ST Finn/John Boyega Discussion Thread

I saw it as budding romance, based on a whole movie of them getting to know each other and forming a friendship. Finn's line about you got boyfriend, kind of set that up. I sat in the theater, seeing the kiss and thought, "damn, Disney is going for interracial romance." You don't really see that often. It's still kind of taboo in Hollywood. For some reason.

And then they backtracked from that faster than can be. For some reason.

 

I didn't notice the voice over originally but par for the course with systematic racism.

 

Let it be known that Disney would rather set their strong female protagonist up with a violent kinslaying space fascist who tried to kill her and bring chaos to the galaxy than her black friend.

 

I think moreso individual choices, potentially, of racism.

 

It's crazy to imagine that scene without the voiceover line and how that would affect the discourse post-TFA. I'm sure many people would still see them as nothing more than friends, and that's well within their rights, but I don't think we would've gotten all the demeaning comments about Finn, and the pairing would've had much more support vs Reylo. When a woman sits by a man's bedside and stares longingly at him, says they'll meet again, then simply kisses him and leaves, that seems to scream "romance" in a way Disney was likely very uncomfortable with.

Something I didn't notice until recently is if you look up the soundtrack for Finn's confession on Youtube, it's full to the brim with old comments about how people enjoyed the pairing and thought they would end up together. It's both heartwarming and frustrating to see the support that the two were getting early on (romantic or otherwise) compared to the utter disdain or indifference they receive now. Truly amazing how LF ****ed up something that could've easily been decent had they not swerved off a cliff.

 

Just to be be sure to have understood it correctly: With "Voice over" you mean that the lines "Thank you, my friend" were introduced only later into the novelization to friend-zonize Finn, or were they cut out from the movie afterwards to friend-zonize him?

 

could still happen, sometimes wonder if out-universe if plan is Finn-Rey together to pass down Skywalker surname. Finn has no surname......conveniant.

would have prefered if Skywalker name had died with Luke but it didn't.....what can you do.

its kinda dumb for Rey to take Skywalker name, just for her to be last one.....then what was point of her taking it?

 

Alan Dean Foster said in an interview right after TROS that Disney/LF had him remove hints of a Finn/Rey romantic attraction from his TFA novelization. The user in the tweet I linked drew a possible connection between that incident and the fact that the "my friend" line seemed to be added in post-production rather than being part of the original scene as it was filmed. We'll never know for certain what happened without transparency from LF on the subject, but based on the downright bizarre level of separation of Finn from Rey after TFA and LF throwing Finn under a bus at every opportunity, its easy to assume some level of deliberate sabotage against the character.

 

I think it became intentional once he's given a name by Poe and doesn't seem to have any name himself as a kidnapped child.
Finn is perfect example of wasted character who would have benefitted from 1 director for whole ST. Boyega seems to have preferred working under JJ.

since Rey isn't a Skywalker and has no real good reason to want to redeem Kylo. I think that's one reason for aborted Finn-Rey romance.
they shifted the romance to save/compassionate towards Kylo.

 

Not only sabotage. Episode VIII is a big Bantustan Poodoo! Seeing all the episodes, for me it feels like as if Finn together with Rose had been dumped in Sun City Canto Bight to let Rey and Kylo Ren have that in-screen and off-screen shoehorned imposed ominous force bond to lure Rey away from Finn, yet to give him someone to play deal with - a quantum of solace, a non-white, not force sensible woman. If that is not racism, I don't know.

Just imagine, Leia in Ep. V would just had forgotten Han in the carbonite freeze and would have started a relationship with Lando instead. And later in RotJ, the three (or with Luke four) do hug.

In other words: What was planned and marketed as a diversity project for actors and characters from different ethnic origin to shine and to add color, became the bland opposite.

 

Considering the creators never even envisioned who their main protagonist was, nor their main villain, there is simply no way they cared about Finn.

TFA gives us potential. But that's only because it's vague and noncommittal to its story or its concepts.

Finn either needed to follow the Jedi Path, where in EP 8 he follows Rey's trail and ends up on Ahc-hto to train under Luke, where they both eventually take on Kylo Ren in EP 9. Or...Finn isn't force sensitive but is inspirational in leading a stormtrooper rebellion, and finally takes on Phasma in EP 9 once and for all. In both cases his bond with Rey should have grown over the 3 movies, gotten them closer, and with the drama built around these two. (Just as the drama was built around the OT3)

The fact that neither of these scenarios is even hard to write, really hammers home just how lazy and uncreative the ST writers were in making these movies.

 

the ST writers were just ripping off the OT.
Just like how Luke got screwed in TLJ due to TFA having him on Ach-To alone.

Finn was screwed by having him in hospital bed in TFA.
RJ was more interested in exploring the ST3 with seperate journeys.

problem with that is that it left ST3 as a weak trio. A trio who only got together for realz.....in last movie, lol.
TFA=Finn and Rey with a bit of Finn and Poe mostly at beginning, TLJ=3/3 mostly alone, ROS=finally something with all 3 but too late

 

If there was a time jump after TFA, it would have made sense for Finn to be committed to the Resistance and live the how to the expanded universe and to give him another kind of arc than what we ended up with.

 

I'm pretty sure JJ said at one point that their lack of a surname was intentional, we just don't know 100% what the reason was. Rey eventually gained a last name through her story, but Finn just went nowhere.

Assuming they remained the centerpieces of the trilogy, I think the idea was that they would both become part of the legacy of the Skywalker family (even if there was no name-taking involved) through their parallel journeys and growing bonds with the OT characters.

I don't mind that Finn sorta fell back behind Rey, as she is the main protagonist, but I hate that he became inconsequential overall and the powers that be were so afraid of Rey and Finn being paired together even platonically that they kept trying to wedge every character possible between them.

 

The scene when Finn reveals the truth to Rey in TFA is such an emotional moment and it's kinda sad there's no other scene featuring Finn that have a similar weight to it in the trilogy. One of the main characters in a saga film is one who humanized faceless villains and the arc they gave us for that character over the course of 3 movies was to join the Resistance and become a general. That, to me, is a missed opportunity.

 

LFL chose a very traditional way for Rey to become a Skywalker, first to get on one, then taking the name - see Rose Dawson in Titanic.

To avoid such a character evolvement desaster as happened to hapless Finn, film-makers in the future could do it like some French companies who announced for job applicants, that in their application, they could all renounce to pictures, name and place of living, all indicators for bosses to thresh out people from the chance of getting the job.

Of course to implement such for a movie is difficult, but a lot could be won, if directors first care about a good script with good story-telling and only afterwards cast the actors. Thus you could thwart the destruction of movie characters, if not whole plots, by racist feelings and objections during film production - be it conscious or unconscious.

 

It's funny how people who use Titanic as an example of why Rey taking the name Skywalker works, when in Titanic, Rose doesn't take the name of her abusive terrorizing fiance, she takes the name of the guy who's nice to her and saves her from that horrible life.

So no Titanic isn't a good example of how this works. Unless you think Rose should have stayed with Cal in order to save him. Although it's also revealing that some think Kylo and Jack Dawson are the same character type.

 

@DarkGingerJedi,
Exactly my thoughts. Thanks for lining that out in detail. James Cameron in 1997 made a grave mistake in story-telling. Rose should have redeemed Cal and Jack was just too much of a nice guy for her. Just like Finn was for Rey.

 

Finn's last name is '2187'

 

Since the FO's army is made up of kidnapped children, I'm really hoping to have a story about Finn reconnecting with his family preferably on a visual medium since SW is a visual medium first and foremost and it's also easier for me to visualize characters this way.

 

that’s not a last name, it’s literally a number given to him by an authoritarian wannabe Empire that’s meant to reduce individual people to numbers,

also, if you’re intending that to be a joke, it’s not funny