SPECULATION OFFICIAL Finn Discussion Thread

Please don't make Finn robocop.

 

In your dreams. Disney is not going to allow its new princess to hook up with Kylo or show much interest in him. And that doesn't even take into consideration that Rey and Kylo may still be related which means there won't even be a trace of such feelings that you are suggesting.

Yeah. Let's take a person's entire argument and whittle it down to that one silly point. What a way to make your case.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 31, 2016, Original Post Date: Jan 31, 2016 ---

The difference between the first trilogy and this third one is that most of the marketing was of Rey and Finn; Ridley and Boyega. JJ even said in his interview with Wired that the trilogy was about those two characters. That's totally different from how we view the OT. It has the big Three but it was Luke alone who had the hero's journey. If TPTB never meant for Finn to be a true co-lead then why waste all this time marketing him so? Why was Boyega virtually on every press promotion around the globe with Ridley instead of being left home from time to time or sent to other locations with other cast members? Isaac and Driver were not at every press event or convention. Ridley and Boyega were (with one exception back in April of 2015). Disney sent those two everywhere together. They were the only two of the TFA cast members who stayed an extra day for D-23 in order to help with the presentation of the Infinity 3.0 game. They were sent to the toy shop in London together for Force Friday when the merchandise went on sale. When the filming was halted during Harrison's injury JJ only took Ridley and Boyega with him when he flew back to Los Angeles for meetings with studio executives. If Ridley was going to be interviewed with just one other individual on a talk show that one person was always Boyega. This wasn't by accident. This was orchestrated by Disney; their way of separating the two of them from the rest in terms of importance.. So the comparison to the totem pole positioning of the OT is not an adequate one. in A New Hope Han didn't get anywhere near the screentime of Luke. He didn't appear until 45 minutes into the film. And Leia, although appearing first, also got much less screentime too in that movie considering she was locked up and away from the action for most of it. But Finn's screentime ins darn near equal to Rey's in TFA. He is just as much a co-lead ad Kenobi was in the prequels. Obviously Rey is the main protagonist but, at least in TFA, Finn is a close 1B to her 1A.

So if TPTB are going to invest that much into Boyega and Finn don't you think they would want something to show for it? Like a competent character who doesn't need to be inferior at everything and can have an arc of his own? It would help sell some toys at least. If you feel Finn has all this potential but don't believe his being FS is one of those possibilities, what do you think can be done with the character the rest of the way? I'm not doubting your feelings on this topic but its just that I keep reading people who share mirror views of your take on Finn and yet can not come up with storyline possibilities for the character going forward....other than Finn joining the Resistance and leading ground troops.

 

I think you've mislabelled the poster ID, this is mine. Anyway, I think you've misconstrued my point about identity politics in TFA. When I said that the only identity politics that anyone should pay attention in TFA is feminism I didn't mean that you couldn't look for racial equality and nor did I mean that the presence of feminism politics in TFA was a positive thing. What I meant was that when TPTB were crafting TFA they were primarily concerned with creating a strong female role model and everything else was a side show to the extent that other characters may have suffered as a consequence of this focus. I believe its been said that Finn was created with no particular race in mind, and I think some of the other potential actors were white, but I'm sure that Boyega being cast, and to a lesser extent Oscar Issacs as well, was certainly a boon to Disney in their attempt to look progressive by having female, black and hispanic leads. And I by no means deny you the right to look up to Finn as a role model to black people, or not as it turns out, but my main point was that Finn's poor treatment, for those of us who think so, was not due to the fact that he was black but as a byproduct of Rey being a strong female character. Strong female leads just happens to be the flavour of the month in Hollywood at the moment.

Unfortunately, often as not this results in their male companions being less accomplished or incompetent, your mileage may vary, with a rare few exceptions like Mad Max: Fury Road. I am by no means happy with this arrangement which is why I am not fond of identity politics, and why I internally roll my eyes whenever I read someone say that they like Rey because she is a "strong woman" because it seems hilariously hypocritical.

ON FINN'S ROLE:

I've been reading along this thread, it seems to be the fastest moving when it wants to be, and while the many of the points are same, and will no doubt continue to be the same until Finn's role is revealed in Ep.VIII, I do like the talk about the Hero's Journey which I have heard about but don't know in detail. I certainly hope that Finn's coma at the end is more about his personal development than just keeping him away from Rey and her destined meeting with Luke, and no I don't mean development in terms of Robo Finn.

Does anyone think Finn will wake up from his coma in between TFA and Ep.VIII or do you think it will be a dramatic wake up for him at the start of the next film? I sort of view the coma as Finn's cocoon from which he will emerge quite a different person but that sort of story works best with latent force sensitivity which of course is still heavily debated.

 

i'm sorry, i can't address marketing issues because that was not part of my experience enjoying this film. i didn't engage in the marketing and went into the movie spoiler-free 100%.

i want to talk about what's great about Finn and have been now told repeatedly that my enjoyment of the character is i don't know ~ wrong? ~ and people repeatedly ask me to come up with storyline possibilities (other than the ones i do) in order to justify why i like the character or, i don't know, prove that he's a good character? and push this co-lead thing on me even though i have repeatedly said i can't work from that point of reference because that not how i watch movies. that's not how judge characters.

i get it. people think the character was wasted. that's too bad. i'll just continue to enjoy him anyway.

 

I couldn't care less if Finn is black, blue or a unicorn. Finn is Finn.

I really think that people who see racism everywhere are indeed the racist.

The world is a mirror.

 

Impressive. Most impressive. You've given me at least something to think about.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 31, 2016, Original Post Date: Jan 31, 2016 ---

It is because they took away his complexity as a former FO member who switched sides. By rushing it, by having Finn never look back or never seem conflicted, by not exposing us to what his life was like for all those years and how very hard it is for anyone to break from FO conditioning, by not establishing any substantial relationships (personal, working, or otherwise) with any of his former comrades in the FO, the writers have gutted Finn of his potential. If he was shown to have been instead a top notch FO member who had blood on his hands because of people he may have killed and had to live with the actions, then he would be such a fascinating character that any disappointment of him not being an eventual jedi may be quickly forgotten. But instead TPTB saddled us with the most family friendly, Disney-fied stormtrooper we have ever seen. A stormtrooper who was n his first mission and ran away before he could kill "innocents." A stormtrooper who has no difficulty adjusting emotionally to freedom from the strict, militaristic lifestyle of a "trained warrior." He is a character lacking depth.

 

It happens every 7 or so days, it starts with people bringing up race then from there it gets bad for a few days. I could post a crazy article on race in star wars but i won't because it has nothing to do with what i want to talk about.

I think it lines up more with campbell so far especially if they are gonna drag his arc across the whole trilogy where rays story feels accelerated to get her to a different kind of arc, very possibly the rise fall and redemption story in one package.

people don't get it, the cast could have been hamsters and we still would have paid to see it lol

 

Well, often when a person brings up the subject of racism, racist treatment or racist portrayals that same person is met with accusations of being racist himself, right or wrong. Comes with the territory.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 31, 2016, Original Post Date: Jan 31, 2016 ---

That's a solid point. I personally thought the author was making all these accusations based largely on emotion but couldn't follow through with a well-crafted intellectual argument.

 

Yeah he could have articulated much better .

 

The difference of course is that Shia's character did not have a human co-lead who was better at him at everything.

--- Double Post Merged, Feb 1, 2016, Original Post Date: Jan 31, 2016 ---

Devolved? Don't think so. I get you may prefer all of us to sing "Everything Is Wonderful" when talking about the character but that would be a lie from our perspective. You are entitled to your reasonable position, a person like myself is entitled to mine.

 

Lmao I love this, "no you" argument.
Classic
Don't ever change.

 

I think I got the gist of what you were saying the first time around although this post of yours does make it more clear. Your argument is a valid one. And you are right about what the agenda may have been all along. But as I've argued before in this thread as soon as TPTB hired who they hired it would have behooved them to consider making at least some changes, none of which would have taken away from the strong female protagonist. I went into detail before and if you want I can do so again. But for now I'll play it safe and assume you have already read it and don't need to see it again.

I have to push back against that a bit because I don't recall too many films in which the female lead is so superior to the male lead (bumbling male lead) as is the case in TFA. But we can agree that Mad Max gets the balance right.

Regardless of the force sensitivity issue, I would prefer a considerable amount of time has passed in which Finn has come out of his coma, hopefully noticeably different .

--- Double Post Merged, Feb 1, 2016, Original Post Date: Feb 1, 2016 ---

Here's the thing...the info I laid down was not about getting you to reevaluate your take on Finn as a co-lead . It was my way of countering YOUR take with facts. What you do with that , where you go from there, doesn't really matter. I was trying to correct the record.

As for your stance that you enjoyed Finn and don't need to prove it by coming up with scenarios of how the character develops next because you are more than happy to let TPTB pleasantly surprise you on that front is a reasonable counter of your own; one that I find hard to argue against. You like what you like and no one can tell you you are wrong. All we can do is disagree and give our own take on the issue.

--- Double Post Merged, Feb 1, 2016 ---

Yet you are obsessed on race because my post that you are responding to wasn't really about race at all. Protest too much?

And people were using that comment about people seeing racism everywhere being the real racist blah, blah, blah even back during the Jim Crow days when discrimination was legal. In other words it is the tired mantra of folks who want to silence others pointing out truths they are uncomfortable with. Use that argument on someone dumb enough to fall for it.

--- Double Post Merged, Feb 1, 2016 ---

It was a she actually.

The fascinating thing is that the people who make that outrageous claim tend to be those who don't mind painting a certain BROAD picture of their own whenever they see fit to criticize things they don't like in the world.

 

...and SHES a CHANGELING .

 

I am not american, I'm not in this discrimination debate, I just don't care.

There is no race debate in my country, we take people as they are and I don't give a s**t of where they are coming from.

I liked Finn, he's a good guy, a good friend. The article to start this thread is pointless for me because I just don't care if Finn is white, asian, black or Twi'lek.

 

Moderator note:

I see this thread going off into a RACE discussion again. This is not going to happen or this thread will be LOCKED.
This thread is for the discussion of the STAR WARS John Boyega character of FINN.

STAY ON TARGET

 

God Pablo is a bold mofo...not as much as Mace though .

 

I hope the writers have him wake up during 8. I think it adds a layer of character development if they do it this way and have him go through some sort of metamorphosis where he changes for the better. If they just have him wake up between episodes and it doesn't change him, then it just seems like an excuse to separate him from Rey so she could be the only one to meet Luke. Then again, if they have him wake up in 8 they might use it as an excuse to prolong his transformation into some type of warrior. I'll tell you what though if the writers waste his stormtrooper origin and coma I'll be pretty upset.

 

The film makers could be racist or they could have really thought Finn had a great story arc. To say the persons view is incorrect with no proof is wrong.

 

I'm not saying they're inherently wrong but could have been worded so much better. Finn's charActer arc has probably been laid down forms long time span. They themselves literally said THE JANITOR WAS A JOKE but, like anyone, when tire telling a joke you don't think of the repurchasing until it's too late .