An Open Letter to JJ Abrams on Star Wars & Race
Warning: Spoilers ahead. If you haven’t seen the movie, please don’t read this.
Dear Mr. Abrams:
You slayed it!
Star Wars: The Force Awakens is now the fastest film to hit $1 billion at the box office. Social media is brimming with generational selfies of families enjoying your movie. The once-empty parking lot at my local movie theater is now packed with cars. The popcorn bucket runneth over.
Except…
Dude, we need to talk about Finn.
Finn has the potential to be a compelling character. Early in the film, he defies the machine and recovers his stolen humanity in a single act of rebellion. And then he spends the rest of the movie running.
Sweaty, wide-eyed, scared, and racing, Finn darts from one scene to the next. There’s even a whole speech about Finn’s cowardice. He reminds of bad 80s action movies in which the black guy runs scared at the first sign of trouble while the white hero swoops in and saves the day.
As a character, Finn has no agency. With the exception of his initial bravery, Finn’s aims aren’t achieved unless they dovetail with someone else’s. Finn fights, but he is easily vanquished while a character with less combat experience defeats the same foe.
All of this leads to one salient point — You made the black guy a janitor!
My friends came to your rescue and made convincing arguments about Finn’s characterization. In a Facebook debate about the issue, my friend Gavin, an African American man by the way, said:
“ Finn is interesting and charming and accomplishes all of these things in the first showing in spite of being new at everything. In fact, Finn is the character that ties the whole movie together if you really stop to think about it…
I liked his imperfection (as it’s the first movie in a trilogy), as much as the other parts of his character. So much so, I’m willing to give the slightest leeway on the janitor issue.”
My friend Sharon, not an African American male, had this insight: “ I get that they thought making him a sanitation storm trooper was a great idea because then they can pull all the reminders of the first Star Wars into this one. (Trash compactor scene.) But I have to imagine that, sadly, JJ didn’t have anyone on his team to point out the obvious to him.”
I am less forgiving of the janitor point because it seems like you went to great lengths to draw from the original Star Wars DNA to give fans what they wanted and expected from the franchise.
Part of that DNA is Lando Calrissian.
I was 7-years-old when The Empire Strikes Back was released. The moment Lando Calrissian welcomed Han Solo, Chewbacca, and Princess Leia to Cloud City, my whole world opened up like the bull crashing through the walls in Billie Dee Williams’ Colt 45 commercials.
Lando is a complex character. He is sly, cunning, and pimp-tastic. He betrays his friends. However, he acts (good or bad) on his own agency, which is to protect the lives of his people.
On the way home from seeing The Empire Strikes Back, my cousins and I did our best to re-enact the battle scenes with each of us fighting over who got to be Lando and Darth Vader, the biggest pimp in film history, voiced by a black man (James Earl Jones).
With the appearance of Lando in Empire Strikes Back and later Return of the Jedi, I could imagine myself as the heroine of my own adventures. I could fight alongside white people in service of the force. I could imagine it because there was Billie Dee on screen as a heroic, flawed, brave character.
Can you imagine black kids today after seeing The Force Awakens fighting over who gets to be Finn by arguing about who gets to hide in the bushes?
Mr. Abrams, I know you didn’t set out to make a “message movie.” And I’m sure you got a lot of crap from people who didn’t like the potential interracial love story. You could probably care less about what a 40-something-year-old, African American fan girl with a laptop and a dream has to about your movie, which has broken box office records.
Except…I’d like you to consider something.
President Barack Obama owes his first historic win, in minuscule part, to Morgan Freeman. Freeman’s portrayal as President Tim Beck in 1998’s Deep Impact gave Americans a vision and a possibility of an African American US president. Voters could imagine it and so it came to be.
Films, as you know, give us a glimpse of what can be.
That’s why I’m making all this fuss about Finn. For the new generation of fans you’ve won with successful reboots of Star Trek and now Star Wars, the vision of what is possible for young people becomes greater, richer, and more diverse.
I believe in you and that’s why I’m sticking with you for the upcoming Star Wars films, should you direct future installments. To paraphrase my friend Gavin, I’m sticking with the reboot despite my misgivings because “the characters aren’t fully fleshed out, battle-hardened Jedi masters yet.” Like Gavin and legions of fans, old and new, I’m really looking forward to seeing them get there.
Just, pretty please, improve Finn along the way.
May the force be with you.
Sincerely,
Kerra L. Bolton