During a conversation with George Lucas at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, the 'Star Wars' creator addressed some longstanding criticisms of his franchise for a perceived lack of diversity in its cast. 'They would say, ‘It’s all white men.' Most of the people are aliens!' he noted.
Stupid criticism but also not a very good response. I don’t think he meant to put it that way, but it makes it sounds like he’s saying they aren’t white men because they’re from another planet and that planet doesn’t have black people on it so there is no ‘white’ there. Again, I don’t think that’s what he meant, but he could have put it better by saying something like it was an unfortunate oversight not to have more human diversity in the early films, but it was not his intent to show a galaxy of white men and he hopes we can all look at Star Wars as inspiration since it’s a galaxy where all types of intelligent beings are equals (except droids).
Does it? It sounds to me like he’s saying that most of the people aren’t human at all. In fact that’s definitely what he’s saying… Like they don’t look like white men or black men, because they don’t look like men. He’s suggesting that viewers may be forgetting that a great many of the characters in the movies are in extreme costumes where ethnicity isn’t apparent whatsoever.
Let’s take the main cast for example, the skywalkers (Luke Leia Vader) are all family, so that makes some sense to be the same race. There Han and ObiWan, as well, so that makes 5 white. But then there’s chewy, Yoda, c-3p0 and R2, so 4 that fall into "other"and finally Lando an actual poc. Yes, the cast is half white, but half the cast is really not bad, especially for the 70’s & 80’s.
And then there’s the Empire, they’re British (apparently). Make of that what you will
The Empire is ridiculously racist and specist. Stormtroopers are all human. Officers are almost all white men. Compare that with the rebels who are multiethnic, have multiple species and female members.
There hasn’t been enough media delving into the bigotry of the Empire.
I understand that’s what he was intending to say. I’m talking about what it sounds like he’s saying, at least from my perspective. And I would suggest that people upvoting me implies I’m not the only one.