ST Finn/John Boyega Discussion Thread

The generalizations are wrong, wouldn't you agree?
Speaking of the whole nations being this or that.
Racism is present in all cultures. And it knows no color. But it is not a trait of a culture as a whole, it is in people. A human flaw. Of some people, not all.
Which is why I am troubled when racism is attributed to whole nations or races.

 

I’m not seeing where anyone has done this

What Jo Malone did is pretty indefensible

 

It's more like what Boyega himself said: they didn't give him any depth in SW. He could've easily done it had they bothered to write the material for him.

 

Imagine looking at Finn, the child soldier, and going, "Yes, this is the character I'll give a pointless subplot to so he can realize how bad the galaxy really is. And not only that, I'll do it so I can draw an incredibly embarrassing comparison between the Resistance and the First Order that completely ignores just how much of a existential threat the latter is."

 

Hey Finn was rubbing him being the boss in Phasmas face in TFA. that was fairly close to the end. so i wouldn't say he was not childlike still. and truth be told is wouldn't mature over a day or so anyway. takes longer than that.

 

I still cringe in how they made Finn into such a naive and ignorant character in TLJ. Especially the scene where Rose preaches to Finn, a former child slave, of the wickedness of the galaxy. Like he doesn't know that already and has likely seen more travesties than her as a slave solider of a expanding Empire wannabe. Such a weird regression of a promising character.

 

That wasn't Finn being child-like and it wasn't about him being the boss; that was Finn feeling elated because he no longer needed to fear Phasma: the roles were reversed and he now held power over her - someone who had dehumanized him, sent him to kill innocent people and would have had him executed had he not fled the First Order. Finn was no longer helpless. That was why he was so giddy.

It's part of his arc for the film about coming to no longer fear the First Order; Starkiller Base is about him, motivated by Rey, facing the fear that has kept him running for the whole film: here, Finn faces Phasma without fear and later, he faces Kylo Ren without fear.

That's one of the things that the Last Jedi either ignored or just didn't realize: Finn's arc in the Force Awakens is about him developing from soneone who runs away out of fear because of trauma to someone who faces his fears. He builds a rapport with Rey. When Rey is captured, he goes to rescue her which means that he comes face to face with the very thing and people that he has been running from. That leads him to confront his fears and overcome them. By the end of the film, he is no longer afraid and picks up a lightsaber to fight against Kylo Ren - one of the First Order's head honchos - even though he knows it's not exactly a fight that's in his favor.

The Last Jedi has Finn still want to run away, even though he had faced and conquered his fear, and have to undergo an arc to join the Resistance, even though he was not lacking for reasons to do so. Again, his reason for not wanting to join the Resistance was a fear of the First Order - a fear he no longer had.

(I'd argue that if the Last Jedi wanted to regress him as a character, a "better" way would have been to keep him as Paige's co-pilot and have her death trigger him: it reminds him of the deaths back on Jakku where his comrades and innocent civilians died. He's not truly regressed: he's just been spooked and feels tempted to run out of fear of re-relieving those experiences, especially seeing people he's come to care about die. It'd be much more meaningful for his character and take advantage of his backstory including in a way that actually follows up on the events of the Force Awakens)

You also say that it's not something that could be gone in a day or so, but Finn immediately drops it when Han asks him to, so, even if it was an example of immaturity, Finn immediately outgrows it.

 

That's one of the reasons why I kinda wish Han would have survived TFA. Finn gets along with Han and Chewie so well I would have been satisfied with just a movie with those three (well and BB-8 too) going on adventures in the Falcon together.

 

It's hard man. Like, you can see what bits of TFA that Johnson pulled some of his characterization of Finn from, but most of it was him homing in on minor negatives that Finn had either already grown beyond or had already taken steps toward doing so.

He already had noble qualities from the start, he was just afraid of dying in a war he never had any choice in joining. This is a very reasonable fear, and TFA doesn't beat him up for feeling that way; Han understands and lets him go, Rey wants him to stay, but doesn't zap him or call him a coward. By the end, he was helping to fight the First Order and defiantly facing down certain death to protect his friend. TFA, even with its more problematic moments, had a level of respect for Finn that was absent in TLJ.

He already had all the motivation he needed to join the Resistance, his arc going forward should've been about finding his place in the Resistance and diving into his backstory.

 

oh ok, he was sitting in the pilot's chair in order to look at a screen. gotcha.

I did find it interesting that when they show the craft exiting hyperspace, it immediately shows rose doing some random thing on the ship, while it shows finn....curiously still in the pilot's seat. Maybe rose was multi tasking/piloting while finn just sat his ass in the chair for reasons other than piloting a ship. I guess the instant they entered hyperspace, rose quickly jumped out of the seat and finn, just as fast, jumped into it (musical chairs style) .Finn would remain in the pilot's seat for the rest of the trip. No, he wasn't flying. He was just sitting in the pilot seat....because logic.

I'd just like the take this time to point out that finn and rose ultimately failed to recruit the non traitorous, non shady, code breaker because they parked on a beach instead of in a hanger somewhere. There are also mariachi aliens and breast monsters on canto bight.

 

Disagree with the bolded. TFA clearly states that everything he does is for Rey. He "joined" the resistance because she looked at him like no one ever has. That was on Jakku when BB8 and Rey find him.
When faced by MAZ who reads him as a man who wants to run, he still doesn't have motivation to stay and fight against the evil that's always been there. He is adamant to leave beyond the outer rim. The only thing that returns him is Rey being taken by Kylo. He is not on the SKB to save the galaxy, he is there to save Rey. (I'm just here to get Rey). And he doesn't fight Kylo to win the war, he fights him to 'protect' Rey (and there isn't anyone else around). Nothing he does in TFA is about resistance.

So in TLJ he actually progresses. First his motivation picks up just where it left of in TFA. He doesn't try to leave the ship to dezert, he tries to leave to save Rey. His motivation is still just Rey. But Rian changes that through the course of TLJ and gives him the growth that starts with meeting Rose and realization that they (he) can actually actively do something about an imminent threat of removing the problem of active tracking. Deciding to do it instead of going after Rey to "save" her (which she never needs actually because she is so self sufficient) is where he grows the most as a character. And it happens further during the fight on Crait when he takes over the initiative and steps out as a leader (I'd argue even more inspiring to remaining resistance than Poe). Him charging that battering ram cannon marks the pivotal moment in his development, marking him a true leader who isn't in the Resistance for his own selfish reasons, but for reasons greater than himself. But that unfortunately leaves little room for growth in TRoS. Which I guess they tried to change with adding his force sensitivity issues, that in the end they didn't address properly due the time restraints of the length of the movie and having a huge number of protagonists/destinies they needed to explain/tie up (not just Kylo, Rey, Poe, Leia, Luke, Palpatine which is a high number by itself, they added even some more Zorri, Janah, Pryde etc..)

 

You're saying this as if finally having found people who treat him as something other than a means to an end isn't a good reason for him to join the Resistance in the first place. The problem you're critically missing is that Finn's largely divorced from every other character that he had meaningful interaction with in TFA and that none of his actual arc in TLJ is concerned with his actual background, which Def Trooper understandably suggests it should have been more about. Finn standing up to someone like Kylo at the end of TFA was always going to be a more impactful impetus for him joining the Resistance than anything TLJ had to offer by contrast (especially since he has nowhere else to actually go after engaging in a duel with a member of the First Order's inner circle).

 

Yeah, Finn not being with the Resistance at the start of TLJ, after everything he went through at the end of TFA, completely loses me when Rey ends TFA going on a mission for Leia and the Resistance. Much like Finn, Rey wanted to run away, too. But the events at the end of TFA, that both Finn and Rey witnessed and experienced, was enough to change Rey's mind. It should've been enough for Finn, too, if RJ had bothered to view him as a character of any type of worth, instead of regressing him and making him go on his entire TFA arc again.

It'd be like if TLJ started and Rey wanted to run back to Jakku the second she saw Luke Skywalker.

 

Also, just like how Rey was tortured by Ben, Finn had been nearly killed and his identity had become known. Meaning his safest bet is with the opposition to the FO where he'll be armed and his skills can be put to good use. This is why I hate the way Finn is treated as he genuinely does not think like a soldier. Not only that, but he's also just made out to be a complete buffoon throughout TLJ.

 

The bolded was not presented in TFA. It was developed and shown in TLJ by Rian Johnson who gave him a motivation for acting different than I'm just here to get Rey. Which is one of the things I personally liked TLJ for. It gave less than shallow meaning to all characters...well maybe excluding Snoke, but hey, nothing is perfect.

 

Wrong. He goes back to tell Han about SKB before the First Order even arrived on Takodana. He doesn't want innocent people to get hurt, but again, he is afraid of dying. Nearly being killed by the riot trooper re-instills this fear after he tried to be a hero with the lightsaber.

And after Han complains about it, Finn immediately puts the Resistance first and helps Han lower the shields, then they went after Rey. Then after that, he helps to blow up the oscillator.

And there should be nothing wrong with that. Since when is fighting for the people you love a bad thing? I guess since 2017, but then Rian was all like "It'S nOt AbOuT FiGhTiNg WhAt YoU hAtE, iT's AbOuT sAvInG wHaT yOu LoVe!!" completely outta nowhere at the end of TLJ, so I dunno what the hell he was actually trying to say with Finn's arc.

Was it wrong that Luke only joined the Rebellion because the Empire killed his family? Was it wrong that Han only stuck with the Rebellion because of Leia and Luke? Everyone in these factions start with a personal motivation, then they grow to love the cause and it's people.

Finn had more than enough reason to stay after watching Han get murdered by his own son, watching the Order blow up a system, and after facing death when he'd spent the whole film afraid of it.

I'd be a little more willing to tolerate Johnson's take on Finn if he'd left in the sympathetic scenes that showed Finn's personal conflicts; The Poe scene where Finn expresses that he doesn't feel like he belongs with the Resistance, and the scene where Finn only decides to leave when BB-8 shows him Rey's kiss were the only times it felt like the movie was on Finn's side and took his feelings seriously, but they got deleted.

So he just spends the whole movie getting **** on by the narrative, and on top of that, he isn't allowed to affect the main plot in any of the major ways he did in TFA. His big moment is him rousing the Resistance up for the final battle, only for them to get absolutely slaughtered a few minutes in. Awesome.

 

What the hell do you mean? What exactly do you think Finn was referring to when he said, as you pointed out...

Like no one ever has. That kind of says a lot about his upbringing in the FO, doesn't it? Does that just no longer matter? Is Finn just some shallow moron who doesn't understand that the feelings he felt toward Rey are just as much of a reflection of vital things the First Order have deprived him of?

 

I'm just going to copy and slightly alter this old post (and include reyvision's post for context and because it fits the current discussion)

Notably, Rey was running away from everything after the vision. She tells Maz Kanada that: "I'm never touching that again. I don't want any part of this." That's how she got separated from Han and why she was alone when she was captured by Kylo Ren. She never makes the decision to go back to the others. The only difference between her and Finn is that Finn is in a coma which means he can't express if he changed his mind like Rey did at the end of the film (which is the only reason we know that she did change her mind)

Finn stating that he's only there to save Rey also happens before Han's death. He is shown to be concerned for Han during the bridge's scene and is shown to be distraught by his death.


There's also the manuscript's description of this moment where they stop and decide to fight Kylo Ren.
Finn and Rey, overcome with emotion, race through the snowy forest -- until Finn SLOWS AND STOPS. Rey stops too, both out of breath. They look at each other. They both know:
they can't run.

Or this scene where Kylo Ren calls Finn a traitor.

Followed by this:


TFA had already shown that Finn was done running and the reason that he wanted to run away was because he was afraid of the First Order. In the climax of the film, he literally choses to face down one of the First Order's head honchos even though he knows is outmatched. That's part of why the battle is so significant: it's the culmination of his character arc for the film.

The idea that Finn would not join the Resistance and would still want to run away after the first film is frankly ridiculous.

Again, what was motivating him to run away? His fear of the First Order. He wasn't motivated by a general sense of apathy towards the galaxy so, when he overcame his fear of the First Order, he had no reason to not want to join Resistance and every reason to want to join them.

 

Reducing Finn's motivations to being only about Rey completely ignores everything that happens in TFA regarding him and every character not named Rey. In his very first scene he holds a dying fellow soldier who is not Rey. He doesn't fire on the villagers of Tuanal village which Rey is not a member of. He helps Poe, who is not Rey, escape the First Order and completes his mission to get BB8 and the map back to the Resistance. He goes back to tell Han about the First Order's massacre of the Hosnian system before he knows Rey is even missing. He also prioritizes the Resistance mission and actively participates in the defeat of the First Order. I don't know how much clearer TFA could have made it that Finn's motivation throughout the film is his care for people, especially those being victimized by the First Order. The point of his arc is that he's a person that's going to step up to defend other people even if he tries to deny his own heroism because deep down that's who he is.
A yellow apple amongst a bushel of red apples doesn't suddenly become a lemon or a banana just because it's yellow.

 

This character did absolutely nothing for me. If the actor is complaining about being sidelined I get it - But it was because Rey and Kylo were far more interesting!