Filmmaker J.J. Abrams was scheduled to make a surprising cameo in this weekend's episode of Saturday Night Live introducing a scene for a Star Wars movie spoof. Sadly, the sketch in which he was to appear was cut for reasons of time.

Abrams, who is currently working on Star Wars: Episode IX, has found a niche in Hollywood reworking classic science fiction concepts for modern audiences. Despite being a critical and financial success, his reboot of the Star Trek franchise drew criticism from fans who said that Abrams had no original ideas and had merely taken the best moments of older movies and TV shows, reworking them slightly with better special effects and action sequences. Similar complaints were made about The Force Awakens - the first movie in the most recent Star Wars trilogy - which many critics noted had the exact same plot as Star Wars: A New Hope.

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The skit (which can be viewed above) opens with Abrams announcing a surprise third standalone Star Wars movie that would follow in the footsteps of Rogue One and Solo: A Star Wars Story. Titled The Mos Eisley Five, Abrams declares that the movie will be released in the summer of 2019 before offering up a first glimpse of a scene from the film.

SNL Saturday Night Live Star Wars The Mos Eisley Five

The clip, which follows shows the titular quintet - a Wookie, a Jedi Knight, a woman dressed as a desert scavenger like Rey, an R2-D2 style astromech droid with a BB-8 paint job and a roguish Han Solo type - as they go to negotiate the release of a captive Rebel Alliance pilot from Goba The Hutt. The negotiations quickly break down, however, with the Jedi Knight questioning how the aliens and robots all seem to speak their own languages and why all the humans except him seem to understand them perfectly. He also asks why the humans all answer the aliens in their own language rather than trying to speak the alien language and expresses surprise that the Droid E2 and the Wookie Dogtota have been talking to everyone this whole time, saying "I thought he was just making dog noises!"

It's easy to see why the powers that be at Saturday Night Live cut this skit from the regular episode. There's no joke beyond pointing out how implausible it is for the vast majority of people in an intergalactic society to be as multilingual as the Star Wars universe would require and that joke wears out its welcome quickly. Still, it is unfortunate that this sketch was cut because a lot of work clearly went into the production of the short scene. The make-up effects on the background alien characters are impressive and the script is full of sly references to the Star Wars novels, with a quick mention of the Wookie language Shyriiwook. Would that they could have worked in another joke!

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Source: Saturday Night Live