>"It seems pretty obvious that Rose was sidelined after a vocal minority of fans hated her and her arc from The Last Jedi."

Oh look, it's the "toxic fandom manbabies" narrative again. Gotta keep the myth that the only reason a female character would be criticized is due to "male fragility" and racism alive.

Rose Tico was the Disney Trilogy's Jar-Jar Binks. No one complained that Jar-Jar was almost entirely eliminated in Attack of the Clones and reduced to a single mute shot at the end of Revenge of the Sith, but the SJWs had their stopwatches out to count the seconds of screen time a useless character had in order to perpetuate their outrage.

Rose only existed because Ruin Johnson wanted to cram a token Asian female into Star Wars. Since she was only included to score diversity points and not for any story purpose, we've been treated to two years (plus) of ginned-up outrage-mongering and with her reduced presence in The Rise of Skywalker, we've been inundated with another wave of rage about the mistreatment of this "iconic" character who was so so great because SHUT UP she was. (Thought Experiment: What if Rose was portrayed by a white actress or, even worse, a man? Would anyone cry over the character's omission, all else being equal?)

The irony is that if Ruin had any writing ability beyond shallow paternal tokenism, he could've made Rose a good character by simply eliminating the useless side quest to Trump Casino World (where she leaves children in slavery in favor or freeing animals which will just be rounded back up) and making her the hacker. (It really should've been Maz Kanata, but Rose would've been fine.) She could've said something about how her warrior sister Paige (who blew up the dreadnought in the beginning) used to make fun of her nerdy interest in computers and make her feel lame, but now those skills are going to save the day.

That's just one option other than what Ruin did. It is actually possible to re-edit The Last Jedi to omit the entire Trump Casino World trip and Benicio Del Toro's lousy character; I've done it. Other than one long shot of the three of them, I removed him from the film and it looks like she opens the door to where they get captured. If I had access to the source footage, it'd be clean as a whistle. (As it is, I was able to chop out about 35 minutes of the movie without it being missed. The stupid mutiny and dumb bathos got jettisoned, too.)

The canard that "racist misogynists bullied Rose out of TROS" completely collapses upon the realization that Rey (female actor), Finn (black actor), Poe (Latino actor) had no reduction in screen time and Jannah (black female actor) was added along with the return of Lando (pimp daddy Billy Dee!). If you're such a shallow racialist that you have to ignore more people of color and obsess over Dominic Monaghan in order to prop up your narrative re: Rose's omission, then perhaps you should try the decaf.

I feel genuinely sorry for Kelly Marie Tran. I'm sure she's a sweet kid who thought she'd caught an epic career break only to be trapped in a misconceived token role and then made into a human shield and cudgel for SJWs seeking to tear apart everything with their divisive bigotry. Kid just wanted to work in the moving pictures biz.

It's tragic that this has happened to Star Wars, a simple saga that originally soared due to its being rooted in universally accessible monomyth only to be commandeered into serving as a skin suit for these intersectional political agendas. Story was sacrificed for sloganeering and rather than having a cultural moment we all could share in despite our differences, it became yet another battleground in the progressives jihad. (Remember when they predicted "incels are going to shoot up Joker screenings"? How'd that turn out? I mean other than no shootings and plenty of bank being made?)

It's weird that Disney, which doesn't do anything to LOSE money, allowed the most valuable IP in the world to be utterly corrupted this way. Between Solo and the reduced takes of TLJ and TROS, they've probably forfeited $1.5B in box office to scratch Kathleen Kennedy's and Ruin Johnson's SJW itches. While virtue-signalling may get you attaboys from your fellow travelers, it's terrible business. I don't think they're going to sell enough Baby Yoda dolls to cover these losses. Pity.

>Faris’s makeup-stained closeups in Birdman"

Who? I think you've confused Emma Stone (who was in Birdman and received an Oscar nomination) or possibly Naomi Watts with Anna Faris (who wasn't).