Star Wars fans are losing their minds over John Boyega’s latest comments about them. The actor has decided to call out “Star Wars” fandom for being racist and “so white” (via Entertainment Weekly).
Boyega starred as Finn in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and reprised the character in “The Last Jedi” and “The Rise of Skywalker.” There was some fanboy backlash against the actor playing a hero in the franchise. Disney eventually opted to give him less screen time in the ensuing instalments. He believes it was all due to racism.
‘Star Wars’ always had the vibe of being in the most whitest, elite space. It’s a franchise that’s so white that a Black person existing in [it] was something. You can always tell it’s something when some ‘Star Wars’ fans try to say, ‘Well, we had Lando Calrissian and had Samuel L. Jackson!’ It’s like telling me how many cookie chips are in the cookie dough […] They’re okay with us playing the best friend, but once we touch their heroes, once we lead, once we trailblaze, it’s like, ‘Oh my God, it’s just a bit too much! They’re pandering.
Reading between the lines, Boyega seems to be pissed off that Disney sidelined his character after he was set up as one of the leads in the first instalment (“The Force Awakens”). Most of the fans I’ve spoken to about Boyega wanted his Finn to play a more central role in the final two films of the trilogy. Sadly, Disney did a course correction and opted to sideline him instead.
This isn’t the first time Boyega has criticized Star Wars. In a 2020 GQ magazine piece, the actor claimed that Disney’s fumbled the diversity in his “Star Wars” trilogy. He said at the time: “What I would say to Disney is do not bring out a Black character, market them to be much more important in the franchise than they are and then have them pushed to the side. It’s not good. I’ll say it straight up.”
Yes, Rian Johnson’s “The Last Jedi” riled up many long-time “Star Wars” fans and quickly became the most divisive film in the franchise. There’s no arguing that. You may say the film was “bold,” but there’s no discounting the fact that those who did the complaining were longtime fans who, in essence, were purists when it came to the franchise and were allergic to any kind of change emerging in the characters and storylines.
The main complaint was, of course, the way Johnson treated Luke Skywalker. However, others were indeed complaining about the new characters who, coincidentally or not, were female (Laura Dern and Kelly Marie Tran’), and black (Boyega) which even led to a fan deciding to edit his own 46-minute version of ‘Last Jedi’ without any women in it.
A few years ago, Boyega infamously walked out of the set of Jeremy Saulnier’s “Rebel Ridge,” under controversial circumstances. We’re still not entirely sure why. After Boyega left, Aaron Pierre replaced him and filming resumed in early 2022. Boyega’s more recent screen credits include “The Woman King” and “They Cloned Tyrone.”
The theatrical version runs 108 minutes, so we're talking a nearly 2-hour-10-minute cut of a movie that works because it's lean, and I'm not sure anyone needs that.