And then gets chastised for not acting on information that he wasn't even given (for no good reason) in the first place.
Gina Carano Fired From “The Mandalorian” Over “Abhorrent” Social Media Posts
- Thread starter hanselthecaretaker
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It's not just that she liked him, but she was also still grieving from the loss of her sister for doing basically the exact same thing. the Noble Sacrifice to take down a massive device. She probably would've tried to stop the other person yes, given her motivations as I saw them. We won't know of course, because they were extras that mostly died, and not worthy of a dramatic scene.
If that's the point, I'd say it's botched. Finn is never really driven by anger, hatred, or a desire to harm others. Hell, with TLJ starting by hitting the reset button on his character arc, his most consistent trait is probably that he doesn't want to fight at all and is doing all that he can to get away from the battlefield...unless he finds out that Rey is in trouble, at which point "save Rey" jumps to the top of his priorities. This is not a guy who is going out of his way to hurt people, or even taking the opportunity to hurt the First Order when presented to him (eg, joining the Resistance).
I mean let's review what happens to him through TLJ: Without a real explanation as to why (originally implied to be the awakening of empathic force ability, but that obviously went nowhere), a literally nameless stormtrooper balks at a slaughter, and decides to aid a PoW's escape on the condition that the PoW takes him along. PoW (...And saying that acronym aloud, I'm suddenly wondering if Poe was a play on words) names him Finn. Crash, PoW is presumed dead, Finn pretends to be part of the resistance to impress a girl he meets. Pair escape the planet, Finn wants to go into hiding, girl bounces between wanting to return to the planet and returning the droid they were traveling with to the resistance. When meeting up with the resistance to accomplish the latter goal, Finn barters passage to a remote world so he can disappear. He is unable to convince Rey to go with him, so the two part ways...until Finn realizes that the First Order took her, at which point he pulls a Will Turner and runs to the Resistance to insist that they rush to her rescue. He tricks them into giving him a ride to Starkiller Base under the pretext that he knew how to lower its defenses, and as soon as he's there admits that he's underqualified but needed an excuse to go there so that he could rescue Rey. They succeed in their nominal objective due to a stroke of luck, and eventually find Rey. Han dies, Rey and Finn try to run, and come across Kylo Ren (who...somehow ended up waiting ahead of them despite them running away from him?). Rey, furious over the death of Han (for some reason), pulls a gun on Ren, who responds by knocking her out. Finn immediately rushes to make sure she's alright, only stopping when Ren flourishes his lightsaber to remind him that the threat is still there. Finn fights, and promptly ends up seriously injured and unconscious until the next movie.
Next movie: He finds himself on a Resistance ship and - still not a part of the Resistance and still wanting no part of that war - promptly tries to leave, only for Rose to treat him as a deserter going AWOL. Understanding that for the time being his fate - and Rey's - was tied to the survival of the Resistance, he helps with the plan to disable the First Order's tracking system. We'll skim over most of the mission and jump to their encounter with Phasma on the Star Destroyer. Phasma captures Finn and Rose, has them tortured and nearly executed. Things go sideways, the two escape and encounter Phasma again as they try to escape, at which point she and Finn duel. Finally deciding to join the fight, Finn opts to help the Resistance as the First Order was bearing down on them. As the Resistance was making what would probably be its last stand, Finn opts to sacrifice himself to try and take out the FO's bunker-buster, which was the biggest threat as the Resistance at that point was playing for time. it's at this point that Rose sabotages his kamikaze attempt to save his life.
There is no reading where Finn is doing what he's doing out of anger, hate, or some kind of desire to get back at the First Order. The only reason we come to that conclusion is because Rose explicitly tells us in the audience to interpret it that way. That's not the story arc we've been seeing with Finn though. He's not a character that is driven by anger and hate to fight an evil for personal satisfaction, much less one who is prone to taking that to self-destructive levels. Finn's a character who thinks that the First Order is unstoppable and that the only smart move is to hide from them. He only breaks out of that mindset when either A) He's backed into a corner and has to fight rather than flee, or B) the Order threatens something that he cares about. So him opting for a kamikaze attack to try and prevent the bunker buster from busting the last line of defense the Resistance had is pretty significant, very much analogous to Han giving up his scoundrely ways in the OT and ultimately leading a suicide mission (which, coincidentally, also involved attempts to break into a planetside bunker). And in the context of his character and what we've seen of him so far, we can't in good faith characterize it as him trying to 'destroy something he hates' but instead should see it as him trying to 'protect something he loves (or at least has come to believe in)'. While Rose was not necessarily wrong to interrupt the attempt, her justification basically amounted to an admonishment to...do what she stopped him from doing.
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This is just you making excuses for the movie. The sister was already dead at the beginning. She just makes the death count by blowing herself up. And the movie forgets her almost as quickly as Rose does. I believe she's going yippieeee about an hour later as she's racing space horses.
And now the liberal mob is starting to attack Rosario Dawson. Good job on ruining star wars liberals. While sane progressives, social democrats, and democratic socialists are focusing on economic issues that are ten times more important than social issues woke liberals(who likely want the jobs of the people they cancel) are canceling Corey Booker's girlfriend. As if Corey Booker and Rosario Dawson aren't liberal enough. Insanity.
I mostly agree with your take on the motivations. Though I LOVE your typo in the 3rd paragraph of "has them executed and NEARLY tortured"
seriously. That's just fantastic in it's "wait...wut?' And yeah, the final bit with Rose and Finn was a bit odd for me. I've never felt it really fit well. I've always laughed at that part, because Finn's reaction to Rose kissing him, was exactly my response too. The sort of *blink and lean back* "uhh...wut? We're at THAT point?" confusion he had was perfect.
I don't really know why they went that way with it, other than the obligatory "you will put the 2 leads into a romantic relationship due to shared struggle" trope that is in every movie it seems. I always just interpreted it as not just love for him, but for Rose having a problem with needless sacrifice. And when the call to retreat came through from the most Gung Ho "They Died as Heroes" guy there is, in the Resistance, and Finn refused, at least from a narrative stance, it was no longer a "legit threat to be taken out with force" and was now a "Fool's Errand that will only get us all killed for no good reason." And at that point, I felt her own grief for her lost sister, and her...admittedly accelerated romance for Finn (but honestly those things are always accelerated in films), and Finn's stubborn refusal to accept the order to retreat, because he Has Something To Prove, made her try and ram him out of the way so he didn't die needlessly. I mean prior to that, when it was their only chance, and it wasn't entirely clear to them (and Poe as commander) that they had zero chance of stopping that gun, she was out there with them. Because it was their last chance. But once Last Chance become No Chance, then yeah, might as well retreat, and try and minimize lives. No Charge of the Light Brigade there thank you very much.
I do think it's made messy by focusing it on the romance part, which again, I think shouldn't have been established that quick. But, Rose is still running around with an open wound from the death of her sister, is clearly a very emotional person with how she fan girl's over Finn at the start, it's not that unreasonable for me to see her developing strong feelings for someone in a tense situation, as a coping mechanism for her grief. Rebound boyfriends/girlfriends are a thing for a reason, though that analogy doesn't 100% work in this context, but you get what I mean.
...Wait, you mean that there's usually a different order of operations? Torture isn't permanent, death isn't transient? Everything I've known has been a lie! (which is to say: whoops. fixed)I mostly agree with your take on the motivations. Though I LOVE your typo in the 3rd paragraph of "has them executed and NEARLY tortured"
My problem wasn't really with the fact that Rose stopped him, but the way she rationalized it to him and the audience as being because his act was "destruction for the sake of hate" rather than "protecting for the sake of love", when the context of Finn's character strongly implies that he was absolutely erring towards the latter. There were so many better ways to justify it. "That wasn't going to help?" Sure, go with that. "We'll need you alive if we want to turn this around?" Eh...not really earned at that point, but still better. "I'm not letting anyone else make another pointless sacrifice?" Hell yes. That's a nice callback to the opening act, a reminder of what ties Rose to it, and throws in a nice "we're learning from our mistakes" undertone to go with it. "I'm not losing anyone else I care for?" Cheesy, but it's an enjoyable cheesy that is very much at home in Star Wars and resonates with a lot of the key moments in the franchise (Anakin's prioritization of his family over everything else, Luke risking everything to redeem his father, Finn himself effectively going 'screw everything else, I'm saving Rey' in the prior movie, and probably half the "Fall to the Dark Side" and "Return to the Light" [sub]plot in the EU).
To clarify, Finn's kamikaze run is absolutely a case of the pendulum swinging too far in the course of his character arc, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. People sadly do have a tendency to...take reinventing themselves to unhealthy extremes which need to be moderated. So him acting like a martyr and a companion stopping him? Those are good narrative points! It shows him overcorrecting for his flaws and needing someone to pull him back before he does something stupid. But "not by destroying what we hate, but by protecting what we love"? Lady, need I remind you that Finn was making a desperate attempt to stop that giant gun from blowing a hole in the base where the remnants of the Resistance were holed up? Was it stupid and of questionable efficacy? Absolutely! BUT, it was also an action very much in line with the protective ideology she just told him to embrace! Finn was not the character who needed that message. That's the message for Poe at the start of the movie, and even then it's questionable considering that Starkiller Base neatly showed why it's important to diminish the First Order's capacity to do damage (They WILL use it indiscriminately given half a chance). But for a character who was sacrificing himself to turn a "we're all going to die" situation into a "maybe everyone else will live" situation? The message is very mistargeted.
Nuuuuuu!! I loved that typo! I kept picturing an interrogator looking at another headless corpse on the floor, with a group of stormtroopers around him, and snapping his fingers being like "So THAT'S why I never get any information out of them! I kept wondering why their bodies didn't seem to react to the torture!" *looks at random trooper* "Steve! Adjust my itinerary! Torture 3pm, THEN execution at 5pm!" "Yes sir!"
Yes, I agree, the last bit about that big gun doesn't fit well in my opinion. It's not a deal breaker for my overall enjoyment of the film, but it is a bit clunky. Given that Finn's driving emotion was Fear, having it suddenly be framed as Hate, is a bit jarring. I didn't really see it as Hate, in the captial letter, Dark Side kind of context, which is an important factor in Star Wars, more just, your average, standard issue, dudebro machismo leading to unnecessary deaths for The Cause. It's clunky in places, but I think the overall point was conveyed, if the choice of dialogue for Rose, made things a bit odd at the end.
Cancelling has been happening for decades and against hundreds of thousands of celebrities. Nothing will stop them. (Unless perhaps you put in hate speech laws but that is fraught with a bunch of issue.) If that could be solved, we would have done it a long time ago.
We probably have to rely on businesses making appropriate decisions..... which is pretty fucked up but the best option we have.
As to them not targeting economic issues, Brietbart said that politics is downstream of culture. He is right. They probably think they are setting up the next generation for improving the economic situation by laying down the ‘appropriate’ culture now. But that’s how stupid all this is
He was chastised for that *before* the FO showed up and showed that they were tracking them.
Characters in movies don't benefit from either hindsight or 4th wall knowledge, not even if they're Leia.
Are we talking about his takeover of the bridge because they were abandoning a doomed fleet or the bit where he had reasonable intelligence that they were being tracked through mechanical means and not a spy and didn't pass that up the chain.
Lotta people made bad decisions for good reasons in that movie. It was kind of a theme.
I mean, it's kind of about abuse allegations being actually litigated in court...
Good on you, you spotted one "theme" out of a few dozens and they all contradict each other.
Don't blindly follow orders (Finn).
Blindly follow orders (Poe).
Lead people.
By lying.
Let the past die.
And burn them books.
But also lets keep doing the exact same thing.
And save those books.
Sacrifice is pointless, love will save us.
But if it doesn't, Luke can sacrifice himself.
Also Holdo before him.
Animal cruelty is bad (wut).
Child slavery can wait though.
The Last Jedi is a mess and a waste of time for the characters and anybody watching. Nobody accomplishes anything, all the reveals prove meaningless, most of the plot is made up of subplots and none are consistent with the tone or purpose of each other.
While, ok, you did put theme in quote marks, I don't think they are so much themes or even "themes" as things that happened.
That movie was all over the place, but for some reason, what really gets me is the straight trenches perpendicular to the enemy's expected approach at the end of the film. That's not how you build trenches, you are supposed to zig zag, and neither the zigs nor the zags should point directly at the enemy.
As far as I am concerned unless any of you have any sources, the case is still ongoing.
Things happen in the service of themes. Boiling it down, the movie contradicts itself on the themes of duty, obedience, heroism, leadership, etc. Good vs. evil, old vs. new, adherence vs. change. What's important, what isn't? The movie has a very fickle grasp on the development of the story, especially when you compare it to the next movie.
Last Jedi was a bold freefall into nothing; Rise of Skywalker is the pilot dashing to the controls and making up for lost time while pretending the flight is going according to plan.
And yes, the military tactics are ridiculous.
No, we shouldn't fire people before a case is settled, and I am more saying this towards Disney, and the unforgiving, premature, and preemptive cancel culture of social liberals.