#**oscisa

oscar isaac

thor, the god of love and thunder

John Boyega in person? Beautiful

Kelly Marie Tran in person? Beautiful

Naomi Ackie in person? Beautiful

Daisy Ridley in person? Beautiful, and had murder in her eyes when asked yet again about Kylo effing Ren

Short answer:

I think it was as perfectly centrist-appealing as all of his answers to political or social questions about his movies ever are, and that his media coach definitely earned their inevitably 6-figure salary to the penny.

Full answer:

Oscar isn’t Poe; I’m a Poe stan who really enjoys Oscar’s public persona for the most part and supports Oscar’s career, not an Oscar stan who just likes Poe for who plays him.

Oscar is consistently much more moderate in his public stances than I personally think make sense for the roles that he is talking about.

That he’s playing Peter Malkin and has yet to straight-up say “Nazis were heinous and wilfully rid themselves of any vestige of humanity, and the Holocaust was wrong, period, no defense possible” is… a lot to swallow, and is definitely coloring my view of Oscar as a whole. But I also understand that, you know, Oscar’s a man of color, and he’s got to balance the way his current tenuous public favor is allowing him some measure of power in his career choices and ability to act with, like, how absolutely eager the public would be to decide he’s garbage and take away that sliver of power.

Case in point, how many articles were like “SO IT TURNS OUT POE DAMERON, LOCAL SPACE LATINO, IS A TRASH HUMAN EVEN WORSE THAN THE LOCAL SPACE NAZIS, RIGHT? AWESOME, LET’S COURT MARTIAL HIM AND HILARIOUSLY DEPORT HIM YUKYUKYUK YOU GET IT? BECAUSE HE’S A LOCAL SPACE LATINO WE DISLIKE? AND DEPORTATION’S WHAT YOU DO WITH THOSE? ISN’T THAT FUNNY OSCAR? WON’T IT BE AWESOME WHEN YOU’RE KILLED OFF SO THE OVERT NEO-NAZI WHITE MAN CHARACTER CAN BE REVEALED AS THE SECRET GOOD GUY ALL ALONG? BECAUSE YOU’RE OBVIOUSLY BAD; YOU’RE LATINO.”

So I get, on some level, why he’s never actually said anything that felt like an actual opinion about any of his characters’ or films’ politics. The closest has been his generic nihilism and pessimistic view of humanity’s underlying selfishness while on the Ex Machina junket (and random quotes that, from anyone else, would be sooooooo embaaaaaarrasssiiiiiiiingggggg about how Loneliness And Disconnection Are The Soulfruit Of Creatives or whatever oh my GOD oscar isaac go smoke bowl with pedro pascal and chill for five seconds).

I would love it if he actually stated whatever his opinion is, re: like, Whether Fascism Is Bad, but he never has. And that’s his right. He doesn’t owe the public his political opinions just because he plays political roles – and honestly, insofar as the roles he does choose, the choices that he makes with his art speak for him, and I would interpret that as BEING his statement.

He didn’t have to take the role of Poe, but he did, and he didn’t have to mention on the TLJ junket that he hadn’t agreed with Rian’s interpretation of the character as being ~rash or whatever the fuck Rian’s peddling his bad writing choices as these days.

He didn’t have to produce Operation: Finale, which as far as I know is his first producer role – giving him a measure of control over the film that obviously he felt like was important enough that he would step out of his comfort zone to see get made in the way he feels it needs to have been made, yk.

He didn’t have to sign onto The Promise, which took a LOT of heat from Armenian genocide-deniers, to the point where there was an orchestrated effort from Turkish, Azerbaijani, and Pakistani partisans to tank the film before it even came out.

And then immediately after The Promise, he defended Poe’s choices in TLJ to the best he could (while being so spoiler-free that it’s honestly dumb of Disney to even have SW press junkets before the movies come out at this point?) and picked up Operation: Finale, another genocide film.

His career for the last few years has been, mostly, movies about immigrants finding their balance between cultures (usually within the context of a majority culture that is openly hostile), radical opposition to right-wing politics, and bringing voice to the horrors of genocide. So… I think he generally picks roles in films that highlight or explore the viewpoint he wants his ~oeuvre~ to embody, which is a pretty rare thing for contemporary mainstream actors.

To that end, like, there are not any other actors I can think of whose bodies of work are THAT politically pointed and THAT focused on a sociopolitical viewpoint who aren’t, like, gross mealy-mouthed henchfolk on the side of festering evil like James Woods or whoever else is in that fakakta anti-abortion travesty. As long as Oscar’s artistic choices keep presenting a viewpoint that I think is consistent with, like, being a good and ethical person, I’m going to trust that he is – and that his soundbytes are just really well-trained soundbytes.

(But I also think that the level to which he lets his art speak FOR him can be frustrating, because it would be nice to know whether those choices really are that deliberate. It would be nice to know, like, just how much Oscar actually believes the wishy-washy centrist line-toeing PR soundbytes, and how much of that is just being preternaturally good at soundbytes that will defang slathering right-wing critics so that he can continue to be able to make such pointed choices with his career.)

Re: Poe specifically, I think Oscar made it as clear as he could while toeing the line of spoilers and not breaking the Disney/LF line in the sand re: defending Rilo Jon’s ~man-genius choicez~ that he sees Poe as a good man, making the best choices he could in the face of bad leadership and imminent danger, and that he sees Poe as a character who deeply respects women and views them as his moral compass (which is in line with every Poe canon except Rilo’s so, I mean, he isn’t wrong).

He’s definitely in JUST as much of a PR bind, in terms of how he reacts to Star Wars questions about his character, as John or Kelly. Half of the SW audience hates him for being in the film at all and not being dead yet. And the other half, apparently, mostly only like him if Poe turns out to be gay and will hate him if he doesn’t. The tightrope that Oscar has to walk in terms of how he responds to ANY “public opinion” of Poe is not one I envy.

His lack of public presence is just as self-protective against bullshit racist fucknuttery as Kelly’s deletions, and I think fandom’s/the public’s apparent majority split between people who ONLY see him as Being Close Enough To White Not To Matter Or Defend Against Racists and people who ONLY see him as Gross Scary Latino Man Obviously Coded As Rapist Because He Exists As A Brown Man is… horrific and heartbreaking. Like, a GOOD and THOUGHTFUL and FUNDAMENTALLY HONEST article or post or meta or fic about Poe Dameron is… not common. That court martial was like the epitome of every bad racist bullshit take snowballed into an orgy of white supremacist Trump-era circle-jerking at its most debaucherous.

Oscar Isaac lives in the real world. He literally DOES EXIST as a man who looks like him in a galaxy where white women who condescend like Holdo refuse to actually do jackshit about genocidal idiot warlords like Hux and Kylo, and people like Oscar die as a result. Oscar Isaac lives in the real world, and he saw that the public sided with white lady laissez-faire that ended with mass deaths. Because that’s what we DO, as a society. We side with the fragile, sad, completely incompetent white ladies who act affronted by men who look like Oscar Isaac, even if it means letting chucklefuck monsters like Hux and Kylo Ren win.

What kind of answer could Oscar give that would be, you know, sane and honest about the shit people are throwing at a totally undeserving Poe, and NOT cause those sectors of fandom/the public to blacklist him more overtly and take away the career he’s been building for twenty years?

…

But also, like, he’s a guy who didn’t understand why some people would think even tacit support of Ayn Rand was worth side-eyeing.

If liking as many boy bands as I’ve loved has taught me anything, it’s that stanning any real-life human man based on any part of their public persona is Dumb because really, they’re just a human man and inevitably disappointing.

JJ ABRAMS REWROTE THE ROLE OF POE DAMERON TO SURVIVE NOT BECAUSE “OSCAR ISAAC IS A LIKABLE GUY,” OR “AN ATTRACTIVE DRAW FOR AUDIENCES ATTRACTED TO DUDES,” OR WHATEVER, BUT BECAUSE OSCAR ISAAC SPECIFICALLY TOLD HIM THAT HE WAS NO LONGER INTERESTED IN TAKING ROLES WHERE HE, AS AN ACTOR OF COLOR PLAYING CHARACTERS OF COLOR, DIED TO FURTHER THE NARRATIVES OF WHITE CHARACTERS (remember: Oscar was cast before John got the role of Finn, so Oscar saw the script containing Rey and “Sam,” a character intended to be white).

JJ ABRAMS REWROTE THE ROLE BECAUSE HE WANTED OSCAR ISAAC, A TALENTED ACTOR OF COLOR, TO BE ONE OF THE ANCHORS OF THE SWST AND THE FIRST HEROIC FACE THE AUDIENCES WOULD SEE IN THE STAR WARS FRANCHISE SINCE THE PREQUELS, AND IT WOULD BE A RACIST ACT TO HAVE HAD THAT ROLE END UP BEING “THE LATINO GUY WHO DIES TO FURTHER WHITE CHARACTERS’ STORIES.”

OSCAR HAS SAID SPECIFICALLY THAT HE WAS READY TO TURN DOWN STAR WARS EVEN THOUGH IT WAS ONE OF HIS LIFELONG FAVORITE THINGS BECAUSE HE DOESN’T WANT TO PLAY SAID “LATINO GUY WHO GETS KILLED OFF FOR WHITE HEROES TO HAVE A STORY.”

PLEASE STOP ACTING LIKE JJ ABRAMS REWROTE THE ENTIRE FRANCHISE BECAUSE OSCAR WAS CHARMING WHEN THEY HAD DRINKS OR BECAUSE OSCAR HAS A PRETTY FACE. ALSO PLEASE STOP ACTING LIKE THE CHOICE NOT TO KILL OFF POE DAMERON WAS AN ARBITRARY CHOICE THAT DIDN’T HAVE AN IMPACT ON TFA BOTH IN-UNIVERSE AND ON A METATEXTUAL LEVEL. “POE WAS ORIGINALLY GOING TO DIE” DOES NOT MATTER TO THE EXISTING TEXT OF THE FRANCHISE ANY MORE THAN “FINN WAS ORIGINALLY GOING TO BE A WHITE GUY NAMED SAM.” BOTH ROLES EVOLVED AND CHANGED BECAUSE IT WAS IMPORTANT BOTH IN THE SW UNIVERSE AND THE REAL WORLD TO BECOME THE CHARACTERS THAT POE AND FINN ULTIMATELY ARE, AND THAT WAS DOWN TO OSCAR AND JOHN BEING EXTREMELY COGNIZANT OF THE VISIBILITY OF THEIR ROLES AND THE CONTENT OF THE SCRIPT. STOP DOWNPLAYING THAT.

Also fuck Rilo Jon. The biggest difference between TFA and TLJ was that JJ not only listened to his actors about how their characters inherently changed because of who was playing them, and how the world would view those actors, he rewrote huge portions of the world he was creating because of those implications despite them not being “what HE meant,” because that is not what matters -- the execution mattered, not the intent. Rilo Jon not only didn’t listen when every single one of his actors expressed concern with their characters’ arcs and characterization being incongruous at best and offensive at worst, but he delights in mocking their concerns and refused to consider that his perspective as a rich white man might not have the knowledge tools necessary to understand why his choices were a problem. The only thing he was willing to revise was, when ordered by Kathleen Kennedy, his older female boss, to add Poe to the movie -- and he did so by writing him as having a huge problem with his older female boss, who ends up being killed in a giant explosion, so like, you tell me whether the baby needs his tantrum diaper changed.

ANYWAY THE POINT IS, THE STORY WAS NEVER “OSCAR WAS SO CHARMING WHEN HE MET WITH JJ IN PARIS THAT JJ DECIDED POE SHOULD LIVE.” IT WAS “OSCAR EXPRESSED CONCERN WITH THE IMPLICATIONS OF BEING ASKED YET AGAIN TO PLAY A CHARACTER WHO WAS KILLED OFF SO WHITE CHARACTERS COULD LIVE, AND JJ NOT ONLY TOOK THAT CONCERN AS A REAL CONCERN, BUT REVISED THE MOVIE TO ADDRESS IT BOTH BY HAVING POE LIVE AND MAKING SURE THAT ‘SAM’ BECAME FINN.”

Oscar Isaac playing peekaboo with his baby. He has his Poe Dameron hairstyle and just the right stubble.

John Boyega playing with TOO MANY KITTENS at once. TOO MANY. He laughs, delighted and overwhelmed, at the tickle of their tiny toebeans.

Diego Luna with sweaterpaws in a big cableknit cowl-neck, peeking out at me with sparkling eyes.

Alternately: Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal lovingly fixing each other’s hair and collars and glasses.

Harry Styles bashfully holding out a bunch of heart-shaped balloons. He’s wearing a floral suit.

Riz Ahmed floating past in a crystal-blue pool, laying atop a swan-shaped floatie. He tilts his sunglasses down to wink.

Harrison Ford looking vaguely maybe-disapproving but being a good sport about it.

George Shelley building a blanket fort for two. He wears a blanket cape.

Mahershala Ali having a tea party with gilded bone china teacups covered in fuchsia roses. The other guests are mostly teddy bears.

Andy Samberg making a giant banana split; he’s wearing a cardigan and his glasses, and he had to roll up the sleeves to his elbows.

Aziz Ansari playing with a Dog That Looks Like Tom Haverford, rip the cutest blog concept.

Tom Holland doing breathtaking fouettes and probably a pas de basque combo.

Harry Shum Jr. can come, too.

Richard Ayoade cleaning his glasses. He’s in a beautiful library. He shushes the camera.

Adam Scott eating a calzone, the cheese stretching entirely too long to be realistic. He laughs at himself.

John Cho riding a white horse like in Selfie, but in less of a shirt.  Maybe in a light rain.

Ben Schwartz and Joe Keery brushing their teeth side-by-side.

Alfie Enoch frosting a giant pink cake with a smudge of flour on his perfect cheekbone.

Terry Crews painting a still life of flowers and various fruits.

Dev Patel and Andrew Garfield having a pillow fight in ridiculously-patterned flannel pajama pants and white undershirts. They lightly pluck stray feathers from each other’s shoulders.

Armie Hammer walking a moderately sized army of dachsunds in raincoats. He has a magenta umbrella.

Louis Tomlinson, clean-shaven, wearing suspenders. Freddie is dressed to match.

Donnie Yen polishing an apple on his shirt and taking a cheery bite. Or maybe a peach, and then then he wipes his mouth on his wrist.

Luke Pasqualino carving an terrible, terrible, but very cute jack-o’lantern. He’s too proud of it.

Tamal Ray eating a huge sandwich. Probably the number two best sandwich of his life, when they fried the pork with rosemary. I want to see his joy.

Nick Offerman reading “Make Way for Ducklings.” TO DUCKLINGS.

Alternately: Madeline. He’s probably wearing a tool belt.