Official Finn Episode VIII thread

Finn is running away from the First Order (his past). His only motivation is to save Rey. His story in TLJ is picking a side. He's confronted with two choices, one presented by DJ who says "don't pick a side" and Rose who says the fight is about saving those who you love. After the chase on Canto Bight he still thinks fighting is "making them hurt" where Rose sees the victory in letting the animals go free. Finally, Finn chooses to fight for the Resistance, but his suicide run isn't wise and Rose saves him.

People might not like this arc, but it's one that makes sense from what we saw of Finn in TFA. In TFA, his motivations were to leave the First Order and save Rey. In TLJ, he finds something else and finally joins the fight.

 

I don't get how you have a movie so dedicated to confronting the past, and don't have one of your supposed leads confront his past. Apologists routinely breeze past this point without addressing it probably because they know they can't defend it either. Virtually every defense of Finn's development that I've heard isn't even a defense, it's simply a regurgitation of what his story was in TLJ, and then acting as though the recount of the story is simultaneously proof that it was good. I know his arc in TLJ, I am not questioning the recorded events, I am questioning their validity.

• Why does Finn not address his past in this movie?
• Why are other people's views of what Finn should do directing his choices?

Two very simple questions. We know Finn's past is not at all addressed. And no one has refuted that DJ and Rose were Angel and Devil respectively to Finn; what they fail to follow to its logical conclusion are the implications of such an arrangement. They're not just whispering suggestions they are pontificating ethics (especially Rose) as though Finn had none of his own with which to consult. The end result is that people outside of Finn don't just present a view, they end up deciding for him what is right, because he is not grounded in his own personal history and ethics in this movie. You know what one of the differences is between TLJ and TFA? In TFA Finn moved other people in the main plot. In TLJ Finn doesn't get to choose anything of his own volition, he is moved along by the C-plot from beginning:
He doesn't get to leave the Raddus, someone else decides for him that he must stay.
To end:
He doesn't get to determine his fate in taking out the canon on Crait, someone else decides that for him.

In this movie, he has no past of his own, no ethical outlook of his own, and therefore no reasons of his own, to make decisions of his own. The Angel on his shoulder directs his actions. I think people thought there was going to be this "triumphant" moment when Finn says "Rebel Scum" and I wonder how they didn't see the gaping chasm between that moment and the events leading up to it. What value is it to me to say he chose the Resistance:

1. If he joined based on someone else's motivations, past, and beliefs
2. When there is no linkage to his conflict in TFA, or his conflict as a Storm Trooper
3. When there is no tension associated with the choice because there is nothing at stake whether he joins or doesn't

No one left the movie theater after TFA with the burning question on their mind, "I wonder if Finn is finally going to join the Resistance? I can't wait to see if he joins the Resistance or not"

You know why? Because it's a complete manufacture of convenience for the sake of the C-plot that Finn's story is about joining the Resistance - a pedestrian story line at best (it wasn't about choosing a side, he had already rejected the FO, the only other side WAS the Resistance). Finn's treatment is a tier 1 example of TRASH writing and TERRIBLE character development.

 

I don't think Finn really had a home. Or at least nothing really go to back to. His first thought and the best part of his arc was his continual concern for Rey.

Meh, maybe a B or B-. He got an A on both Rey and Kylo, a C for Finn (a great idea questioning why Finn would join the Resistance, but @Rayjefury nailed why the final solution didn't land), and a B for Poe.

 

Everyone has a home. Everyone has parents. He was taken as an infant, so how would he know what is waiting for him or not? Ignoring your name, your home, and your family is ridiculous. No one would do what Finn is doing. No one. The Rey thing was fine, but even that was over the top. Most people would not lift a finger to have helped Rey, and they would have been right not to do it. People look out for their own well being first. It's common sense. Han was considered an Alpha Male, and that was because no one could tell him what to do. He was his own man. In this new trilogy there is no man who thinks for himself, and tells us what he wants. We all knew what Han wanted. What does Finn want? We are two movies in, and the only thing he has done is risk his life for people he barely knows. He hasn't done one thing for himself. Unbelievable.

 

I'll have to disagree with you here a little bit. It's an F for Finn (for me), and a D for Rey (for me). Rey is another character who it feels like is stripped of independent character motivation as well. Half the movie she's playing emotional wet nurse to Grumpy Luke, the other half she's an acolyte of the Church of Ben Redemption. What about Rey? What does Rey want? Do they address her parentage? Yes. But for some reason it was secondary or even tertiary to her work on behalf of propping Luke back up, and trying to save Ben.

It'd be one thing if they implied that Rey's primary reason for going to the Supremacy wasn't really about turning Ben so much as she is looking to redeem him to further construct the family and belonging she hasn't had. But she isn't. She is going for the greater good of Ben and the salvation of the Resistance; the former she should still hate, the latter she has been given NO reason to care about enough that she should risk her life. Does she show some enthusiasm for the Resistance in TFA? Yes, so you at least have some pedigree for it, but it's never even marginally fleshed out because Rey's development in TLJ is made a function of her interaction with Luke and Kylo (her Angel and Devil). It's virtually the same problem as Finn, just not as pronounced.

The only major difference from Rey in TFA to Rey in TLJ is her ability to better use the force based on the scant, begrudging training from Luke. The only thing that she knows better after TLJ is Luke and Kylo. She learned not to deify Luke, she learned to feel empathy for Kylo and then cut him off. That is not development of "Rey" to me. That's moving her from point A to point B (much like what happened with Finn)

I question what was the purpose of separating Finn and Rey under the guise of growing them if this is what Rian thought was growth?

 

@Rayjefury @Corn Cream You may not like it. But in TLJ, Finn literally killed the personification of his past.....Phasma.

The big thing TLJ tackles in regards to Finn is where does he go from here. (His future).

Does he go neutral, where you have no values and can still be swayed to either just for personal gain (DJ)

Or does he finally actively fight against the tyranny that he knows about better than anyone with the side that has already been fighting them (Rose)

If he goes neutral or just chooses to leave, he's essentially turning his back on the Resistance and the rest of the galaxy. Which is
1. Morally unsound
2. Takes him out of the Star Wars story

 

Bingo. Pretty much what I said a few posts above. Finn's arc is pretty clear. It's fine if people don't like it or wanted something else, but Finn certainly faced his past in TLJ.

 

Phasma = Finn's Past Personified?

If I'm being honest this is (to me) a gross misreading of Phasma's position relative to Finn. She is NOT his past, she is FROM part of his past; conflating one with the other is untenable. If the line of thinking you're suggesting were valid, anyone from his past, personifies his past. What would prevent anyone from making that same argument for Hux? Or Snoke? And that all aside, do you all really believe (not just for Star Wars but for any movie) that killing a tormentor is tantamount to reconciling with your own personal history? I don't think that holds true at all.

Further, if Phasma is Finn's past personified, and Finn killed Phasma, then Finn "Killed the past"; is that in alignment with Rian's theme? No. Despite RJ's hostility to existing Star Wars metadata and the minimal reverence with which he handles them, even Rian doesn't argue that you can kill the past. So how would your theory square with that?

And all this COMPLETELY overlooks that Finn had an origin prior to being taken by the FO.

• There is a reason why he's very empathetic, and it has NOTHING to do with the FO indoctrination.
• There is a reason why he's unable to participate in the Jakku massacre, and it has NOTHING to do wtih the FO indoctrination.
• There is a reason why he becomes attached to Rey and it has NOTHING to do with the FO indoctrination.

The things that principally drove Finn exist in spite of the FO indoctrination, not because of it. So by what logic does he find answers about who he really is, in the institution that didn't make him what he is?

Phasma isn't his past personified, Phasma is the FO personified; he was terrified of her just as he was terrified of the organization. His fight with her is meant to be symbolic of his formally joining the Resistance. It had nothing to do with his past. When you watch them fight in the Hangar Bay you are watching the Resistance and the FO fight; that's it. If there is any foreshadowing to take from it, the Resistance got beat and by a really disappointing plot device, score a final victory. Maybe the Rebellion will similarly back into an unearned victory in EPIX, who knows. In any event, if Finn is to reconcile with his past with the FO, it has to be with other Troopers, but it's still only part of the story.

I think this is a bit of a false dilemma. Finn already established that he has values; it's the first thing he does on screen in TFA. He cannot be swayed to do evil, even when in the heart of an evil empire. Suddenly suggesting that he is danger of becoming a valueless cynic if he doesn't accept Rose's programming and join the Resistance is the result of a poorly concocted C-plot that was sloppy in advancing an existing character, plain and simple (IMO).

 

His future was to just switch sides? Why bother having a story about a stormtrooper if all we are going to do is have him switch sides? He could have been anybody if that is all they wanted to do. People wanted to know more about the FO's child kidnapping program.
People want to know about him. What does he want? Where does he come from? Where is his family? Are they someone important?

If the whole point was to have a war then there should never have been a trilogy. This story could have been told in one movie. If you are going to introduce one of your leads as a stormtrooper then you better go into the background of these characters. Stormtroopers have been around for 40 years. People would like to know more about them.

As far as moral values. Who is to say the Resistance are the good guys? Have you seen anything from the Resistance that tells you they are more compassionate than the FO? Finn was a stormtrooper. He isn't turning his back if he walks away from the Resistance. He would be walking away to have a normal life. Something he never had.

If the only way to fight is to join the Resistance then that's rather shallow. Everyone doesn't fight for the same reasons. That's a good way of your cause never being addressed if you join someone else's. By joining the Resistance their cause becomes more important than him. Hence his silly suicide run in TLJ for people he barely knows. Who cares if the galaxy would be safe? What does Finn want? That is more important than the Resistance when he is the lead.

 

If you don't want Finn to join the resistance, that what would you have him do to be in the story going further?

Because guess what, they've made it abundantly clear Rey is the force sensitive Jedi in training in the story. Plus she has her own resources with the Falcon.

Unlike Han, TFA established Finn has no other resources and money.

So if he's not fighting with the Resistance, what would you have him do? Because this isn't like the Avengers, where Finn gets his own film where he splits off completely from the rest of the cast, to just focus on him.

This trilogy is about the last Jedi vs the last darksiders, with the Resistance versus the First Order.

This is the plot both TFA and TLJ have shown us.

Finn's birth family was never important, because they're just one of a thousand families who had their kid taken to the FO. Finn's special, not because of who he was born from, but what he decided to do, in spite of who raised him.


"Why bother having a story about a stormtrooper if all we are going to do is have him switch sides? He could have been anybody if that is all they wanted to do?"

You won't like the answer to this. But the answer is........he is anybody. Or more specifically....."the Everyman." This looks like how JJ, Kasdan and Boyega created and portrayed him in TFA.

 

It kinda feels weird that we can re-imagine the Jedi, re-imagine the Force, re-imagine Force Ghosts, re-imagine a heroes journey, re-imagine how space battles are fought, re-imagine technological capabilities, re-imagine light blade weapons, re-imagine the role of Dark Overlords, re-imagine whole character profiles that have been established for literal decades...

...but somehow there must still be only two sides in conflict. That we can't re-imagine. Does that not seem odd to you? That there couldn't be a 3rd faction not aligned to the Resistance but also not aligned the FO, which could be Finn's place in all this? That Finn HAD to be Resistance or he had no place in the story? I have to characterize that as an artificial constraint.

There was nothing preventing this trilogy from having multiple factions opposing one another, except a lack of creativity and/or will power.

 

And time constraints of a modern film

 

While I agree with some of what you're saying, I don't agree with all of it. And Phasma is both his past and the FO personified, because the FO is his past. Phasma is also the only named character to know Finn before the events of TFA.

Hux didn't know him before TFA and essentially neither did Kylo. Finn was never in Snoke's mind.

So Phasma does represent Finn's past in the FO. Hell, besides being a glorified soldier For Hux, what else is she besides a bridge to Finn's past in the narrative of the trilogy.

Also Finn killing her, is not so much as "killing" the past, as it is about confronting it.

Finn was at first, trying to "kill" his stormtrooper past by lying about it and running from it. That's different than Kylo trying to kill all ties to his former life.

 

That's what happens when the force users are the be all and end all for most fans. The rest of the characters get half-hearted storylines and hardly anyone cares. It doesn't matter how boring or stale it is either, as long as they stay out of the way of the force users. Then everyone else that's watching for the "normal" just have to stomach the exact same stuff over and over again.

 

Phasma is the FO. Unlike Finn she joined, she wasn't stolen. She (more than anyone else) represents the FO, and again, that is what Rian was trying to convey with the Hangar Bay fight, not just Finn fighting Phasma, but the Resistance fighting the FO. Coming from his past doesn't make her his past.

She is the personification of the FO. If knowledge of Finn is the threshold, I would argue that in order for Finn to confront his past as a Storm Trooper he would have to do it through other Storm Troopers. In TLJ he doesn't interact with a single one, not one line of dialogue. Finn doesn't confront the part of his past. And again, I say Finn had a past that is separate from the FO, he wasn't always a child soldier, and there are aspects to his character that remain unaltered by the FO (despite the doctrine). Until they explore/address that, you will never fully understand why he could never assimilate to the FO.

Finn was never trying to kill anything, people, Phasma, the FO, his past... nothing. He was trying to run away from it all. He doesn't even go to the Supremacy to confront Phasma, Hux, Snoke, or even regular Storm Troopers, he was trying to adopt Rose's motivations for fighting a war. If Finn was trying to "Kill" his past he never would have told Rey the truth in TFA.

--- Double Post Merged, Apr 26, 2018, Original Post Date: Apr 26, 2018 ---

Time constraints that could have been easily relieved if we hadn't spent bandwidth on the largely maligned Canto Bight sequence.

--- Double Post Merged, Apr 26, 2018 ---

Maybe another writer cares enough to elevate the storyline for Finn. Before TLJ hit the screen many of scrapped the whole FS Finn thing for a Finn that might potentially lead a rebellion. But that would entail making that rebellion storyline as important as the Force Storyline and I ultimately I just don't think Rian cared as much about the other plots as much as he cared about showcasing Kylo and making him likable

 

Finn is one of the leads in this story, but the center of the story has always been Rey/Kylo. I love Finn, but I never had doubts about after TFA. This is clearly a hero story about a young woman becoming a Jedi and a famous son falling to the dark side. Finn has an arc in this film. If you didn't like it that's fine, but this idea that "it's bad because the writer didn't care enough" is simply nonsense.

 

Rian didn't care to make a solid story overall, but I don't know if it's all his fault. Right after TFA came out most of the talk was about Rey's parentage and her interaction with Kylo. Even though she spent most of her time with Finn, and that is where most of her and his development came from, but forget the actual motivations of an actual movie. Most You tube channels focused on her parentage to an obsession. There aren't that many people in the Star Wars universe, but it was better than talking about her actual interaction with Finn which drove the movie.

Then this obsession over a 5 minute scene where Rey and Kylo are mind raping each other, and attempting to turn that into romance over Finn's actually coming back and putting his life on the line for Rey. There is a need for others to elevate Rey and Kylo above all others which is forcing an unnatural narrative down our throats. Even when we didn't ask for it.

The media placed more emphasis on Finn and Poe than Rey and Finn. I remember the actress Judy Dench mentioning Reylo, and that pissed me off.
The media is one of the reasons we got the turd we got. Not one of the major media outlets asked any questions that had actual substance behind it, so it made it easier for Rian to think that the only thing that mattered were Rey and Kylo. Just because they have the force doesn't make them interesting characters. Finn's story is the only one that is unique. The Rey and Kylo thing has already been done, and both are terrible copies of the original.

 

It's difficult to believe that a person could actually believe that a filmmaker could spend years making a film, but didn't care about making a solid story.

Oh, the internet.

Also, RJ was finished with the story long before he could have been manipulated by "the media." I haven't seen this silly theory yet so points for originality.

 

I don't think Rian was influenced by the media speculation that much, the bulk of his story was written before the media speculation subsequent to TFA occurred. Is it possible they augmented some of the script to play up "Reylo" after the fact? Maybe. But I think "Reylo" became a thing with Rian almost as a side effect to his desire to showcase Kylo. Everything else, every character (IMO) suffers for the sake of creating empathy for Kylo.

 

• Um... Finn didn't want to join either side, if I'm remembering right.
• We know his past already, why does it have to be mentioned as if "hey! Everyone did you know that Finn was a stormtrooper". They know already.
• Wasn't his whole fight with Phasma an acknowledgement to him being a stormtrooper?
• Finn determines his own fate. HE CHOSE to sacrifice himself, but Rose intervened. She didn't order or ask him not to and him say "yes ma'am".
• Arguably, all of the main characters have one arc that takes place over two films, not one (except For MAYBE Poe).