Originally Posted by
godisawesome
As others have said, that’s par for the course in most action-adventure films…
…though I think the issue is more bluntly that Rian Johnson seemed to have created Rose almost entirely as a reactionary rejection against even the remote possibility of Rey and Finn have a more gradually developed romance; heck, I’d argue the enitre “flaw” Finn has in TLJ is built around trying to paint Finn as being too close to Rey, since he clearly *did* get the bigger picture and get motivated more by the plight of the Galaxy rather than Rey to return instead of running away. People like to try to say his “I’m just here for Rey” line proves he was myopically obsessed with her on Starkiller Base… but the dude left when she begged him to stay, and only ran back to Han once he saw palnetray genocide being committed, *then* asked about Rey.
All that makes it feel like Johnson created Rose and cast a good actress in Kelly Marie Tran almost exclusively to throw at Finn as a warm body more than anything else - Boyega had strong chemistry with both Ridley and Tran, but TFA used it much better, while TLJ seems almost ignorant of it after the first scene.
The result, along with the complete lack of ambition and almost painfully obvious demotion Finn went through, feels like it was a punishment of Finn for not being who Johnson or LFL wanted as the male lead.
(On a separate note, I philosophically agree that Rey didn’t need to be a Skywalker for her sake, and that the family isn’t needed for most Star Wars stories… but I also knew for a fact that the audience and creators were going to implement a double standard favoring Kylo over everyone, including Rey and Finn, if he were the only Skywalker. There’s simply too much audience investment in the family already, and I think people overlook how ingrained and natural the double standard feels; the only difference between how similar and repetitive Rey and Kylo feel as characters is that Kylo is an official continuation of his family while Rey isn’t, so that plus sexism leads to people whining about Rey not being original or a “Mary Sue” all while Kylo’s equally unoriginal and very much a pseudo-self insert for biased fans who ignore his crimes in favor of seeing the vicarious Skywalker story they want.
Once the family story was included with a new generation among the baddies, there had to be a counterbalancing heroic member, or it would screw up everything. Guess what? It screwed up everything.)