The Star Wars "Boycott" and my thoughts on Science Fiction

I know this is really late and I really don't want to turn this blog into my personal soap box, but sometimes things happen that I have to talk about.

Surely by now, everyone has heard about the ridiculous movement to boycott Star Wars Episode VII. This is due to some labeling the movie as "anti-white genocide". Now I could go after the short mindedness of such a movement, but I'd rather go in another, more positive direction.

I wanted to talk about why I love what this movie is doing and what we're seeing in Sci-Fi as a whole.

When I was a kid, I would have loved to have an abundance of black sci-fi characters like I have seen over the past few years. The reason I hold on to Lando Calrissian so badly is because that was all I had. (And Billy Dee Williams is so cool). There are very few movies where a black character has an impact outside of being killed quickly or a walking stereotype. Although sparingly used, Lando is the good side of what we can see.

With the new movie, we get like the minority trinity of a female, a black man and a hispanic man. As you can see, none of these are white males. I am just glad to see more diversity in these movies and I can't even be cynical enough to think that these were affirmative action type hires. They have picked good actors for the roles and the race had nothing to do with it. If it did, I'm still okay with it to an extent. Besides, it's not like there won't be white characters in main roles. That boycott doesn't even make a whole lot of sense.

If we have movies about different alien species, why wouldn't there be different races of Earth (or an Earth analog) represented as well. We're supposed to see ourselves in these characters. Relate to them on some level. Now it feels like everyone can have someone to latch on to.

I've always hated when people boycott movies based on what they perceive without actually having viewed it. One day they will see that only makes people want to see the movie MORE.

Look at that, I got through this post without even getting riled up. Yes, I know there are a lot of Sci-Fi shows that have diversity (i.e. Star Trek), but I'm just wanted to focus on Star Wars here. Wait, did I mention another franchise with the word, "Star" in it? Uh oh...