Last week, we reported that Disney had fired one of the writers for the official Star Wars website after he criticized The Rise of Skywalker. But it seems that the Mouse House actually got rid of the contributor for bringing up a specific issue in the last movie of the Skywalker Saga.
We’d assumed that J.J. Abrams would take the safe road with Episode IX and try to cater to fan opinion as much as possible. And while the filmmaker did just that with The Rise of Skywalker, it didn’t much help the movie’s reception, as all hell broke loose the moment it hit the silver screens. Since December, the last installment in the nine-movie saga has managed to spark a lot of controversies, much like its predecessor a few years ago. One of the points that The Rise of Skywalker‘s most ardent critics make is the depiction of Rose Tico, or more specifically, a lack thereof.
Rose was an addition to the Resistance who came on board in The Last Jedi and essentially served as the main character. But in Chris Terrio and Abrams’ treatment for Episode IX, Rose only briefly appeared and had just a few lines of dialogue. This enraged a lot of fans who felt like Disney backtracked from Rian Johnson’s flick after viewers bashed Rose’s involvement in the Canto Bight subplot. One of these people was apparently Alex Kane, who used to write for StarWars.com and got fired for criticizing said character’s screentime in The Rise of Skywalker.
Kane recently addressed this in a Twitter post, saying:
“To be clear, this was a small, symbolic gesture that affects little. And yet I’ve known it was coming since the moment I tweeted #RoseTicoDeservedBetter. But if they wait a few months, they can just deny this. I’ll be fine.”
The writer also revealed that his work is still on the website, but the company apparently removed his articles from their featured contributors section.
If that’s what Disney’s Star Wars has really come to, then fans should really be concerned about the future of the franchise, where, apparently, there won’t be any room for criticism and healthy debate.
