Originally Posted by
godisawesome
Finn *is* an extraordinary character: he’s an Everyman slave soldier who broke his programming upon witnessing an atrocity his humanity and willpower was too strong to participate in, became the kind of desperate deserter that would lead to, then evolved into a genuine hero when exposed to more atrocities. Yeah, he was willing to shoot and kill stormtroopers on his escape and when he chose to stand against the FO... but what else is he supposed to do?
And I’m not talking about the fictional conventions here where non-named people dying dense count, the thing that LFL abused to excuse Kylo Ren as sympathetic when he wasn’t, I mean what the hell else is Finn the person supposed to do when confronted by obedient slave soldiers who haven’t broken free as he has?
Sit around waiting to be killed with the rest of the Galaxy, like Johnson’s cowardly self-centered Luke in TLJ? Keep his head down and follow orders, as other Stormtroopers have likely done before? I mean, if a drafted Wehrmacht soldier in WWII is attached to an SS command, and desires when the SS orders a war crime, and in his escape is confronted by other drafted soldiers trying to kill him, what is he supposed to do if he can’t fight them?
And because Finn chooses that no matter what, he won’t kill for the First Order, he frees Poe, helps get BB-8 to the Resistance and gets Rey involved in the conflict while they save each others’ lives, briefs the Resjstance in SKB, and exposes its oscillating weakness and improvises a plan to take down its shields, before holding Kylo Ren off long enough for Rey to recover from being one-shotted into a tree and knocked out, even wounding Kylo and contributing to his physical defeat. He basically does everything that Luke, Han, and Chewie do on the Death Star, but also has the information R2 has and crosses blades with his story’s equivalent of Darth Vader and helps beat him.
And it’s hard to get a more clear motivation than “My ass ain’t committing war crimes like wiping out a village” being followed up by “They just blew up a solar system... yeah, they need to be stopped, even if they’re terrifying.” Please note: it was the Hosnian System’s destruction that pulled him back to Han and away from his escape, not Rey’s kidnapping - that came later.
There *are* issues with TFA’s story for Finn - some of the humor, like the trough scene, needed to be compensated for with a physical victory over someone somewhere beyond shooting Stormies and being part of a winning team effort, and if Abrams had exploited the slave soldier aspect more in TFA, Johnson couldn’t have passed it up as he did.
But if you think Finn was already a dropped ball character, than I don’t think any defense can be mounted for Kylo or Rey in TFA or TLJ, or even Luke in TLJ, because that film is simply worse overall. I mean, Finn is clearly a better character than Kylo because he actually has some development, humanity, and motivation, and Finn’s actions do end up having a more substantial impact than Luke’s in TLJ.
Please don’t tell me you think that TLJ or other ST characters are worth defending if Finn isn’t.