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

We need less Adrian The Not Cool in this thread. Buh, bye.

 

I just saw the Mandalorian panel and i dont think ive been this excited for something star wars related this much since TFA. however what really caught my eye was the casting of Pedro Pascal as the lead, his work in GOT was fantastic, and I've been waiting to see Gina Carano again since Haywire (where my Haywire stans at), Carl Weathers is also got me hyped as well as Giancarlo Esposito and the legend Werner Herzog.

Plus the collection of directors they have from Taiki Watiti to Rick Famuyiwa I beleive. I have to say this seems to be the most diverse star wars production in front of and behind the camera which is awesome. I should prob post in the mandalorian thread but i think this show will shine because after the ST we've seen a lot of force wielders already and it will be nice to see something different for a change, and also the tv format should actually allow the filmmakers to develop characters in a way they simply cannot in a 2 hour adventure movie with lots of characters and plots moving around.

 

He's excellent in Narcos too.

 

Yep, as is Diego Luna, the other great choice who is going to star in the other SW TV show. After watching the seasons of Narcos, it is really easy to get excited about these shows.

 

I might watch this show one day. The only thing holding me back are the showrunners (Al Gough and Miles Millar). They were behind Smallville and I didn't really like with how they wrote female characters on that show.

 

Diversity has been really weak in Star Wars so far. Just background characters, none of them have had a big impact. I hope we get some well written, in-depth poc characters soon.

 

That reminds me, need to get back to Narcos: Mexico.

I really liked Cassain in R1, so it's great that we're getting a series for the character.

 

If we take all the Disney movies and we consider all people involved in

--Directing
--Writing
--Music
--Cinematography

we pile up a pretty large number of individuals.
Well, believe it or not, there are in total zero women and a single non-white man (Bradford Young made the cinematography of Solo).

Before they do something about it, they could at least spare us the hypocrisy of bragging for the diversity in the cast.

 

Finn, Poe, Cassian and Lando are all played by POC, and simply cannot be described as background characters.

 

Thanks for the tip, @Jedi Merkurian! I’m gonna check it out

Edit: It looks like top billing goes to white (and, in most cases, male) actors, though...

 

Lando is the only good one though.The rest are bland and not developed at all.

 

Because Lando was developed? Let's see:

- He's charming
- He's fun
- First he's selfish
- But he hates the Empire and has a good heart after all, so he helps

More development?

To be fair, the other charactersof the SW are not much more developed than that. But yeah, when I saw that a Black man was marketed as the Jedi of the ST when in fact the true Jedi was a White girl, I thought it was a very bad joke.

And of course, the first female protagonist has to be perfect because you know, she's got to be a model for little girls. Male characters can mess up, make fools of themselves and fail sometimes, but female characters? naaaahhhh they have to do everything right, become a strong Force user in two hours, beat the villain who probably started training at least 10 years before she even heard of the Force, be the world's saviour at the end of the movie even after they trusted the bad guy, and all this without messing their hair and their make-up please.

I love SW to bits but if I want diversity, it's not the film serie that I will watch. Unfortunately.

 

What your opinion on a role is hardly matters when it comes to whether a character has an important role or not, now does it?

Finn wasn't marketed as the Jedi of the ST, so no, that wasn't a bad joke, it was completely fine. What's odd is seeing a single take of a character holding a lightsaber and taking from that that he must be the new Jedi hero.

Claiming that Rey was perfect doesn't make a whole lot of sense either. Sounds more like one of thsoe stupid "Mary Sue" complaints, which weren't true the first time around and haven't become any more true since then. Was she perfect when she rushed to attack Finn without asking questions first? Was she perfect when she tried and failed to poison those who tried to enter the Falcon? Was she perfect when she caused the Rathers to be freed by accident? Was she perfect when she tried to fire a gun and forgot to remove the safety-pin first? Was she perfect when she got scared and ran away due to the force-vision?

Not to mention the fact that Rey fought against a badly injured Kylo Ren who shouldn't even have been alive anymore, much less being capable of toying with her for most of the fight.

She also was far from perfect in TLJ, were she thought she understood a force-vision and would have paid with her life for it if it hadn't been for Kylo Ren saving her.

 

For most viewers, the characters who uses a light saber is a Jedi. It was not weird at all to assume that Finn would be a Jedi, and LFL knew it. It's as if at the time of ESB, Han had been marketed with a light saber in hand while in fact he only used it to kill a Tauntaun...

And yeah, Rey fails at doing some things here and there, but there's never a payback for the mistakes she does. When Luke refused to listen to Yoda and flew to Bespin to rescue his friends, he didn't manage to save anyone, learnt the truth about his father too early and lost an arm. When Rey did the exact same thing (refusing to listen to Luke who warned her that things wouldn't go the way she thought), she was rescued by Kylo, managed to escape with only a scratch on her arm, and saved her friends from a certain death. That's why I stand to my claim that yes, Rey is freaking perfect; because even when she messes up, everything goes fine for her and her friends. That's like when someone points out that she's naive and stubborn: sure, she is, but at the end these "flaws" become advantages for her. Nothing that she is or does has serious negative consequences. The same can't be said of Luke and Anakin, male characters, who both had to pay a high price for their mistakes.

There's nothing wrong with her when she refuses to follow the call of a light saber that belonged to someone she didn't know, and showed her scary visions of people she didn't know more. Her reaction is perfectly normal. Her reaction with Finn is also very normal, considering that BB-8 had just told her that he was thief who had stolen Poe's jacket. She failed to poison Han, so she's not perfect? Good thing she failed, apparently. All the other things you quote are just.. the proof that she's only 80% perfect. Ok.

As for Kylo, he was badly injured but still knew using the Force when he threw her against a tree. Curious that he didn't do that again. Actually it would have been all fine if there had been a rematch, but instead TLJ ended with super powerful Rey vs ridiculous Kylo on Crait. Mind you, I don't think that a male protagonist would have been so advantaged by the script.

 

I have a preference for this one:



Finn is in the middle with a blue light saber. But we were stupid to believe that he would be a Jedi...

 

I would describe the marketing as technically not misleading as Finn does fight with the lightsaber twice, but misleading in implication. TFA was not the first ever Star Wars film and for most people with prior exposure to Star Wars, lightsaber equals Jedi/Force sensitive, especially blue lightsaber.

 

Especially considering that the real Jedi doesn't carry a light saber...

 

I pretty much agree with everything you said here so I’m not sure why you addressed me with “tell me again how LFL didn’t market Finn...”. My statement about not technically misleading referred specifically to the photo of Finn with the lightsaber in that he does fight with it. In true meaning conveyed, however, it is misleading.

 

Yeah I would like to know the process behind how the role of Jedi went from Finn to Rey. Was that planned? Was it something that was discovered during the writing process? I'm sure the answer is out there somewhere but I would definitely had preferred what the marketing had lead me to believe. I love Rey and Finn to pieces but I don't see why both of them couldn't have been the next generation of Jedi.

Was there not enough Jedi empowerment to go around?