Actor John Boyega, who played Finn in the latest trilogy, has almost come around to this position. In 2020, Boyega voiced his frustrations with Disney for hyping up his character just to make him increasingly irrelevant over the course of the new trilogy. Boyega has since apparently realized that taking shots at Disney and Hollywood executives might be counterproductive for his film career, especially because the four films he appeared in since the end of the trilogy have been forgettable. In March 2023, he said he was “comfortable” with how Disney treated his character.
Having not appeared in a film since mid-2023, Boyega has instead decided to slam Star Wars fans. According to Boyega, Star Wars is “so white” and an “elite white” space. It is a “franchise that’s so white that a black person existing in [it] was something.” He complained that Star Wars fans didn’t want us to be “their heroes.” And don’t bother giving Boyega examples of black heroes in Star Wars who were beloved, because that is just tokenism and “telling me how many cookie chips are in the cookie dough.”
The problem with Boyega’s diatribe is that it isn’t rooted in reality. What little anger there was at a black stormtrooper and its effect on the lore was muted even among the most devoted Star Wars nerds. Boyega’s character won over fans, whose only real complaint is that his character was made completely irrelevant to the trilogy in the second and third films. Fans wanted to see more of Boyega’s character and his arc of defecting from the bad guys to potentially become a Jedi hero.
Yes, it was actually Star Wars fans who wanted Boyega’s character to become a hero. Rian Johnson, who tanked the Star Wars brand with the disaster that was The Last Jedi, was the one who sidelined Boyega and nuked the value of the Star Wars brand in the process. Disney, which, for some bizarre reason, did not plan this trilogy at all and let two different directors take it in different directions, is the one who stopped Boyega’s character from being a hero.
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Why John, Why?
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