Enter Finn, a Missed Opportunity

Star Wars: The Force Awakens Trailer (Official)

Last time, the First Order had slaughtered an entire village, even though the very map they’re looking for might be hidden within it. However, one soldier doesn’t fire. He lowers his rifle and stares at the slaughter in horror.

His name is Finn. For some reason, no one notices Finn refusing to follow orders, but later in the scene, Kylo Ren stares at Finn for a long time. It’s almost like the force-sensitive villain senses something special inside the stormtrooper. This scene seems to be promising a particular plot point to the audience. What a shame the writers never do anything with this brief interaction.

That’s what’s amazing about these movies. After coming back to this trilogy a decade later, one can really appreciate all the dropped plot points and missed opportunities. Looking back, it’s all too obvious that there was never a plan. But the writers worked very hard at promising that the movies were heading somewhere and that the payoff was going to be marvelous.

After the slaughter, Finn returns to his ship and takes off his helmet, shaken. This is the first time that the Star Wars franchise has confirmed that the stormtroopers are human. The Republic had clones. The Empire apparently used a combination of clones and humans, though it’s worth mentioning that the original movies have nothing to say about the stormtroopers’ origins.

But here, the writers give us the first cinematic confirmation that there are people under those masks. The audience later learns that these soldiers are programmed from birth, but it’s evident that Finn has broken his programming.

This raises an interesting question. What would happen if other troopers were to break their programming? That sounds like an excellent twist or complication for a movie—or even a trilogy. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the audience were treated to something like that? Doesn’t Finn’s existence raise a captivating question? It’s a shame the writers never do anything else with the stormtroopers.

Captain Phasma—who I can scarcely mention because the trilogy does almost nothing with her, despite her commanding presence and chrome armor—notices Finn’s odd behavior and sends him to reconditioning. Needless to say, he doesn’t go. Now this isn’t necessarily a plot hole, but it is one of those little details that should’ve been addressed.

We needed to see Finn escape from his unit because presumably the First Order wouldn’t just assume somebody who’d broken their programming would go to reconditioning on their own. There are plenty of ways to handle this.

The writers just needed to take the time. But when the audience sees Finn again, he’s helping Poe escape, and a viewer couldn’t be blamed for wondering how or why he’s moving around on his own when his captain is already suspicious of him.

Before Finn aids Poe, Kylo Ren uses the force to extract the information he needs about the map from Poe’s mind. That’s one more power to add to the force’s checklist. He then has Hux, another leader for the First Order, send men after the robot that has the flash drive, but if he’d just stayed in the village and tortured Poe on the planet, this action wouldn’t be necessary.

That’s the amazing thing about this film. Torturing Poe on the ship instead of in the village is such a tiny detail, and, in the film, the transition from the village to the ship is done so quickly that there isn’t time to think about it.

But if someone were to take a moment and pause the movie, they might just realize that this one tiny detail collapses the entire plot. If Kylo Ren doesn’t take Poe to the ship, then Finn can’t rescue him.

If Finn doesn’t rescue him, then the chase that covers most of this film screen time can’t happen. The plot collapses all because of this one detail, and the entire trilogy is filled with these catastrophic particulars. Usually, writers will resort to these kinds of odd choices or coincidences when they’ve written themselves into a corner.

But I can’t recall a single time where an entire movie, let alone a trilogy, is completely driven by such choices and coincidences. It’s astounding. I don’t think the most incompetent novice could pull this off, and it makes me wonder if this movie was really written by a computer.

Anyway, after Kylo Ren gets what he wants, he leaves Poe alone, and Finn enters Poe’s room, claiming that “Ren” wants him. Then he leads Poe to another room, where he removes his helmet and tells Poe that he plans to rescue him. He asks if Poe can fly a TIE fighter. Poe says he can, and the two do just that.

They sneak into the hangar and steal a TIE fighter. But there is a kind of cable attached to it, preventing them from taking off. Of course, the troopers all notice them and begin shooting. However, Poe is able to free them from the cable, and they fly out of the ship. They then blow up a couple turrets and make their way to the planet.

Right away Poe and Finn have great chemistry. Poe even gives Finn his name because his identification number is too troublesome to say. Again, the movie teases the audience, making it seem like these two are about to have a long and interesting friendship. Too bad the writers don’t do anything with this.

The duo doesn’t start arguing until Poe says he needs to find his droid so he can retrieve his map. He then tells Finn that the map leads straight to Luke Skywalker. The whole time, the First Order is continuing to shoot at them. Finn becomes so distraught over Poe’s news that he stops paying attention to the cannons, and one of them hits their fighter. The ship isn’t destroyed, but it is disabled, and the two men crash on the planet.

Finn wakes up separated from the ship. He looks for Poe, but when he reaches the downed fighter, Poe isn’t there, and the ship—for some reason—sinks into the sand. Finn finds himself alone, so he begins stripping off his armor as he wanders the desert, looking for a town. I’ll cover what happens then in the next review.