Disney has removed Star Wars’ first same-sex kiss from The Rise of Skywalker in all showings in Singapore over the country’s restrictive LGBTQ laws.
The brief kiss at the end of the film between two minor female characters was cut to preserve the film’s PG-13 rating in the nation.n.
It is not immediately clear whether the brief scene was removed from the film in other countries.
The scene had already sparked a debate among viewers, with many applauding Disney for the momentous first in the storied franchise, while others criticized it as tokenism.
Director J.J. Abrams in an interview this month reposted to some of the criticism, saying he saw the kiss between the two women as a chance to depict an LGBTQ relationship “without it being heavy-handed or making too loud of a deal.”