ST Finn/John Boyega Discussion Thread

What @AhsokaSolo said. JJ wrote a minor gag in TFA that RJ decided to perpetuate as his defining trait in the service of the First Order. You know what else JJ wrote? That Finn was taken from his family and raised to kill. But ya boy Rian was uninterested in taking that seriously. Instead, he wanted some goofy casino heist BS, he wanted to force Finn to stop thinking of Rey, and to have him be lectured about arms dealing. Because genocidal Nazis are equivalent to downtrodden freedom fighters...so gray, much subversive.

Rian chose to degrade Finn wherever he could, just like he chose to pretty up and move Kylo's scar to make him more attractive and to get Rey all hot and bothered about "Ben Solo".

 

RJ also subjected the escaped slave to a lecture on slavery. Oh and tased him for desertion of an army he never joined. And then depicted him as a coward the entire movie over that, despite the fact that he was introduced doing one of the most courageous things we’ve ever seen in SW.

 

It’s TLJ’s fault JJ couldn’t be bothered to do those things in the 2/3rds of the trilogy he had?

TLJ has issues, but there’s nothing in that movie that forced JJ to make the bad movie he did. He didn’t have to bring Palpatine back. He didn’t have to even further demote Finn. He didn’t have to make a movie so rushed and contrived that not a single moment had the emotional impact it should have.

Finn’s stuff in TLJ isn’t good, but it definitely didn’t close the doors so many people want to think it did. JJ could have still done all sorts of things with Finn in TROS and he didn’t bother, not cause TLJ put him in a corner with the character (it didn’t) but because that was JJ’s vision.


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And let's not forget TFA leaving him with a horribly traumatic injury that left him comatose. In the next film we get Finn smacking his head on glass, falling off the bed and wandering around the halls naked and leaking.

Spoiler

 

Dare I say, RJ could've subverted it.

The things he chose to subvert and accept as gospel are very telling. ...but he's so imaginative and liberal and too smart to fall into well-worn sexist and racist tropes. The people who notice these patterns of bias are just butt-hurt because Finn isn't as popular as the other characters...

 

Stating Finn was sanitation was to emphasize the point that he was not one of the troops yet to be down on the planets hurting people.

Hes on a space station among a group of people brainwashed from birth, is he supposed to be teaching mathematics?

 

My guess is any analysis of hashtags on Twitter doesn't even bother tracking #Finn because it could refer to Adventure Time, Stranger Things, Glee, or any other number of things. One more reason the lack of a given last name for Finn - coupled with an extremely generic first name - really sucks.

 

Also, it makes perfect sense that this unstoppable space empire with unlimited resources would send a janitor (as opposed to a competent infantryman who just did sanitation duty once) on a black ops mission with Kylo Ren himself.

A rank might have served the same purpose as a last name. "Finn" might be generic, but "Sergeant Finn" or "Padawan Finn" isn't so much.

As it happens, he doesn't have a rank. He's just some dude named Finn, along for the ride.

 

Evidence? I've seen their work and their actions. JJ set up a story to go one way, RJ took that same setup and went a different way,

The thing you miss is that even though JJ didn't complete his character journey of Finn (just as he didn't for Rey) its because he shouldn't have defined him then - just as GL didn't define Luke and Han in Ep 4 and if watching chronologically Anakin and Obi-Wan isn't defined in Ep 1. But again - it was setup one way and TLJ chose to go a different way.

And as I said before - its crystal clear that Disney interjected into TROS rather than leave JJ to his vision. Multiple legit reports that even he and Terrio was surprised and disappointed in the edit that Disney went with.

People can rationalize away all they want of what happened but I'm quite comfortable in my take in what went on.

 

Every character (like 30+) got a hashtag/emoji a couple weeks before the film came out. It was a neat way to market/advertise the film. The above chart shows the results of who was tweeted amount the most. Speaks that a lot of the ST characters don’t resonate in the conversation besides are two leads, Rey and Kylo. Would have been silly for LFL to not make there films about the characters the audience and directors care about.

 

He kind of did considering Rian crippled the story by killing Snoke. With Snoke dead a void was left where there needed to be a big bad for the climax of a 9 movie saga. The only other option would have been for that to have been Kylo but ever since TLJ, which was also Rian's doing, Disney/Lucasfilm seemed intent on making that not an option.

He didn't demote him any further than Rian did in TLJ. He actually got to escape a movie without anyone talking down to him.

I felt some emotion when Chewie was wailing after finding out Leia died.

 

Folk on tumblr tried to get around this with the tag #rebelfinn. It's still the best way to find content about him on that site outside the finnpoe and finnrey tags, but, yes - the fact that Finn's past was never once broached beyond telling us he was kidnapped and radicalized is a disappointment. Especially since Abrams all but said his single-namedness was to be explained during the TFA period. Just chalk that up to another failure to commit to your own ideas.

Yes, you're not wrong, but I figured "reluctance" was enough to communicate Ford's idea that Han was purposeless post-TESB since that's common knowledge. I've spoken to a few people who think ROTJ wasted Han and Leia, but, as @Def Trooper as stated, Han and Leia had an entire second movie and EU material released before and after TESB and ROTJ that dedicated itself to their development and their relationship. That's why the aforementioned belief about their role in ROTJ is not shared as a general belief.

Finn, post-TFA, was not given that same privilege because Lucasfilm's Story Group made a clear decision not to build his character. I think the only character of the trio that has had explicit EU tales written about them post-TFA is Poe Dameron. Rey and Finn have been seemingly purgatory'ed to read-along and picture books that over-simplify their plots in TFA, TLJ and TROS. It's a world of difference from how the EU was handled during the OT and PT era.

Again, Finn's minimization within the films has little to do with the fact that he didn't fit into the "Jedi stuff" and there was a way to maintain his TFA-prominence within the resistance arc if the desire to do so was present, but it wasn't. Instead Finn is separated from the characters who mattered the most to his arc, and is simply not allowed to progress as a character. His is a systemic problem Black characters/actors face constantly. Sleepy Hollow (the FOX series) might be the most recent and famous example of this. It was airing around the same time TFA and TLJ debuted, so Black Star Wars fans who were watching it got to see different, gradual versions of how the industry minimizes Black characters who were leads.

He absolutely was. His sensitivity has little to do with the fact that he held Anakin's Lightsaber (an argument no one has ever made), and more to do with the choices he actively makes and how he reacts to things throughout the film. His force sensitivity and the Stormtrooper defection plot reappearing in TROS is not an accident, neither is Abrams just coming out and canonizing what folk have been picking up on for five years now.

Anyone who's watched a J.J. Abrams production knows how he drops hints in his stories about pivotal characters (almost as a subtly as his friend Damon Lindelof), and sometimes intelligently. To condemn with faint praise, Finn's force sensitivity could've easily gone the way of Walt's supernatural abilities in LOST by never coming back up again, but it didn't. I don't like how that aspect of his character was handled TFA or TROS, but the messaging has been there from the jump.

Again, nothing being argued about Finn is people seeing what they want to see, it's not expectation vs. reality. This is people picking up on a pattern they've seen evolve over decades across different mediums. Finn as character was undermined. The fact that so many are only just realizing or choosing to admit it now as the Sequel Trilogy comes to an end is fairly telling.

John Boyega is not discontent about how things turned out for no reason.

 

The hints that Finn was force sensitive were speculation at best in TFA and definitely not some master plan. The only actual hint for me was his awakening on Jakku but that could just have been argued as growing a conscious.

That’s made a non-event in TROS when we find out that Jannah and her whole squad did it.

His only other hint was on Takodana and LFL were quick to clarify he was just hearing the people around him. So there wasn’t much to speculate on.

Johnson did his thing based on what he felt for Finn given that he hadn’t been confirmed as Force sensitive. He took the character in a direction I liked but many here dislike.

JJ then makes Finn FS for no actual story reason and y’all lose your minds at Johnson for not following some preordained path that never existed to begin with.

I really don’t think JJ intended Finn to be FS in TFA. His love for the OT and a single good Jedi are too strong for him to make Finn FS and take away from his lead Jedi. He threw it in TROS as a bone to appease Finn fans knowing it would be inconsequential to the overall story as evident by doing nothing of substance with him.

 

Kylo Ren took note of Finn's change on Jakku. It wasn't his conscience. (And that other some other stormtroopers elsewhere were felt a call from the Force too doesn't take away the significance. There were once thousands of Jedi, and there could be again. The Force shouldn't be reserved for a literal handful of people)

He heard the screams of the capital worlds. We know because he hear the exact same screams as they're shown perishing. It's a clear Obi-Wan/Alderaan reference.

And then Finn suggests they use the Force to take down the shields, which sets up Han for a joke, but is also a pretty good understanding of the Living Force...even if Finn is not aware that that is what he's describing.

JJ knew what he was doing and followed through on it, albeit weakly in this film. It's not out of left film.

 

It’s simple RJ can’t write for anyone but white dudes with issues those are his films and while I love looper that’s what the film is. Knives out is about a murder in a White family. The three characters of colour are in very uncomfortable roles in TLJ and Holdo is just over the top to the point of just being a terrible leader and character. RJ couldn’t have subverted expectations with Finn if he wanted to he was written terribly in TLJ because RJ didn’t know how to write him and had no interest in writing for him. He only cared about one plot and then hitting a checklist. At least that’s what TLJ feels like to me.

 

You must have completely missed the point of Knives Out Lmao!!!!!!!!!!! TLJ and KO are so far better written than TROS that it embarrassing to compare.

Also some of y’all with Finns Force ability in TFA:

 

TLJ is one of the worst written films I have ever seen. You will never convince me otherwise.

With regards to Knives Out I was talking about the types of characters white characters and not about the quality of the film. TLJ is the only RJ film that features minority characters in « leading » roles. I have quite enjoyed other RJ films. TLJ went off the rails from the very opening of the film for me.

Also with regards to saying that people are reaching with regards to Finn being Force sensitive. Considering the literal amount of reaching being done to justify things like Palpatine and Reylo. I think the fact that something awakens in Finn and Snoke says there has been an awakening did you feel it. Is far less of a stretch than anything else i have seen in this board.

 

I don’t like what happened it doesn’t fit my predetermined head canon =/= bad writing, yet many here seem to think so! It’s hilarious

 

Knives out also has nothing to do with Finn.

 

If folks were so concerned about the sanctity of Finn's "setups" in TFA, where was the outcry when he went from the moral compass of the movie, to needing adult supervision and decision making under Rose Tico in TLJ? He can survive galactic impressment, but needs Rose to explain to him that child slavery is bad?

He leaves the FO having seen it first hand, but he needs Rose to explain to him about that time they took over her mining planet? What story is she going to tell that was more compelling than watching Hosnian Prime being wiped out of the sky? But I'm supposed to take Rian's story arc for Finn seriously?

To listen to this board now the arc everyone apparently wanted to see was Finn the Insurrection Leader. If that was the case, why aren't you upset that RIAN didn't explicitly set that up?

 

Exactly why I wished he kept his original Finn/Phasma duel. Would’ve been a nice little seed that could’ve been built on.

Regardless I still felt that was the next logical step after TLJ. He’s embraced the resistance so the next part of his arc would be him exemplifying his experience and lead that rebellion.

 

I didn’t have any expectations for Finns arc leading up to TLJ. Considering Rian was given a near dead Janitor that likes to run and scream Rey, I had no idea what he was going to do with that. I feel he did a fine enough job, considering he wasn’t given much to work with. He could have left him in the medical facility the whole film considering JJ set up TLJ to be picked up immediately after.

 

Some people enjoyed RJ’s bully humor at Finn’s expense, some didn’t. Some think TFA set that up and the character deserved it, some didn’t. What will be, will be.

 

Joining the Resistance is not the next logical step in fulminating a rebellion from within the First Order. I have seen a lot of people attempt to attach that outcome into Rian's "story" presumably as a defense. But there's really no reason to "join" the Resistance if the thrust of your story is to start an uprising underpinned by common experience and suffering as military personnel and appealing to their doubt and humanity. Actually joining the Resistance is counter intuitive to that.

Your gross mischaracterizations aside, Rian knew what TFA was before he started writing his installment. He had no problems asking for changes that he wanted in TFA to better suit his film when he wanted.

Considering the quality of writing for Finn's arc in TLJ he certainly could have been left in a coma the entire movie, it would have been just as compelling as what Rian conjured up for Finn.