There's been an Awakening....

No that's not what I'm saying. That's a tangent from what I said. Being there in the first place is not why Finn is not hesitant to blast his way to freedom. Why should he be hesitant if he knows he's doing the right thing by choosing to leave? Why should he make excuses for them but not himself?

What if Finn was depicted as knowing that what he's doing is wrong, but not making the other step and choosing to follow orders and kill those villagers instead since the FO is bigger than him and resistance is futile. Does that mean that an escaping Poe shouldn't gun him down if Finn stands in his way?

I don't agree that it undercuts the drama to not define the troopers as drones who are physically incapable of questioning orders or discerning right from wrong. I think it's the opposite. And it's far more relatable and historically resonant to evoke the idea of "only following orders".

In THX the main character commits drug evasion (Lucas predicted that society would choose to adopt recreational drug use to escape reality, robots do the fighting) and then experiences emotions properly. I get what you're saying but the recreational drug element undermines the comparison with FO troopers.

 

Because the stakes are life or death - kill or be killed. As long as he’s there, they’re going to keep trying to make him a killer. If he could have deserted without harming any of them, I imagine he would have. But the story wasn’t going to let him off that easy. He, ironically, had to become a killer in order to free himself from being a killer.

I personally would have appreciated it if we spent at least a tiny bit of time having Finn acknowledge the weight of having taken the lives of former comrades to save his own. That would have been nice.

Poe has his own right to life and freedom. Again, it’s kill or be killed. Being sensitive to the plight of others doesn’t suddenly transform you into a martyr. Being aware that someone is being compelled to kill you doesn’t translate to you standing there and letting it happen. If killing Finn was the only way for Poe to secure his own survival and liberty, then so be it. But it would still be a tragedy. It was the FO that put them both in that position. That's who's to blame.

The idea is to humanize and sympathize with the Storm Troopers in this regard. The FO wants to treat them as disposable tools. Basically the same way we saw them in the OT. But they’re not. Each one is a child who was taken from their family and forced into this life. Each one is a person. Each one is a victim. Each death is a tragedy. Not a triumph.

JJ didn’t have to complicate matters with introducing the element of troopers being ‘child soldiers’ who were “programmed” to kill. If we weren’t intended to interpret that as having compromised their agency, that they still had full access to their faculties and judgement, then why have that in the movie at all? Honestly. What purpose does that serve? If they’re totally in charge of their own decisions, then why needlessly go out of the way to introduce an aspect that directly challenges that perception? Think about it.

The drugs in THX-1138 aren’t “recreational”. They’re mandated by the state. The people of that world are forbidden from feeling emotions - being human, making independent decisions. They’ve been conditioned to exist in this world without questioning it. THX is unknowingly weaned off his meds by his roommate, LUH. This leads to his self-discovery. The two experience a genuine human connection and that’s what leads to his incarceration and ultimate impetus to escape from that determinist reality.

It’s the story of a man awakened to his station as a slave born into a system of control - a system that only sees him as a number and a function. The drug element is a commentary on the blight of self-medicating, but it’s truly only a mechanism that enables the technocracy’s domination over its citizens. That’s its purpose in the plot. It could just as easily have been depicted as conventional mind control and the story still works. It’s the systemic control and dehumanization that’s the point and the triumph of the individual over that control.

That’s why the movie ends where it ends: THX emerging into we know not where. Because where he is doesn’t matter. Only that he got there by his own free will. That’s the victory. That's the moral to the story.