What about Finn?

[pavonis]

People who hate the PT are very vocal about it. People who absolutely love the PT are relatively few in number. People who are indifferent about the PT are probably the largest group, but don't care enough to vocalize their apathy (go figure). Hence the skewed "everyone hates the PT" meme, when really most people don't have any emotional reaction to it at all. Of course at a Star Wars fan meeting there would be a sufficient number of PT fans to generate a crowd, even large enough for pushing and shoving to be an issue. That's not remarkable. Play ROTS in a regular theatre, even a discount one, and see how many people show up.

[Lord Darth Hunter]

Play any SW movie in a regular theater and see how many show up. They'll all draw about the same in this age of home video technology.

 

At Celebration, these are supposedly the people who hate it the most. The fans who feel Lucas ruined their childhood. It wasn't young adults who saw the PT as small children who were doing the shoving. It was the "old enough to have seen the OT in theaters" crowd.

 

I agree with Poe on this.

Pfft. If Finn were in the Prequels, you'd be all over him.

It's gotten to that point where there's a line in the sand for no real reason. Jar Jar was terrible. Finn wasn't much better. Hayden's acting was wooden. Ford mailed it in. Everything doesn't have to be mutually exclusive.

[Kyrian]

Also he rescued Poe

Pretty sure if Poe hadn't been rescued, someone like Snap Wexley or one of the other pilots would have made the Starkiller run. So...Poe suffers from the same thing as Finn, a character that really doesn't affect the story in any meaningful way. I can't help but feel that Poe and Finn should have been folded into one character and had a lot of the things they did attributed to other characters. Then again, without BB-8 looking for Poe, we would have had a droid alone on a desert planet looking for someone to take them back to the Rebelli- errr, Resistance with vital information. Again. Actually, that's what happened anyway, never mind.

[captainbleh]

I'm a normal person (I think) and I don't like the prequels, but I know lots of other normal people that don't think they are terrible.

 

(I think indifference / lack of emotional reaction is more damning than hate sometimes)

 

I don't hate Finn as much as (nightly) Poe does, but I don't think I could hate anyone or anything as much as Poe does. Suffer much he must.

 

Problem for me re Finn and Poe and pretty much all of the not Rey / Kylo / OT characters is that I'm not really interested in what happens to them at the moment.

 

staff made from a lightsaber resistant material, like beskar or the old cortosis weave used in the KOTOR melee weapons

 

Get in the sea.

[Lord Darth Hunter]

If TLJ had no Finn in it, I'd be perfectly fine with that. I'd rather see more of Poe than Finn. But even then not by much. At this point, only Luke, Rey and Kylo hold any interest as to what happens next.

[pavonis]

Play any SW movie in a regular theater and see how many show up. They'll all draw about the same in this age of home video technology.

 

At Celebration, these are supposedly the people who hate it the most. The fans who feel Lucas ruined their childhood. It wasn't young adults who saw the PT as small children who were doing the shoving. It was the "old enough to have seen the OT in theaters" crowd.

 

I agree with Poe on this.

Pfft. If Finn were in the Prequels, you'd be all over him.

It's gotten to that point where there's a line in the sand for no real reason. Jar Jar was terrible. Finn wasn't much better. Hayden's acting was wooden. Ford mailed it in. Everything doesn't have to be mutually exclusive.

 

Did they say outright that they hated the PT? Or are you just assuming that based on your estimate of the ages of the people you observed? I'd have drawn the opposite conclusion - that those shovers were the small number of fans that loved the PT. They do exist.

[Filthy Jawa]

At Celebration Anaheim two years ago people were lining up hours in advance.... just to watch ROTS. A decade-old movie that supposedly everyone hates.

Well that seals it then, The Prequels are amazing. The most hardcore fans of a series lined up so they could all watch one of the movies together? There can be no more debate!

 

So glad I started this thread so it could devolve into another Sequel Trilogy vs. Prequel Trilogy debate. And it only took, what, seven posts?

[Guest]

I'm more curious about the Poe vs Finn debate.

 

After watching TFA a few times, I have a really hard time viewing Poe as a main character. It was more like people decided there needed to be a main three, so Poe has to be it.

[pavonis]

Poe is Han. Finn is whiny "Tosche station" Luke. Rey is ESB-era Luke. BB-8 is A-r-t-o-o (that's how my copy of the Star Wars novelization spells it, and damn if I'm going to have the R2 abbreviation forced into my posts).

[Guest]

Han was actually in the movie, though. Poe is Wedge with a slightly larger role.

[pavonis]

No. That wasn't Han. Han was Kenobi. Luke was in the movie, too, but he was Yoda. See, everyone is just playing a game of musical roles. Or maybe musical character archetypes.

[Filthy Jawa]

I think you're only saying Poe was Han because he's the "cool guy". Finn was Han: the guy who wanted no part of this crap and just wanted to get the hell out of there (and maybe mack on the girl on his way), but then had a change of heart and got involved.

[pavonis]

That's a good argument. I accept it.

 

Finn = Han

Rey = Luke

Han = Kenobi

Beebee-Ate = A-r-t-o-o

Luke = Yoda

Finn = Kenobi

Wait, something went wrong there....

[Filthy Jawa]

But this thread has proven my point: nobody cares about Finn. So that's why I'd like to see them do something more interesting with him. Make him a cyborg with new cyborg abilities. Or make him super angry and dark, or I don't know. I don't really want to fanfic, I just want them to take Finn up a notch because I agree somewhat with some of the ideas here. As much as I liked Finn, he needs to have some kind of character arc and role in this story.

 

(And he also did go after Rey at Starkiller Base, he didn't do nothing in TFA. If one is going to argue 'someone else would have done that' I suppose you could argue that about any character. The fact is the writer of the story had him do it.)

[Lord Darth Hunter]

Did they say outright that they hated the PT? Or are you just assuming that based on your estimate of the ages of the people you observed?

That's what we are all doing by this point. Making assumptions based on our personal opinions of the films. That's why it's tiresome now that every time someone brings up something they don't like about one film someone else feels the need to defend it by trashing a different one.

 

Filthy Jawa, cyborg like Maul or Grievous? CGI-ish with all these abilities? Or more like Saw Guerrera? Broken down shell of his former self?

[Guest]

Most people just don't really care that much

 

The fact that we're all geeks who hang out with other geeks skews all of our opinions.

[pavonis]

...Or make him super angry and dark ... Finn, he needs to have some kind of character arc and role in this story.

Angry, dark brown-skinned man is a cliche. I fully expect Finn is at the beginning of a character arc. TFA wasn't a complete story, just Act 1 of a new trilogy.

[Filthy Jawa]

The fact that I threw that out there just proves how not racist I am.

 

I didn't even know Finn was black.

[pavonis]

The fact that I threw that out there just proves how not racist I am.

 

I didn't even know Finn was black.

Finn is the one played by John Boyega, right?

[Filthy Jawa]

I thought it was Gwendoline Christie.

[pavonis]

Pretty sure she was playing Captain Phasma.

 

Look, are you seriously not aware of Finn's skin color? Or was it a joke of some sort?

[Filthy Jawa]

The sort that's not at all funny.

[Darth Krawlie]

jawas are black

 

filthy jawa

 

omg racism

[DANA-kin Skywalker]

But this thread has proven my point: nobody cares about Finn.

Awwww! I liked Finn. I thought he was funny, I thought he had good chemistry with Rey, and in the end, when Rey was in trouble, I thought his character showed some true balls going up against Kylo when he knew he had like... a one percent chance of beating him (but he tried anyways because friendship). I thought it was heroic and sweet. For this, I liked his character.

 

Going forward however, I don't know what to do with this character. You mention "he has to have some kind of arc"...I don't know. Does he really? Not all characters need huge sweeping character arcs. Luke's arc spanned 3 movies. Han's arc was completed in ANH. Leia didn't have one. All three are great characters. I don't think Finn needs an arc...he needs something to DO.

 

Oh yeah, and pleeeeeeeeeease no dumb cyborg implants

[DANA-kin Skywalker]

I'm more curious about the Poe vs Finn debate.

After watching TFA a few times, I have a really hard time viewing Poe as a main character. It was more like people decided there needed to be a main three, so Poe has to be it.

I always wondered if Finn and Poe were originally meant to be the same person. It's been said Poe was originally supposed to die early on in the film. Maybe Finn was supposed to escape the Death Sta.. *ahem hem* I mean Starkiller Base on his own, stumble upon Rey or BB-8, join the resistance, and take Poe's place in the space battle where HE would be the one who shoots the thingy really good and blowed it all up?