ST Diversity in the Sequel Trilogy (see warning on page 11)

Oops, I had accidentally read the post as @AhsokaSolo thinking that critics of the ST don't like a female lead. My bad........

Well, there's a good line about moments like that:

"The ability to speak does not make you intelligent."

 

I think the unfortunate ramifications for black actors as seen in this trilogy, is that POC's can't trust producers/ads not to be deceptive. Up until the release of the film, Finn was essentially being presented with lead/co-lead status. He got the lightsaber, a prominent place in posters and advertisements really played him up as the nemesis to Kylo Ren.... And didn't really deliver on any of it. He was basically care taking the lightsaber until Rey could claim it, got spine burned by Kylo and was basically relegated to 3-PO status in the sequel. He didn't even really get to have a prominent nemesis, because Gwendoline Christie got shafted into being an even bigger cypher as Phasma. Phasma had all the potential to be Boba/Jango Fett lethal and every time she showed up, it turned into amateur night in Dixie. It's not even funny.

 

I accept all race and species in Star Wars, that doesn't mean I have to like Rose.

Rose Tico SUCKS.
It has nothing to do with her race, her character just SUCKS. (period)

 

Remember Jango Fett being involved in a massive scheme that dumbfounded even the Republic and the jedi, kicked Obi-Wan's ***, was one of the leaders in a massive battle that launched a war, and was only killed by Windu because of his jetpack malfunctioning? Yeah, Phasma could have been that level of amazing, but she had to be a useless joke who looked cool, because ya just gotta cash in on that Boba Fett nostalgia money!

 

Hypocrisy at its finest...not surprising considering who runs these boards.

 

Anyone else hear that in Mace's voice? Or is that the point all along and I'm just years late.

 

Are you saying that Jedi Merkurian isn't really Mace Windu?

 

Your moderator called out a poster due to his choice of words by using the same words....I called him out and you are telling me to discuss it via PM? This site is quite the joke and I stand by my initial post due to who runs these boards. Its quite apparent what is allowed on these boards due to political affiliation and what is shunned and attacked.

 

That sure would have given the two a more personal dispute, but I don't see how that could have worked out. The trooper got killed by Han, you can't have that happen to Phasma in the same way. Which means you somehow need to break up that fight without either one winning. Not sure how you would accomplish that.

You could of course have Phasma take the shot from Chewie's bowcaster, be thrown away by it, and later on have her stand up and move away to show that she is alive, but that would have created a whole other set of issues. First of all, that scene ends with the heroes getting captured, and it looks quite bad if Phasma gets defeated like that only for her troopers to come in and take over. Secondly, they spent quite some time showing the enormous force of Chewie's bowcaster, with people regularly flying away from its impact. Having Phasma take such a shot and survive would have undermined the whole concept of Kylo Ren being able to absorb such a shot and survive while everyone else is dying.

Another idea would be for Finn to lose against Phasma without Han coming in to rescue him, with the heroes getting captured right away instead. But I don't see how that improves the standing of anyone but Phasma.

Come on now, that's just a gross distortion of what is actually in the movies. Finn was the co-lead in TFA. In fact, he got an enormous amount of screentime in it. Here are the roles that got a similar amount (or more): Qui Gon in TPM, Anakin, Padme and Obi Wan in AOTC, Anakin and Obi Wan in ROTS, Luke in ANH, ESB and ROTJ, Rey in TFA, Jyn in Rogue One. And yes, that means that Finn's role in TFA was even bigger than Rey's in TLJ, and quite a lot bigger than the screentime Han and Leia ever got. His role in TLJ was also of the same size as Obi Wan in ANH or Han in ROTJ, hardly a side-note.

Trailers hinting at stuff that plays out different is completely normal, no one wants to give the best stuff away. None of that has anything to do with John Boyega / Finn being black. Again, the roles were devised first, John Boyega got cast as Finn later on. This makes your whole complaint fall flat. You are basically twisting the entire development on its head. Rey was the lead, Finn the co-lead, in the same way that Han and Leia were co-leads to Luke. You are making it sound like John Boyega magically fell from the sky and the producers had no choice but to use him, and because of that decided to lessen Finn's role because he was black. That simply makes no sense. John Boyega got a huge role, a role that was developed way before his casting. They didn't get him as an actor and then decided what to do with him, they thought that he was a great fit for the role as co-lead. You somehow manage to take the great news of John Boyega getting such a role and playing an important part in the trilogy, and decide just to take the negative parts of it. Being a co-lead isn't good enough, no, he just had to be the big star who carries the movie, and it is somehow a betrayal if he doesn't. That is a very odd perspective to take.

Comparing his role in TLJ to 3PO is also ridiculous. He was the center of one of the three storylines, he had the most screentime behind Rey and Luke. You may not like his story, and maybe there were things that could have enhanced it quite a bit, but that still doesn't mean that you have to make up some sort of nonsense about what the role truly was. Everything in that sub-plot was directed at his development, Rose and DJ were always around to give his character input, rarely to interact with each other.

I'd even agree with the idea of making more out of the whole Finn vs. Phasma scenario, like with the cutscene in which Phasma has to shoot her own troopers. But that is no reason to go into conspiracy theory mode and change the history of the existing movies, pretending that Finn's role in TFA was much smaller than it actually was, or that they promised you anything they didn't hold up. You getting the impression of something doesn't somehow make that a fact.

 

It's simpler than you're making it out to be. If we insert Phasma into the radom trooper's place, then you don't just turn it into a joke fight of her getting walloped by the bowcaster. You distract Han and Chewie with a flood of mooks and grant the scene tension by showing Finn stuck on his own, against a superior fighter, while armed with an unfamiliar weapon who's getting attacked not just on a physical, but psychological front. Phasma could easily rattle off listings of dead troopers. Troopers Finn left behind Troopers Finn would have grown up alongside and weren't just mooks in white armor. The same ones that are getting killed by his new friends right now. Battering away at Finn mentally and physically until she seems to be ready to go in for the kill... And then the Resistance shows up. The movie still plays out the same, but now we have more tension built up, because we see just how lethal Phasma is. If Poe's squadron hadn't shown up, the entire group would have gone up in flames right there.

 

Ok, here we go. I don't give a rat's behind how the roles were devised behind the scenes without public knowledge, where my complaint lies with the character is that ads presented one thing and then gave another. It'd be like watching the Phantom Menace, where Obi-Wan is the guy on the poster with the lightsaber, but during the final battle with Maul, he goes down and Padme calls the saber to her and bisects him. After seeing tons of ads with Boyega wielding the most iconic piece of Jedi trappings, showing him doing the squaring off against Kylo and not even a minor hint that Rey is going to be a Force user of any kind by the ads, I'd say that if I were a POC looking forward to being represented as a majorly powerful character in the new saga, I'd be very disappointed to see that role go to another person out of the blue, when the ads HEAVILY indicated the former over the latter.

Secondly, Finn IS played for laughs. Very often. He's the guy who can't get anything right. Makes a complete dork of himself when he tries to intimidate Phasma and who seems to exist just so Rose or Rey can yell at him for being wrong. His first scene in TLJ has him walking around in a leaking plastic bag. What purpose is that supposed to serve other than to generate yuks? Or seeing him get tazed by an angry tech girl half his size? It's lame comedy at its finest. Finn's role continues to be diminished, as his decision to join the Resistance is press ganged on him, rather than taking the time to look at things from his perspective. He literally got out of being barked at by 1 army 48 hours ago, to being forced into a new army to be barked at by maintenance. And no one sees a problem with it. Like it's normal apparently to shrug off years of brainwashing and poor treatment from 1 set of armed forces, because "Hey, they're OBVIOUSLY bad and we're not, so shut up and get with the program soldier". Giving Finn a chance to make a stinging comment on how the Resistance isn't really all that different from the First Order right now, would have been a bold move and shown Finn as more than the 'funny one'. He was lucky enough to break free of a ruthlessly efficient system designed to destroy the wills of innocent kids to turn them into fighting machines for a neo facist movement, but instead of dealing with that, let's have him and Rose go on a horsey ride! The movie has all these chances to make a real statement about the nature of war, about the oppression and brutalization of minority groups by the wealthy elite and how in the end, war can make beasts out of both sides, but decides to eschew it for trite aesops about winning by protecting those we love- While crashing a speeder into the guy trying to protect the people he cares about, because don't you know you can't do anything right Finn? It's horse hock.

 

Apologies. It won't happen again

 

The fact that the first thing we see of Finn was him being the butt of not one, not two, but THREE body humor/pratfall gags right off of the bat, and his injuries from TFA are completely ignored beyond that, was very telling. Like they just couldn't wait to start making him look bumbling.

 

So you're just going to ignore John publicly stating that he didn't like the misdirection marketing. Does his opinion on it not matter to you?

 

Yeah there's a difference between "not giving stuff away" and "straight up lying to your audience."

 

It's not a conspiracy theory. The disappointment with Finn goes beyond the marketing for the film. He was marketed a certain way and we not only didn't get that but we didn't get what they did promise in BTA which was an exceptional warrior and leader. I can almost guarantee you there wouldn't be as many complaints if Finn was at least given the characterization he was in that novel. But they didn't even give us that and they say that that book is a canon source. So how do you explain that? I can safely say that I have never seen a single character go from book or promotion to film and get as botched as Finn was.