Even weeks after its premiere, some of us can't stop obsessing over Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker. Many left the movie in a state of confusion, with a laundry list of questions ranging from "How is Palpatine still alive?" to "Why was this almost $300 million big-screen adventure a less satisfying Star Wars experience than a handful of Baby Yoda GIFs?" But one creative decision that really sticks in our space-craw was how it cast aside Rose Tico, played by Kelly Marie Tran.

Walt Disney Pictures

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When Rise Of Skywalker opened, some fans immediately took issue with how little time the movie afforded to Tran (just over a minute). In the following weeks, interviews with the creative team have only made the situation more confusing. Co-writer Chris Terrio claimed that they wrote a lot of scenes featuring Rose with Leia, but then most of them had to be scrapped due to technical issues with their digital Carrie Fisher zombie. Then he recanted that statement and claimed the scenes were actually cut during the script phase. Which is ... weird

According to co-editor Maryann Brandon, she "tried very hard" to highlight Rose's importance and wanted "to make her character sing." Which is why they "cut to her a few times in the end battle" -- again, contributing to a total screen time that's roughly a third the length of a Smash Mouth song. These explanations aren't just unconvincing but flat-out contradictory. So the big question is this: Did The Rise of Skywalker minimize Tran to placate racists?

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In The Last Jedi, Kelly Marie Tran became the first woman of color to play a leading role in a Star Wars movie. She was subsequently bullied off of social media by racist fans. In a 2018 op-ed for The New York Times, she wrote: 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. So it's more than a little galling to see her relegated to the margins of The Rise Of Skywalker.

The Star Wars franchise has often modulated itself based on racial politics, but historically, it's endeavored to be more progressive, not less. In response to criticism that the original Star Wars was "one the most racist movies ever produced," for The Empire Strikes Back, George Lucas created Lando. In an early script, "half of the troops, as well as citizens of [Cloud City]" were black. For some reason, that never happened, and some critics slammed Lando for being a "token" black character and a "stereotype." Still, when Return Of The Jedi came out, Lando didn't spend the majority of the movie, say, doing his taxes off-screen. He blew up the second Death Star (and didn't cheat using sorcery like Luke).

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In The Rise Of Skywalker, the filmmakers similarly seem to be modifying the story's trajectory in response to backlash, but this time they're taking cues from an objectively terrible group. These are the kind of people who changed Rose's Wookieepedia entry to a miasma of slurs and profanity. Normally we wouldn't assume that Disney would make major creative decisions just to pacify trolls ... except they did exactly that while The Rise Of Skywalker was being made.

In 2018, James Gunn was fired from the Guardians Of The Galaxy series after some shitty jokes he'd made nearly a decade earlier (and had apologized for) resurfaced. Who resurfaced them? Alt-right personality Mike Cernovich, whose resume also includes promoting Pizzagate and claiming that date rape isn't a thing. Clearly Cernovich wasn't genuinely offended by Gunn's dumb jokes. Instead he targeted Gunn for his "public anti-Trump stance."