The New Mutants director slams “embarrassing” same-sex kiss in Star Wars

30th August 2020

The kiss between two minor space pilots earned ire from the LGBTQ+ community.

During press for the Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, LGBTQ+ fans were promised some representation. However, when it came to it, the moment was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kiss between two minor space pilots, one of whom was even unnamed.

Although some were pleased with the representation, it earned a lot of ire due to how minor the characters involved were, particularly as many fans were shipping major characters Finn and Poe Dameron, and the potential romance between the two had gotten the support of Poe’s actor, Oscar Isaac.

Speaking to TooFab, the director of The New Mutants, Josh Boone, took a shot at the film, calling it an “embarrassing moment” of LGBTQ+ representation, and something he believes his film will avoid as it explores the romance between Danielle Moonstar / Mirage and Rahne Sinclair / Wolfsbane.

“It was just somebody in the background and [the filmmakers] were like, ‘We’ll put out articles as if this is something you should pay attention to,'” Boone said of the kiss.

And speaking of his hopes for the same-sex relationship in his film, Boone said: “I’m a big Joss Whedon fan, I’m a big Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan. They did this in the ’90s already, but they did it on television.

“We didn’t put this in to be confrontational or really even in a calculated way, it just happened naturally. We wrote it because the characters in the comic have like an intimate telepathic connection and it just sort of felt like the right thing to do, and it was more of a gentle thing and a coming of age thing than it was a sexual thing.”

He added: “When I was a teenager, I would go to the movies and they’d make me feel better. They were like therapy in a lot of ways. So I hope this would reach some people and for young women out there who are gay and don’t see representation in a big movie, it’s like, you guys can dress up at Halloween and hold hands and be them and that’s awesome.”Blu Hunt, who plays Mirage, also opened about her sexuality, explaining: “That aspect, it didn’t feel, I didn’t feel the pressure of that as much because it just felt so natural and so organic for me.

“I have dated girls and it just felt cool. I just got to explore that part of myself in this movie. I never felt like I was taking a role that didn’t belong to me.”

She added: “It felt really powerful to play a female character who was not connected to the men in the movie at all, other than just being their friend. And that was really, really, really cool.”

The New Mutants will be released in cinemas on 4 September 2020.