Earlier this week, a “men’s rights activist” edited out all the women from Star Wars: The Last Jedi because, well, who needs 'em, right? The entire cast of the movie roasted him to smithereens, and everyone else in their right mind could clearly see what an inane idea it was. But that was never going to be the end of it, was it? Rather predictably, someone’s now gone and re-cut the movie to remove out all the men. Even though it is a bit “rough around the edges,” it supposedly "substantially cut[s] down on characters whining about not getting their way.” Gotta love justice.
An anonymous Dorkly user announced that they had made the honorable decision to remove all the men from Star Wars on Thursday as a response to the all-male cut that recently made the rounds online. The 36-minute result, titled The Last Jedi: De-Meninized Fanedit, cannot be legally watched—as the author puts it, “Disney's lawyers would find a way to sue for custody of my future children”—but they claim it is coherent and streamlined, perhaps even more so than the original film. The author notes that “the plot was much simpler and easier to follow without dudes mucking up the works.”
The De-Meninizer goes on to great detail exactly how she simplified the film’s plot, and they clearly know a lot about the Star Wars universe and put a lot of care into how this manless edit would come together. The simplicity begins immediately, as the opening crawl becomes simpler and shorter by just removing any references to Supreme Leader Snoke, who is, of course, male.
Next, the editor switched out Poe for BB-8. That means Poe doesn’t do “manly things” like “disobeying commands form a superior officer,” clearing up the plot line for BB-8 to have the spotlight.
"Without Poe's meddling and eventual mutiny, Holdo and Leia would have a lot more precious time to make plans," the user wrote. "The manless cut acknowledges the additional preptime by putting Holdo and Leia safely on another vessel while a ship on autopilot warps right through the First Order fleet."
The user even found a way around having to edit Luke Skywalker out of the Star Wars movie. It was easy, in fact, since Rey does end up teaching herself a lot of her Jedi skills. Skywalker can be swapped out for those weird space nuns and the whole storyline stays pretty much intact.
One of The Last Jedi's most pivotal scenes is when Luke uses the Force to distract the First Order on the planet Crait. Luke projects himself onto the planet in an attempt to help the Resistance, who are just about done for without his help at that point. Well, they definitely needed help, but not specifically Luke’s help. After all, Leia can also use the Force and could do the same thing.
"Projecting yourself across a galaxy might suck the life out of you, but doing so a few hundred yards away probably wouldn't kill you—especially if you're a Force user who can survive and fly through the vacuum of space," the editor wrote.
I don’t doubt for a second that a manless Star Wars is less whiny and more productive than one with men in it, and this Dorkly user is only trying to make a point to those poor, misguided souls who thought the men’s rights activist had a point. But surely we should just start trusting the vision of the director who made the original movie—there’s men and women in there for a reason, and we should be able to appreciate both of their roles equally. (Until then, please catapult me into the all-female Star Wars universe. Thank you.)
