New trailer for The Rise of Skywalker a victory for the Star Wars trolls
The trailer for the latest Star Wars film The Rise of Skywalker has plenty of moments to delight the fans, but it has one big and disturbing omission, writes David Mills.
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Rey’s twin-blade red lightsaber!
A fleet of Star Destroyers!
A new shot of Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia!
The trailer for the new Star Wars film, The Rise of Skywalker, has plenty to delight fans of the long-running space saga.
In two minutes and 10 seconds, the trailer serves up a virtual spotter’s guide to the characters we love from the series: the old gang, the prequel trilogy cast and the new generation, all captured in their most dramatic moments.
Everything about it is epic. The score swells to bombastic new levels. A title card tells us: “The story of a generation comes to an end.”
It is a reminder that this is the story we grew up and/or got old with; its chapters are intertwined with our lives. Its conclusion is unmissable.
But there is one big omission: Rose.
The saga’s first main character of Asian appearance, Rose (played by Kelly Marie Tran) was introduced in 2017’s The Last Jedi as a resistance maintenance worker. She was front and centre in the publicity for that film, and her blossoming romance with Finn (John Boyega) suggested she would have some longevity in the series (despite her fate hanging in the balance at the end of that movie).
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But the character was nowhere to be seen in the teaser for The Rise of Skywalker, released back in April, and again, she is missing from the trailer, released on Tuesday.
Rose became the focus for much of the criticism of The Last Jedi after its release, her character the unwitting face of an overtly-progressive agenda that fans believed had been jackhammered into the film.
The male characters in Jedi were largely depicted as reckless and stupid, whereas the female characters were mostly smart and courageous; some fanboys didn’t like it, and they weren’t shy about saying so.
Faced with a barrage of racist and sexist messages, Tran was bullied off social media, although a later University of Southern California study traced at least some of the hate back to Russian bot-factories and troll mischief-making.
Long-term fans disliked The Last Jedi for other reasons, of course. Some felt the film didn’t honour the canonical lore of Star Wars, or that it frustrated all the big questions posed by its predecessor, The Force Awakens (2015). And it was possible to dislike the character of Rose without it being for sexist or racist reasons. (Let’s face it: she was a bit whiny.)
But her sudden disappearance from the publicity for the new film is troubling, suggesting the filmmakers have capitulated to the demands of the haters — or at best, they’re hiding her until the movie itself, so as to not provoke the trolls before the box office opens.
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This isn’t the first time fan preferences have influenced the unfolding Star Wars saga, either.
The character of Jar Jar Binks, a major character introduced in 1999’s The Phantom Menace, prompted such an outcry from fans that his role was trimmed to just a few scenes in 2002’s Attack Of The Clones, and almost entirely cut from 2005’s Revenge Of The Sith.
Conversely, the character of Boba Fett, who was introduced in The Empire Strikes Back (1980), was such a hit with audiences that Star Wars creator George Lucas found a way to reverse-engineer him into the special edition of the original movie (released in 1997), and further explored his origins in Attack of the Clones. (Fans will get more Boba Fett than they ever dreamt of with the debut of the series The Mandalorian, coming to Disney’s new streaming platform in November.)
Our world makes its presence felt in the Star Wars universe in other ways, too.
An outcry over the all-white cast in the first movie (save for James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader) prompted the introduction of the series’ first black character, Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) in The Empire Strikes Back, while the prequel trilogy explored racial diversity further, with characters of South Asian, Indian and Maori appearance.
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Feminism also eventually caught up with the Star Wars universe: women fighter pilots were not shown in the original trilogy but were there for the prequel trilogy, and have featured ever since.
The movies may be set a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but the saga reflects the changing social attitudes of our times, and the trailer for The Rise of Skywalker continues that tradition.
It’s just that this time, it doesn’t reflect progress. It shows us something we could call the real dark side. It reflects the rise of the trolls.
David Mills is a journalist with News Corp. @DavidMills1972
Originally published as New trailer for The Rise of Skywalker a victory for the Star Wars trolls
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