Star Wars: Why are fans upset about Rose Tico’s lack of screentime?

Rose Tico was a character some fans disliked in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, but others fans are upset she didn’t appear more in The Rise of Skywalker.

Kelly Marie Tran was a victim of racism when her character, Rose Tico appeared in Star Wars:The Last Jedi. She understandably quit Instagram to escape the hate. However, things have changed since that film was released.

She currently stars in the series Sorry for your Loss alongside Elizabeth Olsen as her sister. While her star is on the rise, people who were bullying her have become upset because she only appeared for less than two minutes on screen in The Rise of Skywalker.

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So, why are people suddenly screaming from the rooftops?

Nothing better to do and a character’s purpose

What comes to mind is people have too much time on their hands and will complain about anything. I haven’t seen the film yet so I cannot judge either way, but I think it is ridiculous a character many disliked is missed by those same fans.

However, it should be considered that fans who liked Rose in The Last Jedi miss her in The Rise of Skywalker.

Every character has a purpose in a story no matter what the medium. That’s Fiction Writing 101. In Rose’s case, if she wasn’t included in The Rise of Skywalker at all, people could ask where she was during the film.

To be fair, Rose Tico appears to have suffered a similar fate to Jar Jar Binks. In his first appearance in The Phantom Menace, he served as the comedic relief the way R2-D2 and C-3PO did in the original trilogy. However, after the film was released, the character was universally panned as useless and Ahmed Best received so much hate mail that he considered suicide that he has been vocal about.

Jar Jar became critical to giving Chancellor Palpatine emergency powers in Attack of the Clones which would’ve been Padmé’s decision to make if she hadn’t been a constant target for assassination. Meanwhile, Binks appeared in only two scenes in Revenge of the Sith where he only had two words in the first scene and none in his final scene, which occurred during Padmé’s funeral.

From main character to sidelined

It may be that the writers knew Rose was disliked so they sidelined her for all but one scene in The Rise of Skywalker. Chris Terrio who co-wrote The Rise of Skywalker made some lame excuse to why Tico didn’t play more of a role. His excuse was Kelly had shot more scenes but they were discarded because of bad CGI.

Fans were livid by that response saying that it’s an excuse and not an explanation. It’s obvious he thought it would escape the fans’ notice if she wasn’t in the film as much. Also, the hashtag #RoseTicoDeservedBetter trended on Twitter for a while.

Beloved character?

Many fans have expressed that if Rose Tico was such a beloved character, then why couldn’t the writers, which consisted of director J.J Abrams, have written another use for her in the movie? Terrio should’ve kept quiet until the film had come out on DVD or at least, when the hysteria and disappointment of the film had died down.

Also, did Disney hate the character so much they didn’t bother beefing up publicity for the character? The director of Crazy Rich Asians, Jon M. Chu has said he wants justice for the character and for Disney to do a limited series for Disney+ on Rose Tico to make up for her lack of screentime.

We want to hear from you. Do you think Rose Tico needs a series to make up for her lack of time on screen? Let us know in the comments below!