John Boyega isn’t happy with how his character was treated in the latest Star Wars trilogy.
The actor made the bold move of blasting Disney for sidelining his character Finn over the course of three films in the blockbuster franchise, claiming that producers saved “all the nuance” for his white co-stars Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley.
As fans know, the 28-year-old played a Stormtrooper turned resistance fighter in The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker. He was featured in tons of trailers, and front and center on many posters, but the actor feels like the studio marketed his character as being “much more important” in the story than he actually was.
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The revelation was made in an interview for the October issue of British GQ magazine. Boyega began:
“You get yourself involved in projects and you’re not necessarily going to like everything.”
Specifically, the British star didn’t like that his white co-stars were seemingly given much more rich, complex characters in relation to himself or Vietnamese American actress Kelly Marie Tran, who played Rose Tico in the last two films.
The actor continued:
“Like, you guys knew what to do with Daisy Ridley, you knew what to do with Adam Driver. You knew what to do with these other people, but when it came to Kelly Marie Tran, when it came to John Boyega, you know f**k all. So what do you want me to say? What they want you to say is, ‘I enjoyed being a part of it. It was a great experience…’ Nah, nah, nah. I’ll take that deal when it’s a great experience.”
Ouch.
Boyega went on to claim that his castmates would agree with his brutally honest assessment, adding:
“They gave all the nuance to Adam Driver, all the nuance to Daisy Ridley. Let’s be honest. Daisy knows this. Adam knows this. Everybody knows. I’m not exposing anything.”
It’s true, fans were quite vocal after Rise Of The Skywalker about the third film blatantly throwing away Rose Tico. They even added another (white male) engineer character to sit around the base and spout technical lines. And Finn’s barely seen character arc certainly seemed to be a victim of a mess of a script which pretty overtly tried to undo any developments from the previous film.
But it wasn’t just the weak character arc that tainted Boyega’s Star Wars experience: he was also the only member of the cast who had fans saying they were going to “boycott” the franchise because he was in it. He explained:
“I’m the only cast member who had their own unique experience of that franchise based on their race. Let’s just leave it like that. It makes you angry with a process like that. It makes you much more militant; it changes you… Nobody else in the cast had people saying they were going to boycott the movie because [they were in it]. Nobody else had the uproar and death threats sent to their Instagram DMs and social media, saying, ‘Black this and black that and you shouldn’t be a Stormtrooper.’ Nobody else had that experience. But yet people are surprised that I’m this way. That’s my frustration.”
Boyega’s comments received a mixed reaction on social media. While many agreed that his character’s storyline fell flat, others argued that he still had the second most time on screen in all three films. Meanwhile, a chunk of separate critics claimed none of the new Star Wars characters had “nuance” to begin with.
Where do U stand on this, Perezcious readers?
[Image via Instar/WENN]
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