The Rise of Skywalker, the last of the new Disney Star Wars trilogy, has come and gone. Was the movie a satisfying conclusion? The verdict is still out on that. Right now, Rise of Skywalker has both a 54% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. Film attendance for the film has dropped a whopping 81% and the movie is only on its third weekend. It’s underperforming against the other new Star Wars films as well. The Last Jedi made $758,198,252 in 19 days while Skywalker is $303 million behind. Needless to say, this film hasn’t been met with positivity.
Fans are not the only ones to actively voice their unhappiness concerning this movie. The actors themselves have followed suit since they are no longer under contract to withhold their opinions. The biggest voice of anger and frustration has come from John Boyega, the actor who played Finn. John Boyega has been vocal about his anger, mostly aimed at how the character of Finn has been treated by both fans and Disney. He was promised to be the male lead alongside Daisy Ridley who portrayed Rey. Disney didn’t follow through with these promises and he has rightfully critiqued them for it.
On December 31st, 2019, John Boyega made a tweet. The tweet, pictured above, features Rey (played by Ridley) and Kylo (played by Adam Driver) interacting throughout this new trilogy. For those unaware, in the latest movie, Kylo receives a kiss from Rey before he dies. Many people share John’s sentiment concerning the relationship due to a number of reasons which we’ll go into. John also made a sex joke concerning his character Finn and Ridley’s character, Rey. However, there were many people who were appalled by this tweet.
What is Reylo?
Since The Force Awakens, a certain sect of fans latched onto the character of Kylo Ren. White female fandom has a tendency to seek out white, male characters they find attractive and coddle them. This has happened before with Severus Snape of the Harry Potter franchise and Loki from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. All three of these characters operate as villains, commit villainous acts and rarely show remorse yet fandom often makes excuses for them. Many fans will go as far as to woobify them, a fandom created trope that focuses on making a character so miserable and unhappy that audiences can’t help but feel bad for said character. This happens to many villains so when Kylo Ren was revealed, it was almost guaranteed that white fans would flock to him.
To make matters worse, they decided that Rey needed to be paired with Kylo and it was Rey’s job to save Kylo from himself. Of course, many of us know that it’s not a woman’s job to save a man and it certainly shouldn’t be the job of a woman when the man has abused her. Kylo has treated Rey like garbage throughout the trilogy; from tying her down and invading her mind with his powers to literally calling her nothing, there is no romance between the two of them. Even the actors who play them admit it. When Ridley was asked about her feelings concerning the ship, she openly stated she couldn’t support it. Adam Driver, in a Rolling Stone interview, went as so far as to say that Kylo wouldn’t make a good boyfriend. These statements are both public knowledge and are easy to find with a quick online search. When asked, Reylo was even dismissed by Mark Hamill, Luke Skywalker himself. No one on the cast seems to have a love for this relationship yet it was made ‘canon’ with an awkward kiss.
However, there was no uproar when Adam, Daisy and Mark voiced their dislike of Reylo. But for some odd reason, when John made his tweet, all hell broke loose?
Why is that?
A Black Man in Star Wars?
Star Wars was Boyega’s first big role. While he had success before with Attack the Block and Imperial Dreams, Star Wars was what put Boyega in the public eye. When his character Finn was revealed in the Star Wars trailer, some people were not happy. How dare they cast a black man in a Star Wars movie! Where were the white men? Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford would reprise their original roles but that wasn’t good enough. Ever since John was revealed to be Finn, he has faced massive amounts of racism.
Those who ship Reylo have been vocal about their hatred for Finn and it has extended to John as well. Even though Finn is one of the heroes, many people tried to paint him as pathetic and annoying. They also didn’t understand how some people would want Finn and Rey to be romantically involved. Many fans would constantly ask John Boyega on various social media about his co-star, Adam Driver. Driver doesn’t have social media so while it’s understandable that some fans would ask his co-stars to rely messages, it was almost like shippers wanted John to be his babysitter.
Everything came to a head not just with John’s post about how he felt about Reylo, but he posted a video on his Instagram. In the video, it shows Boyega responding to his harassment by attacking the responses. Instead of realizing they were wrong, many Reylos started to accuse him of bullying them. It didn’t matter if they were the ones who replied to John with racist, degrading comments and it also didn’t matter that the comments they made were public: they couldn’t be held responsible. it’s John’s fault for not taking abuse silently. Some people are so upset about this, they’re already planning smear campaigns for his upcoming movies.
Now, if John had actually bullied any of these fans, these attempts to call out his behavior wouldn’t be misplaced. The issue is that John was doing nothing but standing up for himself and showing public comments that featured insults regarding him. There was no threats exchanged, no one was doxxed and John never once asked for his fans to attack anyone on his behalf. Since he is no longer tied to Disney, John doesn’t have to be polite when dealing with rude fans. But since he’s a black man, it’s different. Fandom has always treated black actors and their respective characters with scorn. Even when they claim they love these characters, their actions speak differently.
What’s the Real Problem?
The issue at hand is that harassing actors and actresses of color is becoming a bit too commonplace. John is not the only actor to have to deal with this harassment; co-star Kelly Marie Tran was bullied so badly, she left all social media. Like John, she did nothing but exist and star in Star Wars. The difference is that John Boyega decided not to be polite to his tormentors and they were shocked.
The other issue is that his harassers don’t want to take responsibility. Many of John’s tormentors openly attacked him on a public website. Instead of owning up to their actions, they tried to call John a sexist for ‘attacking’ them. Again, the only harassment happened to John Boyega. After five years of having to be polite towards those who hate him, John has understandably had enough. The problem is that there is an idea that black people or other people of color have to be polite to those who are racist towards them.
That is, of course, not true.
People of color do not owe their harassers anything. If someone is racist, they should not be coddled, they should be rightfully called out for their behavior. Since John has decided to no longer sit and take this abuse, white fans are shocked. John’s unwillingness to allow racists to win is a good thing: it shows his resolve and exemplifies to people of color they don’t need to treat racists with kindness. Racism has been a problem in fan spaces for a while and it’s high time that people realize this.
