Long a critic of the franchise, Star Wars actor John Boyega has outlined what he’d have done had he been producer on the sequel trilogy… Ever since he played Finn for (possibly) the final time in 2019’s The Rise Of Skywalker, actor John Boyega has made the occasional criticism about his time in the franchise, ... Star Wars | John Boyega says sequel trilogy should have been more like The Force Unleashed
Long a critic of the franchise, Star Wars actor John Boyega has outlined what he’d have done had he been producer on the sequel trilogy…
Ever since he played Finn for (possibly) the final time in 2019’s The Rise Of Skywalker, actor John Boyega has made the occasional criticism about his time in the franchise, not least the treatment of his character following 2015’s The Force Awakens. Speaking at an event in Florida recently, however, and the actor has provided a broader critique of the sequel trilogy, and outlined what he’d have done with it had he been in Lucasfilm producer Kathleen Kennedy’s position.
“If I was a producer on Star Wars from the beginning,” John Boyega said at Florida Supercon (via Popverse), “You would have had a whole completely different thing.”
First, Boyega’s sequel trilogy would have treated its legacy characters with a bit less, er, murderousness. “First of all, we’re not getting rid of Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, all these people,” he said. “We’re not doing that. The first thing we’re going to do is fulfil their story, fulfil their legacy. We’re going to make a good moment of handing on the baton.”
As for its newer characters – and he seems to be specifically referring to Daisy Ridley’s Rey here – he’d have reworked the stories to make them less capable from the beginning. “They won’t just grab stuff and know what to do with it. No. You’ve got to struggle like every other character in this franchise. I’d do that.”
It’s a sentiment that echoes those exhausting shouts of ‘Mary Sue’ in relation to the Star Wars franchise in the mid-2010s, but we’ll swiftly move on from that. What’s clear, though, is that Boyega’s a Star Wars fan himself – as demonstrated by the kinds of stories he’d have drawn from had he been producer. The 2008 videogame The Force Unleashed, which introduced a secret Darth Vader apprentice named Starkiller, was one of them.
“I’d look to the Old Republic stories,” Boyega said, “and see what we can add to the continuation of that. I would definitely want to see Force Unleashed stories in there. I would try to expand the Star Wars universe as much as possible while respecting the lore. If we’re expanding the lore, we have to do it in within the respective boundaries that stay true.”
He reserves his harshest criticism for the sequel trilogy’s treatment of Luke Skywalker, though. “Luke Skywalker wouldn’t be disappearing on a rock,” Boyega said. “Hell no. Standing there and he’s, like, a projector? I would want to give those characters way more.”
