With the world in the midst of more vocal calls for widespread equality than there’s been in a long time, Hollywood is expected to lead the charge as one of the most visible mediums in popular culture. As brands that draw in the biggest audiences, the industry’s premiere franchises should realistically be at the forefront of increasing diversity and representation, and based on recent comments by Thor: Ragnarok star Tessa Thompson, it sounds like the Marvel Cinematic Universe will be at the head of the table.
However, another one of Disney’s most lucrative properties recently came under fire for its own attempt, with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker highly publicizing the first LGBTQ characters in a galaxy far, far away, only for fans to discover that the moment in question was reduced to two seconds of background footage.
J.J. Abrams may have defended his decision, but folks still weren’t happy, and now it turns out that The New Mutants director Josh Boone is one of those who had an issue how it was handled. In a recent interview, the 41 year-old filmmaker blasted The Rise of Skywalker‘s big LGBTQ moment as “embarrassing,” saying:
“It was just somebody in the background and the filmmakers were like, ‘We’ll put out articles as if this is something you should pay attention to’.”
It might have only been two seconds of footage, but it was still enough to be censored from the Middle Eastern release, and the studio also faced criticism of their LGBTQ character in Pixar’s recent Onward. Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, petitions were launched to try and force Disney Plus to remove animated short Out based entirely on the premise.
As one of the biggest entities in entertainment, the Mouse House will always try and go out of their way to ruffle as few feathers as possible, but Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker‘s so-called ‘breakthrough moment’ for LGBTQ representation in the franchise still left a lot of people feeling short-changed.
