I mean some people make much of the fact that Poe and Rey said “hi” but… what were they supposed to do, jump right into a duel for Finn’s hand? That’s awkward for a first meeting. I’m pretty sure they’re waiting to get to know each other a bit better before they pick their weapons and choose their seconds.
I mean some people make much of the fact that Poe and Rey said “hi” but… what were they supposed to do, jump right into a duel for Finn’s hand? That’s awkward for a first meeting. I’m pretty sure they’re waiting to get to know each other a bit better before they pick their weapons and choose their seconds.
This is the best take of that scene.
*only take
The only other take it could be is if they’re starting a we ❤️ Finn Club.
President and Founder – Rey
Vice President and public relations – Poe
Head of Marketing – Rose
Official Sponsor – Leia
Pledges – Stormtroopers
So Poe did lose the duel to Rey, because he met Finn first and yet he’s vice president
I would not have repeated the OT’s central conflict quite so blatantly, mostly because unlike JJ I had no idea that it could sell, much less be a record-breaking hit 😂 My vision of the ST would probably have been a more PT-like affair, but about the struggle of building a New Republic in contrast to the ending of the Old.
A brief summary because I ended up writing a monstrosity under the cut: Poe’s adventures as a New Republic pilot and spy reporting to Leia the Republic Chancellor, a more gradual deprogramming process for Finn who is a kidnapped Mandalorian child soldier and the main antagonist for the whole first movie, Rey as a world-weary space scavenger looking for her family. Ben Solo starts out as a powerful but arrogant Jedi whose outsized pride and understandable resentments lead him over three movies to become the Big Bad while Finn goes in the opposite direction, reclaiming his heritage and fighting back against the organization that stole him as a child.
I’d have made Poe an officer in the New Republic (which is his actual background in the ST, of course) leading a mission given him by Chancellor/First Senator Leia Organa to investigate a disturbance in Mandalorian space. The NR and the Mandalorians are negotiating peace and trade treaties, but the Mandalorians are distracted by raids on their outlying settlements and, most disturbingly, their children being stolen. They blame the Republic, or at least its inability to reign in the chaos in their space which they believe simply pushed the raiders and slavers into Mandalore space. The Mandalorians also bitterly remember how clones of one of their warriors were used as slave soldiers by the old Republic. Some even suspect the Republic is trying to build another Mandalorian army. Leia wants to stop these raids, but it’s not easy gaining a skittish Senate’s support for missions outside Republic space. Poe has to find the smoking gun on these raiders to bring the Senate around. Along the way he is helped by Master Luke Skywalker and his apprentice, Jedi Knight Ben Solo, who ends up coming along with his old friend and rival (and implied old flame, depending on how much I can get away with).
Poe ends up being captured, however, just as he and Ben are nearing the raiders’ base. Poe kills one of the raiders that he took as a Mandalorian pirate and then is taken down by one of the dead man’s fellows–another seeming Mandalorian who fights with devastating effectiveness and ejects Ben into space before taking Poe prisoner. This is Finn. Poe escapes later when Ben, who had saved himself with the Force, comes back to save him, seething with wounded pride–something he has quite a lot of–that he was bested and almost killed by a non-Force user. He, Ben Solo, Master Skywalker’s finest student! A Skywalker by blood! He vows that there will be a rematch.
Poe and Ben have escaped, but are far from home free. The ship they stole to escape is damaged in pursuit and they hide from pursuers in a debris field, occasionally bickering, and several scavengers come upon them only to squabble among themselves over salvage rights. The winner is a tough young woman who arrived in a cloaked ship before blasting everyone else away–Rey, who’s a lot like Valkyrie from Thor: Ragnarok and is played by Devery Jacobs the way God intended. Ben and Poe instead convince her to help them out and they’ll give her anything she likes. What she really wants is to find her family, in search of whom she’s been traveling ever since she got off the junkyard planet Jakku. Poe promises the full support of the Republic for her search.
According to the information Poe had managed to extract from the ship’s databanks it turns out that someone is building an army with stolen children and, what’s more, this started decades ago. They appear to be remnants of the Empire. The mysterious warrior Finn may have been one of the first wave that was taken, judging by his age. Poe and the others need to take this information to the Senate and Mandalore, but are slowed by Finn’s dogged pursuit before Rey sets a clever trap and they take him and his crew prisoner. Finn fully expects to be tortured and killed, and is angry at the death of his friend Slip at Poe’s hands. Finn refuses to divulge anything but Poe and the others can tell just from the way he talks about the Republic that he was heavily indoctrinated his whole life. He is honorable, however–he asks that Poe spare his crew and that they execute just Finn himself as an example. Rey thinks Finn is a lost cause, which stance Ben is inclined to side with, but Poe tries to get Finn into the reality-based community which mostly has the effect of making Finn defensive. More than actual facts, however, Finn is confused at how well he and his crew are treated. On the one hand he suspects a trick, obviously, but the first seeds of doubt are planted.
Finn, however, is far from naive–he has extensive knowledge of galactic politics and military and makes some sharp critiques of the Republic’s incompetence and injustices, and his arguments actually have an effect on both Poe and Ben. Ben has seen the pressures his mother is under trying to run the Republic, how self-serving and cowardly the Senators are. Finn’s argument that only a strong central leadership backed up with credible threats of force can make the galaxy governable resonates in particular with Ben. This will be the start of Ben’s own fall as he is increasingly consumed with the thought that only he can right the ship of the galactic state.
Meanwhile Rey finds latent memories coming back from snatches of Finn’s conversation and the way he fights. Could he hold the key to finding her family? Was she a stolen child soldier like he was? She also respects Finn, and he her, for their respective skills. She doesn’t have a bone to pick in this fight and there’s no personal enmity between them. She thinks she might have liked him if he weren’t a brainwashed stiff. Scratch that, maybe she likes him nonetheless. Their interactions are increasingly filled with banter and borderline flirting.
At the end of it all Poe’s party bring the information and the prisoners to Republic space, but it is too late–the Mandalorians have invaded Republic space. They have decided that if the Republic will not keep the order they will do it themselves. Leia calls for a measured response, but the Senate quickly overrules her and actually issues a vote of no-confidence, then arrests her as a Mandalorian collaborator and would-be dictator. The situation escalates to war and Ben seethes at what happened to his mother. He runs off to rescue Leia and enlists Poe’s help. The Republic military takes in Finn and his crew and brutalize one of them when they resist, showing that Finn is in danger of much worse treatment than he was with Poe. Rey sneaks after Finn’s prisoner transport, unwilling to lose this possible lead to her family. End first movie.
Finn was born on a world of water. He has dim memories of the soft grit of sand beneath his feet and a sense of awe when the water roared and then gentled. He can’t remember his family or anything else about his planet, but he remembers the cool embrace of the waves when someone – his mother perhaps – carried him out into the shallows and held tightly to his hand while he squished wet sand between his toes and laughed at waves that slapped gently at his chin.
Finn was born on a world of water, somewhere in the vast galaxy. And someday, he will return.
You know how they say certain coma patients are still aware of what’s happening around them? Like they can still hear other people, they just can’t move or open their eyes?
Could you imagine Ren rendering Rey unconscious and kidnapping her, Rey still faintly hearing the TIEs and X-Wings above her, the blaster fire around her.
STORMTROOPER UPRISING GOD AND JJ PLEASE LET ME LIVE
With Finn leading them.
Imagine Finn appearing on screens throughout the First Order, telling the Stormtroopers who he is, telling his story, telling them that they, too, can be free.
Imagine his image appearing everywhere, his face painted on bulkheads, his designation number scratched on a piece of equipment only to be scratched out and replaced with “Finn.”
Imagine Free Troopers with red streaks on their helmets in honor of
Finn and to distinguish themselves from the Stormtroopers loyal to the
First Order.
Imagine firefights in the corridors of Star Destroyers, Walkers turning on each other, officers shot in the back by their own troops.
Imagine Finn himself appearing among the ranks, taking off the helmet to reveal himself, and Hux ordering the Troopers to shoot him–but they raise their guns instead, parting to make way, and he walks through the parting sea of white.
Imagine the Star Destroyers empty and abandoned, scrawled with graffiti of red-streaked helmets and the words “Resist” and “Refuse.”
Continuing off the idea of Rey deciding not to be a Jedi and how that might affect Episode IX.
Rey might be a Force user but she’s no soldier and not really a fighter either. She a survivor. She’ll fight if she has to but generally avoids to.
Finn seems to have committed himself to the cause at the end of TLJ and they need someone like Rey, they need a Force user who will fight to counter Kylo (and possibly the Knights of Ren, but who knows about these douches). On the other hand I don’t think he’d ever want to push Rey, or anyone, into something they don’t want to do. He’s been violated like that for too many years himself.
Still it would be an ongoing point of contention between them and the source of many an argument. Could you just imagine one of them ending in Rey looking Finn in the eye and saying, “well, you have that power too. I’ve sensed it in you. You do it.” And then shoving the ancient Jedi text into his arms and storming off.
Finn standing there with the old books in his arms not knowing what to think. He’s never seen himself as a Jedi, not realized what the things he sensed were and being a little bit scared because boy this is huge, but at the same time this needs doing.
So he does it. He reads the books and meticulously rebuilds the lightsaber, using the broken crystal from the old one.
Rey being supportive because it removes a burden from her she didn’t want and takes away a task she feels she couldn’t do, but at the same time feeling guilty for shoving this on Finn.
I love this, because one of the things I hate about Rey’s story is that she seems to have a role foisted on her that she doesn’t seem particularly into. I dislike that her story consists of her being an errand girl to save the universe, unsupported by her own inner drive. She’s a lot like Anakin that way, actually–extremely talented capable, but doing things because he was told to when all he really wanted was to love and be loved. Anakin would have had a much happier ending if he’d put his foot down and said “no” to the demands on him, not that this would have been easy when he started on his path as a child and almost all his relationships and his very identity revolved around being a Jedi. Rey is not nearly so constrained, and in fact it’s Finn who had similar social and psychological constraints as a Stormtrooper before he had the incredibly courage to leave behind everything he ever knew.
Does Kes Dameron know of his son’s capture and torture, near-death and escape? Has he heard from his son since the events on Jakku? Does he wonder and try to keep busy, checking his communicator too many times? Or has he gotten a short message while the Resistance base is in an uproar behind Poe? Despite his son’s assurances that he is fine, he’s just about to deploy can’t talk long, I’ll be fine love you Dad, does Kes see the cuts and bruises despite the grainy quality of the transition, does he sense something has happened to his boy, something Poe would not tell him? Does he ache to be there by Poe’s side, to kiss the scrapes away like he and Shara used to? Does he play the recording again and again, looking for clues, just wanting to see his son’s face in the flesh again, a small and traitorous part of him wondering if he ever will?
When the Resistance is–thankfully, oh, he can breathe again–back in communication and Kes learns, in bits and pieces, what has happened, does he keep up a brave front for his son? Does he hold in the tears and the screams in front of Poe because he can’t make this about himself? Do father and son tear up together as Kes hugs him, repeating how happy he is to have his son back and how proud he knows Shara is of him, just as in life? Does he assure Poe that he can stay and rest as long as he likes, knowing that much like Shara he can’t ground Poe for long while others are still out there fighting?
When Poe wakes from nightmares, is Kes on his feet before the first scream is finished, is he running down the hallway like he had never slept, because he had known this was coming? Does he call Poe’s name, never complaining that Poe’s arms around him are too tight, because it is a reminder that his boy is with him, is alive, that the darkness has not taken him? Does he stay for the rest of the night by Poe’s bedside, and when Poe starts sobbing or groaning in his sleep again does his father stroke his face or pat his shoulder, and is that enough to give him peace–for the moment?
Later in the calmer day, when the night has receded for a while and Poe is laughing outside with the dogs, when Kes takes out his old rifle from the Rebellion days–its main use now to scare away local wildlife from the livestock–to clean it, does he stare at it for a long time? Does he aim it into the air, imagining Kylo Ren’s head at the end of the barrel? Do the great, wracking sobs come then, as he imagines against his will what his son went through? Does his whole body shake from the effort of keeping them silent from Poe outside, an unheard earthquake of pain?
Frantically he runs the numbers through his head. How long was Poe held before that former Stormtrooper, seemingly sent by the Force itself, took him from his cell? How many hours, how many questions, how many screams? How much agony slammed again and again into a mind already torn and bloody from watching a mass murder that he was powerless to stop?
A sense of waste, of failure rises up in him, threatening to choke him with the foul taste. He and Shara, they had dreamed together of peace. They thought their son would grow up in a galaxy without war. It was what they fought and risked their lives for, what they built their home for after the war. What was it all for, with that very son shattered by this new cruel fight?
Stranded in a universe without answers, with nothing but the sounds of his son out in the yard to anchor him, Kes wipes his face and finishes cleaning his weapon with practiced, unthinking hands. He locks the blaster away, not admitting to himself he doesn’t want Poe to stumble on it, as though Poe doesn’t have a weapon of his own that he carries at all times, as though there were anything left to shield his son from.
Poe calls for his father and Kes goes outside, a smile on his face as he steps into the light, laughing to watch Poe mobbed by a pile of wriggling and overenthusiastic puppies. He runs to “rescue” his beleaguered son, kissing each happy pup as he takes it off Poe. The sun shines high above and the night is far away, for now.
L.J.'s Obsessions 