Showing posts with label Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker. Show all posts

Friday, January 3, 2020

Star Wars' Rose Tico fans not satisfied with explanation

DISNEY
Rose Tico and Finn in "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" became a promising couple fans hoped to see again.

Hmm. Before the final cut of Star Wars: The Last Jedi was released in theaters last Dec. 20, Vietnamese American actress Kelly Marie Tran was pretty excited about the important role her character, Rose Tico, would have in the movie.

Interviews done before the The Last Jedi premiere that appears to undermine the statements of the screenplay writer of the final chapter of the 9-movie space saga.

“Yeah, it was probably one of the biggest sets I had ever been on,” Tran told The Hollywood Reporter about the Battle of Exegol, one of the climactic action scenes in "The Rise of Skywalker." “It was incredible to see what the stunt teams did. It was also insane to be running across this platform — which I know you only see for a second in the movie — but we shot it so many times. I remember having bruises on my knees the next day because we kept running and then we would fall onto our knees and do some more shooting stuff. I don’t think that’s in the movie. It was definitely organized chaos as stormtroopers were flying, people were on horses.  . . .  It was pretty insane.”

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly in November, Tran alluded to scenes that she supposedly shared with this trilogy's new Jedi knight Rey (Daisy Ridley), even though none of their scenes together made the final cut.
"I think it’s really cool at all that they are even in scenes together because in ‘[The Last Jedi]’ we weren’t in any scenes together," Tran told EW. "It was really cool to have feminine energy on set. I wish I could tell you more but I’m really excited for people to see [Rose and Rey] interact. They both have the some objective which is to fight for the things you believe in and the people you love."

Unfortunately, neither of these scenes made the final cut. And neither involved any interactions with Princess Leia which seems to make a tipid explanation offered by writer Chris Terrio.
"One of the reasons that Rose has a few less scenes than we would like her to have has to do with the difficulty of using Carrie’s footage in the way we wanted to," Terrio told several media in an interview published earlier this week. "We wanted Rose to be the anchor at the rebel base who was with Leia. We thought we couldn’t leave Leia at the base without any of the principals who we love, so Leia and Rose were working together. As the process evolved, a few scenes we’d written with Rose and Leia turned out to not meet the standard of photorealism that we’d hoped for. Those scenes unfortunately fell out of the film."
He added, "The last thing we were doing was deliberately trying to sideline Rose. We adore the character, and we adore Kelly – so much so that we anchored her with our favorite person in this galaxy, General Leia."

The argument Terrio gave was meant to temper the onslaught of criticism of the reduction of Tico's role to that of an extra after playing such a major role in the rebel resistance in The Last Jedi, the movie preceding the current release. The Last Jedi ended with the hint that Tico's heroics that saved the life of another major character, would lead to an even bigger role in the final chapter.

Terrio later clarified that his comments referred to “a specific scene in which Leia’s emotional state in Episode 7 did not seem to match the scene we wrote for use in Episode 9, and so it was cut at the script stage (before the VFX work was done).” 

Oh, so the scenes were cut at the script stage, not in the editing. What that means is poor writing was the reason Tico's onscreen time was reduced to 1 minute, 16 seconds.

What angers Tran's/Tico's fans is that it appears that the producers yielded to the racist and sexist fanboys who hated Tico, the first Asian American woman, the first woman of color, with a major role in the nine movies that defined the Star Wars universe.

To fans, it appears that lines and actions that could have been for Tico were given to newly introduced characters who were unnecessary in order to move the story forward.

Rose Tico deserves better. Kelly Marie Tran deserves better. Star Wars fans deserve better.

Friday, December 20, 2019

Rose Tico 'marginilized' in new Star Wars movie

DISNEY / THE LAST JEDI
After a hint of a relationship between Rose Tico and Finn in 'The Last Jedi,' fans expected much more.

We need to talk: Where's Rose Tico? What happened to "our girl" in Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker?

The prescient headline in Variety read: ‘Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker’s’ Kelly Marie Tran on Why Rose Tico’s Story Is Also Her Own. After the debut of the much awaited final episode of the space saga, Rose's fans are in an uproar at her marginalization, giving more meaning to the headline.

"Her character was aspirational, especially to Asian American girls who grew up on Star Wars but never saw anybody that looked like them represented in the galaxy far, far away," wrote Joey Marona on cleveland.com.

After making Rose Tico, the first Asian American hero in the last movie Star Wars: The Last Jedi, in the 11-episode (9 plus 2 side stories Rogue One and Solo) telling the story of a "galaxy far, far away," the character has met the silent fate many Asian Americans face almost every day in school or on the job.



Rose's role in the Rise of Skywalker has been significantly reduced to barely more than an extra lingering in the background. Her extraordinary heroism in Last Jedi, ending with a kiss with John Boyega's Finn, one of the main characters, has long been forgotten. The new couple (or, so we thought) became appeared embarrassed at letting their emotions get the better of them in the previous (Episode 8) of the 9-part saga.

I'm not sure what the decision process was in the making of what we are told will be the last Star Wars movie, for Rose Tico fans, including those Asian Americans cosplaying her at the numerous comic-cons, Rise of Skywalker is a major, major disappointment to say the least.

One explanation offered on social media is that director and producer JJ Abrams yielded to the fanboy trollers who like their women in spandex and their heroes white. After Rose was introduced in The Last Jedi, they went on a hate-filled on-line campaign causing Tran to cut herself off social media and forcing the director Rian Johnson and Abrams to go on the record in interviews defending the Rose Tico character and Tran.

After becoming the moral center of The Last Jedi and saving Finn's ass (Boyega) from a senseless suicide attack, Rose deserved better. We expected better.








The Variety article, written before the general release of Episode 9, foretells Rose's fate, but ends with a tinge of hope from Tran:

"And now that the Skywalker saga is ending, Tran thinks that Tico offers a new hope, especially for young Asian American fans – that they, too, can have a place on the big screen, in a galaxy far far away. In these made-up universes and real-life spaces that are still evolving to include them.

“'I cannot wait to see what this next generation does ‘cause the rules that we grew up believing are so…' Tran pauses and lets out a laugh, 'They’re lies.'”


Truth, Kelly. Truth.