John Boyega was taking no prisoners when he attended a Black Lives Matter protest in London and proceeded to give a hell of a speech in support of those fighting against racism and police brutality while not giving a damn about what it means for his Star Wars fanbase or his career.
The GOAT team talk about Black Lives Matter and the George Floyd protests on ‘It’s Been A Big Day For…’ below:
It was incredibly powerful stuff to see someone like John take to the streets with a loudspeaker and give an impassioned speech empowering the Black community while denouncing racists and the systemic inequality that’s been present for decades.
There was a lot of supportive messages for John Boyega following his actions at the Black Lives Matter protest in London, the most notable of which came from the Star Wars Twitter account.
Now that’s quite a nice sentiment from Lucasfilm and whoever is running the Star Wars Twitter account. Here’s the thing though, where was this kind of support for Black Lives Matter and John Boyega when he was, you know, still working on the Star Wars films?
Back in 2015 when John was working on The Force Awakens, he copped a heap of awful abuse from racist Star Wars fans who weren’t pleased at the thought of having a Black male lead. While he took it all in stride at the time, the suits behind Star Wars were deafeningly quiet about it.
There was no message or statement of support for John at the time or in the years following as he weathered the same racist storm during The Last Jedi and The Rise Of Skywalker. Nor was there any show of solidarity for John’s Star Wars co-star, Kelly Marie Tran, when she was harassed by both sexist and racist fans (and they still haven’t) though they did cut her role to almost nothing.
Needless to say that Star Wars and Lucasfilm copped a heap of backlash for for only taking a stand now for John Boyega and Black Lives Matter (and even that is putting it nicely) when it needed to be done years ago and how it is conveniently saying something now since everyone else is also doing it.
It’s nice that the suits and whoever is running Star Wars‘ Twitter account decided to finally say something in support of John Boyega. But the fact that it’s taken literally an entire country going into protest against racism and police brutality for it to happen makes the message incredibly disingenuous.
A bit too little too late there, Star Wars. Oh and Kelly Marie Tran is also waiting for her message of support as well, though we can probably assume that’s not happening any time soon either.
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