Greg Grunberg says there is no director’s version of The Rise of Skywalker

Actor Greg Grunberg, longtime friend of director J.J. Abrams says in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter that, as far as he knows, there is no alternative adaptation The Rise of Skywalker despite a persistent fan rumor, quite the contrary. Fans unhappy with the 2019 movie held on to a theory that pressured Abrams into making Disney TROS more fan-friendly, and that there was a director’s cut somewhere with Abrams’ ‘real’ version of the movie. That’s why the hashtag #ReleaseTheJJCut was born.

But Grunberg said THR he doesn’t think there is such a cut:

“I’m completely honest here, but not once has he ever told me there was pressure on him to turn things off. I personally don’t think there’s any truth to that, and I’d be surprised if there was a ‘JJ cut “Every movie goes through a series of cuts; it’s just the nature of it. I don’t buy it at all.”

Grunberg also added that, contrary to another rumor, he didn’t think Abrams meant it TROS to be a rebuttal to Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi, which was the second in the three-movie Skywalker series, and the only one that Abrams didn’t direct. “I never heard anything contemptuously from J.J. about Rian, “Grunberg said THR. J.J. loves that man. He loves how creative and brilliant he is. ‘

There has been a fair amount of careful analysis of the “JJ Cut” theory; earlier this year Aja Romano at Vox went to extremes to explore every point, including Abrams’ on a large scale misinterpreted statement Vanity Fair that “The people who love it more than anything are also Turn right. “Romano notes that rumors of an Abrams alternate – along with the fervor surrounding a supposed cut alternately Justice League by original director Zack Snyder – suggest deep polarization among the fans of the movies:

The belief system is all structured to feed an alternate story of the franchise, keeping fans feeling invested in it rather than battling their own disillusionment. The possibility, fueled by the anonymous sources, that the alternative film fragments exist promotes that story. And while the alternate cut theory may be the biggest conspiracy going on right now, it’s not the only conspiracy – and the way these conspiracies interact really starts to bend.

Abrams and Grunberg have known each other since they were children, and he’s an equally good source of rumors of an alternative cut TROS. But as anyone who has spent more than five minutes on the Internet knows, fans’ conspiracy theories continue to puff, whatever the ‘facts’ suggest.