With the release of her first big screen role in Judd Apatow’s comedy Trainwreck, which she also wrote the script for, Amy Schumer has been all over the place recently, including the cover of GQ. Decked out in Princess Leia’s iconic Return of the Jedi bikini, a theme that continues inside the issue, this made quite a splash, but not necessarily in a good way. Star Wars apparently isn’t happy with what they call the "inappropriate" use of their characters.
The star of Comedy Central’s hit variety show Inside Amy Schumer, the 34-year-old comedian has been red hot lately, but her blunt, often explicit style is also rather divisive. Because of this, just about anything she does becomes a lightning rod for criticism, and combine that with the fact that fans don’t like people tinkering with Star Wars, a backlash isn’t surprising.
What is surprising is the assertion that Star Wars, Lucasfilm, and Disney didn’t approve the use of their characters and props for this photo shoot. I’m no expert on copyrights, fair use rules, parody law, and the like, but I imagine GQ has a whole department of people who are really good at that stuff and who signed off on this. And the photos are still up and circulating, so it doesn’t appear there’s any legal action in the works.
The complaints primarily seem to be from people who aren’t particularly Amy Schumer fans. There are a lot folks out there throwing around insults like calling her fat and ugly and not funny, which is something she pokes fun at on her shoe all the time. Others decry Star Wars being sexualized (because Carrie Fisher in a bikini and chains somehow didn’t do that already).
The cover of the magazine shows Schumer in the outfit Jabba the Hutt forces Leia to wear in Return of the Jedi, sucking on C-3PO’s metal finger.
Because of the storm of controversy, GQ later asked Schumer to redesign the cover, and this is what they came up with. Although, you have to assume they anticipated such a response and probably had this round already chambered.
Inside the magazine, the overt sexuality continues, as you can see in this photo of Schumer naked and in bed with R2-D2 and C-3PO. She also reportedly recounts the specifics of a particularly wild night with everyone’s favorite protocol droid.
We’ll have to wait and see if anything comes from this situation, but we all know it isn’t going to have one iota of impact on the popularity of Star Wars: The Force Awakens when it arrives on December 18. And if anything, it’s probably just going to drive more business for Amy Schumer and Trainwreck, which opens nationwide today.
