Star Wars: The Last Jedi was the most divisive movie in the franchise's history. While there are several Star Wars fans that love the film (including myself), a plethora of angry fans got online and started a petition against the film. Two of the biggest complaints fans had for the film was the sprawling plot and the use of several female characters. In fact, a female-less edit of the film hit the web, made by fans who cut out as many scenes that only featured women as possible.
Kelly Marie Tran, who plays Rose Tico in the film, received a large amount of criticism on social media. The criticism turned into blatant bullying, with Star Wars fans making sexist and racist comments about the Vietnamese-American actress. Tran ended up leaving Twitter months back, but the actress recently penned an op-ed for The New York Times, where she opens up about the online bullying. "It wasn’t their words, it’s that I started to believe them," began Tran in the article.
"Their words seemed to confirm what growing up as a woman and a person of color already taught me: that I belonged in margins and spaces, valid only as a minor character in their lives and stories," she continued. "I want to live in a world where children of color don’t spend their entire adolescence wishing to be white. I want to live in a world where women are not subjected to scrutiny for their appearance, or their actions, or their general existence. I want to live in a world where people of all races, religions, socioeconomic classes, sexual orientations, gender identities and abilities are seen as what they have always been: human beings. This is the world I want to live in. And this is the world that I will continue to work toward."
