Minorities in Comics and Other Media, etc

[Moon Ronin]

If that's true, why wouldn't Boyega tell Disney to kick rocks barefoot [if the rumor is true they're secretly trying to get him back for a Rey movie]? But like you said the Rey movie probably won't go anywhere beyond being announced anyway.

He kind of did in a very polite way. And he has in the past been vocal of his disappointment with the direction of Finn in the movies again doing so without seeming bitter. As for the new Rey movie the script is not even written so there is know knowing what part Finn will play in it big or small. I think that Boyega has a classy demeanor and seems to know not to burn bridges in an industry that is duplicitous.

[Username taken]

He kind of did in a very polite way. And he has in the past been vocal of his disappointment with the direction of Finn in the movies again doing so without seeming bitter. As for the new Rey movie the script is not even written so there is know knowing what part Finn will play in it big or small. I think that Boyega has a classy demeanor and seems to know not to burn bridges in an industry that is duplicitous.

Yeah, Boyega has been very careful in his statements regarding Star Wars.

He's been rather polite in expressing his disappointment.

[godisawesome]

Yeah, Boyega has been very careful in his statements regarding Star Wars.

He's been rather polite in expressing his disappointment.

There’s an interesting contrast between John Boyega’s position and comments about Star Wars and Ray Fisher’s about the DCEU.

Fisher was sort of screwed from the very beginning thanks to Cyborg being promoted to the Justice League mostly so that John Stewart wouldn’t replace Hal Jordan in the comics to achieve representation, which was then followed by Cyborg being sort of lost in the shuffle of a Justice League ensemble cast by a divisive director, and that movie being reshot in a way that let Fisher know that WB wasn’t actually serious enough about promoting Cyborg for him to rise above “token black guy”… and the film bombed as well. Fisher had every right to be angry, but his platform was effectively dead-on-arrival thanks to the weaknesses of both versions of the film and his lesser role even in the better one for him. It was much easier for people to paint him as a malcontent or get distracted from the point he was making about the role itself being screwed for him, along with his contemporary career.

Boyega would end up having the role of Finn screwed as well, but… TFA came out beforehand, and for all his flaws as a director, Abrams *had* showcased Boyega and the character of Finn, which then made $2 Billion and had Boyega praised as one of its strengths. That gave him a platform when he finally felt at liberty to speak, because he could point to some basic facts - that the film co-starring him over Driver had made massively more money and had far more positive reception than either of its successors.

[MindofShadow]

It is always going to be odd to me that Disney didn't see the potential of grabbing money from POC by simply making Finn force sensitive.

Like... fumbled the bag for no reason at all.

and no, Asoka doesn't count, she's orange.

Then again, nothign about the sequel triogy really made any sense.

[Adam Allen]

It didn't make sense that they'd let Kylo killing Han stay in TFA, if they wanted him to be the protagonist ultimately. There's some blemishes a redemption arc can't erase.

[godisawesome]

It is always going to be odd to me that Disney didn't see the potential of grabbing money from POC by simply making Finn force sensitive.

Like... fumbled the bag for no reason at all.

and no, Asoka doesn't count, she's orange.

Then again, nothign about the sequel triogy really made any sense.

It didn't make sense that they'd let Kylo killing Han stay in TFA, if they wanted him to be the protagonist ultimately. There's some blemishes a redemption arc can't erase.

Again, O think it mostly came down to “…But I wanted Adam Driver as the male lead!” combining with a production schedule that didn’t allow for “debriefings” on the films after they were released combining with some likely ugly privilege and institutional racism. Boyega as Finn “wasn’t what they ordered” initially, and they just kept trying to get Driver as the male lead like they wanted originally, and proved that if they regarded a black character as an “interloper,” they were going to screw him up extra because of a mix of simple apathy, hostility, and paranoia for Adam Driver.

And I really, really think that hostility and paranoia are evident in the final product, even given the bad production schedule.

I think LFL (and Rian Johnson for TLJ itself) were getting the dailies of TFA and some were saying “…Huh, we’re spending a lot of time before getting to Adam a driver, who’s the character I’m watching for,” while others almost certainly were quietly thinking “Dammit, this black guy is too charismatic, too intense, and too charming; if we let this dude carry on, he’s going to outshine Adam, and I don’t want that for… reasons…”

Because I do think that Boyega was coming out of TFA with a similar public reception to Harrison Ford coming out of ANH, and to LFL’s dismay; I’ve seen others try to argue against it, but Boyega was highly praised, shut up most of his doubters pretty thoroughly, and was getting compliments specifically for his range, charisma, and overall skill (contrasted with Driver still getting effusive praise, but more one-note for playing a villain with a complex emotional state.) LFL wasn’t able to evaluate what Driver, their preferred main character was doing as an actor because they were in denial about him; they weren’t going to tolerate Boyega getting the praise they expected for Driver.

TLJ’s Finn plot feels like it was purpose built to try tearing Finn down whenever he’s on screen; he may have been a successful “Badass Normal” love interest for Rey akin to Han in the OT before TLJ, but it wanted him to be proven “wrong” for caring about Rey “too much.” Him getting the Force in TROS was likely Arbams trying to undo that sabotage… only to get LFL trying to undermine that as well (thus Boyega’s defense of Abrams while airing his criticism.)

Plus… I think LFL’s racists were sadly able to accurately predict that more pretentious professionals in both Hollywood and the film criticism industry would play along because “Sad White Guy Pain” is basically crack cocaine to art film lovers, and Driver’s acting style and “type” as an actor is right up that alley. A hell of a lot of dudes who watch movies professionally were “getting high” off Driver making his lip wobble a little bit while playing a character who was self-centered and introverted… and we’re likely to react badly to having that pointed out to them.

[Lord Morph]

I think its *usually* harder for White (male) writers to identify with, self-insert or see themselves in Black/POC characters. That's why Kylo, being the only real notable White male amongst the newcomers, ended up getting the hero's redemption arc and really the girl" at the end of it all. This is especially evident by Rian Johnson attaching Finn to Rose and tossing them aside in dumb subplot while Rey and Kylo were pushed to the forefront. I thought Abrams had Finn's best interest at heart, so it was disappointing to see him double down on and seal the deal on the Kylo arc but I suppose by that time production was such a mess that they couldn't do extensive changes so w/e.

Shame, Finn had the best foundation out of all the new characters, and his arc could have been incredible if it had gotten proper care and attention from start to finish.

[godisawesome]

I think its *usually* harder for White (male) writers to identify with, self-insert or see themselves in Black/POC characters. That's why Kylo, being the only real notable White male amongst the newcomers, ended up getting the hero's redemption arc and really the girl" at the end of it all. This is especially evident by Rian Johnson attaching Finn to Rose and tossing them aside in dumb subplot while Rey and Kylo were pushed to the forefront. I thought Abrams had Finn's best interest at heart, so it was disappointing to see him double down on and seal the deal on the Kylo arc but I suppose by that time production was such a mess that they couldn't do extensive changes so w/e.

Shame, Finn had the best foundation out of all the new characters, and his arc could have been incredible if it had gotten proper care and attention from start to finish.

Rian Johnson is a fairly good case study across his filmography of how “easy” it is to view white dudes as the “standard hero,” even if I think he’d gotten better after TLJ, and that TLJ is the only really bad film in that regard (partially thanks to its context.)

All of his films before TLJ had “sad” white dude anti-heroes as their protagonists, and he was likely to casually use some “fridging” and mild objectification of women and to have roles for POC actors and actresses being more problematically stereotypical; now, generally, that fact he was aping old noir films sort of explained why he tended towards mildly sexist tropes, but it definitely didn’t look good that, say, Brick’s 2 black actors are an arrogant jock whose white girlfriend the white dude hero steals after humiliating him or a promiscuous and manipulative would-be actress who also gets humiliated for taunting the same white dude hero. It wasn’t extraordinary racist by Hollywood standards, but it was somewhat painfully stereotypical.

TLJ seemed to actively try and undermine Finn (which I think was just as much LFL’s desire as Johnson’s) and seemed to have no clue what to do with Rey *except* pimp her out to Kylo (not just Johnson’s favorite character, but LFL’s), but was made worse because the previous film had explicitly shown that neither Rey nor Finn were bad as leads, and because TLJ clearly made the viewing experience much worse for a large chunk of its audience by doing so.

But then we start Johnson’s own franchises after TLJ, and he’s clearly making more of an effort ot be inclusive, and mostly successfully so… even if he still hasn’t quite managed a movie without a white male lead. The Benoit Blanc films both have POC women as the heroines, and generally well-written ones, though the main “attraction” is Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc. Johnson’s TV show, Poker Face, has a female lead, though following the Columbo formula, you could argue the protagonist of each episode is actually the killer rather than her… but that is progress.

Interestingly, up until Knives Out, not only were Johnson’s lead characters white dues, but also generally sad, self-consumed anti-heroes; part of the problem with TLJ is that he tries to make a Neo-Nazi school shooter like Kylo Ren more like his pseudo-private detective Brendan from Brick or his Hitman-with-a-heart Joe from Looper.

Also interestingly, both his Benoit Blanc films and Poker Face have had their share of “entitled rich white guy” villains, showing he *could* have done something similar with Kylo, but chose not to (again, so did LFL.)

[Nate Grey]

Rian Johnson is a fairly good case study across his filmography of how “easy” it is to view white dudes as the “standard hero,” even if I think he’d gotten better after TLJ, and that TLJ is the only really bad film in that regard (partially thanks to its context.)

All of his films before TLJ had “sad” white dude anti-heroes as their protagonists, and he was likely to casually use some “fridging” and mild objectification of women and to have roles for POC actors and actresses being more problematically stereotypical; now, generally, that fact he was aping old noir films sort of explained why he tended towards mildly sexist tropes, but it definitely didn’t look good that, say, Brick’s 2 black actors are an arrogant jock whose white girlfriend the white dude hero steals after humiliating him or a promiscuous and manipulative would-be actress who also gets humiliated for taunting the same white dude hero. It wasn’t extraordinary racist by Hollywood standards, but it was somewhat painfully stereotypical.

TLJ seemed to actively try and undermine Finn (which I think was just as much LFL’s desire as Johnson’s) and seemed to have no clue what to do with Rey *except* pimp her out to Kylo (not just Johnson’s favorite character, but LFL’s), but was made worse because the previous film had explicitly shown that neither Rey nor Finn were bad as leads, and because TLJ clearly made the viewing experience much worse for a large chunk of its audience by doing so.

But then we start Johnson’s own franchises after TLJ, and he’s clearly making more of an effort ot be inclusive, and mostly successfully so… even if he still hasn’t quite managed a movie without a white male lead. The Benoit Blanc films both have POC women as the heroines, and generally well-written ones, though the main “attraction” is Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc. Johnson’s TV show, Poker Face, has a female lead, though following the Columbo formula, you could argue the protagonist of each episode is actually the killer rather than her… but that is progress.

Interestingly, up until Knives Out, not only were Johnson’s lead characters white dues, but also generally sad, self-consumed anti-heroes; part of the problem with TLJ is that he tries to make a Neo-Nazi school shooter like Kylo Ren more like his pseudo-private detective Brendan from Brick or his Hitman-with-a-heart Joe from Looper.

Also interestingly, both his Benoit Blanc films and Poker Face have had their share of “entitled rich white guy” villains, showing he *could* have done something similar with Kylo, but chose not to (again, so did LFL.)

So basically Johnson had a problem with seeing black people as human beings, but now he's "better" in that he only sees black WOMEN as human beings. Got it.

[Moon Ronin]

So basically Johnson had a problem with seeing black people as human beings, but now he's "better" in that he only sees black WOMEN as human beings. Got it.

Of all the faults Johnson has I don't think that is one of them. Directors/writers don't have total control over casting as casting directors and producers have way more influence of that part of film so who plays who is not up to the directors/writers. Johnson's problem is he thinks that he is better than he is and that with Finn and the rest of the Star Wars Characters he didn't seem to understand and/or like the ones that was created by Lucas or Abrams. He sidelined Leia in a coma, used Chewbacca as comic relief negating that that is the part of C3PO and R2D2 and carried out a character assassination on Luke. And with Abrams characters: He framed Poe as a trigger happy win at all cost reckless insubordinate with no respect for authority, Hux as a bumbling idiot, Reduced Maz a plot tool to revel a macgurffin, and killed off Phasma and Snoke for cheep OMG scenes. Finn is not the only one that he mistreated, he even killed Ackbar a huge fan favorite off screen. This doesn't even go into Rey and Kylo. So I don't think its just a case of Jonson brushing off a black character as he basically mistreated every one of them. Finn actually had more screen time than Luke, Leia and Poe. His useless side quest took up the majority of the screen time so he was hardly brushed off but just a victim of horrible writing.

The bigger issue is how Finn was treated after. What did he do in The Rise of Skywalker? This was a great opportunity to do more with Finn but was a complete let down. But looking into the money aspect of it. The Black Panther did poorly in China with Antman making more money, movies with black leads really don't seem to do well in China which is the 2nd largest film market in the world. So it's easy to assume that the higher ups in Disney made the decision to side line Finn keeping him in one of Abrams "mystery boxes" other than moving him more to the fore front in becoming a Jedi to just following Rey around yelling her name and keeping his potential locked up to placate the foreign market.

So yes Johnson did misused Finn but I don't think race was the motivation as just about every character was misused in that film. The real crime to Finn is what Abrams and the Disney movie group did to him in the follow up movie.

[Nate Grey]

...naw I just replied to a post that was mostly about Rian being "better" in regards to POC but specifically black people post TLJ and his issue with wanting to use primarily white male leads, you don't get to suddenly say "race wasn't a motivation" when it was literally the impetus for this particular discussion. I mean you can you can do whatever you want its just kinda odd.

Abrams gets some slack cause for all we know he was following orders and his other works at least on the surface doesn't represent the same pattern *that we see with Johnson*.

[Moon Ronin]

...naw I just replied to a post that was mostly about Rian being "better" in regards to POC but specifically black people post TLJ and his issue with wanting to use primarily white male leads, you don't get to suddenly say "race wasn't a motivation" when it was literally the impetus for this particular discussion. I mean you can you can do whatever you want its just kinda odd.

Abrams gets some slack cause for all we know he was following orders and his other works at least on the surface doesn't represent the same pattern *that we see with Johnson*.

Jonson doesn't have a huge body of work to go off of and I'm in no way a fan of his as I think the only movie that is somewhat OK is Knives Out and that is not a great movie its self. I mean if your really looking for a pattern of the 3 films that he did before sure knock yourself out but anyone can force a pattern if they try hard enough.

Of all the movies that Abrams has done only one outside of The Force Awakens has a black "co-"lead and that is Gone Fishing' with Joe Pesci and Danny Glover and he only co-wrote that movie. So from 1997 all the way to 2015 Abrams didn't have one POC as a lead or even co-star in any of his movies and has never made one move with a POC as the soul lead. And he has a huge body of work to go off of. Truth is that will less movies Johnson as the same amount of movies with a POC as a co-lead as Abrams does.

[godisawesome]

Johnson still hasn’t had a black guy as the lead in anything except an episode of his Poker Face TV Show, one he neither wrote directed, but instead produced. Given the show’s format, he was the murderer of the episode, killing his brother with the aid of his brother’s (white) wife.

I believe, though I could be wrong, that the rest of Johnson’s filmography mostly just reflects what conventional Hollywood casting and writing choices go for; more an example of simple white privilege as the bias rather than conscious bias. The black actors he’s had cast that I know about go:

- Brick (his first film) has a black high school athlete dating the white femme fatale of the film; the main character (a white dude) ends up having to challenge him after he gets jealous of his girl flirting with someone else, beats him in a fight, and the femme fatale later ends up trying to get with the main character.

- Lakeith Stanfield appears as the main police detective in Knives Out, who’s a solid authority figure and practical skeptic; his white partner provides comedy for the film, but the detective himself is simply a straight-ahead investigator in the film.

- In the second episode of Poker Face that Johnson directed, the murder victim is a friendly, erudite black army vet dating a white girl, killed by jealous stalker both out of envy and a winning lottery ticket.

- There’s the the third epsiode I mentioned where a black man kills his brother with the aid of the white wife, not written or directed by Johnson.

- Tim Meadows appears as the co-conspirator, though not the mastermind, of another Poker Face episode Johnson just produced.

- And of course, Janelle Monae as the female lead in Glass Onion.

It’s not out of the “ordinary” that he hasn’t had a black dude as his main character give he’s a white filmmaker in the infamously “conventional” and privileged world of Hollywood, nor is it out of the “ordinary” that he can write them or direct them in mostly respectable supporting roles in some of his films and shows, though his earliest film going a “dumb jock” route is troubling…

…But Finn is the one time that his job both (at least publicly) was supposed to showcase a black male lead, and where he seemed to have a conscious bias being used against a black man. I still think his bias against Finn was intially made up more out of how Johnson and LFL didn’t want him to be the male lead, and how Johnson seemed to have a stylistic hatred of most of the Star Wars characters he inherited…

…But I also can’t help but feel that Johnson (and LFL) would, at minimum, allow white privilege and institutional racism to plague Finn especially, and that more than a few choices at LFL were made out of racist excuses - not just with China (since TFA still made record breaking amounts of money even with poor Chinese performance) but also possibly towards the Western audience, and especially those who would feel like Adam Drover was the “natural” lead.

Because I’d still argue that Adam Driver, as good as he is and was in TFA as a villain, didn’t actually put anything on screen that was really notable in TLJ and TROS because of how limited the role was written (especially TLJ)… but that there were enough professional critics, art film types, and others who just decided he must have done a great performance because he was the highest profile white dude and playing a self-consumed *******, and there’s a pernicious habit in the film world to pretend that,s automatically “better.”

[Moon Ronin]

Some of this really belongs in the Star Wars forums but:

Kylo was still the antagonist of TLJ, not the "male lead". He used Rey as a means to an end to kill Snoke and take over the First Order. He was basically grooming her using Rey's vulnerability to lure her to him. This would have been great if not for the bad writing that some how created idea that he was somehow a love interest which in a way is sick with at this point would be a very toxic relation ship. It was TROS with it's redemption arc and not doubling down on him being manipulative and evil as he was in the first two movies that rose him up to the "male lead" part and co protagonist.

Finn in TLJ had at least a horrible attempt at character development where his motivation in TFA was to get far away from both the First Order and the Resistance with his loyalty to Rey the only reason not to. In TLJ with the slogging side quest in which DJ showing him that both sides have blood on their hands and Rose showing him reasons to stay and fight. In the end Finn has a transformation from running to joining and fighting shown in the cheesy killing of Phasma. It was TROS what pushed him to the side with him really doing next to nothing in that movie.

So no I don't see the white privilege and institutional racism when it comes to contrasting the two characters in TLJ. Where Kylo is the same manipulative villain that lured Han in so that he could run him through is the same one that in TLJ that used a vulnerable Rey to achieve his scheme. Where as Finn grew from the first movie as a deserting soldier fleeing all conflict to defecting to the other side fighting for a cause. Not saying that the movie was great as the writing was abhorrent and the execution was horrendous but I can't see racial shadows as one of its faults. TROS on the other hand......

[godisawesome]

Some of this really belongs in the Star Wars forums but:

Kylo was still the antagonist of TLJ, not the "male lead". He used Rey as a means to an end to kill Snoke and take over the First Order. He was basically grooming her using Rey's vulnerability to lure her to him. This would have been great if not for the bad writing that some how created idea that he was somehow a love interest which in a way is sick with at this point would be a very toxic relation ship. It was TROS with it's redemption arc and not doubling down on him being manipulative and evil as he was in the first two movies that rose him up to the "male lead" part and co protagonist.

Finn in TLJ had at least a horrible attempt at character development where his motivation in TFA was to get far away from both the First Order and the Resistance with his loyalty to Rey the only reason not to. In TLJ with the slogging side quest in which DJ showing him that both sides have blood on their hands and Rose showing him reasons to stay and fight. In the end Finn has a transformation from running to joining and fighting shown in the cheesy killing of Phasma. It was TROS what pushed him to the side with him really doing next to nothing in that movie.

So no I don't see the white privilege and institutional racism when it comes to contrasting the two characters in TLJ. Where Kylo is the same manipulative villain that lured Han in so that he could run him through is the same one that in TLJ that used a vulnerable Rey to achieve his scheme. Where as Finn grew from the first movie as a deserting soldier fleeing all conflict to defecting to the other side fighting for a cause. Not saying that the movie was great as the writing was abhorrent and the execution was horrendous but I can't see racial shadows as one of its faults. TROS on the other hand......

See, you don't find Finn fans of John Boyega particularly angry about TROS because TLJ is much worse both in concept for itself and because TLJ was "attacking" his TFA story and lying to the audience about what had happened in TFA. The problem that more applies to this thread is professional Hollywood types trying to gaslight the audience and cover up the fact that the more "artistic" film was banally and blatantly racist, and the root of the problems the "cash in" film that followed had.

TROS comes after TLJ has lied to fans about Finn and tried its best to replace and neuter him, LFL has tipped their hand about disliking Finn, and where we can see that LFL, not Abrams himself, is the force moving against Finn, likely even in the editing room, all out of a desire to fulfil TLJ's mission of promoting Kylo over Finn - they had fired Colin Trevorrow for failing to make Kylo's story heroic enough for them in the first place, and would clarify that only Driver would be available for any Best Actor noms, even though both Boyega and Oscar Isaac had more screentime. And even whilt he film had a conflcit between Abrams and LFL that likely saw "Finn is a Jedi Pirate securing the victory for the good guys" chopped down to "Finn is an implicitly Force sensitive hero securing the victory for the good guys, Finn still matters to the story in a positive way and walks away with the Force - often to the consternation of TLJ fans who want him to be insignificant going forward as TLJ intended.

Because that entire "Finn just wanted to get away and was only around for Rey, and that's a flaw" argument that TLJ creates is a blatant lie about TFA, while the Rose character is screwed over because she's designed to drag Finn down to "where he belongs:" as a mostly insignificant background character who's sort of a token Black guy. Finn's transformation into a "hero fighting for the bigger picture" actually takes place about half-way through TFA, when he walks away from Rey... and returns when he sees several planets blown up by Starkiller Base. Yes, he cares even more personally about Rey and says so when he joins the rescue mission to save her, but he still prioritizes saving the Galaxy over her.

TLJ is the one that pretends he didn't care about people outside of Rey, mocks his injuries at Kylo's hands, and its goal is to have him "learn his place" following orders and staying away from Rey by giving him a deliberately frumpy and more boring background girlfriend (KMT owed getting cast as Rose to Johnson, but he also put her in unflattering clothes and cut away the stuff that was supposed to make her cool and more complex out because he was trying to undermine the story, not help it.) It's also the one that clearly *is* trying to replace him with Luke as the film's male lead (more understandable given the character's stature) and Kylo as the Trilogy male lead and as Rey's screen-partner (in a sexist way there, too; she doesn't have a story for herself, she becomes an accoutrement to Kylo's).

If we don't recognize that TLJ was actively anti-Finn on top of its other more divisive choices, and pretend that TROS was where his fall began, we're kind of excusing institutional racism and deliberate active bias - which is why Boyega has made it clear he's still cool with Abrams, and has pinpointed TLJ as the film where the problems first started.