ST John Boyega (Finn) in Episode VII [v 2.0 Read Opening Post BEFORE Posting]

I really don't get the complaints that Finn's character was annoying. And the part where Finn runs after Rey when Kylo Ren carried her off frankly gave me a lump in my throat; while Han knew all he could do was watch, Finn simply could not accept seeing this person that he just recently formed such a strong connection with carried away by this group of terrible people that he was all too familiar with. So he ran, and he screamed at the top of his lungs, because he was so distraught and he did not care about things like his own safety or welfare at that point.

 

I lovee how he's afraid that Rey wouldn't like him anymore if she knew the truth about him, but turns out she didn't care if he was resistance or first order she just cared that he was her friend

 

I think Finn's smile when Rey hugs him......was darn cheeky. I loved that!



Finn, lucky guy you!

MJ

 

Finn felt so obligated to Rey because he was sheltered in an environment his whole life taught to kill where friendship, and compassion did not exist. Rey was the first person Finn met that looked at him like a hero, not a First Order storm trooper. That clearly meant everything to Finn, as that was the exact identity he was trying to get rid of. Not to mention the very evident attraction he has to her. Rey, very similar she had been left there by her family and we saw no sign of her having friends on Jakku. She just worked all the time, so these two meeting is like both their first time "friend" so that bond is only going to grow as they go on. When yo

I don't think TFO had a weak training program. They only had one trooper of so many that has defected that we know of to this point. When they sense a trooper's hesitation they send them to reconditioning. That is exactly where Finn would have ended up had Poe not been aboard to help them escape. I hope Finn's family ties are significant to why maybe his personality was the reason he was able to sense what he was doing was wrong, while the other troopers were so disciplined. Or is Finn force sensitive and the light side was calling him, he just isn't aware of his power yet? I initially do not believe he is, but it is possible. I am looking forward to seeing Finn discovering his past, and his character development. I think he added the right amount of humor when needed, and stepped up big time for Rey.

 

There's nothing that Han did in the movie, except dying, that couldn't have been said or done by another character, old or original. Hell Poe could have replaced Han and taken Rey and Finn everywhere they needed to go and works have spared us Hans clunky introduction into the film. Finn on the other hand is essential to everything that happens in the movie.

 

Han's intro was one of my favorite parts of TFA. Lots of good world-building, humor and dialogue in that sequence.

But I agree that Poe could have fulfilled that role. Indeed, it looks like that was the case in earlier versions of the story.

 

What Han provided was nostalgia and credibility. Millennium Falcon did it to an extent, but seeing him in the cockpit once again bridged the new to the old. It's no longer a question of if it felt like Star Wars.


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"Finn is a distraction in that he’s wasted on being the red herring that covers up the fact that it is Rey, a woman, rather than Finn, a man (specifically a black man, which makes his red herring, fakeout-hero role in the film even more problematic), who will inherit the Jedi legacy, and as such not only does Finn feel completely inconsequential when it’s revealed that he’s not the Jedi we’re looking for, but because so much of the time the film spends on trying to trick us into buying Finn as the hero could (and should) have instead been spent on giving Rey a decent Hero’s Journey.
But despite all that, Finn actually has a pretty damn heroic story in defying the First Order in his first battle – even though, like with Kylo Ren, they really could have done a bit more in terms of fleshing out his motivations. Finn is also an obnoxious character in a lot of ways. The thing I dislike the most is how he’s low-level sleazy towards Rey for the entirety of the film that combined with the fact that he’s so damn giddy about everything means, if Kylo Ren is the return of Hayden Christensen’s Anakin (only infinitely better), Finn is Jake Lloyd’s. But I don’t actually mind that he’s basically a 12-year-old boy, in a broad sense. He’s a soldier trained from birth to be a killing machine; his emotional growth is bound to be a little stunted. However, that brings us to his thinness of motivation in defying the First Order – it’s an awesome idea, executed with about as much care as the oh-look-another-cantina scene, and the real issue here is that this poorly-executed premise is his entire character. He is the Storm Trooper who Defected. That has mythic written all over it, but nothing is done with it.
Well, that’s not 100% true, more like 88%. He kind of lives up to it – just not in a satisfying way. I think there’s a decent argument to be made that Finn has more of a Hero’s Journey going on than Rey does, because his story is not just about him. Unfortunately, neither is this film, so it’s not much of an argument – but I’ll try anyway.
Finn starts off as a conscientious objector. He objects to participating in the massacre of a village of innocent people, and while Star Wars worked because its symbolic events were backed up with at least a bit of justification, here it’s just completely out of the blue.
It’s also the most original bit of storytelling that this film does. Try not to blink.
Along the way he meets Rey, gets a hard-on, and proceeds to be the most pleasant obnoxious entitled adolescent boy on the internet of all time, which is not that pleasant as it turns out. The best scene in this film is when he and Rey are fixing the hyperdrive and getting increasingly irritated with each other, culminating in Rey’s fantastic “the one I’m pointing to!” line. Sadly, this is also where we see that even a genderless robot is treated as Default Male and adheres to the Bro Code, helping Finn to keep up his ****boy façade so that he has a shot at getting into Rey’s pants.
And then there’s the oh-look-another-cantina scene, and this is where Finn finally gets something to do – kind of. He leaves. He’s a conscientious objector; he’s seen first-hand what the First Order can do, and he is – rightly – scared ****less. If there is one thing that I like about Finn besides the fact that John Boyega is a rather likeable chap, it is the fact that he brings some counterweight to the gung-ho heroism that Rey defaults into for … whatever reason. She also doesn’t really have much motivation in that regard. Unless it’s that she’s as much of a Rebellion fangirl as Kylo Ren is a Darth Vader fanboy.

But seriously, do any of these new characters have motivation for doing the things that they do? I mean Luke gets over the death of his family pretty quickly, sure, but at least there was something to get over. At least it gave him a ****ing motive, skimmed-over though it was, to join up with Obi-Wan’s religious cult that is predicated on suppressing all emotion.

Anyway, Finn. He leaves because he doesn’t want to, y’know, die, and while it’s disappointing in the way that anybody who decides that they don’t want to play with you anymore is disappointing, it’s Finn, so I find it hard to care. I wish I cared, but I don’t.
And then he just … comes back. Because … why? I think the fact that we don’t see him changing his mind really spoils his Hero potential here; he has a change of heart, and most importantly goes from acting in his own self-interest to the more noble (according to the logic of the Hero’s Journey at least) motive of acting on the behalf of others – but we don’t get to see that change, because the film doesn’t treat it as important, thus cementing the fact that Mace Windu is the only black Jedi we’re ever going to get.
Although maybe he doesn’t actually have change of heart; maybe he just comes back because he still has a NOPE for Rey, and that same NOPE is what propels him through to his final act in the film: sacrificing himself to protect her.
Which … I mean, he does protect her. He holds off Kylo Ren long enough for Rey to regain consciousness and have her crowning moment of awesome; yes he gets his ass handed to him, but that is the other part that gives me the argument for his Hero’s Journey being the one to watch. He Refuses the Call, has a change of conscience (or is overpowered by his unquenchable thirst), and follows it through with a noble and, most importantly,heroic sacrifice. It’s not a self-contained Hero’s Journey, if it is one at all: it’s the beginning of a Hero’s Journey that extends beyond himself. Finn’s act of sacrifice is his first step into a larger world."

 

Truer words were never spoken

 

It all falls apart though when you realize Finn came back to warn the others about the First Order firing the Starkiller on the New Republic before even realizing Rey was captured by Kylo.

Finn witnessing or "feeling" those deaths on hosnian when he looked to the sky is what first sparked his change of heart about running. But of course when his first real friend Rey was captured it only enhanced the feelings of conscience and chivalry we saw from Finn all throughout TFA even in the very first scenes when he refused to fire on the villagers. I mean why wouldn't it?

Aside from Poe (who Finn thought was dead by that point) she was his first true connection with someone/anything that wasn't First Order Military issued.

 

I thought that one stormtrooper that finger paints Finn's helmet in the beginning was his bestie? Is that not true?

 

i thought so.

 

And I thought he and TR8R were friends too?

 

I wrote a limerick about Finn....

----------

There once was a trooper named Finn
Who found himself in the middle of a sin
At the command of orders
Villagers were slaughtered
His own friend killed
He wasn't too thrilled
He took out his gun but didn't fire a shot
Under his armor he was getting hot
Crying against violence and murder
He promised he would go no further
Off he ran, in a ship with Poe
Who just minutes before was a foe
Turning a high-powered blaster from his end
Finn murdered hundreds of his own friends
As they escaped he never asked himself
Is it worse killing villagers, in the name of orders, villagers who just killed his friend?
Or, killing friends, in the name of free will, because you hate the idea of killing and violence?

 

Yes, according to Before the Awakening, the three of them were in the same training group and were then sent on that first live mission together as well. The one who dies there (I forget his name) was usually the slowest in the training exercises, and kind of the weak link of the group. Finn would often try to help him keep up and stand up for him if the others complained to him. That trait in Finn was something that Phasma even noticed and told him to cut out. This also explains why the guy who ended up being known as TR-8R (a dumb name IMO) was so mad at him; he wasn't just another stormtrooper, but one that had grown up and trained alongside Finn.

 

good point but did you notice Poe killed Finn's friend?

 

Oops.

 

Much of a muchness, the moral dilemma remains

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Only if you equate the lives of Stormtroopers acting on behalf of a genocidal regime, to a bunch of villagers who were defending themselves against said regime...

That said, Finn definitely should've had more nuance when it came to killing other Troopers (or the movie should've made it clear that he was an outsider to them all along, like the novel did)

 

notice in the hanger he doesn't shoot until they shoot at him so technically it's self defense

 

If you do not fire till fired upon it's self defense.

 

new trading card for Finn:

 

These are the ugliest trading cards since the Garbage Pail Kids.

 

Finn has to be my second biggest complaint about TFA (after tons of rehash). Gosh, was he annoying... I mean all his comedic moments and overacting. I'm not sure what to blame more: Boyega or the script and directing? Both are guilty in some capacity, but I think I'd lean towards acting.

Finn was such an interesting idea for a character and it was all fine for his first couple of scenes. He should have remained this kind of shell-shocked soldier concerned with the sudden twist in his life. I'm not saying he should be totally grim, but at least more serious. What we got instead? A cartoon character... I tell you, IMO that's the closest to Jar Jar we've got in the whole Saga. 'I'm in charge! I'm in charge now!'... Jesus Christ...

I'm sure Boyega is a capable actor, but his excitement about being in Star Wars kept breaking the character. Look at his expression when Maz hands him the lightsaber and later when he ignites it... I find even details like this irritating. He was trying way too much in a lot of scenes.