Favorite character in The Force Awakens?

It seemed to be a common question shortly after the films release and it was often asked by people who thought Kylo was too weak or Rey was too strong which speaks to a general impression rather than any logical thought about why Kylo lost: And in film I think the impression is key. Obviously, the writers put all those logical reasons to explain why Kylo lost but they still chose to make him lose which is where the actual disagreement lies over the end of the duel. The arguing over the why is mere fluff to cover disgruntlement with the result.

I personally would have preferred an interrupted draw but then Kylo did get that, presumably, awesome scar....

I'm sure that Snoke is trying to keep Kylo off kilter but then he seems to be throwing challenges in Kylo's direction to test him, to improve him. I think Snoke views Kylo less antagonistically then some would suppose and instead seems to be tempering him. Kylo is like the raw iron that Snoke is gradually beating into true steel, a sword, so he will place him in the fire now and then to help him develop.

haha, funnily enough I felt like I was downplaying him more.

 

something about the book and repeated viewings has given me a very unsettled feeling about the relationship between Snoke and Ren. i totally see what you're saying and agree, but i feel like there's an underlying sadism there. Snoke seems to take perverse pleasure in these trials, which, let's face it, thus far haven't appeared to actually make Ren any stronger (look at the fiasco with killing Han). i'm extrapolating a lot here, though, so we'll have to see how it plays out.

 

Good description! I shall henceforth call him Adolf Weasly, unleasher of Ventril Cannons!

Side-kick, yes. Comic-relief, also ( "Yeah, I'm resistance. This is what we look like," LOL ). Needed saving all the time? Not so much...

Yes, let us count the ways in which Finn saves the day...

1. He rescues Poe Dameron and helps him fight off pursuit ( and Ventril Cannons!)
2. He helps Rey fend off pursuit while she pilots the Falcon to safety.
3. He gets BB8 to tell them where the Resistance's base is.
4. He gets Phasma to drop the shields on Star Killer base ( saving, just, you know, the galaxy ).
5. He helps Han plant explosives in the base's "weak spot."
6. He valiantly holds off a highly trained and very powerful force user in a light saber duel long enough for Rey to regain consciousness.

Now let us count the ways in which Finn is saved ...

1. He is saved by Rey from one of the Rathtar thingies ( which, uhm, she mistakenly set loose in the first place ).
2. He is saved from TR-8R by Han/Chewie.
3. He is saved from certain death by Rey and Chewie after he's left comatose...for saving Rey.

So it's OK to love Finn - he's quite the heroe.

While I actually voted Rey, I thought Finn was a great character. Close second.
He's the Han Solo of the movie, in as much as he's the one who grounds the whole thing for the audience. He's the only one who reacts as we would amid all the craziness going on. He brings comic relief, but also heart.

Uhum, yes. Allow me to expound on why I liked her so much.

The short version is that she's an irresistible and perfect mix of innocence and grit, of badassery and vulnerability. The long version...


...is that these are not qualities you normally mix together because, uhm, they are polar opposites. Somehow J.J. and Daisy managed to get the mix to work. In the process, they've shown how the hero's journey, normally done for male protagonists, can be done for female protagonists as well. Maybe this had been done before - I honestly don't know - but surely never in something as influential as Star Wars.

One thing that always frustrated me about female characters in modern fiction is how they were given attributes to make seem "strong" that only made them feel weaker as characters as a result. It's like the writers thought that all you needed to do to modernize the portrayal of women is add "spunk."

The best examples I can think of this are two movies decades appart: Aladdin, and John Carter. Both have a female lead with "spunk." They both have the requisite "emasculation" scene where they show the main character, a dude, that they can not only take care of themselves, but that they're better than him with a sword. They are both fiercely independent ( in that they don't want to marry just anybody ). And both end up being damsels in distress who need to be rescued by the dude. Oh, sorry. In the case of Princess Jasmine, she actually helps the dude. By seducing the bad guy ( and this is the one that's meant for children ).

And this is only part of the problem. The larger issue is that the closer female characters come to the lead, the more perfect they tend to be. The male leads tend to be more bumbling, and this leads the writers to think they're "empowering" the female roles. The problem is that the more bumbling role is also the more relatable one. So the male roles tend to be more human and relatable than the female roles, and this is not necessarily a good thing.

So, Rey... she bucks that trend.

She's relatable - perhaps not as overtly as Finn, but certainly as relatable, if not more relatable than Luke in the OT.

People calling her a Mary Sue should take a second look at the movie. She sets the goddamned Rathtars loose by mistake. Can you imagine Leia making such a blunder in the OT? No, Leia was always right in the OT, always bossing the more "bumbling" male leads around.

Rey, on the other hand, has flaws.

She's scared of intimacy, she's scared of leaving her awful life behind, she gets angry and looses her cool, etc. She has to face her fears, something normally reserved for male characters in this kind of movie.

And she's visibly emotional, which male characters are normally not. She cries, but it's not the "oh, women are so emotional" type of crying. She cries when she learns Finn came back for her, and when she thinks she's lost him forever. In other words, she cries when someone in her situation would cry - or, at least feel like crying. This makes her relatable, to both men and women.

I could go on and on, about Daisy's portrayal, about how she can perfectly let us know how Rey's feeling with a simple facial gesture, about how the character's strength/badassery is ironically amplified by her vulnerability, but I think I'll just stop here. For now, anyway.

That's what happens when you put off revealing the character's appearance for so long, only to have him end up looking like the misbegotten spawn of Gollum and Lord Voldemort. I know, I know - he's played by Gollum, and Rey has a Harry Potter vibe to her. Still... I hope he looks better next time around.

 

shouldn't sink all that awesome stuff about Rey under a spoiler tag. you summed up perfectly why she's so awesome and not the least bit Mary Sue.

 

The problem with just having it be a draw is two-fold:

1. It undermines her in relation to Luke and Anakin (who both got flat-out wins in their debut films), espeacially since her victories were already less impressive in the grand scheme of things than there's. She didn't get to be the big hero of the hour at the end (she got to have an ambiguous staredown with Luke instead). So he gets to have a win, be the big hero, and he gets to have a win and be one of the big heroes, she gets to, not totally lose and fly off on her own to an uncertain future/ Yeeeahhh.

2. It's just not very satisfying as an ending. There's a reason why the first act tends to give the hero a win and have them end on a high note. Because you're usually going to then kick them in the proverbial teeth and drag them down to their lowest point in the second act.

So let her have her win, you can easily put an asterisk next to it anyway. Plus I haven't met many people in my day to day life who really had an issue with it. That seems to be mostly an on-line fandom thing.

 

1. Finn needed Rey to wake him up after the air strike on Jakku knocked him out so they could keep moving.
2. Finn needed Rey to save him from the rathtars.
3. Finn needed saving by Han from TR-8R with the melee weapon.
4. Finn needed Rey to save him from Kylo Ren.

1. Rey technically needed saving ONCE from the air strike on Jakku, which was Finn's one heroic moment. However, TFA refused to allow him to look good, so they knocked him out and made him look foolish by asking Rey if she was okay when clearly he was worse off.

Every other time Finn tried to save her:

- it annoyed Rey (hand holding on Jakku)
- it caused him to need saving instead (Finn leading Rey away from the rathtars; Kylo Ren fight)
- it wasn't needed (Rey had already freed herself on Starkiller Base)

Finn needed saving 3-4 times vs. Rey barely needing it once. So, yeah, Finn definitely "needed saving all the time".

 

I didn't care for any of the trio of new leads.

Kylo Ren was ok but then he got his butt whupped at in the end in a most unspectacular, and frankly for a sith lord in training, disgraceful fashion.

Snoke and his mysterious nature was for me the lone selling point of TFA. Everything else was a major letdown.

 

Thank you!

Done!

 

Nope.

1. She needed to save him from the Rathtars, because SHE LET THEM LOOSE!! People can just flat-out ignore/dismiss this all they want, but it doesn't make it any less true. Cleaning up your own mess doesn't make you "flawless," if that were true than freaking Tony Stark would be 'flawless," nor does it make Finn incompetent, because he wouldn't have been in that position to begin with if it weren't for her screwup.

2. A trained riot trooper using a weapon that's he's familiar with. Also Finn took out another Stormtrooper with the lightsaber like ten seconds earlier, and he was gunning down multiple ones with great ease like ten seconds after, which people also refuse to acknowledge.

3. And without him, Rey would be on her way to Snoke as a prisoner, because she was out COLD!!

Now lets see:

1. He saves her in the tent.
2. He saves them both on the MF. Her instincts were to fly high, which would have gotten them shot down, whereas he told her to fly low, which confused their tracking and saved the day. His gunning skills were also essentially (oh and for someone who'd never used to gun turrets before, he got quite good at it quite quickly, truly incompetent he is).
3. Without him, The Resistance knows nothing about SKB, knows nothing about it's weakness, and cannot launch an attack anyway because the shields are still up.
4. As stated above, if he doesn't fight Kylo, then Kylo just picks up the unconscious Rey (again), and carries her off as his prisoner (again) to Snoke. Oh and she didn't really "save' him since Kylo had seemingly very little interest in Finn after that. He was more concerned with her and the lightsaber. Technically, Chewie saved them both.

So again, just because he wasn't "bad***" in the most shallow and cliché way possible (although he could hold his own just fine with a blaster), doesn't make him "incompetent." The heroes DO NOT WIN without him, and EVERY one of them would have been killed or captured by the end of the film if he weren't around.

 

1. Rey made a mistake by letting the rathtars loose. I never said otherwise, nor did I call her "flawless". However, Rey was also allowed to fix her own mistake and save Finn in the process.

2. Rey was allowed to defeat the main villain, who was familiar with his weapon, but Finn wasn't allowed to defeat a non-villain stormtrooper. You can tell he was a nobody because of the way he was casually killed by Han. Finn was never established to be skilled with the lightsaber, so he had no business using one. It's no wonder he lost both fights. The only reason why he defeated the first stormtrooper with the lightsaber was because Finn snuck up on him. That wasn't a fair fight. And what's so special about a main character killing henchmen with a blaster?

3. Finn was allowed to be HELPFUL to Rey in various ways, including fighting Kylo Ren, but he's not allowed to achieve personal victory. Finn kept Kylo busy, but he did not succeed in stopping the threat. Rey had to do that herself.

1. Like I said before, Finn technically saved Rey in the tent, but the film went out of its way not to make him look heroic doing it. Rey also had to save him by waking him up.

2. Finn doesn't save Rey here. He HELPS her because she is also contributing to their survival. It's not like when Obi-Wan was on his own when he saved Luke from the sand people. If two characters are working together, then no one is being saved. They're working as TEAMMATES. Finn was allowed to be helpful to others and to be a team player, but he wasn't allowed to look heroic saving anyone or achieve any personal victory (defeat a villain, blow up a super weapon, etc.)

Like Poe told Finn, TIE guns aren't all that different from blasters.

3. Again, Finn is allowed to be useful to others. I never denied that. Without him, Poe is stuck with the First Order, Rey is stuck on Jakku, etc.

4. Finn doesn't save Rey from Kylo Ren because he didn't stop the threat. Instead, he kept him busy until Rey was able to recover, which allowed her to save Finn by defeating Kylo Ren. Finn was also in serious need of medical attention, so he needed Rey to save him as he was helpless on his own. When was Rey ever made helpless so that someone else could look good saving her?

Don't put words in my mouth. I never said I wanted Finn to be a flawless badass. Like Luke and Han before him, I wanted Finn to experience a mix of success AND failure. However, what TFA gave us was a character who didn't PERSONALLY achieve anything, didn't get to heroically save anyone once and kept needing to be saved 3-4 times. You may be okay with that, but I'm not. It's a shame what they did to Finn.

 

I debated between Rey and Kylo, but ended up voting for Rey because she had more screen time and we got to see more of her character evolution. I think we will see a lot more of Kylo's evolution in the next film.

 

I voted for Rey cause I believed that having a female lead as the central character was a great start to a new trilogy. I say Kylo is a close second with Finn and Poe falling in close behind. With additions like BB8...who would not fall for a cute droid like BB8? eh?

Keeping in mind that while TFA brings more questions than answers to what might have happened prior to the film's events, we still don't know a good deal yet of what is to come. And because TFA is the first feature film of a new trilogy set in the galaxy far far away, we must be patient for the next round. As always, I'll be avoiding spoilers for a long (like I did with TFA) while up until the release date of the SW movies become close enough where I am not eager to read and believe everything about the movie...otherwise I am setting up for disappointment in the same way I did with the Prequels.

 

Luke Skywalker, of course. Even with no dialogue he was my favorite part of the movie.

I will say though, Poe Dameron is definitely my favorite new character. I love his confidence, humor, and optimism. Not mention he flies a black X-wing which is the coolest thing ever.

Kylo Ren is also another one of my favorite new characters. I like him more and more every time I watch the film. He is such a compelling villain, in my opinion. I find his internal conflict with the light side to be really interesting. I even like his rage tantrums. Adam Driver's performance is spot on. I can't wait to see where they take his character in VIII.

 

I really missed Han while all the hype for the movie was going around. It was wonderful to see him in action again, relive those great lightspeed jokes, and have our hearts broken with him when he faced his son. I could completely relate to Leia in that moment...

Daisy Ridley was fantastic, (and @Master Padawan summed her up exquisitely) but Han wins for me in this movie.

 

Rey because she is just so likable, sweet, and so cute!

 

I Don’t Know Why, But I Really Like Poe!

 

Kylo by far because of what he represents both within the story framework as well as in our real world.

It's absolutely poetic.

Rey is magnificent as well. Her character just seems way more rooted in the real world, as opposed to having any actual connection to the established mythos of SW, at least thus far..

More than any other character before her.. Rey is a nobody, from nowhere.

This gives her incredible potential for progression. She just needs a bit more time.


"Ride the Tide"

-SOAS

 

YES. More specifically, Rey is us. Take that entire scene where she is introduced and what you see is Rey being a reflection of the typical Star Wars fan. She has toys, puts up her helmet, looks up to the sky and dreams of Star Wars, all to escape the 'dread' of daily monotonous existance. It has now become all the powerful because she is a nobody.

 

So very spot on.

The connections you made were brilliant!

She really is a whole new breed of the 'Hero' that is tailored fitted for both the fans and average person alike.

Masterfully crafted.

I cannot wait to see her character fleshed out more with the release of future installments.

Rey is a much welcomed addition to the SW Universe.


"Ride the Tide"

-SOAS

 

Rey with Han and Kylo followed closely behind.