Sometimes you just need to be mad

September 2, 2020 9:12 AM

John Boyega gives an interview to GQ UK.

“It’s so difficult to manoeuvre,” he says, exhaling deeply, visibly calibrating the level of professional diplomacy to display. “You get yourself involved in projects and you’re not necessarily going to like everything. [But] 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. It’s not good. I’ll say it straight up.” He is talking about himself here – about the character of Finn, the former Stormtrooper who wielded a lightsaber in the first film before being somewhat nudged to the periphery. But he is also talking about other people of colour in the cast – Naomi Ackie and Kelly Marie Tran and even Oscar Isaac (“a brother from Guatemala”) – who he feels suffered the same treatment; he is acknowledging that some people will say he’s “crazy” or “making it up”, but the reordered character hierarchy of The Last Jedi was particularly hard to take.

“Like, you guys knew what to do with Daisy Ridley, you knew what to do with Adam Driver,” he says. “You knew what to do with these other people, but when it came to Kelly Marie Tran, when it came to John Boyega, you know fuck all. So what do you want me to say? 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.”

posted by hanov3r (35 comments total)

Nice interview. I had the opportunity to interview him myself after an event I was covering, just after his debut as Finn. He was so happy about it, effervescent even. I see now that was, as this article describes it, during the "boyhood dream" period before that dream was punctured. It's nice to hear what he really thinks, though I would like to hear the off-the-record version too where he can name names and say, these are the worthy custodians of that franchise, and these are the ones sabotaging it. But having him contradict the standard "great experience" bland post-Star-Wars chatter is great.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 9:43 AM on September 2, 2020 [10 favorites]

Anyone who watched the third film knows this. Tran was barely in it; Boyega got to yell "Rey!" a lot and Isaac drove the Falcon too fast once. The rest was pretty much all Ridley and Driver.
posted by octothorpe at 9:45 AM on September 2, 2020 [17 favorites]

I have so much affection for Boyega, and Star Wars squandered him so, so badly. Thanks for linking this.
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:54 AM on September 2, 2020 [34 favorites]

“That was a weird time, man,” he says, with a sigh. “I took on too much work, basically.”

It’s something both men of color and all women are so often forced to do in that industry - you take all the work that comes, when it comes, because you don’t know when it’s all going to suddenly go away. Unless you’re one of the very few to get incredibly lucky, you know there’s only a limited time to make hay. And it sucks.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:38 AM on September 2, 2020 [9 favorites]

So Boyega is right that Rise of Skywalker really just threw away most of what the first two movies set up. That said, there were a LOT of characters in TFA and TLJ and it would have taken a miracle of screenwriting and another movie to do justice to them all. ROS already felt like the Disneyland ride version of a movie.

you know there’s only a limited time to make hay. And it sucks.

Isn't think what actors like Samuel Jackson have very explicitly said? He's everywhere because the alternative is to very quickly find yourself nowhere.
posted by GuyZero at 11:01 AM on September 2, 2020 [8 favorites]

Wow, what a great interview!

Also - the Steve McQueen miniseries about the Windrush Generation sounds super interesting.
posted by ChuraChura at 11:16 AM on September 2, 2020

I have so much affection for Boyega, and Star Wars squandered him so, so badly.

Almost a decade ago I first saw Boyega in a great movie called Attack the Block. It is that rarest of things: a high-concept (aliens attack a London neighbourhood and are stopped by a street gang and a few allies) modestly-budgeted movie that was great. Entertaining, thrilling, with a solid script and a diverse cast. It is definitely worth tracking down.

I was surprised years later to hear he’d have a prominent role in the new Star Wars movies. After seeing the final trilogy, the best sf movie I’ve ever seen him in by a considerable margin is Attack the Block
posted by ricochet biscuit at 12:10 PM on September 2, 2020 [20 favorites]

That said, there were a LOT of characters in TFA and TLJ and it would have taken a miracle of screenwriting and another movie to do justice to them all. ROS already felt like the Disneyland ride version of a movie.

Yeah, and that's its own storytelling problem, but when they specifically pick exclusively white people to tell their stories, well. It's not a great look. To say the very least.
posted by kalimac at 12:13 PM on September 2, 2020 [8 favorites]

there were a LOT of characters in TFA and TLJ and it would have taken a miracle of screenwriting and another movie to do justice to them all

But introducing new characters (played by your bestest buddies) that sideline existing characters is way worse than "not a miracle".
posted by The Tensor at 12:20 PM on September 2, 2020 [19 favorites]

Film internet is having a lot of trouble with this interview because Boyega clearly did not enjoy the experience of beloved TLJ. Personally, I think it can be both things: a pretty decent Star Wars movie by a great director that also did a major disservice to its primary character of color.
posted by Think_Long at 12:30 PM on September 2, 2020 [7 favorites]

TLJ didn’t do as good a job as it could have, but TFA and ROS were so, so much worse.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 1:28 PM on September 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

Attack the Block is great.
posted by dudemanlives at 1:33 PM on September 2, 2020 [5 favorites]

I thought TFA was good, but haven't seen it since it came out. I remember distinctly feeling like it was a good first entry in a potentially good trilogy at the time. RoS was hot garbage, partly because I don't care about Kylo Ren and would've been fine if he died in the first movie, but also because Abrams doesn't know how to do endings, his mysery box (thats a typo but I like the double entendre so I'm leaving it) talk makes that clear. And yeah, the racism.
posted by axiom at 1:36 PM on September 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

So, I somewhat disagree with his defense of JJ Abrams, although I recognize he’s looking out for a friend. JJ made some terrible choices as a writer and director for the movies, mostly by setting up characters in TFA without any idea on how to resolve their stories. He basically set Rian Johnson and Colin Treverrow (sp?) up for failure. It’s pretty clear from ROS that Abrams didn’t like the choices Johnson made in TLJ — although I think Johnson deserves credit for actually trying to do something interesting with the blatant fan service that was TFA.

Ultimately, I think the creative failure of Eps VII-IX rests on Kathleen Kennedy’s shoulders. If she was going to hire three different people to write and direct each film, then she needed to have a clear vision of where the story should go and make them fit their stories within that vision. As it was, she hired hotshot creatives and gave them too little guidance while hanging them out to dry when the fans were unhappy with the product.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 1:49 PM on September 2, 2020 [13 favorites]

Also, contrast the films with the work Dave Filoni has been doing on the TV shows. Dave has been at the heart of every one and pretty much knocks it out of the park every time.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 1:53 PM on September 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

I don't remember it being a conscious choice, but I just realized that TLJ is the only one of the new batch I've watched more than twice (once in the theater, once when we got the disc).
posted by Gelatin at 2:20 PM on September 2, 2020

(fans self) whew, I sometimes forget how powerful the difference between an actor and legit Movie Star can be.

Ahem.

Anyway, to make this even more about myself, I've been handling maintenance of the status quo okay these days, but I've lacked much motivation. I'm finding this interview galvanizing. Like I read Boyega's words and the clarity in his movement, his sense of purpose, and I'm like, yeah Blue, you 100% deserved your time to wallow in how much everything sucks, but it's time to put on the big girl pants and go again.
posted by BlueBlueElectricBlue at 2:37 PM on September 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

The thing that seems so strange to me about how the Star Wars movies were made is that apparently the directors were playing a game of Exquisite Corpse and there was no overarching plan for what was supposed to happen. This explains how it went from TFA as functional-but-not-exciting reboot; to TLJ as interesting, thought-provoking middle chapter; to ROS as predictable, pandering fanservice (so I hear; I haven't seen it and based on reviews and plot summaries don't intend to).

I was excited after TLJ. On top of having interesting new characters like Rose, Finn, and Poe, I think Rian Johnson was basically pointing at Buddhism in space, and at the needed recognition that the idea that the Force can be divided into "the Light" and "the Dark" is inherently deluded and harmful. There are multiple elements in TLJ that indicate this (take a look at the mosaic image, for one).

So disappointed that ROS was how they decided to wrap it up.
posted by Lexica at 3:19 PM on September 2, 2020 [8 favorites]

In a better world, we'd have John Boyega playing Clark Kent/Superman, or playing Bruce Wayne/Batman (Jamelle Bouie's take on how a Black Batman would work is well worth reading; be warned it's a Twitter thread).

Boyega is a Denzel-level supernova of charisma and talent, and I so appreciate that he's doing a brave, hard thing by reminding people that the thing they really like is complicit in unthinkingly racist storytelling. I hope he gets a Denzel-level career, both because he deserves all the success he wants and because we would be so lucky to have it.
posted by sobell at 3:56 PM on September 2, 2020 [6 favorites]

So Boyega is right that Rise of Skywalker really just threw away most of what the first two movies set up

I was confused by this bit of the interview, as it seems like he's mostly saying this about The Last Jedi, and defending tRoS, but the 3rd film is absolutely the one that makes the worst use of POC characters. If anything TLJ left the door open for Star Wars to finally stop being the "Skywalker Saga" and go more deeply into other stories, they just didn't walk through it.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 4:06 PM on September 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

I mean, the not-white actors experienced a bigger backlash from angry fanboys after TLJ, so I understand completely if that movie was a worse experience for them.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:13 PM on September 2, 2020 [4 favorites]

I was confused by this bit of the interview, as it seems like he's mostly saying this about The Last Jedi, and defending tRoS

I didn't get that he was defending RoS. But, as someone who was pretty pivotal to the primary story of TFA and ended up in the comedic B-story of TLJ, I can see his argument that Johnson didn't know what to do with him or Tran.
posted by hanov3r at 4:26 PM on September 2, 2020

I personally found Rose's TLJ storyline of how anyone, from any background, can be a hero, and the impact she had on Finn committing to his identity ("rebel scum") to be quite effective. But I understand his point about the more nuanced roles being given to Daisy and Adam; there was lots of potential to explore with Finn after TFA that just wasn't.
posted by nubs at 5:02 PM on September 2, 2020 [4 favorites]

I was confused by this bit of the interview, as it seems like he's mostly saying this about The Last Jedi, and defending tRoS, but the 3rd film is absolutely the one that makes the worst use of POC characters.

Yeah, I'm going through article and there's lots of good non-Star Wars stuff, but the movie he explicitly is criticizing isn't RoS, it's TLJ.

He doesn't spell this out, but it seems like he liked Finn's role as up and alongside Rey in the first movie, and possibly assumed he was going to be one of the three unequivocal warriors of the resistance as the plot progressed, and felt shunted to the second tier heroes in TLJ. So blames Johnson. I could understand that. I don't see how he could think Finn (let alone Rose) was treated better in RoS but maybe it's residual good will towards Abrams?

I'm biased as I'm a huge fan of what Johnson did with his Star Wars entry. But I think Finn and Rose were set up to complete a nice arc at the end of TLJ, and honestly walked out thinking Rey had the least developed story (partly due to her isolation from the rest of the cast.) At least emo Kylo Ren had become unnecessary. And Abrams just decided to ignore everything.
posted by mark k at 5:09 PM on September 2, 2020 [4 favorites]

I was really confused and disappointed at how TLJ handled Finn. He was established in TFA as a brave and sensitive warrior, and then in TLJ he is treated as a child who fucks up and has to be dragged around and have basic shit explained to him. This was a terrible, hurtful choice for the film-makers to make. And Johnson should be made to fucking own that, instead of skating by because TLJ was maybe slightly better than TFA or RoS. Rian Johnson seems like a nice guy and a talented film-maker if the reviews for Knives Out are anything to go by, but he really shit the bed on this one.
posted by um at 5:25 PM on September 2, 2020 [5 favorites]

He was established in TFA as a brave and sensitive warrior

Really? I didn’t see that at all. But if that’s what he took away from it, then sure.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:50 PM on September 2, 2020

just for context also, jja is still a colleague who's still giving him professional opportunities, but that's fine, especially with the trilogy concluding, finn's journey in tlj can be read as shunting him aside, when, if the narrative thread was thoughtfully closed, he would've represented a genuinely exciting dimension to the concept of the saviour not needing to be of special heritage (along with rey's). so i can see it. also, i think irl jja seems like a friendly genuine sort of person - he's just not someone with any storytelling instincts worth a damn.

the bit re: ridley and adams felt more damning to me, especially in light of ridley's Irish Times interview when she completely whiffed the privilege question.
posted by cendawanita at 8:45 PM on September 2, 2020

He was established in TFA as a brave and sensitive warrior, and then in TLJ he is treated as a child who fucks up and has to be dragged around and have basic shit explained to him.

I interpreted this VERY differently. To me it was a clear case of Rian picking up what JJ had put down and working with it. In TFA, when Han found out Finn was in sanitation and asked, "[h]ow do you know how to disable the shields?", Finn replied, "I don't. I'm just here to get Rey." [emphasis mine] Then he helped Rey escape, ran into Kylo Ren (who he had a personal grudge against), and got knocked unconscious. So the last thing we knew about his motivations, according to TFA, was that he was doing it for Rey, not for the Resistance.

When TLJ made it clear that he wasn't loyal to the Resistance, I was thrown for a second, too, but then I thought back to TFA and realized that, if anything, having him suddenly being a loyal Resistance member would have required a serious bit of character development between the films...when he was in a coma. If JJ hadn't ended TFA on a cliffhanger—or rather, a cliffstander—Rian could have done a time jump and shown Finn some time later, already having come to feel like a part of the Resistance (much as Han Solo went from rescuing Luke at the end of Star Wars, possibly out of personal loyalty alone, to acting as an officer in the Rebellion at the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back). But because TLJ had to start right after TFA, Finn had to be in the same place character-wise as he was at the end of TFA.
posted by The Tensor at 12:25 AM on September 3, 2020 [3 favorites]

I mean, Finn broke his own Stormtrooper conditioning: no-one deprogrammed him, he saw himself out because he empathized with the oppressed. He manned the guns of a stolen TIE fighter and destroyed several pursuers despite not being a trained gunner. He picked up a lightsaber and wounded a more experienced fighter.

There were interesting things that could have been done with Finn but Johnson didn't make that movie. If you don't believe me then believe Boyega.
posted by um at 2:59 AM on September 3, 2020 [3 favorites]

I was surprised years later to hear he’d have a prominent role in the new Star Wars movies

Yeah, he seemed to be cast, off of attack the block, explicitly to lead a stormtrooper rebellion.

Which the directors, and specifically RJ, failed to follow up on. The first movie had dropped a lot of hints. By the second movie, you could see that it wasn't going to happen.

But I still pretend that they wrote the planned stormtrooper rebellion in, a lot of the time.
posted by eustatic at 5:06 AM on September 3, 2020 [5 favorites]

Anyway, regardless of how Individual viewers interpret each installment of that particular series, in the twenty-freaking-first century there’s no good reason why actors who aren’t cishet white men should have to be competing so hard for scraps of representation. And then having to put up with toxic reactions from audience members who can’t stand to see anyone who doesn’t look like them have even a slice of the pie.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:11 AM on September 3, 2020 [6 favorites]

Boyega's complaint makes even more sense when you remember that the original intention in TFA was to make Poe Dameron a much smaller character, but the role was expanded because Oscar Isaac is amazing. So it's understandable that Boyega signed on with the belief that he and Rey were going to be the primary focus of the new story.

I agree 100% with others in this thread who say that one of the biggest sins in the new trilogy is that it was not plotted out ahead of time. That's not to say that there couldn't be room for flexibility, but it's bizarre that they didn't have an overarching plan for what was going to happen to these characters over the course of three movies.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 10:16 AM on September 3, 2020 [6 favorites]

Watched Attack of the Block yesterday based on recommendations here and enjoyed it. I think I may go through a few other titles I haven't seen.

Does anyone else who's read the Rivers of London series think Boyega would be a perfect Peter Grant?
posted by mark k at 10:24 AM on September 3, 2020 [5 favorites]

But because TLJ had to start right after TFA, Finn had to be in the same place character-wise as he was at the end of TFA.

But that's a false dichotomy. TLJ could have had scenes that took place in over the span of a long weekend.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:47 AM on September 4, 2020 [1 favorite]

I would like to see Boyega play Black Panther.
posted by Gadgetenvy at 8:35 PM on September 7, 2020 [2 favorites]