Back in 2014 when the first teaser for Star Wars: The Force Awakens came out, fans were quick to believe Finn would play a bigger part in the sequel, but while John Boyega has been very vocal about his disappointment from that experience, nowadays he’s happy that Anthony Mackie got the proper role that he deserved.
These comments first came up from an interview in late 2020 where Boyega denounced Disney and Lucasfilm’s decision to cast actors belonging to minority groups like him and Kelly Marie Tran only to treat their characters arcs as minor plot points towards the trilogy's ending. The matter escalated so quickly and loudly that it prompted Disney executives to hold a meeting with Boyega so that they could discuss this type of representation in Star Wars and other films.
It seems now that Boyega is much happier with the kind of path Disney has taken since then, as during a recent appearance on NPR’s Fresh Air podcast he praised the kind of role that was given to Mackie’s Falcon on his journey to become Captain America. The way he sees things, “these moments that are given to characters, it’s only because these moments are written by somebody,” as he went on to explain the type of epic superhero scenes that Captain America tends to get.
Boyega considers the type of exposition Mackie got in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier the proper way to hype up the importance of a character that's played by a person of color, something that was boosted not only by the fantastic shots used to showcase Sam Wilson brand new Cap suit, but also in the way Isaiah Bradley’s story was used to depict the very real horrors suffered by African Americans.
Disney does seem to have corrected its course in some way with the passage of time as even before Finn’s role began to fade away in Star Wars, the company’s Marvel division was whitewashing Asian characters for Doctor Strange, a trend that finally seems to have been erased. To make matters worse, both Finn and Poe Dameron got diminished roles as the sequel trilogy unfolded, a decision that may have been influenced by the obligation to finish telling the story of legacy characters like Luke and Leia.
While Disney continues to sort out what will Star Wars serve its fans in Patty Jenkins and Taika Waititi’s future film, it seems Boyega’s statements may end up helping that cause, regardless of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier being planned before that moment, studios are taking notice of these matters to some degree.
Source: NPR