Why The Force Awakens is better than The Last Jedi (IMO): Character Arcs- Finn.
(Note: This is an entry in a series arguing why one member of the FranchiseWars duo, Hopper, has a serious issue with any and all claims that The Last Jedi is better than The Force Awakens. Other entries will eventually be linked to this article. This article emphatically does *not* reflect the opinions of the other member of the duo, the Condor , who loves the shiznit out of The Last Jedi.)
The Force Awakens *lives* for character arcs. It’s the bread and butter of the film, as every major character undergoes serious character growth or, in the case of Kylo Ren, character breakdown. And the chemistry and conflict between the characters effectively defines the film’s best parts.
And in comparison, the Last Jedi utterly fails at that.
First, to Finn. Finn is, in effect, the de-facto main protagonist of The Force Awakens; he goes through the most character growth, with a character arc that lasts from his first scene until his last. He’s initially the literal personification of a background extra; a nameless, voiceless and faceless Stormtrooper, who’s only maybe recognizable by his short height. But from the first second the camera directs the audience to view him, we witness his character arc begin. He’s the first Stormtrooper we see to ever respond to an injured comrade and try and help him, then he’s the first one on screen to suddenly grasp the horrors of what he and his comrades are doing, with John Boyega doing some amazing acting for a masked character in heavy body armor. And when this Stormtrooper refuses to massacre civilians, and exchanges a frightened and frozen stare with the apparently stoic Kylo Ren, we’ve already gone through more character growth than most other individuals in the saga’s arc. We’ve witnessed a “face turn,” to use wrestling parlance, and one executed perfectly.
And without a single line uttered by the character! And we haven’t even seen his face yet!
From there, the stormtrooper’s changes in character become integral to the film’s plot. After a brief reprimand by Phasma, we see him showcase pragmatic and cunning thinking by forging an alliance with Poe and escaping the First Order with him. And for this, the Stormtrooper FN-2187 gets a name: Finn. He’s almost *literally* baptised by combat into a new identity. And it’s not inaccurate to point out that since the film establishes that Stormtroopers are stolen from their families and raised to e cannon fodder, he’s ditching a *slave name* for a new identity. And when separated from Poe and upon meeting Rey, he adopts a persona as a Resistance fighter partially out of convenience and partially out of a selfish desire to maintain Rey’s admiration. It’s a very human reaction for someone who’s basically been reborn into freedom to pursue something that can give them just a little bit of joy and ease of life…
…Of course, for Finn, it also means that he suddenly has to act the part he’s decided to play, and effectively by going full method actor. While his personal goals are still to merely escape the reach of the First Order, he finds himself picking up Poe’s mission and forging an alliance with Rey to deliver BB-8 to the Resistance. And this introduces the next major component to his character arc: the internal conflict between wanting to run and hide versus helping Rey, BB-8, and ultimately the Galaxy in a dangerous mission. Han Solo’s entrance in the film highlights this conflict; when Han immediately susses out that Finn’s story is a cover, John Boyega gets to give Finn scenes of shame and guilt just by facial acting. He doesn’t just want Rey’s admiration; he wants to be *worthy* of it, and he knows he isn’t.
Which is why I absolutely love the shiznit out of his and Rey’s argument when Finn wants to leave! Finn’s new identity is basically a newborn freedman, and he pours his heart out to her with what he wants and what he feels, and all the things that were impossible to contemplate when just a faceless Stormtrooper. He begs her forgiveness and understanding, and pleads with her to flee danger with him. It’s an emotionally vulnerable scene for the character, and we again see his internal conflict when Rey begs him not to go when he hesitates and seems to genuinely consider staying with her and accomplishing their missions before rejecting it. Again, it’s a very relatable choice he makes, as we understand how he can evaluate his survival above the potential to save the rest of the Galaxy…
…Until he suddenly sees the First Order destroy the Hosnian System. Watch that scene again, and watch Finn. He freezes mid-escape plan, and goes to tell Han what happened… and only *afterwards* asks where Rey is. Finn’s underestimated his own virtues. He saw a need to at least pass on more reliable intelligence, and forsook his escape out of a moral obligation to help Han and Rey understand what they’d just seen. His flight reflex has flipped over to fight. And he takes up arms against the First Order not just for Rey, but also because it’s simply the right thing to do. When he goes to Starkiller Base to rescue Rey, he’s fully on board and obedient to the mission’s priorities of deactivating the shield first, and doesn’t hesitate to follow Han’s lead in staying to compromise the Oscillator’s fortifications. Finn may still care about Rey more than anyone or anything else, but he’s clearly fully on-board with the Resistance’s goals. He’s a loyal soldier, just like a Stormtrooper is supposed to be, but he’s a loyal soldier to the right cause and for the right reasons.
Which helps add even more awesome to his confrontation and short duel with Kylo. When they first shared the screen, Finn was in utter, helpless and voiceless terror of Kylo Ren, who only bothered to give him a somewhat bemused stare after Finn had stared at him for several seconds. Now, at the end, Kylo has to draw Finn’s attention *back* to him by screaming and threatening him, when Finn is so focused on helping Rey he’s willing to turn his back on the 6-and-a-half-foot tall patricidal madman. The faceless Stormtrooper has so enraged the self-absorbed Knight of Ren that he whines and cries about how Finn’s denying him what he wants. And even though the power between the two is still heavily in Kylo’s favor, Finn charges against him because damn it, he’s going to defend his friend! And even though Kylo simply toys with and quickly maimes Finn, Finn’s furious, desperate assault buys time for Rey to reawaken and challenge Kylo, and Finn’s single landed blow plays a part in Rey overpowering Klo at the end of their fight.
The Force Awakens took a nameless slave mook, gave him name, and a journey to being a savior of untold billions of lives and herald of the return of the Jedi…
And then The Last Jedi does almost nothing with the character but give him busy-work, when it isn’t mocking him, ignoring his past, or undermining its own message.
You see, Finn’s *supposed* to have a character arc. He’s supposed to struggle between: a desire to flee the Resistance’s fleet to seek out Rey (ostensibly because he’s certain the Resistance is doomed and wants her safe from the First Order), and coming to grasp the larger picture and his responsibility to help the Resistance fight the First Order. And he *does* go through this arc…
… For all of about 5 minutes.
Right after Rose has tasered him for his attempt to leave, and while they’re arguing over what he was doing, they stumble into techno-babble about how they might be able to save the Resistance. And from then on, Finn doesn’t express any internal conflict or competing desires like he did in TFA. Instead, we have an almost totally static character here, who doesn’t really experience any growth. (I’m going to argue the same thing is true for Rey and Kylo in future articles.)
And arguably worse than that, the film seems to mostly treat Finn as a comic fool, someone to be laughed at and condescended to. Think about his first scene in the film: Finn has just awoken from the life-threatening, coma-inducing injuries, for which he has received intensive medical care, and which almost certainly have left a permanent scar across his entire back… and the film decides he’s the perfect target for some slapstick humor. “Ha! Look at the addled and injured war hero! Doesn’t he just look so stupid wandering around in that ridiculous suit we put him in? Perfect! Now we don’t have to address his situation in anything resembling a serious manner!”
Not that Finn should be dead-serious; Boyega gave him a humorous charm in TFA. The issue with the comedy in TLJ is not the comedy itself, but the refusal to match it with the gravitas that TFA and the Original Trilogy managed. Finn gets a scarce few times to show Boyega’s dramatic chops, and TLJ works to downplay those scenes, or it undermines them outright. On Canto Bight, Finn receives a short, all-too-brief and simple lecture from Rose about the underpinnings of slave labor that allow the place to operate.
She just told the *child slave soldier* about people suffering a similar blight right in front of him. And he does *nothing.*
What the hell!?! This ignored concept has more dramatic value than anything they give the character in the film! Kind of like how the film *refuses* to tackle how ex-Stormtrooper Finn might have a strong compulsion to free his brothers and sisters upon visiting the Supremacy, or how he and Phasma should have an intense animosity born from her using people like him as cannon fodder but is willing to sell out everyone to save her own hide! (Check out how this might have been the original plan for the character in the Extra Credits at the bottom) Finn should be the unholy offspring of Harriet Tubman and Spartacus! And instead, we’ve got Finn, The Last Jedi’s comic relief minor character stuck in a plot cul-de-sac, going nowhere fast.
Finn and Rose’s journey has barely any impact on the film’s meta-narrative, save for the convoluted and horrible writing of the Space Chase connecting to it to ensure their mission actually makes things *worse* for the Resistance (again, this will be covered in later installments). The most eloquent defense I’ve heard of the film is that the subplot is supposed to reinforce the “failure is the greatest teacher” theme. It’s a good lesson to teach, to be sure. But the lesson is sabotaged by other plots in the film, and since Finn and Rose are ultimately just reinforcing the idea, it renders their entire sequence superfluous and redundant.
And it really doesn’t help that an accurate statement about The Last Jedi would be “The white guys shape the overall narrative, while all the people of color are off in skippable subplots.”
And finally, the film tries to give Finn another lesson to learn, but does so in a laughably incompetent way. When Rose rams Finn out of his charge at the Battering Ram, she justifies her decision (which was already on some pretty shaky physical grounds from her cutting him off when he was at maximum speed) by arguing that “We won’t win this fight by killing what we hate, but by saving what we love.” It’s a sweet thought, but, uh…
WHAT THE HELL DID SHE THINK HE WAS DOING?!?
He was trying to *save* what he loved, and save everybody’s lives, by risking a self-sacrifice to stop the Battering Ram, allowing the Resistance to survive even longer behind their great door! And since the film doesn’t show the Battering Ram firing until after they’ve crashed, and he’s gotten out of his speeder, ran to her, she says what she wanted, and then moves to kiss him… well, it looks like he clearly could have made it to the Battering Ram and saved everyone! The film could have tried to play the scene better, by having the cannon fire right as Rose knocks him out of the way, demonstrating he couldn’t have made it, or by having her not saying that stupid phrase in a situation where it simply doesn’t fit.
But nope. The Last Jedi had to ensure that we knew it treated Finn and his plotline as bantha poodoo.
It’s such a baleful, pathetic continuation of The Force Awakens take on the character, I’d *almost* laugh, if it weren’t so sad.
EXTRA CREDITS: How Rian Johnson kept changing Finn’s plot.
Okay, to be a bit more real here, I don’t think Rian Johnson intended to wall off Finn and Rose into an ultimately pointless pee-break of a story. A lot of his early ideas sound like they clearly included big, fun plans for the character. But it’s also clear that Johnson made serious mistakes while creating the film that slowly ate away at his initial plans, and left us with the disappointment we have.
First off, Finn’s story was supposed to feature him and Poe as the duo going to Canto Bight. Sounds cool, right? Oscar Isaac basically sweats charisma, and he and Boyega have a proven chemistry! Just one problem: Rian Johnson felt he couldn’t differentiate their voices enough.
Asides from being male, these two characters couldn’t be more different. Poe’s a veteran New Republic pilot raised in the Galactic order created by Han, Luke, and Leia. Finn’s a freshly defected rookie soldier hailing from an autocratic regimes slave army. But apparently that was too similar for Johnson as a script writer, so we got Rose.
Now, Kelly Marie Tran is a great actress, and she does a lot of good work that I think TLJ ultimately wasted. Some of that is because of another change that occured in production. You may remember this picture of Finn from a BTS video:
Notice how he’s wearing a Starfortress Bomber uniform? Apparently, Finn’s original entrance in TLJ would have seen him not in his bacta suit, but instead as one of Rose’s sister, Paige Tico’s, fellow gunners. Finn would have been the last survivor of the bomber run on the dreadnaught, and would have cradled a dying Paige, so she could put a bloody handprint over his heart, mimicking the opening of The Force Awakens. Sounds interesting, right? It would certainly add an interesting dimension to Rose and Finn’s relationship, perhaps increasing their friction, as Rose would see Finn’s attempted desertion as a dishonor to her sister, while Finn would be leaving because he refused to re-experience that kind of loss again. It’s great dramatic material!
But Johnson didn’t want to write it.
“If he did know Paige was Rose’s sister, there would either have to be a big ‘I saw your sister die’ scene, which I didn’t want to write and the movie would have come to a full stop to do, or he would be an arsehole because he would never tell her. So ultimately it felt really right as a set-up but I realised there was no wood to burn in terms of a pay-off.” (Rian Johnson, Art of Star Wars: The Last Jedi)
You’ve got to be kriffin’ kidding me! “No wood to burn in terms of pay-off”?!? It would have been leagues better than the fairly onenote characterization of Rose’s attraction to Finn, and would have added some actual internal drama to the story!
ANYWAYS… originally, Canto Bight was going to be a much longer sequence, which presumably would have done a better job of handling the war profiteering angle, and the recruitment of DJ. Finn and Rose would have been outfitted in some sweet space tuxedos/dresses. Presumably, this would have acted to play up physical attraction between the leads… and get some laughs from Finn wearing his backward.
Finally, We have confirmation of a deleted scene building on Finn and Phasma’s confrontation, and possibly planting seeds for a potential stormtrooper revolt in Episode IX. Here’s the scene from The Star Wars Show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjoJqZDjxgI
While it’s a rough scene, I do think it should have remained, if not expanded. Phasma and Finn desperately needed more buildup for their confrontation, and just that little hesitation on the Stormtroopers’ part reminds us that they were just like Finn once. Shame Johnson decided a badly written Space Chase subplot couldn’t be cut entirely to save time for this scene…
To read the next article on Rey: https://franchisewars.tumblr.com/post/171920170140/why-the-force-awakens-is-better-than-the-last-jedi
