I made a post the other day (link) on how John Boyega deserved better, but I don’t think people are aware of just how dirty he was done actually playing Finn in Star Wars. As the first Black protagonist in a franchise that has been dominated by white characters, this meant a lot to many people. There was a reason you saw pictures like this:
You see, when people talk about represenation in Star Wars, for some reason-
They usually leave off John Boyega’s Finn unless they’re just half handily throwing him in there, but this character meant something to a lot of people. It still does.
I want to make this clear, these movies while being enjoyed by generations of fans, myself included who had been introduced to Star Wars as a youngling by my pops, are for kids. Not because they’re dumb, not because they’re childish, but because kids are supposed to see themselves in these characters and have a story that can stick with them for years.
We’ve heard for years how much Rey meant to little girls, but what could Black kids, Black people look to? A character that somehow even transcended race to the point that it didn’t matter if you were Black or not? Well, that’s where Finn came in:
Let’s just jump into it, the sequel trilogy ended divisively. We had a handful people fighting over what the story should be, who should be related to who, and who should end up with who, but if there has been one shining example of the most original and heartfelt character in a trilogy that if we’re being honest, ended up just copying and pasting aspects of the original trilogy into its story, it was John Boyega’s Finn.
Rey became a Luke stand-in
And for some reason the universe just wanted Poe to be like Han
Yet Finn was something we’ve never seen before in the films. A stormtrooper with a heart who chose to betray his masters because he didn’t want to become a senseless murder.
And I can label criticism against The Force Awakens where it deserves, but at the end of the day people walked away from that at least having a hero to look to in both Rey and Finn. Everyone had some to look to.
Then we get The Last Jedi and I’m not gonna spend too much time on that movie. If you loved it, good for you, but it 100% sidelined Finn, erased his arc from TFA, and as a film, took away people had in The Force Awakens by re-contextualizing that story as “Finn just being selfish” when it was anything but that.
Even John Boyega had disagreed with it:
But things didn’t get better after The Last Jedi, if anything, things got worse with how bad Finn was treated:
The EU, which is basically comics, books, etc, went out of its way to erase Finn’s status as one of the best Cadets and even an important character in Star Wars by taking every chance they had to either sideline him by leaving him out of books, comics, promotional material, making him small in promotional material or just disrespected him around every turn.
And then, just when both John Boyega and fans of the character Finn, a good deal of the people of color, had hope that the Rise of Skywalker would finally deliver and do right by this hero many looked it, it all went to hell with multiple re-writes, re-shoots, and people behind the scenes fighting tooth and nail.
Now, if you interested to actually know what went wrong on a deeper level with Finn’s role in The Rise of Skywalker and the trilogy, I made this video actually deep diving into that mess:
But even then, I don’t think people realize just how much this character getting done as bad as he did hurt others.
We have people in one breath saying “Black Lives Matter” then in the other breath cursing John Boyega’s name for believing that he was done dirty, cursing the very idea of his character being important in Star Wars because either they didn’t want to see a Black man as a protagonist in the story or they didn’t want him getting in the way of how they felt the story should be.
And the horrible part is, a good deal of Finn’s treatment was brought on because of this fandom’s reaction to the character. That’s not to say Lucasfilm didn’t encourage this behavior, they 100% did, but no one fought against it.
Every attempt at Where Is Finn always faded away with a whisper.
Any talks of how John Boyega or Finn Deserved Better would always get brushed aside.
You mention Kelly Marie Tran deserving better and everyone agrees. You mention Rose needing more Screen time and everyone agrees.
You say Oscar Isaac fought against Disney and everyone praises him and says Poe deserved better.
And of course, Daisy Ridley’s Rey will always be in the conversation of deserving better.
And YES, these actors did deserve better, their characters deserved better, all of them did. Driver, Gleeson, Christie, Hamil, Fisher, Williams, Ackie, all of them!
But when the conversation comes to John Boyega’s Finn, it always dies there.
I don’t know if anyone still cares. I don’t. But, even if I’m the only one that actually does still care about John Boyega’s Finn and how he deserved better, I’ll keep saying it every chance I get
Because as much as people don’t think so, how we treat ficitonal Black Characters and the Black actors who portral effects how people see Black people IRL.
Because as much as people don’t think so, how we treat fictional Black Characters and the Black actors who portray affects how people see Black people IRL.
Reblog this so everyone knows:
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