Books Star Wars: Before the Awakening

Which is precisely why I roll my eyes at them in Star Wars. Just because Lucas was inspired by 30s serials doesn't mean you should write like it is the thirties, guys.

(Though honestly, I didn't even notice it was there on my first read. Stuff like "sanisteam" is embarrassing, but "refresher's" been established so long it doesn't actually jar me at all).

 

Well, I made this thread over a year and a half ago and just started reading the book about two weeks ago (I actually DID try to buy it at the bookstore by the theatre on December 18th after my 3rd viewing but they were already sold out. Only got 3 copies in and they went in a day by 10 PM). Not quite finished YET but super-compelling. The FN-2187 story is a nice look at what 2187's life was, basically a whole lot of training and I do like how he's shown to be the outcast, but not as much as an outcast as Slip. But 2187's inherent goodness let him try to cover for Slip, which is a cool bit that shows he's a good guy even then. nice to get some background on "Nines" aka TR-8R if only it adds some punch to the "TRAITOR!" moment (not that it needed it anyway). Phasma was keeping an eye on 2187 back then as he showed promise, which makes how she's sort of irritated at him in the movie a payoff. What's interesting about the big moment in this story is that Finn tells Rey "In my first battle, I made a choice. I wasn't going to kill for them" and he's clearly talking about the landing at Jakku but it could also be seen as him talking about the climax of this story where Phasam orders 2187 and his squad to execute miners, and he doesn't. Slip being the first one to do so is actually kind of powerful. Dark ending but I like how it establishes that 2187 didn't suddenly become a good guy at the Jakku battle, he always was.

The Rey story I'm about halfway through, she just had a showdown with some Teeedos. There is a lotttt of discussion about the details of her putting together the ship she found. But I actually quite like the isolation and how Rey managed to work on flight sims and junk to be as good at the random tasks she is in TFA. And her finding the ship is a piece of joy in her life which, as I can tell as I've seen Force Awakens, is probably going to end rather horribly. The narrative is leading hard into the two fellow scavengers stealing it, but they did just save her from some angry Teedos so maybe there's another twist (the family Rey notices at the start). It's not the most action packed but I kind of dig this spare, trying narrative for her. the ship represents hope! Get it? I get it! Not hope for her leaving, hope for a better life, and hope that she can accomplish something by fixing it. Hell, I don't mind heavy handed stuff like that, it's Star Wars. you lean hard into your symbolism and metaphors.

Apparently everyone loves the Poe one and it seems to take up a lot of the book so looking forward to that, if only to see how it plays into the Poe Dameron comic.

 

I actually liked the Rey one the best, although I won't give away the plot. I liked how the characters behaved like "normal" people. No magic light side/dark side dictating their actions. And I think Rey's behavior at the end says A LOT more about her than anything else that's come out since TFA.

Poe's story I mostly forgot at this point, except the general premise... it was a lot like a standard SW short story (character goes somewhere, gets things done, no subtle underlying plots).

Finn's.... hrmmmm. I was of a mixed mind on that one. I liked the idea of foreshadowing Finn's behavior that led to his eventual panic attack on the battlefield. But I didn't like how Phasma had already singled him out as some amazingly special guy. I liked TFA because Finn was one of the bunch -- not the trooper all the other soldiers knew had an outstanding training resume. I thought TFA's message was you didn't necessarily have to be the guy who was already outstanding in everything else to have a change of heart.

 

I dunno, Phasma seemed awfully defensive of Finn.

 

In TFA? I thought they were going for the angry-boss type that's always lurking behind the corner waiting for you to foul up, like the boss in Office Space. That steady drawl she was using added to it. The only time she defended him was when Hux asked if Finn had a record and she said something like "This was his first offense".

 

This makes that scene at the beginning of TFA disconcertingly funny, the way she shows up seemingly out of nowhere...she did show up from out of nowhere because she has the weird spatial-teleport-jump superpower of a bad boss from a comedy movie.

 

I was closer to the end of the Rey story than I thought, just a few pages. Liked how nicely abruptly the story concluded, kind of darkly funny and appropriate. I buy it that Rey couldn't conceive of leaving Jakku so she was blindsided by someone else wanting to. That's not the Falcon she fixed, by the way, as some have speculated a page back, she mentioned the YT-freighter when she takes in the fixed ship for a landing at Niima outpost and then spectacular duo took off into the sky with Rey's fixed up ship. But the scene ending with Unkar just grunting and walking away is kind of gold. Maybe that's why he was only doling out Half and One-Quarter portions for her in TFA, because he's irritated she let such a fine prize slip away.

Her noticing the family at the start of the story I guess was more of a reference to Rey being left behind by her parents, or her just noticing that there's a family with a daughter which probably stirred something in her.

As for FN-2187 being a top-level trooper, I could see how one could see it as undermining one of the central points of his journey in TFA, but I buy it because Finn is pretty resourceful and he's able to wield a lightsaber without, apparently, having Force ability and hold his own against Kylo Ren for a bit, so him being adept at training simulations can go a way to explaining that. Him having a pre-existing underling relationship with Phasma I feel works really well in the context of the film. His ecstatic "I'm in charge now, Phasma!" because she has been drilling him for, well, years. And his smirk at the realization they can toss her in the trash compactor is a nice pin to their student / mean teacher dynamic.

 

Finished the Poe story, I got quite a kick out of it. while it doesn't have juicy First Order tidbits like in the Finn story, or the downright sad feel of the Rey story, it's fun to see how Poe got pulled into the Resistance and his first meeting with General Organa because he actually broke the rules the New Republic is pushing. It leads very nicely into the Poe Dameron comic (although I do slightly quibble that in BTA Poe and Kare and their buddy are leading different squadrons and in Poe Dameron comic Kare is a part of Black Squardon that Poe is currently leading) And the finale where he has to take over a rich senators yacht has some great moments, especially the passage where Poe is pretending to be a crazy pirate that I liked so much I made it my signature below.

 

Boyega gave Before the Awakening a shout out!

http://www.theforce.net/story/front/We_Spoke_With_John_Boyega_180052.asp

"The big thing was that we didn't get a chance to really go back to Finn's day to day life as a Stormtrooper. For me what I wanted to convey is that a person that had been done. He had to stay quiet and try to submit to a movement he truly didn't believe in deep down in his heart. And playing that in the beginning was very cool and people felt like they got to go on this journey with him and they believed his conviction to take a stand and leave. If you read the extended Star Wars: The Force Awakens books you read about his rivalries between certain Stormtroopers and how he was always just so different. That's explored various ways in the different formats. Those are the kind of things I wanted to know, those facts, so that I could portray that and have that memory at least as a character."

Which is kind of awesome and I agree that it's kind of good to see a look at Finn's pre-Jakku life as to why he makes the jump. Although, one will notice him, like many other actors and filmmakers, always use the term "extended". Which is a small, ultimately irrelevant distinction, I just think it's funny they keep saying that

 

Boyega does seem to come off as being a true fan of the franchise. As good of a job as Ridley is doing with being Rey I think few would ever get the impression that she is a true fan of Star Wars. Not that there is anything wrong with that because actors don't need to be big fans of the movies/franchises they are a part of but it is nice to see when it seems they are.

 

What about Isaac's attitude he didn't even turn up for the last celebration!

Boyega's attitude towards being is star wars is just another reason why I wish he was the main star of the trilogy instead of the comic relief

 

Not sure if you're joking or serious but either way, for the record Oscar Isaac not going to SWCO almost certainly had nothing to do with his "attitude." I believe it was actually stated during the TLJ panel that he was working on a play in NYC. Also his wife was late in her third trimester of pregnancy, which surely contributed to his decision not to attend. (His son was born on or around April 28.)

 

Isaac is the one that wanted Poe be from Yavin 4 as part of his backstory, as the exterior scenes in A New Hope were filmed in Guatemala, and that is his heritage. I think it was cool of the Story Group to add that for him. And he is clearly a fan, even if only casual compared to us or maybe Boyega. Watch any interview with him.

The fact that John Boyega used a spin-off book as research into his character might be the first time we've encountered that. And that is really cool, on so many levels.

 

I re-read the "Poe" section of Before The Awakening a few days ago, not only to lead into various Sequel Trilogy fiction, but specifically as a lead-in to my first reading of the Poe Dameron comics.

My understanding is that the book jumps around on the timeline a bit. The "Finn" and "Rey" sections are clearly right before The Force Awakens, but seeing as how "Poe" leads into his comics -- and those themselves are set before his scenes in Resistance -- I'm guessing that his story is set about 6-7 months pre-TFA, just before the first episode of Resistance.

 

I've been meaning to go back and re-read this to see hows it fits with all the other material released since. It will be interesting to see if all the various Rey on Jakku stories work together