Daisy Ridley has admitted she feels certain areas of the Star Wars fan community were too “vicious” with their critiques of the most recent film, The Last Jedi.
Released in 2017, the eighth instalment in the Star Wars saga was met with a mixed reception online, with some unimpressed with certain story decisions made by the film’s writers.
Speaking about this backlash in an interview with Bustle, Daisy said: “It’s great that people are expressive of their views. But this is people’s jobs. People worked really, really hard on that thing.
“I think there’s a way of having a discussion that isn’t so vicious.”
Referring to how certain fans have developed a “God complex” by having their views agreed with on social media, Daisy added: “If you’ve got however many followers, and you write something that you think is, like, so deep, and a hundred people like it, it’s constant reinforcement.”
One particularly alarming criticism held by a small percentage of fans was the prominence the film’s female characters held in The Last Jedi which, unfortunately, ended in actress Kelly Marie Tran being driven off social media after receiving a torrent of online abuse.
Kelly later penned an opinion piece about the racism she faced from Star Wars fans, and the impact that this had on her.
“Their words seemed to confirm what growing up as a woman and a person of colour already taught me: that I belonged in margins and spaces, only valid as a minor character in their lives and stories,” she wrote. “And those words awakened something deep inside me ― a feeling I thought I had grown out of.”
She added: “This is what it is to grow up as a person of colour in a white-dominated world. This is what it is to be a woman in a society that has taught its daughters that we are only worthy of love if we are deemed attractive by its sons. This is the world I grew up in, but not the world I want to leave behind.
“You might know me as Kelly. I am the first woman of colour to have a leading role in a Star Wars movie. I am the first Asian woman to appear on the cover of Vanity Fair. My real name is Loan. And I am just getting started.”
The final instalment of the Star Wars franchise, The Rise Of The Skywalker, will be released in cinemas this December. Watch the trailer above.