Rando Calrissian #36

Tales of the Underworld, Race in Space, and Cleanin'

It’s Friday!

Four items on my list, so they’re being tossed into one bucket, my miscellaneous Star Wars thought tub.

First, follow me on Bluesky.

Second, new trailer new trailer new trailer!

Looks like a scowling Cad Bane and Asajj Ventress, with her new boy band haircut and yellow lightsaber, will do the honors in this third iteration of Filoni’s Unfinished Thoughts.

The last two of these, Tales of the Jedi and Tales of the Empire, were for hardcore completionists, and answered questions normal people wouldn’t chase down, like “What’s Morgan Elsbeth’s backstory” or “What exactly happened to Ahsoka when she was an infant?” They were really coloring in the margins of the coloring book. But they also had some real high highs, like the cruel fate of Yaddle (a sad day in my household), and of course, these anthologies (duologies? parallelograms?) looked incredible. No expense was spared, and they felt like real gifts for the kind of people who, I don’t know, read (and write) newsletters like this one.

So it shall be with Tales of the Underworld, no doubt. It looks beautiful, and these are popular characters for the Celebration Set. So what if it’s not reinventing the wheel? So what if it’s Deep Cut City. This is Star Wars for Star Wars’ sake, released on May 4th, just to make that point clear.

Third, in a recent interview John Boyega shared thoughts about Star Wars and being a Black man in the science fiction space and did not hold back.

“Lemme tell ya, ‘Star Wars’ always had the vibe of being in the most whitest, elite space. It’s a franchise that’s so white that a Black person existing in [it] was something,” said Boyega. “You can always tell it’s something when some ‘Star Wars’ fans try to say, ‘Well, we had Lando Calrissian and had Samuel L. Jackson!’ It’s like telling me how many cookie chips are in the cookie dough. It’s like, they just scattered that in there, bro!” He also said “They’re okay with us playing the best friend, but once we touch their heroes, once we lead, once we trailblaze, it’s like, ‘Oh my God, it’s just a bit too much! They’re pandering’”

I’m a white man approaching fifty years old, so the best, wisest thing I can do is take this younger Black man’s real life experience to heart, honor it, and try to learn from what he’s telling me. It’s clear that this experience was not satisfactory on many fronts, from how he felt Finn was handled, to how fans communicated with him and other people of color, to how official channels did or did not manage his experience of being attacked en masse by racists. It’s irrefutable: if you’re not white and you get cast in a Star Wars series, you’re probably having a very shitty time on some level, at least online. Just ask Amandla Stenberg.

After all, Star Wars has often appealed to young men, and those same young men have shifted to the racist, misogynist right in droves, especially in the US. It’s not imaginary, it’s in the data. If your worldview includes supporting a politics that defunds public schools that care about diversity, then maybe that attitude is seeping into other parts of your behavior in the world. You’re not fooling anyone: the rest of us sense it.

A defensive response I sometimes read can be summarized like this: “I don’t care what race you are, I just didn’t like your character.” Setting aside the inherent entitlement of the idea that complaining to the actor about their character is fair game (read: it’s not); this also entirely ignores how racism actually works. Your opinion exists in an ecosystem, and if you’re just a monkey pressing the I Don’t Like Wokeness Button to get your dopamine hit from YouTube, you are actively making people feel unwelcome. That contributes to a racist culture.

It’s not complicated. We are all responsible for the effect we have on other people. The internet gives us the illusion that we can say whatever we want in a consequence free way, and if someone says it hurts them, then the problem is theirs. It’s the opposite. If you say something that makes people feel unwelcome, and they tell you so, then it’s up to you to receive that and figure out how to do better.

As for his belief that Star Wars is a predominantly white space: he’s right. That’s just how it’s been. I think it’s wonderful that steps have been taken to show us a galaxy of heroes from all walks of life, backgrounds, and races. It’s a worthwhile project. Denying that that original trilogy basically had one black character would be absurd. It doesn’t make them bad movies, it just shows their age. That’s why the sequel trilogy was so important: it’s casting wasn’t political, it’s casting was contemporary.

Finally, I watched Cleaner, the new Daisy Ridley action vehicle directed by veteran Martin Campbell. This is peripherally Star Wars related, but what the hell, here’s my take on it, if you just like talking about Daisy Ridley. Spoilers follow.

Campbell’s credits go from the sublime (Casino Royale) to the whoopsy-daisy (Green Lantern) and this lands squarely in the center. It feels competent, inexpensive, workmanlike. She’s a window cleaner with an autistic brother and she just happens to be cleaning the windows of a big unethical energy company when environmental terrorists arrive and things get out of hand. But wouldn’t you know it? She was in the armed forces, and she’ll be damned if anyone threatens her brother, so look out baddies.

The ethics of the movie could have gotten a second draft, I’ll say. The environmentalist villains, led briefly in a paycheck cashing appearance by Clive Owen, aren’t wrong that the people they’ve captured are monsters, so they movie has to make one of them an even bigger monster to compensate. Sure, it basically says, these people destroy the climate and hurt people, but this guy? He wants to kill everyone because he loves plants so much. It’s muddled. To the point that when our hero gets her hands on the confessions from the energy execs the terrorists get a gun point, she actually releases them to the public as if they are a good thing. So…hooray?

Anyway, movies like these don’t exist to help us understand climate change, they’re an excuse for action. Ridley herself shows she is up to the challenge of being an action star. Those scenes where she is allowed to be John Wick, she acquits herself well. She’s pugnacious, quick, and convincing as the kind of person who could kick your ass. The movie gives her far fewer of these scenes than you might imagine; they really only show up in the last thirty minutes of a ninety minute film.

So…I had fun watching it. It was shorter than a Netflix series, and people ran and jumped, and it’s got a short runtime. Perfectly fine for a movie watcher on the go. A good airplane watch. I think it’s more or less a proof of concept for Daisy Ridley Action Hero. Here’s hoping her appearance in Cleaner gives her similar roles more ambitious pictures.