You can hold somewhat contradictory opinions about the Star Wars franchise all at once and it’s okay. Personally, I thought The Last Jedi was a stupid movie, mostly because I didn’t understand why certain characters were off doing stupid busy work. My dislike of the film was mostly about the script. I actually loved the introduction of Rose Tico, played by Kelly Marie Tran. Sci-fi adventure films are such a white space, and here was an Asian actress in that world, and she had stuff to do within the adventure. And for that, Kelly Marie Tran faced an online campaign of sexist and racist harassment from the Star Wars bros and bots. It was awful and unfair and I often felt like if the script and story for The Last Jedi had been better, perhaps Rose Tico would have been better served as a character and maybe Kelly would not have been “blamed” for the issues with the story. I don’t know. It sucked.
Here’s something else that sucks though – Kelly came back for The Rise of Skywalker and she’s been part of all of the cast promotions and premieres and press. And… a Slate journalist took a stop-watch into the film and counted the number of seconds Kelly is on-screen. It came to 76 seconds. Jesus Christ.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker director J.J. Abrams once praised The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson for introducing Kelly Marie Tran’s Rose Tico to the Star Wars universe, calling it “the greatest thing” Johnson did. Yet Tran’s character reportedly received approximately 76 seconds of screen time within The Rise of Skywalker’s runtime of two hours and twenty minutes.
It became apparent to anyone who watched The Rise of Skywalker that Rose Tico, a main character in The Last Jedi, was benched throughout the new film. Slate writer Violet Kim watched the film with a stopwatch, noting every time Tico appeared on screen. Kim noted that she tried to be “as generous” as possible, including scenes like “at the end where she hugs Chewbacca at the Rebel base, although it’s possible to argue that she wasn’t quite in the foreground of the action…I was so alert for any sign of Rose that I even included the part where she is only seen in (partial) profile staring intently at Poe while he speaks,” Kim wrote.
To compare, Tran’s character reportedly received around 11 minutes of screen time in The Last Jedi. In the last week, frustrated fans have started tweeting about the lack of Rose Tico, using the popular “#JusticeForRose” hashtag that first started after The Last Jedi came out in 2017. Though many people loved Tran’s character at the time, others bemoaned her inclusion in The Last Jedi. At the height of discord, trolls used Tran’s public Instagram account to harass the actress, leading her to leave the platform.
Yeah, Justice for Rose. And Justice for Kelly Marie Tran. I get that this is the final film of this “trilogy” and JJ Abrams was trying to tie up all of the story strands, and maybe they didn’t want to give the Rose character more “busy work” like in The Last Jedi, but still. “Hey we’re being super-inclusive and supportive of Asian actors in this white space, that’s why we only put our one Asian-American actress on screen for 76 seconds.” It’s gross. And once again, it feels like JJ Abrams is playing footsie with the Star Wars bros who appointed themselves the gatekeepers to all things Star Wars. Like, JJ was saying “don’t worry bros, I HAD to include Kelly but I tried to edit her out as much as possible.”
Photos courtesy of WENN.
76 seconds?! That’s such a shame. Not seen the latest film yet as thought the last Jedi was strangely boring and forgettable but read a review that it seems like a film designed to appease Disney shareholders and most commentary I’ve read seems to back that.
I felt the same about The Last Jedi, but really kinda loved Rise of Skywalker. It’s definitely worth seeing IMO.
Long-time female fan here and I loved it too, there are only a couple major plot points (not spoiling anything) that I’d change but other than that… I could probably say it’s my favorite of the nine films. I *gasped* and oh-no’ed! and oh-yes’ed! on this one more than any of the other films. Very exciting film, much better pace and none of Lucas’ campy transitions.
Funny how now everyone seems to have loooved TLJ and are outraged at this one, haha.
Agree with you guys; TROS is the best out of all the 9 films. TLJ was atrocious and Rose actually derailed Finn’s hero moment and caused destruction of the base in the process. They ran around looking for the one and only codebreaker (Justin theroux), missed him, and what thrown in jail with another one and only code breaker. OOOOOOKAAAAYY. As for Laura dern, hyperspace doesn’t work like that (it’s like a wrinkle in time so she couldn’t have split that shop in half) and what was the stupid poe and holdo storyline about the importance of blindly following your superiors?!!! Because that was what she was trying to teach poe, who was totally reasonable in what he did! Luke’s character is the embodiment of hope and Johnson turned him into an useless grouhh. And on and on…..
Kelly Marie Tran is so spunky and likeable in interviews but rose was badly written.
Did we all see the same movie? The Rise of Skywalker was sooo cheesy with lots of slow parts until the end. I would 100% say this trilogy is by far the worst for story telling, originality, and interest. At several points I rolled my eyes and said oh come on.
The reviews are accurate. Look at Rotten Tomato revies and many are just disappointed because they had some good ideas to make a great film but instead made a watchable, cookie cutter movie.
It’s around 55% on RT, which isn’t exactly in the 1 – 10% range, so the critics appear to be just as divided as the audience is. Didn’t go in expecting much, not a big SW nerd/fan, and just wanted a breezy, adventuresome film without massive plot holes and idiotic developments (TLJ). Also, I’d read the spoilers about Rey’s origins beforehand and there were SW fans who actually guessed everything from the start after The Force Awakens was released, based on her theme/melody, her fighting style, her name, and her at-times-explosive personality. Daisy said she thought everything relating to Rey’s origins was spelt out in TFA, right after that first sequel was released. I thought that was cool JJ Abrams and a small group of people were in on it from the start and it had been planned from the start.
TLJ was great and TROS sucks, and it mainly sucks bc JJ Abrams is so obviously trying to undo all the interesting narrative decisions made in Ep VIII… and that includes everything about Rose Tico’s character. It really felt like he went out of his way to pander to all those people who abused KMT; I bet she’s gutted, honestly.
All of this ☝️
TLJ had such interesting and poignant themes, reflecting on the nature of legacies and also served as a kind of meta commentary about how Star Wars can and does have the ability go adapt once the Skywalker saga finishes….
And then JJ and Disney threw all their toys out the pram and made a film that caters to the lowest common denominator.
TLJ was a great example of elevating genre films beyond all the whizz/crash/bangs to mean something poignant.
TROS is a two and a half hour slog that essentially screams “ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?” at salty fanboys instead of actually following an interesting narrative.
Filmmaking by committee at its absolute worst.
Amen. I got slaughtered for saying what you say but i stick to my opinion. TLJ was by far the one movie who had that old Star Wars feeling.
TROS was non-existing dialogues, stupid plotholes and lots of palm leaves.
I remember when JJ Abrams did the Nu-Trek movies, he said something like when he was young, he was more of a Star Wars fan than a Star Trek fan. It showed in the Nu-Trek films. They were entertaining, but they in some ways kind of missed the heart of Star Trek.
So I expected when Abrams got the chance to head up the new Star Wars films, that he’d ‘get it’ and do a really good job with them, since the Star Wars universe was something he supposedly loved, that it was more his ‘thing’ than ST. But instead, I think he sort of missed the boat, and didn’t really get that he understood the heart of Star Wars any more than he did the heart of Star Trek.
There were some interesting moments, interesting characters and set pieces, but something was missing.
I liked The Last Jedi, and I think that this movie had it stupid moments, but idea, characters development were really fine.
The Rise of Skywalker disgusts me because Disney just openly shows they have no balls. They didn’t just redo everything TLJ moved forward, they did it to please bloody reddit, which isn’t the biggest star wars fandom part, and even they hated the movie. Rose character in TRoS is epitome of Disney and JJ “people” pleasing because they fear of losing money. I really hate this situation, and I feel really sorry for what they did to Kelly, she doesn’t deserve it, and I wish her a big career in Hollywood.
I just saw the film. I mean it was fun, and a nice ending to the series – but too many throwbacks and scenes that were deliberate fan service that didn’t necessarily add to the story. And it definitely needed more Rose. (very minor spoiler alert here) I mean in one part Finn was like “Rose, come with us, we have to go” and Rose responds “No sorry I have to stay here and fix something.” ORLY? Please, Rose is a badass and she would fixed whatever in 3 seconds and then gone on an adventure and saved all of their asses.
Exactly, it was so obvious that they were just writing her out of that part. Ugh. I enjoyed the film because it does play to nostalgia and there were some good parts, but I’ll never love it because of how Abrams rewrote some of the great ideas from previous film and made it pretty much paint by numbers.
I dunno; although I’m sorry the asshat fanboys roasted Tran online (which was unwarranted), I really didn’t like the character or Tran’s acting in TLJ. The character seemed shoehorned in for a couple of reasons, the most egregious being providing an obvious love interest for Finn. Meh – they had absolutely no chemistry. It seems now as if the producers/director rethought her purpose in the narrative and realized it wasn’t worth expanding upon. It happens, and actually I agree with this decision.
They could have given all of the lines that Charlie from Lost had to her and it would have worked for her to stay behind. Instead we had to introduce some random Scottish guy so JJ could get one of his favorite actors into SW. just no.
And Finn just giving Rose a pat on the shoulder at the end of the film was just insulting.
I like her so much, and I think she could be used in a much bigger way. Totally untapped.
she’s a good actress but her character was so annoying in the last movie that basically everyone hated her. I’m sad for her as an actress that she didn’t get more screen time but I’m glad in terms of her character that she wasn’t around more.
No. Not everyone hated her. This is a baseless claim.
Well, I didn’t like her much either, because I found TLJ to have too many new characters and threads that went nowhere and, as mentioned above, main characters were off screen doing … whatever most of the time. I also feel for the actress and that Stat Wars has always needed more inclusivity – just that they’re almost always bad at shoehorning in new characters they create.
Okay.
But again, this is not “everyone”.
No shade to KMT and the trolls that attacked her are disgusting, but I didn’t care for her character either. Her sister had a more compelling story.
Sorry I exaggerated…. Most people hated her.
I also have to add that as much as KMT gave a great performance, the character herself was a victim of RJ’s crappy writing and narrative skills. She was extraneous, and the subplot with her and Finn was just stupid.
I didn’t hate Rose Tico but her storyline was just so dumb! I feel bad for Kelly Marie Tran because I have a feeling a lot of the hate she got might have been because of how stupidly her character had been written (IMHO) and that was totally out of her hands.
Bubbagirl, I agree. Kmt is so funny and spunky in interviews and they wrote her as an abrasive character who went around giving lectures and derailing Finns attempt at saving the base – she actually could have killed Finn with that move, and herself too
Rose Tico was just a character who was trying to do the right thing. And the amount of hate she got was totally baffling and confounding. But this can’t be put just on the toxic bros. There are a quite a few people who need to evaluate themselves on how they voiced their opinion on a woman of color with a significant role in a Star Wars movie. And I’ll leave it at that.
TROS was very disappointing, partly because of this issue. It walked back many of the things that had been done right in TLJ.
I went to see Little Women last night and that made me much, much happier!
I can forgive many things about RoS, but not this one.
As much as I didn’t care for TLJ (good concept, bad execution), if JJ Abrams had such a vision for the trilogy then he should have stuck around to helm the second movie. Spending billions to basically ignore or reverse most major plot points that took place in the middle chapter was spineless and lazy. Worse, in Kelly Tran’s case – it was giving a big present to the whiny, racist, sexist neckbeards who are pissed that women and POC are invading their safe space. He pretty much rewarded them for harassing her off social media, which is pretty disgusting considering the times we’re currently living in.
Maybe instead of giving significant screen time and dialogue to your buddies for scenes that no one cared about and contributed nothing to the overall story, maybe focus that energy on a character that was clearly introduced as being a big part of the Star Wars Scooby gang.
The thing that really made me uncomfortable was there’s footage of JJ Abrams on stage with the cast somewhere and he makes some remark about how the best thing Rian Johnson did was cast her! I’m no Last Jedi fan but making statements like that in the face of basically cutting out her out of your movie?? Yikes, what a phoney Abrams is. Plus he cast at least two of his (white male) friends with dialogue she easily could have had (why was a hobbit there?) Just…yikes.
I saw the movie and….well, wow The Mandalorian has been great hasn’t it? 😬 Seriously though I had fun in many spots but geez that movie was a mess!
What they did to Rose was savage. Lol They basically had Finn friend-zone her in this one and she’s like yeah I’ll just stay here.
TRoS sucked for much different reasons than why TLJ sucked.
Waayyy too many plotholes, and the storyline was insulting and undermined everything the originals and prequels had established regarding the Skywalker saga. I don’t even know why they bothered. They could have easily done a whole new story about Rey and her friends without tarnishing the Skywalker saga. Or they could have just chosen ANY other villian besides this one for her to defeat and it wouldn’t have negated the previous films.
And don’t get me started on all of the pointless McGuffin chases. Ugh.
TFA was the only movie that was decent, albeit predictable. The last two were hot garbage. They somehow even managed to screw up the titles too. They should have called the last one “Rise of Skywalker” and this one “The Last Jedi”. It would have made better sense.
I really liked the Rose character and thought Kelly was very good in it. However, I hated the story line that segregated two of the major characters of colour away from the main action of the story, especially Finn, who should have been a LEAD in that film.
I’m not surprised that the haters went after Kelly. She’s a Asian woman and the fan dudes probably thought she was a safe target for their racism and misogyny. And JJ Abrams and his crew are horrible cowards for letting her take all that heat since neither Rose the character or Kelly the actor wrote ‘The Last Jedi’.
I haven’t seen the latest installment but I’m very disappointed (but not surprised) that Rose has been ghosted. I would have liked to see her develop away from her relationship with Finn. But we can’t have a woman of colour become a REAL person, can we? It might upset the White men in the audience.
I haven’t seen the last movie either. But from what I heard, Fin gets sidelined in this one with nothing to do. The Rose charactered suffered from misogynists and racists coming together to blame Rose for everything they hated about Last Jedi.
I feel for the actress: they gave her a character with potential and then stuck her in a plotline that made that character peripheral at best. Basically a cameo guest appearance like Lando. Not great writing.
Hopefully she will move on to better things and soon.
So she’s not at all the first person of colour in the movie series, right? Why all the hate for her? Do the stans not find her pretty enough? Wanted a more thin petite Asian woman (incel culture doesn’t want women to take space) or was this character not Asian before they chose Kelly?
Her character isn’t based on anyone, star wars generally aren’t adaptations, it’s everything other (comic books, books, animated movies and tv series are based on movies).
“Fans” who hated Rose, “explained” that yes she isn’t petite Asian woman, like her sister, who died in beginning of TLJ, and that she isn’t “warrior” (like everyone in Resistance should be!!11 ugh) and she’s “woke” because she “teaches” Finn about horror of war with First order and slaved space horses on casino planet, and there is no place for woke in star wars!!1 And she saved Finn from suicide mission in the end, how dare she.
I really like star wars, but I can’t join fandom because there is a ton of insane people in it, who rips it apart because of anything happens, not only a new movie coming out. I just can’t cope with that.
I think the hate started with Rose and Finn’s adventure, few people like the casino storyline. It took Finn away from a storyline with Rey and the the storyline was pointless. Then some fans over hyped the character and that angered die heart rabid fans.
I’ve been a SW film since childhood, and I’m frankly kind of impressed that Disney managed to stumble worse than anything I could have expected. Guys, I like the prequels. The INFAMOUS prequels. Totally agree with the criticisms of it, but the story, characters, general thematic intent? Beautifully done and a perfect dark parallel to the original trilogy. The ST is just a mess of missed opportunity, and it makes me sad that even with a hugely expanded cast of writers, directors, and new input outside of Lucas, we couldn’t get a new or thoughtful take on such a famous story.
It’s almost as if George Lucas understood his characters/universe more deeply that soulless, cash-grabbing disney.
That company must really think very little of its audience. They just shovel garbage and people lap it up bc of famous IPs
Ugh, this is tough. On one hand, I did not like her character’s storyline in TLJ. I thought they whole casino sequence could have been removed without missing much, if anything, from the story. Especially with a movie roughly 2.5 hours, it was unnecessary. However, she faced so much ridiculous hate that this is really bothersome! I knew she wasn’t in RoS a lot, but hadn’t realized it was quite so small a time. This feels like pandering.
I did not care for the Rise of Skywalker. It was so packed full of action and dialogue it was almost too much. Seriously, it reminded me of the deli sandwiches I used to get in NY – meat stacked so high between two slices of bread that you couldn’t possibly open your mouth wide enough to take a bite all at once. I have read that some critics call J.J. Abrams Jar Jar Abrams and after seeing that movie I have to agree.
The pacing in the first half an hour and the dialogue used to get us up to speed was awful. It got better when they got to adventuring, but yeah, that’s a good description.
TLJ was a great movie. It subverted expectations and did something new instead of retreading the old trilogy with new characters. That movie was about failure and disappointment — Luke’s failure with Ben, Rey’s failure to redeem Kylo, Kylo’s failure in the eyes of Snoke and Luke, Poe’s failure as a leader, Finn and Rose’s failure to save the day, the failure of allies showing up, etc. It set up the last movie to be: how do these characters come back from failure? And Rose was integral to that arc since her character epitomized hope and doing the right thing.
Then TRoS swoops in and retcons everything and turns it into a nostalgia pandering mess. It undid the choices of TLJ to a petty degree, the most egregious being turning Rose into an extra — even if some people didn’t like her character, ignoring the fact that she was a main character in the last film basically validated all the fan-bros who cruelly harassed the actress for daring to step into what they considered to be their space.
There are so many things wrong with the new movie: it is visually boring, it is narratively nonsensical, it has non-existent character development and is contradictory to established canon…to name a few.
The trilogy ended at TLJ for me — I am actively trying to forget that TRoS even exists. This is my most desperate hour; help us, baby yoda — you’re our only hope.
OR…maybe…she didn’t want to be in it AT ALL because why would she want to reopen that can of worms….but which also couldn’t be allowed to happen, and this was the compromise. She almost certainly had a contract of some kind, but the woman was beaten up so badly online that she basically ghosted the world. Why should she show up just to have it happen again? This way, she was there, but not enough that the trollbabies can cry about it. Semi-genius compromise when looked at that way.
The whole SL, with Rose and Finn was a waste of time, that added nothing important to the story. Then some people made a big deal out of her being Asian, pissing of some of the rabid fans. Rose contributed nothing in the last movie and the entire series is being wrapped up, so wht would she have a large role. Most fans wanted the movie to focus on the main characters and give them a decent send off.
She did not deserve any of the hate or racism directed at her. However, her acting and her character were horrible. All things can be true.
Well said. But I think she can act;the problem. is the character was written so badly and the pointless and ridiculous casino scene, plus rose Rico’s derailing of Finns attempt to save the base just made her so extra
Not sure I saw the same movie as everyone who loved it. I thought it was awful. Terrible dialogue (but that seems to be standard with SW franchise), stupid plot points, enough with the dead people already. Even the big reveal lacked creativity. Skip it and invest in Disney+ for The Mandalorian, that is worth it for sure.
It’s especially galling to give her so little screen time and lines as a lead character while making time for JJ Abrams’ homies: not-the-Hobbit blond guy from Lost and not-Jon-Favreau guy from Felicity (hilariously squeezed into a flight suit, which… not to be mean… but I was looking forward to the scene of him trying to climb into a cockpit).
Just ridiculous friend-serving casting of two quite charmless white dude performers, given multiple poorly delivered lines, while sidelining an established major WOC character.
Just my two cents. I don’t think her reduced screen time was about pandering to racists and sexists. I think it was because the character has nothing to do and is not important to the plot.
She wasn’t a good character. That’s not the actresses fault at all and it sucks for her. Honestly that happens a lot in Star Wars where characters are introduced and just not good.
I feel bad for all the hate she got in real life….but her character wasnt that interesting. Her and Finn’s pointless side quest in the Last Jedi was my least favourite part of Last Jedi so I cant say that Im disappointed that she wasnt featured as prominently in this one.