I walked away from TFA feeling like Finn successfully faced his fears and was ready to take an important role in the series as it progressed. To each his own though.
To add to that, there are other ways they could have grown Finn as a character. He could have woke up from his coma paralyzed from the waist down, and spent the movie shadowing Leia and seeing first hand how important her dedication to the cause is. Learn to be more than just a pew pew soldier. Could have tapped into some of the breadcrumbs JJ left of him possibly feeling the force, i.e. the scene in the village. Same themes of growth and sacrifice could have been tackled.
I like about half of TLJ, and thought all the Luke, Kylo and Rey stuff was cool. But I can't help but feel that Rian had no interest in Finn and downgraded him to the C plot.
Same. The events in TLJ for Finn did nothing for me. Canto Bight felt very odd and out of place for a number of reasons. Its messaging was beyond simplistic and over the top even possibly for Star Wars.
More importantly though, those events on Canto Bight and the subsequent failure on the Supremacy in no way made me feel like they had a real impact on Finn to the point that he learned anything or was really changed by them, let alone justify his state of mind for his suicidal attempt at the end of the film on Crait. It was such a minuscule part of the film overall and felt like a complete afterthought. Especially with how great the Luke/Rey/Kylo events were and on point their themes and messaging was for both the series and those characters specifically.
I'm all for teaching lessons through failure and everything they were going for, but it felt entirely unnecessary that Finn needed to be won over to the Resistance. Yes it's a viable interpretation, but not a very good one. I would have believed and felt it far more interesting if Finn instead went down a path of misguided reasoning for joining the Resistance. Much like Poe believing luck and gambles will save them and not really understanding or weighing the risks and loss of life that could come from it. And more importantly tying this back into his background with the FO and putting him down a path of vengeance and blind desire to destroy them. Have him join the Resistance and support Poe's foolhardy plans because he now sees offense and destroying his enemy as his cause for fighting and not to save innocents.
Skip out on Canto Bight, go straight to infiltrating the Supremacy and spending some time forcing Finn to face the reality of the FO's crimes against people and what they do, have a side plot where they deal with some of these child soldiers like he went through and that saving them and others like them from the FO is the reason to fight, not just to kill them all and seek blind vengeance. And then fail because the plan was bad and go down to Crait desperate and confused, go on a suicide run and get saved by Rose. Except have her shoot him down because continuity wise that ship crash made no sense and have the battering ram wing her ship so it crashes too, but they can still use it to fly back, cause that was a long as fucking walk to carry her.
