A/V THE FORCE AWAKENS - The Official Movie Discussion Thread

I keep going back and forth on it. I'm schizophrenic about it. But I think that there are some subtle clues that he is. The biggest being, when Slip touches his helmet, the sound effect that plays when Finn "awakens" is the exact one that plays when Rey touches the lightsaber for the first time (when she "awakens"). But at the same time, he never gives any indication he could use it either. But also Leia didn't in ANH. So I think it's still all up in the air.

 

I don't think he is, if he isn't... that's a real dickish bait n switch.

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I know a lot of fans were angry about it.

Which is a shame but I guess I see a Stormtrooper as a pretty cool thing to be.

 

I mean, Finn's awesome whether he's got the Force or not, but I just really feel like he does. But I thought he was awesome with the lightsaber and want to see more scenes like them only where he actually wins in VIII, so maybe I'm biased.

 

We DO need more Jedi.

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But if Finn isn't set up to begin his training in 8 alongside Rey (and he's not) then I don't see it happening this trilogy.


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Forget not that Maz is Force-sensitive. She was never Jedi-trained, but that doesn't mean she doesn't know how to use it (there have been confirmed deleted scenes where she uses it to fight stormtroopers). If Lupita returns for VIII, perhaps she would be open to teaching Finn how to use the Force some. Or even Leia. But like I said, whether he is or not, I think he's a great character and am looking forward to how they use him.

 

Hmm.





Hmmm.





Hmmm.

. . .

Nah.

Couldn't be. They wouldn't.

Would they?

( )

 

I kind of hope he isn't. Jedi were always the least interesting aspects of Star Wars and utterly ruined things with the prequels and EU thinking the only people worth following were paper-thin flip out with laser sword ninjas. My hope is that when the EU was wiped out (haaaaa, ahahahahahaha) that Saba died in the most pain, the most slowly. Siss, sisssss! But anyway...

Finn should be the Everyperson Han Solo was in the OT. The character who is really our voice. Rey is obviously the warrior goddess and I couldn't be happier - she's an amazing character and just off one film she's in my top 3. Poe might be the voice of humour and cynicism but the 1970s were all about cynicism. The twenty-teens are about discovering identity and a place in the world, and for that, Finn is the best mouthpiece possible.

Making him a Jedi would mean undermining Rey's journey and subjecting us to terrible stories about him flipping out and disabling whole First Order Star Destroyers with the uberForce. Though to be fair, Disney are spending more than $20 on their writers, and finding good authors rather than people who aspire to be third rate hacks so maybe we won't get it that bad.

 

Your....everyman....is a child soldier conditioned from birth to kill and obey orders.

That's your pick?

Not the working class girl who has a family and worked for a living.

 

Return of the Jedi...

2016 Special Edition:

 

Ew. Working class. So crass.

But seriously? No. Rey is your Hero archetype in Jungian terms. Young, naïve, idealistic she embodies the notion of people destined for greatness no matter the odds.

Finn, however, is closest to the regular guy/girl. In the space fantasy world of Star Wars (HEAR THAT, DR SAXTON AND CO? IT'S NOT GODDAMNED SCI-FI) his skills are limited. He's not a good talker. Would make a lousy artesan. Couldn't forge a living, and the conditioning you speak of he's rebelling against. In a world where people are challenging every norm of the last 20 years, what more appropriate metaphor do you have than a black Stormtrooper who rejects indoctrination to forge a unique and individual identity?

You're looking too literally if you only see child soldier and programmed killer.

 

Pablo's confirmation that the scene we see with the Knights of Ren and the massacre is not the Jedi Temple slaughter makes sense given the spoilers that came from the shooting script prior to release. I'm not sure where we stand on considering those spoilers, since elements may come into play in VIII, or may change entirely, so I'll put this behind a cut:

Spoiler

Basically the shooting script had a much longer flashback sequence. It included Ben Solo being dropped off by his parents with Luke when he was younger, and - as we saw - Luke's pained discovery of the burning Temple and the metal hand against Artoo. It also included the history of the Skywalker lightsaber. In addition to the fight between Luke and Vader, there were then shots of it being found and used by someone as a firestarter, then making its way into use as a chieftain's weapon in skirmishes, then that clan gets slaughtered by the Knights of Ren. There's a shot of Maz Kanata sneaking up to the Knights' camp and stealing away with the saber. The whole thing seemed a bit out of order, and some of the scenes in the shooting script seemed to be omitted based on the scene numbers. It wasn't clear exactly what was happening when and with whom. For instance, notes about Kylo approaching Rey during the slaughter of the clanspeople were in there, so a lot of people speculated that Rey was a child of that clan, but it's now obvious that it meant he was stepping towards Grown-Up-Having-A-Vision-Rey.

Based on this - and if it doesn't change by the next movie - it seems that Ben turned on Luke and the Jedi and became Kylo Ren. Kylo Ren and his knights then went searching for the Skywalker lightsaber, which they found with a clan of people they slaughtered. Maz Kanata then stole it back from them. The complexity of the storyline is likely a callback to early drafts when the lightsaber, not the map, was the MacGuffin. And it seems like the visions were pared right down for the film.

I can understand why, but I also think that assuming the massacre we saw was the Jedi Temple is a completely rational assumption. We've heard about Kylo going bad and killing the Jedi trainees. We see Luke in great pain in the middle of burning devastation. Then we see Kylo having just killed a bunch of people. Thinking, "Oh, I bet that's a totally unrelated, DIFFERENT massacre!" just...doesn't make any sense. No one's going to think that.

tl;dr I guess we'll see how they handle it in future. If Rey does have something to do with that clan then I imagine it'll be important in future (though I'm not sure she does given she was dropped off on a planet by people in a spaceship), if she doesn't, Ren searching for the saber and being foiled by Maz may be the sort of thing that's relegated to tie-in material.

 

Well spoken, Beccatoria!

It all makes sense now!

 

This is the best interpretation of that shooting script I've ever seen. It's always seemed a bit choppy to me, but your interpretation sounds spot-on. I'd love to see if the rest of the vision is in the BR's deleted scenes, so we can see how accurate this speculation is.

 

I've heard some people say that, but we still have two more Episodes. If the Sequel Trilogy ends with Luke finally re-establishing the Jedi Order, Rey a Jedi Knight, and the Resistance having saved the New Republic and restored peace to the Galaxy, the OT's ending is still perfect. Yes, a little bittersweet given the death of Han, but still a victory and a happy ending.

--Adm. Nick

 

I just wish we didn't have to wait 30+ years for Luke to reestablish the Jedi Order. Yeah, his first attempt failed due to evil nephew, but still. Or worse yet, have to wait until after Episode IX for the new EU to establish what Luke's Jedi Order will actually be like. Unless there will be a whole lot more recruiting and training off-screen in between movies, but I doubt it.

And I dislike it when stories artificially drag out the "mystery" of what happened to certain characters. I am glad the movie didn't fall back on the "I have very important information to tell you. That very important information is that-" "We're under attack! Run!" cliche. But Leia nor Han knowing why Luke is off somewhere was annoying.

And what a waste of Mark Hamill. The metal hand bit doesn't count, we barely see 30 seconds of him. I saw a bit of him on the Flash a few weeks ago, and he was still great.

Just as long as these deleted scenes aren't added back into canon as some sort of extended edition, but off-hand I think only the Hobbit movies (especially the last one) are that blatantly greedy in terms of keeping really good scenes back for the extended edition.

 

Not to party poop but doesn't Han explicitly say those closest to Luke know what he's up to?

 

Sounded more speculative when he said it. They thought that's what he might be doing, but they didn't know for sure.

 

No; those closest to Luke had ideas he'd gone to find the first Jedi Temple. That's it.

Also, if Rey is somehow a descendent of Obi-Wan, it would be a victory for the kind of asinine stupidity that marked the EU for death. Lawrence Kasdan is not a hack, so you have to assume that he won't try the same "I wish I could be as good as a hack!" tricks as Luceno, Traviss, Denning etc. Honestly, I'd rather that the Third Reich or even Daesh conquered the globe than "Obi-Wan had a secret child" be a thing. It's so offensively stupid that such extremes are needed.

 

I don't really know what a realistic timetable is for training and establishing a new Jedi Order. I mean, prior to Luke the wunderkind Son of Anakin The Chosen One Skywalker, the Jedi Order took 20-25 years to turn out fully trained Jedi Knights. We can't expect ALL Jedi candidates to train up the way Luke did. They aren't all going to have the same Force potential as a Skywalker. Heck, Leia may not have close to the same potential as Luke. Ben may have went dark because it was the quick and easy way, since he may not actually have potential on the level of his uncle and grandfather.

So what's reasonable in expecting a resurgence of the Jedi Order under the tutelage of a guy who still doesn't have all the information about the Jedi that he might need, or who may not actually be a very good teacher no matter how much of a whiz kid he was with the Force?

Side note: I need an explanation for Luke having a metal hand like Anakin, rather than his synthflesh hand.

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Was it definite, or was in the sense of "his closest friends think that what his current mission is, probably"? I'm honestly not sure how to interpret that part. Although that was probably before Han and Leia separated (and Han went back to smuggling), since that was probably all in the aftermath of their son's betrayal.

I don't like that Luke was off-screen for the whole movie anyway, but I would have preferred a simpler explanation, like Leia saying Luke is helping the Resistance in his own way, rather than all this mysterious hunt for him. Even the First Order want to find him, or at least ensure he's not found, Kylo and Snoke were giving conflicting orders on just how much time to spend on looking for BB-8, I think?

The whole plot was kind of silly anyway- so that's where the First Jedi Temple is, that might have something to help the Resistance against the First Order? Not to mention it turning out to be a small part of a map with Artoo holding the rest of it, but not feeling like sharing it until the plot says so.

EDIT: And while its debatable how long it would take to train Jedi, I was hoping for some progress. I know the backstory had some progress, but it was all wiped out, and Luke has gone off somewhere else in the meantime. On a mission, retreat into grief, something. But 30 years later, we're still at only one official Jedi, and that's it. Not even that really, as he's off-screen the entire movie. At least the OT had Obi-wan and Yoda as major characters.

 

Fixed it for you

 

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