Although it was released late last year, many LGBTQ+ fans are still talking about THAT lesbian kiss from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
What could have been a groundbreaking moment for queer representation in one of the world's longest-running, and most beloved/iconic movie franchises ended up becoming nothing more than a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment that felt lazily tacked-on at the last minute to fulfill some kind of diversity quota, and many viewers were rightfully upset. So much so, that many think the kiss was actually a huge step backward when it comes to LGBTQ+ representation in mainstream, blockbuster cinema. And it looks like The New Mutants director Josh Boone is a part of that camp.
In a recent interview with TooFab where he discusses the creation of his troubled, and long-delayed X-Men spin-off film, Boone calls out The Rise of Skywalker's lesbian kiss, plainly calling it "the most embarrassing example of queer representation."
"It was just somebody in the background and [the filmmakers] were like, 'We'll put out articles as if this is something you should pay attention to,'" Boone told the website.
Speaking about how his new film The New Mutants and his decision to actually make it queer-inclusive, he continued:
"I'm a big Joss Whedon fan, I'm a big Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan. They did this in the '90s already, but they did it on television. We didn't put this in to be confrontational or really even in a calculated way, it just happened naturally. We wrote it because the characters in the comic have like an intimate telepathic connection and it just sort of felt like the right thing to do, and it was more of a gentle thing and a coming-of-age thing than it was a sexual thing."
Although The New Mutants does include a much-needed lesbian love story, as our friends at Autostraddle point out, it's worth noting that Josh Boone's superhero/horror flick isn't without its own faults. One of the biggest and most valid criticisms of The New Mutants centers around the character of Roberto. In the comics, Roberto is an Afro-Latinx boy from Brazil and has to deal with anti-Blackness, but in Boone's movie, non-Black actor Henry Zaga was cast in the role, completely erasing that aspect of the character.
What's worse is that in defending his casting choice in a recent interview with Gizmodo, Boone had a less-than-stellar response to the controversy:
"I didn’t care so much about the racism I’ve heard about in Brazil, about light-skinned versus dark-skinned," Boone said. "To me, it was I wanted to represent Brazil in a positive way and I wanted to find somebody who seems like he could look like a guy who’s had the silver spoon in his mouth, who has like a really rich dad and [Henry] just exemplified all these things."
While Boone did make some points about Star Wars, "not caring about racism" is still a big, no, HUGE yikes...
