all part of Kylo Ren’s journey and I think he just felt that there was too much time being spent on something which he explained much quicker.
“So that’s all it was, really. Runtime is always my biggest fear on any movie. So much of what we do, so much of what we shoot—and I’m sure this is the same for every department—you invest so much time and love in it and you hope it’ll make the final cut, but it doesn’t always do that because the movie would be four hours long. Which would be great! [Laughs].”
Official unused concept art for #TheRiseOfSkywalker showcase designs for “The Oracle” alien and its baby’s head! More leaked concept art here: https://t.co/Wzohk14uLO pic.twitter.com/1PuinzWciJ
— Star Wars Direct (@StarWars_Direct) January 20, 2020
The cut scene, featuring The Eye of The Webbish Bog, was recently detailed in an excerpt from The Rise of Skywalker novelization, wherein Kylo Ren encounters the strange creature protecting the Sith Wayfinder before acquiring the device on his quest to find Exegol – which provides further context for Ren’s on-screen confrontation with the Alazmec.
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Scanlan, however, holds on to the hope that the “fully practical” spider-like being might be brought back out of the creature shop for a future adventure in the galaxy far, far away, as he admitted that he would like to see the character revisited in the Disney+ series The Mandalorian.
“I hope that we can maybe bring that back in some way shape or form on the TV series [The Mandalorian] or that we can revisit that character in some way because it was a haunting image and a very unusual image,” he told the outlet. “But one which I think was incredibly Star Wars. So yeah, somewhere there’s footage of that.”
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Unfortunately, it might be some time before we get a proper look at the Mustafar-monster-dweller, as there has been no indication of any deleted scenes being included on The Rise of Skywalker’s digital and home releases. Plus, The Mandalorian Season 2 recently wrapped production without any mention of the Webbish Bog, which is probably for the best as adorable Baby Yoda might have mistaken his tentacles for those of an edible amphibian.
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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.
Source: IGN.com Here's Why Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker's Original Opening Scene Was Cut