MCU: Why John Boyega Should Play Luke Cage Or Nick Fury
Forget your continuity hang-ups...
As has been speculated before, it seems that John Boyega might be one of the next big-name stars to be coming to the MCU. The Star Wars actor spoke at Awesome Con (as covered by Bounding Into Comics) to say he's had "meetings with Marvel about potentially taking on a Marvel superhero" and suggesting it's a longer term thing that won't come off in the near future.
Naturally, that has inspired a lot of speculation on who he could be with Blade and White Tiger ranking high on the list of possibilities (despite Boyega ruling out the former already). Somewhat inevitably, he's mostly being linked to black Marvel characters, which isn't necessarily going to be
The best options are already staring us right in the face: he should either play a NEW Luke Cage (with some serious allowances for a continuity fix) or he should play a young Nick Fury.
Now, don't get yourself over-excited: this is not ignoring the fact that there's already a Luke Cage or that Mike Colter's performance as Power Man is incredible - it merely solves a problem that Marvel Studios don't seem to be able to get over. It brings a Defender who deserves to be part of the Avengers to the big screen without having to be too concerned about tying the continuities together - which they've said quite openly is impossible.
In the wake of Avengers 4, Marvel will need new Avengers to fill the holes left by departing characters (whether they retire or are killed off), and the best available option that would also fit Kevin Feige's promise of a "new dawn" would be to have two separate Avengers teams. The first would be led by either Captain Marvel or Doctor Strange and would include whoever survives from the Infinity Saga (minus Spider-Man) as a sort of officially sanctioned team - The Mighty Avengers, as it were.
The second would be the New Avengers, introduced partly as a means to bring in some of the former Fox-owned characters and to give fans the dream line-up of Luke Cage, Spider-Man, The Thing, Wolverine and Spider-Woman (though she'd take more establishing work). Just as in the comics, they could be a splinter group of more-rogue characters who don't necessarily agree with doing everything by the book (and as a bonus for Jeremy Renner fans, it could include his version of Ronin to fit that agenda).
If Marvel chose to go in that direction, they'd need to bring in Luke Cage and rather than seeking to "promote" Mike Colter, they should go with the same (expected) explanation for how the Fantastic Four and the X-Men appear in the MCU: alternate universes to bring a different Cage to the MCU's Earth. Or to explain away the Netflix universe shows. Either way, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch and it would allow for fans to enjoy both.
Arguably even more compelling is the idea of casting Boyega as a young Nick Fury for a period movie (or several) taking place before he appears in Captain Marvel's 90s story. And when you consider the possibility of a period movie (perhaps set in the 60s and 70s) taking leads from Sgt Fury & His Howling Commandos, it's hard not to get excited.
Who wouldn't want to see Boyega as a swaggering young Fury leading a group of heroes against HYDRA cells? And it's not entirely unlikely that we'll see more period MCU movies, now that Marvel have hinted that they're going to explore different time periods into Phase 4 and beyond...
What do you think?