^The novel adaptation reveals that Rey was actually the son of a Palpatine clone whose "talent skipped a generation" and who, presumably, turned his back on the Sith or was exiled by his "father".
^The novel adaptation reveals that Rey was actually the son of a Palpatine clone whose "talent skipped a generation" and who, presumably, turned his back on the Sith or was exiled by his "father".
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Thing is she never really thought her parents were big shots in TFA. At least as far as I can tell. She was just holding out hope her parents were coming back for her.
That has Never been a narrative though. In fact it was never a point until TLJ. For all the talk of undoing that narrative they actually made it more important then it actually was.
Luke already lectured about it to Leia in RotJ. And Emperor thought that Luke being a Skywalker was a big deal in ESB. So clearly Skywalker bloodline was thought important already in the original trilogy.
(Although, how this is known if the Jedi are not allowed to marry or have family?? Or do those restrictions lift if they quit the order like Dooku? Was never very clear.) And of course there is vast library of EU material about various Skywalker offspring.
There is also general close-knittedness of the Star Wars universe, like C3PO built by Anakin, Chewbacca being Yoda's old comrade-in-arms and so on. Having new main characters with no existing ties to 'old guard' was refreshing to me at least.
Yes...but the problem is that by the time it came, what it did to character was ruin it.
Yes, but this is because it wasn't played as a mystery. Audience was only briefly wondering what he was before the truth was told in plain language. It wasn't like he shoved his lightsaber into Solo's gut and went "Take this...father" and we would have been all 'shocked' about the 'revelation'.
In fact, even Rey's parentage 'mystery' was largely in the audience's head because previous Star Wars material had educated them to believe that there must be a relation because, well, there usually is. It was a 'meta' mystery (like Snoke, another charcter people wanted to see a mystery about when there was none). Most characters around Rey did not actually seem to care about her parents even in TFA.
Well here we disagree. In TFA she was shown a person who inexplicably and suddenly became a superhero. It was just bit too 'action-movie-ish' for me (even though it is an action movie). In TLJ we saw her to make mistakes and poor judgement in the use of her awesome abilities and that made her much more believable as a person. TRoS was just mess as you said.
Problem with Finn character was that he was written into a trap from the start. They wanted to portray 'a reluctant protagonist' who starts up insignificant and grows into role of a hero. And it worked for a single movie - TFA - but the choices they made meant he was hard to employ well in the future movies. Finn's shtick is that he knows First Order stuff and can fight a bit. That's all what he offers to the Resistance. Once his knowledge base is used up, he is just another disposable grunt which is what he started as. It's easy to see why Poe is important to Resistance: he's the best pilot they have and a good tactical leader. Same for Rey: she has Force powers and is also a good pilot. Finn? Umm...the others like him? Once he has spilled out all he knows, Resistance has hundreds of people with similar or better skill base.
Yeah. TFA should have better established Finn with other skills. But it’s hard when they say Jakku was his first ever real mission. And he’s constantly portrayed as too green.
And with Han dead, there’s no one else to really show him the ropes.
Poe was learning about leadership from Leia. And Rey was with Luke.
That’s one of the reasons they paired him with new character Rose. But Rose is constantly attacked by the fandom for having the gall to teach Finn anything. Even though Rey was learning from Luke and Poe learned from Leia.
Last edited by Will Evans; 10-12-2020 at 09:40 AM.
Exactly. Finn was made a janitor in TFA to really underline the 'someone lowly rising to the occasion' trope. Then they put him into coma to provide motivation for Rey and emotional ending. Since TLJ pretty much started where TFA ended (probably some time passed during Rey's travel, but not that much), Johnson probably felt that he couldn't just ignore the coma, he had to show him waking from it in the beginning of the movie. All of this meant that in TLJ, Finn was still exactly the same person he was in the previous movie - a janitor who has some inside knowledge of First Order. It's not a good place for major protagonist to be and Johnson probably thought "oh heck, what I'm gonna do about him - lets shove him into the B plot, I'll write up some daft Casino world thing". Compare this to ending of ESB - Luke is seriously hurt but wakes up and is fine, just with new robot hand. Some time clearly passes between ESB and RotJ and when Luke shows up in Jabba's palace, brimming with power and confidence, viewer doesn't question obvious progress of his character.
Now there would have been ways to address the situation. Obvious one is that at end of the TFA, Leia or some other Resistance bigwig takes note of him and says "hey son, you got the goods. Interested about officers' commission?" Kinda mirroring how Han Solo became high-ranking commander in the Rebel Alliance. Then you begin TLJ showing Finn doing a mission leading bunch of Resistance commandos and showing himself much stronger character. Of course they could not have done the coma then. Or Johnson could have just ignored the coma, but that may have been felt a cop-out.
Another possibility would have been to make all three DT films character-centric, but different character each time. First movie is about Finn with Poe & Rey being in slightly reduced roles. Make second one from Poe's viewpoint. Then finally third one is a Rey movie. All characters get the spotlight and the concept of the trilogy feels much more fresh instead of being a retelling of previous trilogies.
But of course all that would have required Disney to, you know, PLAN AHEAD. A crazy concept, I know...
Last edited by Ikari; 10-12-2020 at 04:17 PM.
I think Finn was kind of a bit bland in ROS, in a similar fashion to Han in ROTJ. His purpose in the story was seemingly mainly to work with the ex-Stormtroopers and imply that he had some force sensitivity.
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The parent mystery was built up because of the marketing. The first trailer they revealed her was with the the whole force is strong in my family speech from ROTJ. Sure most characters didn't care about her parents but people were wondering because why else would they use that speech? The audience isn't the one who made her parents a mystery box.
I have to disagree here. I feel like Finn had a lot of potential. I think the idea that stuck out the most for me was him getting Stormtroopers to rebel against the First Order. From what I understand janitorial duties can be assigned as a disciplinary measure by the CO. So I think it could work if they explored a bit more of his rivalry of Phasma.
Last edited by MASTER-OF-SUPRISE; 10-13-2020 at 03:54 PM.
Trailers kinda gave the impression Finn is the Force user and that was the impression I had going to the movie. I think in retrospect that Luke's speech was directed at young Ben.
After the movie was released there were tons of articles about 'top 10 theories about Snoke's identity/Rey's parents' and whatnot, some of it undoubtely sponsored content, but TFA itself did not treat these a mystery.
This is an angle which would have been best explored in the third movie, but it was so packed (JJA trying to cram two movies into one) that it was really not feasible and it's also why Phasma didn't come back, which was very disappointing.
One way TLJ could have made Finn more important was a wartime promotion: Leia or Holdo or somebody summons him and tells that "We are short of experienced personnel. You are a leader now, Captain Finn". But in the finished movie there is almost nowhere to put such a scene, except when they are on the planet and then it's probably too late. Nobody had a plan for Finn, so Johnson continued to use him like he was used in TFA and character went nowhere.
Was it Rian's call to kill Phasma off? Kathleen Kennedy said she was her favorite character and it kind of looked like Phasma would be much bigger given that a lot of the TLJ tie-in marketing featuring her was pretty heavy, I think she even hosted a convention panel or something like that (She even had her own solo origin novel, the only sequel trilogy villain to really have one!). I was under the impression she would be kind of like Mace Windu-do nothing much of all in the first one, but have much more to do with the plot in the second and third.
Then again, maybe all of that was compensation from Lucasfilm for Christie....
Last edited by ChrisIII; 10-14-2020 at 10:34 AM.
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Could have Finn done better as a character?… Probably.
For me, it was the novelty of the new trilogy because the young one who has a connection with the Force… it has been done before.
We know little about these Stormtroopers and it was nice that they were given a face… instead of these dehumanized puppets.
“Strength is the lot of but a few privileged men; but austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time.” Goethe
Tie-ins always flesh out minor characters and the "Journey to..." stuff was never as connected to the movies as it wanted you to think they were (heck, all the "Journey to TROS" stuff never connected to anything, since all the stuff they referenced was written out of the final version of the film!).
Doctor Strange: "You are the right person to replace Logan."
X-23: "I know there are people who disapprove... Guys on the Internet mainly."
(All-New Wolverine #4)
As I recall they seemed to mainly introduce Admiral Ackbar's son and re-introduce Wedge, both of whom didn't do too much in the film.....
Also that Leia had lasting ill effects from the space walk, which combined with her reaching out to Ben in ROS killed her off.
Last edited by ChrisIII; 10-15-2020 at 09:40 AM.
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