10 Iconic Movie Characters Weirdly REPLACED In Movie Sequels
4. Rose Tico - Star Wars: Rise Of Skywalker
It's fair to say that Star Wars: The Last Jedi was a hugely divisive film with fans despite scoring largely positive reviews, and one of its most polarising elements was the introduction of Resistance mechanic Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran).
While some felt she brought some welcome diversity to the franchise and served as a cute foil for Finn (John Boyega), others opined that her romance with Finn was rushed and she was ultimately unnecessary in the general scope of the story.
Nevertheless, Rose became an iconic and highly recognisable character overnight, such that it seemed inevitable she would have a large role in the follow-up, The Rise of Skywalker.
Bafflingly, then, Rose is reduced to basically a cameo role in the film with just a few lines of dialogue, all while numerous new - and ultimately quite superfluous - characters are introduced including Resistance fighter Jannah (Naomi Ackie).
Jannah forges a fast bond with Finn due to their respective pasts as former Stormtroopers, and it ultimately feels like she was created as a reaction to the online negativity surrounding Rose, to basically act as her replacement.
Jannah is certainly not a copy-paste Rose doppelganger, but her dynamic with Finn feels like it was initially reserved for Rose only to be awkwardly changed during the film's infamously messy production.
Given that Jannah herself is hardly a fleshed out character it's frankly baffling, and saw writer-director J.J. Abrams fielding accusations that he'd kotowed to online trolls who took issue with Rose.
For his part, Abrams insists that Rose's role was reduced during post-production due to how much of it originally involved Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), whose own arc had to be re-jigged following Carrie Fisher's death.