John Boyega Calls Out Disney

So much for my idea of bringing him into the Black Panther franchise.

I don't know what to make of this. I don't know what they promised him at the beginning, but I never got the feeling that he was the leading man in this trilogy. Well, maybe for a while in The Force Awakens. I do think he is leading man material, but it seems to me that the story was always going to come down to the link between Rey and Kylo.

And for what it's worth, I felt Finn was well represented in all 3 movies and I'm a little more disappointed with how little they used Po Dameron, or whatever his name was. I get the feeling that this might be a ploy to get some negotiating leverage over Disney on future projects.

Thoughts?

I liked his character fine, but the stand outs to me were the lead characters Rey and kylo ren.

Warners/DC will scarf him up in a heartbeat.
They love poking Disney in the eye.
Hey, John, wanna be Green Lantern?
Eh? Eh?

Sounds a bit entitled.

The cast of the Star Wars sequel trilogy SCREAMS "diversity" so it's fairly obvious that they were trying to cover all of their bases on that. It is unfortunate that they forgot to hire some decent writers afterwards, resulting in us getting repetitive "Reylo" bullshit - probably also the result of the focus groups - with everything else pushed aside.

What's he complaining about? It was a high-profile, well-paying gig and he only had to learn one line: "Rey!!!"



Boyega wasn't always well-used, but he was hardly sidelined. He had less to do in TROS, but he still had a lot of screen time.

Finn and Po went well together, and the writers should've kept them together for the 'B' plot (yes, Rey/Kylo is the 'A' plot).

He had such a promising career. Oh, well.

I think his role in TROS was pretty meaty. Him being Force sensitive and meeting the other chick and them taking down Palpatine's dead army ship. That was like half the movie. Is he mad he didn't get to be the leading man?

Having made friends with someone who was pretty high in the decision-making of that series, I can say that Kathleen Kennedy was adamantly against Boyega because she felt there was already "enough" diversity with putting in a female co-lead. It was JJ who fought to keep him in the role...and that was even before the trailer was released and he got racial slurs thrown at him for the unpardonable sin of...*checks notes* stormtrooping while black.

He didn't get the worst shaft (that was definitely poor Kelly Marie Tran by a country mile) but his story was all over the place and pretty much only define by his relationship to Rey, and that's boring as hell. Plus, the fact that Disney's official excuse for cutting him outta promos for the global release was "because of China" just say y'all wanna keep on doing the same racist shit Hollywood was doing for decades and go.

Wow, you made friends with the dartboard JJ Abrams used to come up with plot points?

He didn't get a lot of deep character moments, but, yes, he did get a lot of time as an important part of the plot, and he got several good action moments.

I understand if he has some disappointment over the way the trilogy turned out--join the club--but the insinuation that he was bypassed for "nuanced" moments in favor of white actors really isn't true for a couple of reasons. One, it's Star Wars: there's not a whole lot of nuance to go around. Two, the only white actors who got better moments were Ridley and Driver, but their story is the emotional core of the films.

(I will say the filmmakers seemed not to know what to do with Finn after Episode VIII. In VII, he was a deserter from the Empire who found a friend, and he was developing a social conscience in VIII. But in IX? Just a guy who was either worried about Rey or a mostly generic action hero.)

Boyega got as big a break as any young actor could hope to. I hope he doesn't make himself toxic by looking ungrateful and disrespectful.

But that's the crux of it, which to be entirely fair is an industry-wide issue and not specific to this franchise. Black actors (and other non white actors) get shafted on real, meaty development on the regular. Like I said earlier, Kennedy specifically did not want a black actor for this role and studios new excuse to diminish non-Asian PoC is to say "welp, China's racist and we can't give up all that money UwU " and call it a day.

I'd be pretty pissed too.

Just out of curiosity, what are your thoughts about Robert Patterson taking the piss out of Twilight almost from the day he was cast as Edward Cullen?

Kathleen Kennedy--bugaboo of the far right incel fan crowd--a racist?

Interesting.

I don't have a dog in this hunt, so forgive my intrusion, but are you under the impression that there are a lot of Robert Pattinson defenders around here? Seems to me he's more or less universally disliked. The initial news of him being cast as Batman was not met favorably.

Just curious.

Back to the show.

Yeah this strikes me as odd too.

Pattinson is going to be a great Batman. Best since Keaton.

I mean, the original trilogy was always about Luke and Vader, but they still managed to make Han and Leia an important and memorable part of the story. IMHO they're more memorable than Luke himself.

Finn had memorable personal arcs in the first two movies, I can understand being disappointed when that disappeared in the third.

I think he has every right to complain. The stuff he did in each movie became less and less important and less interesting.

In Force Awakens, he has tons of interactions with the other heroic leads, there's the seeds of a possible romance with Rey, he has a cool bromance with Poe, he shoots down stormtroopers and fights the main villain. He becomes one of what, just a handful of named good guys to wield a lightsaber in live-action combat (Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, Anikan, Yoda, Mace, Luke, him and Rey). Could be missing somebody, but whatever the actual number, that's still huge. There's the interesting potential backstory of reformed stormtrooper and the potential to dive even deeper into his backstory.

In Last Jedi, the three main heroes are split from each other for most of the movie. Finn gets basically the worst of it, stuck in the subplot with the casino heist that has gotten roundly panned. He has a fight with the stormtrooper captain and is willing to sacrifice himself. But really nothing to compare to the potential for his character in Force. Instead of having Rey or Finn to play off, for the most part he has the awkward romance with Rose. At least, though, you could say that he evolved somewhat from someone who was there just out of convenience/attraction to Rey to self-proclaimed "Rebel scum."

Then in Rise, it seemed like they just overreacted to fan criticism of Last Jedi. I find it hard to remember anything Finn did in this movie other than follow Rey and say that he had a secret to tell her but never did. I guess he met some other former Stormtrooper and they rode horselike creatures on a deck of a ship for some reason? Nothing more about his background as a Stormtrooper, nothing more about his own journey, nothing about his potential romances with either Rey or Rose (or Po).

In the previous trilogies, they gave each of the three main characters important things to do in each of the movies. Yes, Annie and Luke were at the center of them, but you still had arcs for Obi-wan and Padme, and Han and Leia. The sequel trilogy fell down for both Poe and Finn in that regard IMO, but especially hard for Finn.

ETA: TIL that the actor who played Poe is of Latino descent. I jumped to the conclusion because of the name that he was White.

Why? Racists, incels, and many on the far right think that women are only good for use as "breeding stock." It doesn't matter if the views the women have are the same as those of the men, if the women are in a position of authority, then they're rabidly hated.

Ahem. Though I was a bit skeptical of Pattinson in the batsuit, I've always thought that he is a fine actor.

The teaser put out last week really put most of my lingering doubts to rest. Even the costume I kinda hated in static shots looks pretty good on film.

I'm having a hard time seeing how anything you just said stands in opposition to me finding it odd that Kathleen Kennedy might be a racist.

Why is it odd for her to be racist? Lots of people are racist, even if they don't go around in Klan robes. I'm not saying that it should be the default assumption that everyone is racist but it is fairly common in most societies.

Maybe more ironic than interesting.

I wasn't aware of that, since I didn't follow anything Twilight-related. I thought I heard he was nearly fired from the role early in production.

But I'd say the same thing: if you get a big opportunity, it's bad form to look ungrateful by complaining that it's not everything you could've hoped for.

I had no idea who John Boyega was before Star Wars. I had some vague awareness of Attack the Block, but hadn't seen it (still haven't). If not for Star Wars, Boyega would likely be (relatively) unknown today. It may be that he didn't get everything he wanted out of the franchise, and it may be that was a result of marketing concerns, but that's life. He should appreciate it for what it was, and be grateful for the opportunity that will undoubtedly opens more doors for him.

Sounds like it is pretty uppity for him to complain and he should learn his place.

On the other hand, who gives a shit? I'm like...25% sure there are other movie studios not owned by Disney. Maybe he doesn't want to work for Mickey any more.

Was he actually established as Force-sensitive? I only saw TROS once and don't remember it particularly well.

As to taking down the ship, meh. It doesn't hold a candle to the centrality of Han and Leia taking out the shield generator on Endor, along with their love story coming to full bloom, for instance. Like if you literally cut Finn out of the movie, would it make a difference?

90 percent of the whining again Patterson I've seen is less about Patterson himself, but more because his claim to fame was attached to a Thing Icky Girls Like. From what I can gather of the guy, his acting since those movies has taken leaps and bounds and he mostly avoids franchise related stuff because of it.

Nice dodge, though.

I want to say yes, but now that you bring it up, I'm blanking too.

Every right to complain? Yes, always. Wise to complain? Eh...

I think he peaked in TLJ, where his character actually had some visible growth that wasn't tied up with Rey.

I kinda liked Rose, but I think her character should've been omitted. Finn often seems like he's playing second banana to her. I think they should've reworked the casino sequence so that it was Finn and Po on that mission, then have Phasma show up there, and then have a series of wild escapades ensue. Oh, and eliminate the absurdity of a second codebreaker being so conveniently available.

Sidenote: Oooh, here's a thought. Imagine they got the codebreaker as planned, but that he was reluctant to help the Resistance, and Finn has to give a speech convincing him and only then does Finn realize himself that he's become truly committed to the cause.

As I said, worry about Rey and be generic action hero. I agree the producers didn't know what to do with him in the last film. It's not like they cut him from the film; he's still there. He just doesn't have anything really interesting to do.

He's a white Hispanic.

They introduced a hint of a good idea with Finn and all of the other stormtroopers being brainwashed slaves with basically no free will then presumably the fierce frees Finn. They didn’t really follow up with that or the potential love interest he could have had with Rey. So he’s kind of right, but I think the blame lies mostly with Kathleen Kennedy and JJ Abrams for not fleshing out the sequel trilogy.