John Boyega Rips Into Disney for Marketing Finn as a Key Part of STAR WARS Then Pushing Him to the Side
Star Wars star John Boyega recently participated in a candid interview with GQ, and during that conversation, he ripped into Disney for how his character Finn was being marketed as a key part of the franchise and then ended up being pushed to the side.
A lot of fans felt that there was no pay off for Finn’s story arc, while Kelly Marie Tran's character Rose was pretty much just given little more than a cameo role. Boyega didn’t hold back when he talked about his feelings in regard to this. While he did defend director J.J. Abrams, he was not happy with the way his character was treated. He explains:
"Everybody needs to leave my boy alone, He wasn’t even supposed to come back and try to save your shit. 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.
"Like, you guys knew what to do with Daisy Ridley, you knew what to do with Adam Driver. 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.' 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."
So, I guess that means Boyega won’t be interested in working with Disney again. Out of all the characters that were introduced in the new Star Wars trilogy, Kelly Marie Tran was the one who was robbed the most. She deserved better.
As for Boyega, I thought that his character had plenty of screen time and that he did play a big role in the story. In fact, he had 74 minutes of screen time in the trilogy. He is ranked number 8 in the top 10 characters with the most screen time out of all of the Star Wars films. He had more screen time than Padme Amidala (72 minutes) and C-3PO (71:45 minutes). Princess Leia was right in front of him with 77:30 minutes of screen time, and that’s from every single Star Wars movie. So, Boyega did have a pretty big part in this final trilogy. He had more screen time than both Kylo Ren and Poe.
I guess he just wasn’t happy with the direction they took his character, but, by the numbers, his character Finn was certainly a key part of the franchise. He also played a big role in helping save the Galaxy. Maybe he wanted his character to face off with Emporer Palpatine instead of taking down a Star Destroyer? What do you all think about Boyega’s complaints regarding how Disney treated his character?
