hey there! so I've been following you for a few months and i know you're like super amazing at analyzing films and at writing and everything! (i'm sorry, i don't know exactly what i'm talking about exactly but i know you're good at it. sorry if this is weird :P) I was just wondering if you had an opinion on the scene in swtfa where finn is telling rey that he has to go, and she's actually placed higher than him. i figured there's some significance there, i just don't know what. thanks! xx
OKAY. I HAVE NOW SEEN TFA FOR A THIRD TIME AND I AM ARMED AND READY TO RESPOND TO THIS QUESTION
first of all???? ‘super amazing’?????? i’m. what a lovely, lovely thing to say. thank you so much. go SH
BUT MORE TO THE POINT, i watched that scene really carefully this time, and as far as i can see, there are two things going on there. on the one hand, it felt sort of like submission – or, better, supplication. finn looking up at rey, heart in his eyes, divulging in some small part all his hopes and all his fears and begging her to understand: the dirty secret that he’s a stormtrooper, the glimmer of hope he saw in her eyes when they met that made him start to believe, just for a moment, that he could be a hero, too…… but ultimately, he doesn’t believe that. he’s too selfish, he thinks, too weak. ‘none of us stand a chance against the first order,’ he says to them all before he storms away. he’s scared, and he doesn’t think he can be a hero if he’s scared.
which brings me to my second point: rey standing above him, listening, begging him to stay and fight…….. i think finn sees something in rey at this moment – has seen it there since the moment they met – and it makes him even more sure that he can’t be the hero he wants to be. because rey has the same thing in her that luke had, and it inspires and humbles finn the same way it inspired and humbled a generation before him: this mythological strength, the strength of a light that will never die. he’s literally put rey on a pedestal in his mind – because this, finn thinks, is what a hero looks like, fearless and noble and kind, and who is he in the face of that? just a dirty kid, just a traitor, lost long before he could ever be found, plucked from the arms of his family and taught to think only of the order, or if not of the order, then of himself. he doesn’t have that unwavering light that shines from rey’s eyes as she asks him to stay. he can’t be a hero. so he’ll leave, and let the real heroes get to work.
(little does he know that rey’s scared, too – that they all are; little does he know that light isn’t something you have, but something you choose, a fire you feed and feed and keep feeding till it eats away every encroaching shadow. little does he know that that little spark in him could set the whole galaxy ablaze, if only he’d give it breath. but the force is persistent, and it wants what it wants. he’ll learn all that soon enough.)
