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John Boyega says non-white actors 'pushed to the side' in Star Wars by Disney

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
no, he was literally pushed to the side because he was black.

151209103057-star-wars-china-racism-poster-full-169.jpg


or rather, he was taken from the side, shrunken down to 1/3th the size, and inserted beneath BB-8.
How you think chewie feels?
And yeah, I know about China Posters
But this is more in general, JJ set him up and Rian fucked him to the side
 
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#Phonepunk#

Banned
yeah i mean he was fucked over by everyone. to me it's not a question of pointing a finger. everyone dropped the ball. fwiw i don't think they singled him out and were like "Let's be racist to him" it's just that they didn't plan anything out and half assed it all and let down everyone.

but him being so heavily featured in marketing (he was the first person we see in the first trailer) and the depths his character is taken to, it feels more unjust than, say, what they did to Poe (which sucked but he wasn't even supposed to survive the first movie). i mean he fights the new Darth Vader at the end of the first movie. Luke didn't even get to do that until movie 2.

imo none of it was intentional, they just had no fucking clue what they were doing about anything, and Boyega got the shit end of the stick.
 

highrider

Banned
Shut the fuck up dude. People go there whole lives and never get an opportunity to be a shitty character in a shitty film and make a truckload of money for life. Imagine having a life so void of difficulty that you had time to cry about your character arch in a film universally panned for shit characters and story.
 
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Fbh

Member
I actually hate that Harrison Ford’s awesome job as an old Han was wasted on this trilogy.

Yep. Even though he was probably the hardest to convince to get on board, his performance was great.
Dude slipped back into the character as if he had just filmed return of the jedi a couple of years ago, and they gave him the only decent story arc of the old characters.

Shame it was wasted on this crap.
 
when you look at the Last Jedi screentime, it's quite baffling that he gave Luke Skywalker more screentime than Finn.

fx547Az.jpg


people kept telling me "It isn't Luke's story" well i'm sorry but the movie was entirely centered around him. Rian should have written a movie around the new characters but he tried that and failed. for some dumb reason he had to write the whole thing himself so we got stuck with what we got.

I thought it was common knowledge that this is Luke's movie idk what you're trying to get at here.
 

Woo-Fu

Banned
Feels like talking shit about Disney is a bad career move, regardless of the black utopia that you're expecting BLM to usher in any day now. Guess he'll be umm, blacklisted now.
 
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#Phonepunk#

Banned
I thought it was common knowledge that this is Luke's movie idk what you're trying to get at here.
i thought the Last Jedi was praised for being about the future and being some bold, new direction. then why is the movie based on an old character, to the point where he has more screentime than anyone else in the movie (except for Rey)? how is that "new" and "bold"? we repeat Luke's Empire training sequence, only with "subversion"? this is actually what takes up most of the non-Rey story. then we are told we are idiots if we don't get how "new and brave" it is. this is part of the reason i dislike that movie, it claims to be a brave new thing, but in reality it is the same old leaning on the old characters. the whole time with Luke i was wishing i was watching something interesting with the new characters. just saying "He meant to focus on Luke at the exclusion of the new cast" doesn't make it okay. it doesn't transform the movie from a bummer into something i would ever want to revisit.

Boyega was cast in the new Star Wars trilogy. he was told he would be one of the main leads. he was the first person to appear in new footage, during the trailer. he shot a climactic duel with Kylo Ren in his second lightsaber battle of the movie. then the next movie, he doesn't work with Oscar outside of one or two days, he doesn't even see Mark Hamill except for on press tours. think about that, he went from sharing multiple battle scenes with Harrison Ford as Han Solo to not even meeting Luke Skywalker. if that isn't pushing him off to the side, as a character and as an actor, I don't know what is.
 
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Cutty Flam

Banned
Those Disney Star Wars movies were so sorry, not even Rey was decent. There wasn’t a single fucking decent character. Everything was abysmal. And the casting was even worse. I always thought you had to have undeniable talent or work on your body to like a maniac to get such huge roles. It should still be that way; but they literally just said “fuck it, let’s hire these average chumps and call it a day” whoever the casting director is should be blackballed from the industry

The script was about as forgettable as they come too. At times it was so cringeworthy I honestly felt abused. The lines were so horrendous and soy in The Last Jedi that I nearly went into shock every time I had to endure one of them. Entire reboot project was soft and disgraceful. Utterly vapid nearly all throughout IMO
 

Stryda

Banned
It’s a shame Disney gave into identity politics And backed out of clearly having an interracial relationship in Starwars.

The incel salt online would Have been glorious if they went through with it.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I"m not a SW fan, but I've seen I think all of them lately except Rogue One. I thought Solo was decent, but the main films were crap.

Since I don't follow SW, but just join in for sake of watching them like everyone else, I swear I thought that Force Awakens movie was a reboot of the old ass movies. It was the exact same plot.

SW is a weird franchise. On one hand, it's supposed to be campy fun for the family, but glitz up in high budget special effects. The more recent movies try to be more gritty, but even for me (someone who likes grittier movies), it doesn't seem to work. I'd prefer it to be campy fun like Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford cheesing it up with Leia and Chewbaca jokes kinds of dialogue.

These new movies have gritty effects but combine with quirky aliens so it doesn't really work. The old movies were cheesy plastic effects and family fun.

Also, the characters are forgettable. The old movies were the handful of key characters and some supporting ones.

These newer movies, all I remember is Rey and Adam Driver, and the rest are forgettable.

Boyega. Who cares. Asian funny chick. Who cares. That superstar Xwing Fighter dude. Who cares. Even the orange robot isn't as memorable as CP30/R2D2. The old cast lingering on as ancient relics (Leia, Skywalker, Han Solo). And the old cast (being old) are terrible. Harrison Ford has been dreadful in any movie he's been in for the past 10-15 years and can barely speak and walk. You should see how ridiculous he was in Indiana Jones Crystal Skull and that was 2008. Carrie Fisher stood there basically reading off a script.
 
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Pejo

Gold Member
I thought a great ending for his arc would have been letting him Randy Quaid that cannon, if they would have given it the proper gravitas that it would have deserved. Saving him at the end of TLJ only to have his character just kinda fuck around and do nothing in the final movie was a poor choice. Sadly, after the first movie he was never again written as an interesting character, and that's not his fault.
 
I don't really like Boyega. He seems like a bit of an asshole sometimes, but he's not lying here. It did seem like he was set to be a main character, but then the entire trilogy went tits up, and so did his character. You can't deny either that Disney used him to promote their "diverse" cast and wokeness, all of which ened up being just for show. I'm not sure he should be all that mad about it though. I assume he made a pretty penny.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I don't really like Boyega. He seems like a bit of an asshole sometimes, but he's not lying here. It did seem like he was set to be a main character, but then the entire trilogy went tits up, and so did his character. You can't deny either that Disney used him to promote their "diverse" cast and wokeness, all of which ened up being just for show. I'm not sure he should be all that mad about it though. I assume he made a pretty penny.
I don't follow the storyline enough to know whether Boyega was planned as a main character, but since the movies came out so close to one another it's obvious this character wasn't destined to be a main character from the onset...... unless the writers hurried up and rewrote the plots fast after TFA.

If he was destined in story arcs to be a less important character, then all Disney did was play off the diverse cast list as you said. If they made story changes to get rid of him that's a different reason.

Regardless of which one it was, Boyega should just shut his mouth. Too bad. Your character isn't important anymore. Either his character was rewritten because it sucked or he got used a minority to bump up sales. That's how it goes and he should know that's business.
 

#Phonepunk#

Banned
They didn’t have direction for any of the characters. Even Rey and Kylo storyline’s felt poorly thought out.
Exactly. And those were really the only characters in the trilogy! The most important at least. So if they didn’t bother with them then how little did they bother for someone on the periphery, much less a minority. The writers were not capable of crafting the story that could meet the exceptional cast. You wonder why the directors wrote it, was it ego? It turned out to be a giant waste of talent.
 
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Madflavor

Member
Dude was a side character. Get over it :messenger_grinning_smiling:

He certainly wasn't marketed that way during the promos for TFA, and even in the film he had more of a role than Adam Driver. At the time, it was pretty much established that Rey, Finn and Poe were the new trio. Then after that the trilogy couldn't make up it's mind about who the trio was.
 

Wimbledon

Member
"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," he told GQ.

"What do you want me to say?" Boyega continued. "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. 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."


I admit that Finn was underused in EPIX, but he was a major role in VII and VIII (even if the casino planet section was gash).

Do you agree or disagree with John?


I agree with him but to be fair none of the characters were good in my opinion except maybe the pilot.

When i look at Mandalorian WHICH MADE ME LIKE STARWARS, the leads and the cast is very diverse.

iu


But the difference is the writing, the great characters the setup everything just comes together. In my opinion, Mandalorian was better than all of the new star wars movies and prequels by George Lucas combined.

It felt like a space opera/cowboy type adventure. Every character did have nuance or lines that stood out "I HAVE SPOKEN". It is about how you write these characters and make them and the world resonate with the audience.

Finn didn't have a bad backstory but he should've played a bigger role i originally thought he was going to be a jedi and i would've liked to have seen that instead of a black guy running and screaming and then rushing almost every minute to sacrifice himself.
 

Atrus

Gold Member
Based on how the first movie was marketed, Finn appeared to be a major character akin to Luke and Han.

An Imperial turncoat who exhibited vague force-like intuition and a budding romance with a would be Jedi hero.

This all ended when Rian Johnson and his crowd of supportive losers decided to send Finn off to an irrelevant side story where he was paired up with another token minority.

By the time the third film hit, Finn was just as much a background character as Poe, Chewie and everyone who isn’t Rey and Kylo Ren.
 
don't play the race card, man. It was obvious Disney had no direction for all its characters. The story was an absolute mess. FFS, they spent the first 30min in ep9 telling everyone ep8 never happened.
 
As an actor I like him, he's fun on screen and has charisma. Finn the character from TFA had me thinking he would become a jedi alongside Rey. His character deserved more than the trilogy delivered and Boyega had more to give no doubt.

Is he a lead actor/character of a huge budget movies though? Based on Pacific Rim: Uprising I have to say no he isn't, that movie sucked ass and balls and for me he was a big part of that movie being shit. Being the supporting actor, for now, fits him better.

As for the racist crap, just take each person on their merits and leave that shit at the door already.
 

PanzerAzel

Member
So what are you saying John? That if someone were white and sidelined they’d hold less cause to hold grievance?

Fuck these racist twats.
 

cryptoadam

Banned
I think they are all gonna be retconned by Disney and thats why he is dumping on it.

There gonna forget all about the ST stop merch and marketing and just do a redo in a few years. So hes got nothing to lose by bad mouthing it.
 
This comment section is fucking weird, I've gotta say.

Boyega is right. The initial marketing for the first movie had him front and centre. They made it look like he was gonna be the main dude and his initial story started out intriguingly. Then it turns out nope, Rey's the one.

All he said in that quote is to not make it seem like non-White characters are gonna be a big deal in the story and then back-pedal when things are heating up.

Disney is fake-woke. When it counts, they can't commit.

Respect to Boyega for calling them out. He's right. It was obvious what they did and it was bullshit.

Agree with you there. It's weird how they made his character redundant with every film. (and it does feel like Disney tried to commit then withdrew because older audience didn't like it, and the newer audience didn't shout loud enough when they relegated them)

My personal offence is that they had to rely on OLD characters the more you went through the film.

I didn't personally hate any particular character, but I think the Actors didn't get a great script to show off their talents.
 
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Breakage

Member
He went from the ghettoville of Peckham, south London to Star Wars and rubbing shoulders with Hollywood. These people take all the valuable opportunities without complaining, and then when they get to the top, they still want to be perceived as permanent victims of oppression.
 

Stryda

Banned
So poor black kid from the ghetto should be grateful for the scraps he is given by his white masters up above?

You know many Hollywood stars have similar small beginnings? Does that mean they should never call out wrongs?

The fact is, Finn was a main character and he was relegated and distanced from Rey most likely when racists didn’t like a black kid being so close to a white woman. I remember when so many were triggered when he used Luke’s light sabre. How dare a black man touch the white saviour’s weapon!

He was a low key Rose.
 
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So poor black kid from the ghetto should be grateful for the scraps he is given by his white masters up above?

You know many Hollywood stars have similar small beginnings? Does that mean they should never call out wrongs?

The fact is, Finn was a main character and he was relegated and distanced from Rey most likely when racists didn’t like a black kid being so close to a white woman. I remember when so many were triggered when he used Luke’s light sabre. How dare a black man touch the white saviour’s weapon!

He was a low key Rose.
What are you talking about? Honestly? You think Disney sidelined Finn to appease some small % of racist Star Wars fans? Let's just think about that.

What is the #1 complaint from many old school Star Wars fans about the new movies? Its either Rey being a Mary Sue or the bastardization of Luke Skywalker. They were willing to turn the hero of millions of fans into a weird hermit who drinks fresh squeezed alien boob milk and reminisces about trying to killing his nephew because he had a bad dream. They didn't give a shit about what Star Wars fans thought about these movies. They certainly were not catering to whatever tiny number of them were racist enough to have a problem with Finn touching Luke's old lightsaber.

That is a stupid take. Try harder next time.
 
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Stryda

Banned
Don’t get me wrong. The new Star Wars trilogy was a wasted opportunity and did the dirty on pretty much every character.

My most hated character In TLJ wasn’t Rose like most, it was Poe, he actually had the worst treatment of anyone In the trilogy after Luke.

That doesn’t mean Finn wasn’t mistreated. Making him a janitor was another racist trope they snuck in, let’s not forget. Race clearly played an issue in how Finn and also Rose were later treated.
 
Don’t get me wrong. The new Star Wars trilogy was a wasted opportunity and did the dirty on pretty much every character.

My most hated character In TLJ wasn’t Rose like most, it was Poe, he actually had the worst treatment of anyone In the trilogy after Luke.

That doesn’t mean Finn wasn’t mistreated. Making him a janitor was another racist trope they snuck in, let’s not forget. Race clearly played an issue in how Finn and also Rose were later treated.
You may believe that, but it wasn't traditional Star Wars fans they were catering to. They didn't give a shit about what traditional Star Wars fans thought about those movies.
 
You may believe that, but it wasn't traditional Star Wars fans they were catering to. They didn't give a shit about what traditional Star Wars fans thought about those movies.

They didn't just not give a shit, they also actively scapegoated the old fans as racists and sexists for not liking the movies. All while using minorities as cheap props to score diversity points whilst having no intention to actually give them interesting things to do in these giant movies.

I'm usually against people using the race card, but in this instance, considering how Lucasfilm actively touted diversity as such an important aspect of these movies and then did fuck all with those actors, I totally get it.

If a company puts your face in the first second of a trailer to promote diversity, and then hides you on the Chinese posters to appease racists, and turns your character into a clown, you have every right to be pissed off.
 
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Stryda

Banned
Yup. These movies were messed up in so many ways.

They wanted to be modern and diverse but at the same time, they were too scared to go all the way and he genuine.

In the end, they didn’t make anyone happy. Older fans hated it. The racists hated it. Progressives and new fans also hated it.

I think they should have tried to get one director to own the trilogy rather than let 3 people do their own thing which ironically they also ended up not following after getting cold feet.

I think Finn and all the characters would have been treated better if JJ had owned the whole thing.

He basically had to fix all of TLJ problems and at the same time wrap it all up.

Finn ended up suffering the most but at least Poe was more likeable like in TFA compared to the moron in TLJ
 

TheWisp

Member
BLM really bought a side to this guy that is just insuferable, a giant victim complex for someone that took part in one of the biggest franchises in the world...

1st, his character was a secondary character. He played that role perfectly.
2nd, isn't misleading marketing a good thing nowadays? I mean take this example, wasn't it such great move by naughty dog on TLOU II's side? And everyone that dared complain about it a big baby?

Seriously.
 

tkscz

Member
What did he expect? Does he not know the number 1 focus of Disney's Star Wars

merchandising.jpg


He played one of the least marketable characters in the movies. The focus was given to those who sold the most merchandise in the trilogy, Ray, Kylo and BB8. Ray sold to small girls, feminist, activist, and general SJW/Tumblr type who only cared she was female. Kylo sold to anyone who had the hots for him/characters like him (see Zuko) or people still obsessed with Darth Vader. BB8 is cute robot, 'nuff said.

All the other characters had little to no marketing appeal, regardless of there being plenty of merch for Fin and Poe. Character's like Rose and purple hair lady came off as mean spirited bullies who the audience is being forced to have to like and the rest that aren't from the OG trilogy are just forgettable. Disney doesn't give a fuck about you if you don't make them money, and Fin didn't. How often do you see a toy, shirt or object of Fin compared to the same object of Ray?

Race had little to do with the decision to push an already side character further to the side. This isn't Lucas' Star Wars where it's just a passion project with a giant budget. Disney wanted that merchandising money and while the OG trilogy gets that, the new trilogy got very little in comparison.
 
Rey? Nuance? Did he see a different trilogy of vaguely movie-like products than I did?

Finn did get the shaft though, and it was not because of racist white people. It was because of racist Chinese people. But that little nuance will get swept under the rug.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
What did he expect? Does he not know the number 1 focus of Disney's Star Wars

merchandising.jpg


He played one of the least marketable characters in the movies. The focus was given to those who sold the most merchandise in the trilogy, Ray, Kylo and BB8. Ray sold to small girls, feminist, activist, and general SJW/Tumblr type who only cared she was female. Kylo sold to anyone who had the hots for him/characters like him (see Zuko) or people still obsessed with Darth Vader. BB8 is cute robot, 'nuff said.

All the other characters had little to no marketing appeal, regardless of there being plenty of merch for Fin and Poe. Character's like Rose and purple hair lady came off as mean spirited bullies who the audience is being forced to have to like and the rest that aren't from the OG trilogy are just forgettable. Disney doesn't give a fuck about you if you don't make them money, and Fin didn't. How often do you see a toy, shirt or object of Fin compared to the same object of Ray?

Race had little to do with the decision to push an already side character further to the side. This isn't Lucas' Star Wars where it's just a passion project with a giant budget. Disney wanted that merchandising money and while the OG trilogy gets that, the new trilogy got very little in comparison.
Poe has to be the most boring afterthought pilot ever in a sci fi movie.

Typically, the pilot is among the most popular characters because the nature of the character is always a skilled hotshot jetfighter guy with some attitude. Instead, the guy is boring, hardly in the movie sometimes, and has a gentle demeanor.

Waste of a character.
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
I've always said Rian Johnson gave him a raw deal in The Last Jedi. I think most reasonable people fully expected him to be one of the main characters right up there with Rey and Kylo after A Force Awakens. He was heavily featured in the marketing leading up to its release and played a massive role in the film only to get almost randomly sidelined in the second and third film.
 

#Phonepunk#

Banned
Finn was front and center in TFA. This is not something the fans made up or that marketing invented. It is in the movie. The story starts with him rebelling against Kylo Ren while on the battlefield. That highlights his importance from the first scene. He proves he is fighting for the good guys before we even meet Rey. i don't know why Rian and everyone insists he still had to "prove his worth" to the likes of Rose. if you think about it, she stops him while he is trying to do something heroic TWICE in TLJ. at the start, when she tazes him as he is heading off to help Rey and Luke. then at the end, when she rams into him with her spaceship.

Rose is the only character he meaningfully interacts with the whole film! it is as if he is being punished for some weird reason, stuck with this character that browbeats and looks down on him, uses a tazer on him and forces him into an army. Isn't that why he escaped the First Order? To avoid forced conscription? With Rose the Resistance is basically the same as the Empire. That's ok because it fits Rian's moral relativity, which is one of the big things that doomed the ST.

The pointlessness of it all, think about all those scenes, for the themes of "animal slavery is bad" and "cartoon rich people in a casino are evil". The dumbed down stupid go-nowhere "Do you see?" moralistic sideplots of both Luke wanting the Jedi to die/live and train/not train Rey, the "shocking" revelation that people were profiting from this war both took up a huge majority of sceentime. A good hour plus of wasted screentime. IMO Instead of all this wasted time they should have had a more personal journey that Finn could have gone on. Where does he come from? Are there other troopers awakening like him? Where is that journey? Rey was on a personal journey, Kylo Ren was, Han Solo died on one, for Leia it's very personal, why not Finn?

answer is: the writers suck.
 
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UnNamed

Banned
He was never the costar, his role was never intended in that way. He had an entire storyline just for him in The Last Jedi, he had more time on screen than the more talented and interesting Oscar Isaac. Don't know why he's complaining.
 
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