Remember Solo: A Star Wars Story? If not, you aren't the only one.
Star Wars fans and not alike missed this telling of the youth of Han Solo, starring Alden Ehrenreich as the titular scruffy-looking nerf-herder along with Emilia Clarke in a new role.
The movie hit theaters in 2018 to an extremely lukewarm reception. But one person who did not have a lukewarm reception for it was Thandiwe Newton whose character Val received a rather unceremonious death.
Newton said she thought it was a completely tone deaf mistake by the movie to kill her character off.
"You don't kill off the first Black woman to ever have a real role in a Star Wars movie," she said in an interview with Inverse. "Like, are you f**king joking?"
Newton later said the decision to kill Val was made after she'd signed onto the project and was made hastily.
"....Actually, in the script, she wasn't killed. It happened during filming. And it was much more just to do with the time we had to do the scenes."
Originally, the character's fate was supposed to be interpretive, with no clear indicators she'd died.
"But when we came to filming, as far as I was concerned and was aware, when it came to filming that scene, it was too huge a set-piece to create, so they just had me blow up and I'm done."
But even then, Newton knew the movie was making a big mistake.
The Star Wars franchise has quite a few new things on its plate, including new series and new films all coming out within the next few years.
Hopefully production teams hail Newton's words and future projects are handled more thoughtfully.
