The Star Wars franchise has fizzled as a cultural phenomenon thanks to the contempt Disney has for the franchise and its fans.

Actor John Boyega, who played Finn in the latest trilogy, has almost come around to this position. In 2020, Boyega voiced his frustrations with Disney for hyping up his character just to make him increasingly irrelevant over the course of the new trilogy. Boyega has since apparently realized that taking shots at Disney and Hollywood executives might be counterproductive for his film career, especially because the four films he appeared in since the end of the trilogy have been forgettable. In March 2023, he said he was “comfortable” with how Disney treated his character.

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Having not appeared in a film since mid-2023, Boyega has instead decided to slam Star Wars fans. According to Boyega, Star Wars is “so white” and an “elite white” space. It is a “franchise that’s so white that a black person existing in [it] was something.” He complained that Star Wars fans didn’t want us to be “their heroes.” And don’t bother giving Boyega examples of black heroes in Star Wars who were beloved, because that is just tokenism and “telling me how many cookie chips are in the cookie dough.”

That’s right, you Star Wars fans are racist, and any proof you offer that you aren’t is just tokenism. Such is the logic of the woke celebrity.

The problem with Boyega’s diatribe is that it isn’t rooted in reality. What little anger there was at a black stormtrooper and its effect on the lore was muted even among the most devoted Star Wars nerds. Boyega’s character won over fans, whose only real complaint is that his character was made completely irrelevant to the trilogy in the second and third films. Fans wanted to see more of Boyega’s character and his arc of defecting from the bad guys to potentially become a Jedi hero.

Yes, it was actually Star Wars fans who wanted Boyega’s character to become a hero. Rian Johnson, who tanked the Star Wars brand with the disaster that was The Last Jedi, was the one who sidelined Boyega and nuked the value of the Star Wars brand in the process. Disney, which, for some bizarre reason, did not plan this trilogy at all and let two different directors take it in different directions, is the one who stopped Boyega’s character from being a hero.

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If Star Wars fans had their way, Boyega would have been up with Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver, and his redemption arc, as the big three heroes of the trilogy. But Boyega, whether through woke politics or a cynical desire to appeal to Hollywood executives again, has decided that the fans are the problem, just as every failed Star Wars project of the last few years has done.

Such is the sad story of Star Wars in the modern era. Disney puts out a pathetic product that fans hate, and the fans are then labeled racist for not liking it or the token minority characters that have no interesting traits or role in the story. Boyega has fallen to that Dark Side, which, unfortunately, is more of a character arc than his character received in three movies.