I only saw TFA, but Rey was both Luke and Leia. She was the person that the others went to rescue on the Death Star.
Poe was a nobody.
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Looking back at the Han Solo moment in TFA
- Thread starter Uzumaki Goku
- Start date
I only saw TFA, but Rey was both Luke and Leia. She was the person that the others went to rescue on the Death Star.
Poe was a nobody.
I'm talking about writing, not Finn's thoughts. They were very deliberate about Finn using that lightsaber and not a blaster. When, in the past, everyone just grabs blasters like it's nothing.
I mean, yea
I think you know I'm talking about movies here. The OT, specifically.
I mean watch the scene, there's no stray blasters around as he's entering the fight. Hence him saying that he needs a weapon before realizing he has a saber. Blasters don't just magically fall out of thin air in star wars and he literally grabs a stray blaster later on. I'm not sure what the complaint even is at this point?
On a side note, goddamn the battles in TFA are so good. 😩
This is it. And while I do hear and understand the complaints of "We didn't get to see Han, Leia, and Luke together again," I'm also old enough to know that sometimes that's just not how it works. Sometimes you don't get to have the band back together again one last time. Life gets in the way, death happens, absences are felt. And you just deal with it, appreciate what you have, and move on. That to me was a much more meaningful way to go than to just get one last group photo together.
Of course, to Luke and Leia, Han was in fact there for that reunion. "No one's ever really gone." TLJ is just phenomenal filmmaking. Too bad JJ and Terrio weren't capable of following that up.
Han could have had a spare, Chewie could have had a spare (both before the fight when Finn was leaving), those people Finn was going to run away with could have had a spare.
They emerged from a blown up building. They could have had blasters there, they chose not to!
Or...
Finn: I need a weapon!
Maz: Here's a blaster! Keep that lightsaber safe, she's going to need it!
Simple!
Like, you really can't acknowledge that the writers specifically wanted Finn to use the lightsaber, huh?
I honestly thought it was a top moment in the sequel trilogy, even amongst the whole saga.
The sequel trilogy is pretty damn poor but me TFA is the only one to get it right. TLJ has Luke and Reys story which is great but the rest of it and all of TRoS is pure garbage and wasted potential.
The sequel trilogy is pretty damn poor but me TFA is the only one to get it right. TLJ has Luke and Reys story which is great but the rest of it and all of TRoS is pure garbage and wasted potential.
He clearly didn't?
He also clearly didn't. You can literally see everything they're carrying as they walk into the bar?? Where would they be keeping their spare??? Hammerspace?
And this matters why? In the grand scheme of things?
I'm saying this, doesn't really...actually..matter? The circumstance as presented justifies Finn using the saber.
I feel like Finn using a light saber is a strong showing for him even if he didn't become a Jedi. Like he is so against retiring to TFO that he runs into a fight with some ancient weapon he has only seen in passing a few times and later on against the strongest force user he's seen he still decides to try to fight him. It shows a lot of tenacity.
The Han/Kylo bridge scene is comfortably the best scene in the sequels and one of the best in the series.
This whole exchange came about because I said I could see why fans would feel slighted about Finn not being a Jedi because they got bait-and-switched.
And, indeed, the writers had Finn use the lightsaber twice, when they didn't have to at all.
I was too young for Phantom Menace chatter, but was most definitely there for the Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith message board talk.
Discussion was wayyyyy less intense than this, because defenders were virtually non-existent. Everyone, other than the general public, absolutely hated the prequel movies. And the general public weren't the ones discussing the movies online. It was all Jar-Jar, midiclorians, clone troopers, Yoda doing flips, and the penultimate "noooooo".
Hardcore fans were still pissed about the '97 Special Editions. And the mega-fans were freshly angry about Jango Fett demoting a very popular series of Boba Fett books from "does not conflict with anything depicted in the movies" to "decidedly non-canon".
All this got rolled up into George Lucas hate in general. There is even a 2010 documentary called "The People vs George Lucas" specifically about this. I guess more specifically it's about the relationship between fans and creators in general. It's got some very "late 2000s" vibes (by which I mean rape jokes), and a pretty standard "not actually objective" perspective that most cultural documentaries pretend not to have. I'll bet it looks sensationalized now, but this was the way the prequels had been discussed for almost a decade at that point.
I swear it was the /r/prequelmemes subreddit gaining traction that convinced older fans to rewatch these movies with a different mindset or preconceived expectation regarding what Star Wars "is".
Very interesting, I appreciate the insight!
So it was mutually negative. Maybe that is better overall than the constant slap fights going on now lol
I must've missed that chapter in the screenwriting classes that stated that red herrings can only be used in the mystery genre.
And even if tropes weren't obviously confined to their genres, who ever heard of Star Wars mixing tropes, right?
They'd never do that. What's next, a kurasawa inspired fight scene that's literally happening one directly next to a cowboy western inspired standoff?
True. But still, what purpose does the "red herring" of Finn being a potential Jedi possibly serve? What's the intent? Why bother to do it?
It's clear from the lightsaber reacting to Rey that she is Force sensitive and the destined Jedi character. So what's the point of teasing Finn after the fact as a red herring?
Feel free to utilize and mix up tropes and genres all you want. But there has to be a point.
What was the fucking point of bait and switching Finn?
A twist is not its own reward. Shit needs to be competently set up. This was not.
Again, people got hyped over him and were let down. I said I could see why they were let down. It's obvious.
So did you miss that feminism is kind of a key theme of the ST and how Finn's arc plays into that when it comes to how he treats Rey? Namely, how his knight in shining armor schtick doesn't represent the type of person he is, and that Rey doesn't even need that type of person in the first place because she's capable AF, not perfect, but very capable. That's the actual red herring, not Finn's force sensitivity. And also exactly the reason why his character arc in the sequel is "look at the bigger picture instead of just Rey."
His first line in that film is literally "Rey" because what else would it be?
That was the overall point and so much of the imagery is centered around that idea.
Yes it was. Also last I checked what was he supposed to be fighting Kylo with again? The blaster that he saw Kylo freeze a bolt from in mid air at the beginning of the film? His fists? Snowballs??? A particularly sharp branch?
Pretty much, i cant stand the sequel trilogy, and have no desire to rewatch it.
The knight in shining armor schtick does not require him to weild the lightsaber.
I swear, you keep using choices made by the characters and actions taken by the characters, in a given scenario, as an argument. Meanwhile, I am questioning the scenario altogether, which you wholly ignore.
The writers chose to knock out Rey, and yes, Finn used the lightsaber against Kylo after he witnessed a blaster fail against him.
They could have easily written it so that Finn gets knocked out instead of Rey. She still gets to step up, fight, the feminism angle still applies.
But, for whatever reason (bait and switch), they were absolutely determined to have Finn weild the lightsaber. So that's how they wrote it.
Again, I fully understand how people could have expected Finn to be the Jedi, and how they felt slighted afterwards. It was written that way. Plenty of Finn lightsaber footage. Even in the trailer. Even in the merch.
It was a bait and switch.
Personally, I'm with THErest's side on this in that Finn also should have had a Jedi journey. Not for 'wish-fulfillment' or anything like that, but because TFA using the promise of the first Black Jedi protagonist so they can JJ Abram's surprise box you with that it's the first female Jedi Protagonist is....well, mean, for lack of a better word. In threads on this, I've seen the Black community mention that they felt they were tricked into having hope for representation, only to have the rug pulled out from under them, but not be able to complain because then they'd be shitting at a different kind of group getting their long overdue representation. They're not wrong. The marketing was a deliberately set up this way, and it's mean.
While TLJ's character arc for Finn is fine enough (I give a C+/B-, like Poe's. Truth of the matter is, the Rey, Luke, and Kylo Ren plot do a lot of heavy lifting for the movie), I think it could have hinted at Finn's force abilitys at the tale end of his plot (the encounter with Phasma) and then he and Rey train together in the timeskip before episode 9. Rey obviously has the lion share jedi conflict with Kylo Ren because she's the protagonist, but that just means Finn is free to carry the "Rebel Hero" side of the Jedi job, where he fights with the people while Rey has the personal battle with Kylo Ren.
While TLJ's character arc for Finn is fine enough (I give a C+/B-, like Poe's. Truth of the matter is, the Rey, Luke, and Kylo Ren plot do a lot of heavy lifting for the movie), I think it could have hinted at Finn's force abilitys at the tale end of his plot (the encounter with Phasma) and then he and Rey train together in the timeskip before episode 9. Rey obviously has the lion share jedi conflict with Kylo Ren because she's the protagonist, but that just means Finn is free to carry the "Rebel Hero" side of the Jedi job, where he fights with the people while Rey has the personal battle with Kylo Ren.
…….tell me again what weapon a knight typically uses in fiction im misremembering. Surely not anything that can be interpreted as…phallic. 👀
As much as I love TLJ I did find it kinda frustrating in the theater that they killed Luke off at the end. TROS doing it with Leia pissed me off even more, because not only was it poorly handled but with how big Star Wars is they easily could have kept Leia alive for comics/games post TROS but chose not to.
I do wonder, if somehow they knew Carrie wasn't going to make it to all three movies, if they'd have kept Luke alive for what would have become of TROS (not to beat a dead horse but it also annoyed me that TLJ set up Force Ghost Luke being a super easy thing for the sequel to use and it instead mostly just ignored it).
A moment of surprise during a third act retreading so many beats was nice, imo.
God that first act was so good. There was so much goddamn potential. Do y'all remember the feeling of those first two great trailers?
God that first act was so good. There was so much goddamn potential. Do y'all remember the feeling of those first two great trailers?
I will fight to the death on my position that TLJ should not be at all concerned with what comes after. I want these movies to be movies, and not a series of breadcrumbs for the next series of bread crumbs. Luke dying was clearly important to RJ and the story he was going for, too important to go "wait wait but have you considered your impact on the next feature film??" and reverse course.
Tear down the oppressive reign of the "trilogy"! The worst take to come out of the sequel trilogy discourse is that a lack of planning is what sunk it and not a lack of creativity from Abrams, Kennedy, and others. Trilogies just put us in a terrible mindset.
Oh sure, but how can he be a red herring without gills, right?
Oh, but his name is Finn, of course! It makes so much sense now!
Laughable, honestly.
Wait til you find out that Kylo Ren is a goober instead of a scary dark side man.
