Kumail Nanjiani tweets about Rogue One and the importance of representation

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/12/21/kumail-nanjiani-tweets-about-r.html

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No spoilers here but:

Bodhi (sp?) is the character he’s talking about i want to say, and i was convinced that he’d be unceremoneously killed off not long after he’s introduced. The fact that he continues to be an important character to the plot kept surprising me. Rogue One is not a perfect movie, but god damn it i fucking loved it.

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I did wonder though, does the Empire have uncharacteristically permissive grooming standards? I wouldn’t have expected an imperial pilot to have long hair and a beard.

Was that an intentional statement, that even the xenophobic space nazis are cool with (or at least ambivalent about) individual cultural diversity?

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Only the highest officers are expected to be so fastidious! Everyone else is just blaster-fodder.

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I liked the fact that the StormTroopers on the Penal planet (or where ever they broke what’s-her-name from) were decidedly less Spit-and-Polish than the ones on the Death Star.

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I suppose it’s entirely possible that stormtroopers are all a bunch of shaggy hippies under those helmets.

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I was bothered, too, by Diego Luna trying to pass himself off as an officer with his scruffy hair and beard, and then I realized that most of the bare-faced Imperial officers we’d previously seen in SW movies happened to occupy relatively prestigious posts, either on one of the Death Stars, the Executor, or another Star Destroyer.

That said, Scarife wasn’t exactly some backwater prison facility. Would it have killed him to shave on the shuttle ride over?

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I think it’s within the realm of possibility that his facial hair, and hair length could be excused depending on what type of pilot he is and what specific role he did for the empire. But it’s a stretch. However the thought about his grooming did pop into my head while watching the movie, but it did not really bother me all that much.

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I’m gonna file this under the same category as “unkempt, unshaven Indiana Jones successfully impersonating a German officer.” (Twice!)

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Few things to remember about Bohdi when we meet him. Spoilers of course:

  1. He had been on the run for a little bit, personal grooming probably wasn’t his highest priority
  2. He was just a cargo pilot. So his long hair and beard (when kept clean and trimmed to imperial standards) would probably have been fine.
  3. Once Saw got ahold of him and ran him throught he alien mind bender thingy (weakest part of the film imo) that did mess him up so again personal grooming wasn’t his highest priority.
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Four: His goggles are apparently permanently glued to his forehead. (Okay, he DID yank them off in frustration 95% of the way through the movie, but still…)

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Yeah that mind reader thing kinda bugged me. Wasn’t the process supposed to make him a drooling idiot?

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I thought maybe that was just Saw playing with/intimidating him (as if any more of that was necessary with a giant tentacle beast carressing him already).

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I wonder if that is part of the character growing from how he was originally written. Perhaps he was supposed to be a drooling fool after that, but them the role increased and they just sort of hand waved it

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But can we all step back and appreciate how easy Bohdi will be for Cos-players. Jumpsuit. Goggles. Okay. I’m done.

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I guess it wears off after a while, kind of like hibernation sickness.

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Well it was supposed to turn him into a vegetable if he was lying. Which he wasn’t, so possibly him being catatonic was just trauma or possibly a side effect of the creature not flaying his mind to hell.

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I was happy to also see Star Wars’ first unofficial gay couple, Chirrut and Baze.

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I thought when Saw explained the creature that it was no matter the results of the test, most subjects don’t make it through unscathed at least a little.

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