In one of his memorable last lines in The Last Jedi, Luke Skywalker contradicted Kylo Ren to say “The Rebellion is reborn today” and “The war is just beginning.” John Boyega predicted that Episode IX would be about war as well, saying:
“I think Episode IX you know, regardless of where the story goes, and I haven’t read it by the way, is going to be all-out war …”
This grand vision is somewhat belied by the reality at the end of TLJ, however. The entire remainder of the Resistance fits on the Millennium Falcon, and its calls for help to its Outer Rim allies were evidently ignored. The main First Order fleet may also have taken a blow from Holdo’s suicide attack, but even just the ground forces portion of its remainder is considerable. We also know that it has troops elsewhere with which it is tightening its grip on the galaxy.
So how can there be all-out war between two such asymmetrical forces? One possibility is guerilla warfare, perhaps with the Resistance operating out of mobile headquarters since having a stationary one didn’t work out so well for them. They can harass the First Order, strike at its supply lines, rally support in the populace, conduct sabotage missions. This is how badly outnumbered and outgunned forces have fought for millennia, after all.
Guerilla warfare by itself is not enough, however, to be described as “all-out war.” It’s not enough to topple the First Order, either, and that is the Resistance’s goal especially if Luke, Holdo, Finn etc. are right and they are resurrecting the Rebellion. A rebellion as I understand it doesn’t just seek to weaken and undermine the enemy, it seeks to replace the enemy government. Nibbling around the edges of the First Order’s domination of the galaxy might be fine for Leia’s barely-sanctioned militia, but a full rebellion against the First Order needs to have the means to unseat it and defend territory from it. Leia implies that necessity herself in the Poe Dameron comic:
What are the sources of the troops and materiel the Resistance/Rebellion might have? Here are a few I can think of.
Resistance forces and allies elsewhere
It appears that the Resistance did not put all its eggs in one basket and there are others who were not in Leia’s fleet that ran from the First Order. Black Squadron, for instance, was on a mission to the Outer Rim to gain support from allies. The one mission that we know about from the partial transmission in the comic is a failure and the radio silence in response to the Resistance’s distress call implies they may have not met with resounding success, but there is a chance the Squadron itself survived.
Zay and Shriv from the Battleront II single-player DLC were similarly dispatched to the Outer Rim to contact the Resistance’s allies. They may well come back with allies of their own, though this did not come to pass at the end of TLJ. Have the Outer Rim allies really foresaken the Resistance, or was something else going on?
Lando Calrissian
Lando’s return in Episode IX may mean a significant boost in the Resistance’s forces, too. Lando was a General during the last war, the Administrator of a city, and the owner of Calrissian Enterprises, a huge droid manufacturer. His wealth and resources, coupled with his war experience and the security forces he himself must command, make his return a hopeful development for the Resistance/Rebellion. Since his base of Cloud City on Bespin is located in the Outer Rim, he may well have been one of the allies Leia dispatched people to contact.
A droid army
The droid manufacturing capacity of Calrissian Enterprises could additionally mean the manufacture of combat droids to augment the Resistance against The First Order. We saw droids fighting armored troopers before in the prequel movies and The Clone Wars. Could we be seeing a reprise, only this time we’re meant to root for the droids?
Droids aren’t just cannon fodder but also excellent sources of information, as C3PO’s plot in the Poe Dameron comics showed. C3PO had an extensive droid spy network, something that was on Leia’s to-do list to revive in The Last Jedi novelization. It remains to be seen whether droids will play a greater role in the war.
The New Republic
We know that the
New Republic is in shambles after the destruction of the Hosnia system,
but by the time of Episode IX they will have at least begun to regroup.
If the New Republic’s military were to join forces with the Resistance,
as seems likely, we will see a significant boost in the Resistance’s
numbers. They should also, in my opinion, be called not “Resistance” or “Rebellion” but Republic forces. Such a change also brings potential for cultural clashes and mutual
resentments, something that may have begun to be explored in TLJ
but didn’t really go anywhere.
If Leia plays a leadership role in the New Republic again because they come to their senses in the crisis and realizes they need her, then we’ll see her lead the charge on this end. This seems a likely path for her character to take, since the footage cut from TFA that will be used in Episode IX is likely to pertain to the New Republic’s political situation, like the deleted scene with her aide Korr Sella.
People around the galaxy
Finn’s conviction that people around the galaxy would rise up against the First Order may not have been borne out on Crait, but was validated by the final scene of The Last Jedi when it was shown that people throughout the galaxy are sharing and taking heart in the story of the Resistance and the Jedi. Over time this hope may become a groundswell of support for the Resistance.
Stormtroopers Insurgent Free Troopers
This is my personal fondest hope of all, that Finn inspire other kidnapped and brainwashed Stormtroopers to rise up as he did. He has already gone twice into the heart of the First Order and escaped, showing that this group not invincible–they’re kind of pathetic, in fact.
Speaking of pathetic, the new Supreme Leader of the First Order is this dude:
Kylo Ren, a man who has a lot of raw power but zero self-restraint or dignity, who is skeptical of the entire Stormtrooper program (but not of slavery itself–he brought up clone troopers in TFA), and who very publicly made a fool of himself on Crait in front of his army.
It seems likely that Finn’s exploits, together with disappointment in Kylo Ren and his leadership, will lead at least some Stormtroopers to be disillusioned with the First Order. They could fill out the Resistance’s ranks or at least drop out of the fighting altogether, making the numerical disadvantage less overwhelming.
As one anon has pointed out (link), combined with the droid army idea above, it’s possible that we could see Free Troopers and droids working together in another inversion of the prequel trilogy/The Clone Wars dynamics when they were pitted against each other.
Such cooperation would be all the more poignant because, with the recent canon incorporating a droid liberation plotline, the Free Troopers and the droids would share a liberation narrative. And if the new Star Wars canon gives a liberation plot to the droids but ignores the Stormtroopers then man, fuck Star Wars.
In conclusion
Though the ending of TLJ is very bleak in terms of its prospects for the fight against the First Order, the Resistance has a lot of untapped resources. Episode IX could show these allies coming together to destroy the First Order and, eventually, start the hard work of rebuilding.
@rebelspies I would LOVE to see Mandalorians as a political and military force on the big screen at last. I just can’t think of how to bring them in when they weren’t shown so far, unless Finn turns out to be one in which case I will die of joy right in the theater.
I could see them bringing the Mandalorians if Finn is one of them.
Or, the Resistance could form an alliance with Boba Fett.
“I knew Darth Vader. You, boy, are not Darth Vader.”
It’s not guilt by association. He had full knowledge and was entirely complicit in the destruction of Hosnia. He KNEW about the plan to destroy Hosnia, he was right there when Hux presented the plan and Snoke approved it, but didn’t do Jack Schitt to warn anyone. Instead he doubled down, imploring Gramps to help him stay strong in the Darkness. He literally stood and watched Hosnia happen, knowing it was wrong and even conflicted about it but having made his choice.
This is where the comparisons to Zuko are so insulting. When Zuko found out about his father and sister’s plan to destroy the entire Earth Kingdom he realized this was a bridge too far and refused to be part of it. He confronted his father and then left the Fire Nation to train the Avatar in order to put a stop to the planned genocide. Even a sixteen-year-old boy who had been abused and scarred by his own father acted against and refused to be part of what he knew to be unconscionable.
And YES, throwing Kylo Ren in jail is for the greatest good. The Resistance sure as hell don’t need him. He’s already killed off Snoke, ending up doing some good that way for his selfish reasons, and Rey is stronger in the Force than he is. Finn could still be revealed to be Force sensitive. The Resistance never needed Kylo Ren, and Rey would have seen that from the first if not for her insecurities and self-doubts. I have already detailed how the Resistance could still come back from the end of TLJ (link). I don’t think the lack of one murderous white guy with an overblown sense of his own importance is going to doom them lol. I would far rather place hope in the people around the galaxy, heroes who have sacrificed so much for galactic freedom, and the tens of thousands of enslaved Stormtroopers than on a selfish, narcissistic elitist.
Throwing Kylo in prison would not just be for his involvement in the genocide of a Star System, which he definitely is. The Order was given by Snoke, Hux and Kylo share equal blame.
Let’s list off the known/on screen crimes that would throw Kylo in prison:
Kylo and the Knights of Ren killed their fellow classmates and burned Luke’s temple.
Kylo killed a defenseless Lor San Tekka in cold blood.
Kylo ordered the slaughter of the surrending Jakku villagers.
Kylo tortured Poe, a New Republic Soldier.
Kylo led an attack on Max’s castle and was responsible for the deaths multiple people.
Kylo killed Han, a General in the New Republic.
Kylo led the attack on Leia’s ship, personally killing many of the soldiers on the hanger, like Tallie Lintra. Also this attack Kylo led, killed multiple high ranking soldiers still in affiliation with the New Republic, like Admiral Ackbar.
And finally, Kylo led and ordered the attack to destroy the rest of the Resistance that caused the deaths of multiple New Republic soldiers, including Commander Luke Skywalker.
Kylo at this point is lucky is he gets prison. It’s would be a charity, that would literally be a favor of the greatness magnitude for Leia.
Death is too easy. I want him to stew for the rest of his life in the humiliation of defeat, ranting about how right he is. And if he does end up seeing what horrible, irreversible crimes he committed and his conscience mauls him for the rest of his life so he never has a moment of peace, then all the better.
I don’t want Kylo to die, because death means nothing to him.
A fitting karma would be for Kylo to loose his connection to the force and be cut off from it for good.
I think the author of Twilight is a member of the LDS church, and though the more conservative strains of Mormonism may have some things in common with Christian fundamentalism there’s enough anti-Mormon bigotry in Christian fundamentalist circles that they probably shouldn’t be conflated. But you’re right, it’s a very specific and to me creepy kind of wish fulfillment.
TLJ may be more Christian than you think, though. I had conversations with both @kyberfox and @attackfish about how blatantly, painfully white and Christian a story TLJ is, more in the cultural than religious sense. It’s really a jarring tonal change from TFA which was directed and written by Jewish creators.
As a result Rey is no longer the scrappy heroine from TFA burning with anger at the injustice done to her and those she loves. Rather she’s a pure and patient maiden devoted to the redemption of the “sinner” who wronged her. The whole movie has a pretty nonsensical message about how you shouldn’t hate your oppressors for Reasons and love will save us all? Somehow?
So yeah, Rey is one of the characters who were failed by the storytelling but her story is also symptomatic of the movie as a whole and its incoherent, sometimes downright repugnant message.
@thatfantasylovingdork Okay. You seem desperate enough for my attention to get into my notes months after I ignored your first comment, so let’s do this.
First of all, I am not Jewish myself and was relying on comments by my some of my Jewish friends that their culture is more accepting of anger as a response to injustice, and women’s anger in particular, compared to cultural Christianity dominant in Europe and the U.S. Rey’s character could be seen as a reflection of such a cultural archetype. I certainly don’t mean that all Jewish people are angry (though I don’t blame them if they are tbh), or thatthere is any one Jewish experience or any one Jewish culture for that matter. It’s a statement of a few anecdotal experiences with particular Jewish cultures, just like yours is.
Second of all, I don’t know what to say if you think Rey was angry and easily pissed off for “no reason,” especially toward the end after you watched her assaulted, kidnapped, tortured, and forced to watch people she cared about murdered and almost murdered. I heartily hope you don’t apply that standard to real people.
Third of all, since you are so very ready to invalidate the effect of everything Kylo Ren ever did (”no reason” lmao), it’s not surprising that you’re calling for him to be forgiven or rather, it seems to me, absolved of all accountability for his actions. I don’t even want him to die, personally, I want him to be in jail for the rest of his life to think about what he’s done. Would you be okay with that, I wonder, or is that too violent for you? I’m also okay with him dying a violent death, and if he is killed it will be to end the immediate threat he represents and not a “heartless murder.”
If he needs to find peace from people patting his ass and telling him it wasn’t his fault, then fuck his peace. That sounds, again, suspiciously like a threat that the people he hurt need to swallow down their pain and anger and endlessly accommodate him to avoid a greater threat, whether from the First Order or Kylo Ren’s own darkness. It’s his own damned responsibility to find peace, not the people he tortured and tried to murder.
The same goes for Padmé: There is no peace without justice, and if she was seeking “peace” by literally getting in bed with a mass murderer at the expense of justice for murdered children, then her idea of peace is not peace but appeasement.
I also never said the stabbing attempt would be a positive thing, I specifically said it was suicide and too little, too late. It would be an expression of despair born out of Anakin’s crimes and guilt for her own silence, not a positive development. At least it would show an awareness that she had made a terrible mistake, not a doubling down on the same make-nice avoidance of accountability that had worked so spectacularly (as in, not at all) before.
It’s not guilt by association. He had full knowledge and was entirely complicit in the destruction of Hosnia. He KNEW about the plan to destroy Hosnia, he was right there when Hux presented the plan and Snoke approved it, but didn’t do Jack Schitt to warn anyone. Instead he doubled down, imploring Gramps to help him stay strong in the Darkness. He literally stood and watched Hosnia happen, knowing it was wrong and even conflicted about it but having made his choice.
This is where the comparisons to Zuko are so insulting. When Zuko found out about his father and sister’s plan to destroy the entire Earth Kingdom he realized this was a bridge too far and refused to be part of it. He confronted his father and then left the Fire Nation to train the Avatar in order to put a stop to the planned genocide. Even a sixteen-year-old boy who had been abused and scarred by his own father acted against and refused to be part of what he knew to be unconscionable.
And YES, throwing Kylo Ren in jail is for the greatest good. The Resistance sure as hell don’t need him. He’s already killed off Snoke, ending up doing some good that way for his selfish reasons, and Rey is stronger in the Force than he is. Finn could still be revealed to be Force sensitive. The Resistance never needed Kylo Ren, and Rey would have seen that from the first if not for her insecurities and self-doubts. I have already detailed how the Resistance could still come back from the end of TLJ (link). I don’t think the lack of one murderous white guy with an overblown sense of his own importance is going to doom them lol. I would far rather place hope in the people around the galaxy, heroes who have sacrificed so much for galactic freedom, and the tens of thousands of enslaved Stormtroopers than on a selfish, narcissistic elitist.
Throwing Kylo in prison would not just be for his involvement in the genocide of a Star System, which he definitely is. The Order was given by Snoke, Hux and Kylo share equal blame.
Let’s list off the known/on screen crimes that would throw Kylo in prison:
Kylo and the Knights of Ren killed their fellow classmates and burned Luke’s temple.
Kylo killed a defenseless Lor San Tekka in cold blood.
Kylo ordered the slaughter of the surrending Jakku villagers.
Kylo tortured Poe, a New Republic Soldier.
Kylo led an attack on Max’s castle and was responsible for the deaths multiple people.
Kylo killed Han, a General in the New Republic.
Kylo led the attack on Leia’s ship, personally killing many of the soldiers on the hanger, like Tallie Lintra. Also this attack Kylo led, killed multiple high ranking soldiers still in affiliation with the New Republic, like Admiral Ackbar.
And finally, Kylo led and ordered the attack to destroy the rest of the Resistance that caused the deaths of multiple New Republic soldiers, including Commander Luke Skywalker.
Kylo at this point is lucky is he gets prison. It’s would be a charity, that would literally be a favor of the greatness magnitude for Leia.
Death is too easy. I want him to stew for the rest of his life in the humiliation of defeat, ranting about how right he is. And if he does end up seeing what horrible, irreversible crimes he committed and his conscience mauls him for the rest of his life so he never has a moment of peace, then all the better.
I agree, she was engaging in magical thinking and being irresponsible. She had already married his ass knowing he had massacred Sand People, including children by his own admission. I mean, what did she think was going to happen? The mass murderer, in possession of his full freedom and power with the aid of her silence, committed mass murder again. I am shocked, shocked!
I wish they’d gone along with an earlier idea of having Padmé try to stab him on Mustafar. It would have been at least as much a suicide as an attempt to kill him, and he could have given her a mortal wound in his rage. They could perform emergency C-section to save the twins while Vader breaks the fuck down over what he did, and her death would have made some sense while her character could at least have tried to set things right if in a too little, too late sense.
In one of his memorable last lines in The Last Jedi, Luke Skywalker contradicted Kylo Ren to say “The Rebellion is reborn today” and “The war is just beginning.” John Boyega predicted that Episode IX would be about war as well, saying:
“I think Episode IX you know, regardless of where the story goes, and I haven’t read it by the way, is going to be all-out war …”
This grand vision is somewhat belied by the reality at the end of TLJ, however. The entire remainder of the Resistance fits on the Millennium Falcon, and its calls for help to its Outer Rim allies were evidently ignored. The main First Order fleet may also have taken a blow from Holdo’s suicide attack, but even just the ground forces portion of its remainder is considerable. We also know that it has troops elsewhere with which it is tightening its grip on the galaxy.
So how can there be all-out war between two such asymmetrical forces? One possibility is guerilla warfare, perhaps with the Resistance operating out of mobile headquarters since having a stationary one didn’t work out so well for them. They can harass the First Order, strike at its supply lines, rally support in the populace, conduct sabotage missions. This is how badly outnumbered and outgunned forces have fought for millennia, after all.
Guerilla warfare by itself is not enough, however, to be described as “all-out war.” It’s not enough to topple the First Order, either, and that is the Resistance’s goal especially if Luke, Holdo, Finn etc. are right and they are resurrecting the Rebellion. A rebellion as I understand it doesn’t just seek to weaken and undermine the enemy, it seeks to replace the enemy government. Nibbling around the edges of the First Order’s domination of the galaxy might be fine for Leia’s barely-sanctioned militia, but a full rebellion against the First Order needs to have the means to unseat it and defend territory from it. Leia implies that necessity herself in the Poe Dameron comic:
What are the sources of the troops and materiel the Resistance/Rebellion might have? Here are a few I can think of.
Resistance forces and allies elsewhere
It appears that the Resistance did not put all its eggs in one basket and there are others who were not in Leia’s fleet that ran from the First Order. Black Squadron, for instance, was on a mission to the Outer Rim to gain support from allies. The one mission that we know about from the partial transmission in the comic is a failure and the radio silence in response to the Resistance’s distress call implies they may have not met with resounding success, but there is a chance the Squadron itself survived.
Zay and Shriv from the Battleront II single-player DLC were similarly dispatched to the Outer Rim to contact the Resistance’s allies. They may well come back with allies of their own, though this did not come to pass at the end of TLJ. Have the Outer Rim allies really foresaken the Resistance, or was something else going on?
Lando Calrissian
Lando’s return in Episode IX may mean a significant boost in the Resistance’s forces, too. Lando was a General during the last war, the Administrator of a city, and the owner of Calrissian Enterprises, a huge droid manufacturer. His wealth and resources, coupled with his war experience and the security forces he himself must command, make his return a hopeful development for the Resistance/Rebellion. Since his base of Cloud City on Bespin is located in the Outer Rim, he may well have been one of the allies Leia dispatched people to contact.
A droid army
The droid manufacturing capacity of Calrissian Enterprises could additionally mean the manufacture of combat droids to augment the Resistance against The First Order. We saw droids fighting armored troopers before in the prequel movies and The Clone Wars. Could we be seeing a reprise, only this time we’re meant to root for the droids?
Droids aren’t just cannon fodder but also excellent sources of information, as C3PO’s plot in the Poe Dameron comics showed. C3PO had an extensive droid spy network, something that was on Leia’s to-do list to revive in The Last Jedi novelization. It remains to be seen whether droids will play a greater role in the war.
The New Republic
We know that the
New Republic is in shambles after the destruction of the Hosnia system,
but by the time of Episode IX they will have at least begun to regroup.
If the New Republic’s military were to join forces with the Resistance,
as seems likely, we will see a significant boost in the Resistance’s
numbers. They should also, in my opinion, be called not “Resistance” or “Rebellion” but Republic forces. Such a change also brings potential for cultural clashes and mutual
resentments, something that may have begun to be explored in TLJ
but didn’t really go anywhere.
If Leia plays a leadership role in the New Republic again because they come to their senses in the crisis and realizes they need her, then we’ll see her lead the charge on this end. This seems a likely path for her character to take, since the footage cut from TFA that will be used in Episode IX is likely to pertain to the New Republic’s political situation, like the deleted scene with her aide Korr Sella.
People around the galaxy
Finn’s conviction that people around the galaxy would rise up against the First Order may not have been borne out on Crait, but was validated by the final scene of The Last Jedi when it was shown that people throughout the galaxy are sharing and taking heart in the story of the Resistance and the Jedi. Over time this hope may become a groundswell of support for the Resistance.
Stormtroopers Insurgent Free Troopers
This is my personal fondest hope of all, that Finn inspire other kidnapped and brainwashed Stormtroopers to rise up as he did. He has already gone twice into the heart of the First Order and escaped, showing that this group not invincible–they’re kind of pathetic, in fact.
Speaking of pathetic, the new Supreme Leader of the First Order is this dude:
Kylo Ren, a man who has a lot of raw power but zero self-restraint or dignity, who is skeptical of the entire Stormtrooper program (but not of slavery itself–he brought up clone troopers in TFA), and who very publicly made a fool of himself on Crait in front of his army.
It seems likely that Finn’s exploits, together with disappointment in Kylo Ren and his leadership, will lead at least some Stormtroopers to be disillusioned with the First Order. They could fill out the Resistance’s ranks or at least drop out of the fighting altogether, making the numerical disadvantage less overwhelming.
As one anon has pointed out (link), combined with the droid army idea above, it’s possible that we could see Free Troopers and droids working together in another inversion of the prequel trilogy/The Clone Wars dynamics when they were pitted against each other.
Such cooperation would be all the more poignant because, with the recent canon incorporating a droid liberation plotline, the Free Troopers and the droids would share a liberation narrative. And if the new Star Wars canon gives a liberation plot to the droids but ignores the Stormtroopers then man, fuck Star Wars.
In conclusion
Though the ending of TLJ is very bleak in terms of its prospects for the fight against the First Order, the Resistance has a lot of untapped resources. Episode IX could show these allies coming together to destroy the First Order and, eventually, start the hard work of rebuilding.
@rebelspies I would LOVE to see Mandalorians as a political and military force on the big screen at last. I just can’t think of how to bring them in when they weren’t shown so far, unless Finn turns out to be one in which case I will die of joy right in the theater.
Depending on the count Finn had equal screen time as Rey or more in TFA, so the reduction was entirely in TLJ. And a sizeable number of TLJ stans don’t think Finn was a protagonist in the first place–I’ve heard him compared to Qui-Gon Jinn or Mace Windu–so to them that’s just the way things should be.
The mentor who died in one movie or the only black Jedi they know.
Finn’s screentime was reduced by about 20 minutes compared to TFA…
In TFA Finn and Rey were miles above everyone else in screentime, and storywise clearly were the co-protagonists, with Finn actually actively starting the entire story …
TLJ retconed that. For that alone the movie is awful. (Not to mention there was more Finn material filmed, important material in fact that RJ cut for unknown reasons *cough*)
The entire Kylo show btw doesn’t result from Kylo having gained significant screentime.. his screentime stayed pretty much the same compared to TFA but Finn in particular and also Rey lost a lot of theirs. This explains the shift of the focus, together with the fact they Rey’s storyline is mostly about poor Ben and not herself, and Finn’s is literally filler material.
Finn has approximately 7 deleted scenes, 8 if you count whatever scene this flight suit came from. What I find weird though is how Finn’s cut scenes aren’t short things the film can do without like Kylo staring out a window, they’re actual character driven scenes.
It also strikes me as odd Finn is the only character to have an entire alternant scene! Which makes me think that this version of Finn’s confrontation with Finn is from an entirely different character arc.
tbh I’ve had a particular horror vision in my head for a while… and this vision says that John expected a totally different film in terms of Finn’s arc. That even more things that we don’t know about were filmed and then scrapped as soon as Johnson was in the cutting room … Like RJ couldn’t get away with minimizing Finn’s role to this degree while filming but then once this was over, he could wield the scissors and rearrange everything until it fit more to his original idea, ie. Finn as the comic relief who doesn’t do that much. And then John saw the movie and realised what was done to his arc and couldn’t do anything about it.
Maybe. Could be possible. No one just has that many deleted scenes. Also put in mind that Finn in his flight suit-
Has a different haircut than the rest of the movie and this footage was taken during principal photography. Now I’m not sure if everyone knows this, but hair doesn’t grow overnight, especially hairstyles like that. Us african folks ain’t a chia pet. John woudnt just show up to set with a different cut. He would have to of cleared this look. That means John potentially has an entirely different group of scenes that were changed in re-shoots.
Yes! It makes no sense for him to turn up to filming with a completely different haircut! Look at how early he started growing out his hair for IX even before we knew that’s what it was for! Training for TLJ started shortly after the end of the TFA promotion, so why on earth should he get a haircut during this period if it wasn’t for the movie?
Also wasn’t Rose’s background story initial in the movie and they then reshot the scene and left it out?
Also this is John during the promotion of the Force Awakens. Different haircut, particularly visible bc it’s longer and the line in his hair is on the other side, unless the footage from TLJ shooting is mirrored for some reason but I don’t know why that should be the case.
Usually when people get that type of haircut, the line is on both sides for balance.
I really don’t know why anything happened. I just know that there had to of been some changes, even JJ admits that he changed parts of the TFA script because he didn’t like them or the implications.
Timeline-wise, one of the first things to get leaked about tlj was the filming of John and Kelly “getting flirty” on what we now know to be a Falthier and that photo was released in March of 2016 iirc. It’s my opinion that the casino plot on Canto Bight was Rians top priority for Finn.
My tin foil hat is on, but I don’t think rian ever had many alternative ideas for Finn. I don’t know who is responsible for coming up with Finns arc on the supremacy, or for the plot involving Finn fighting alongside Paige, but it is unlikely to have come from Rian himself. I don’t even think Rian was present while shooting the Finn vs Phasma duel—I have to double check this, but I believe the secondary director was there filming that. And we have bts footage of Rian observing daisy and Adam training, but nothing of John.
Yeah I’ve looked in BTS and there’s not jack of Johnson, and I mean even the throne room scene is more about Kylo then Rey.
Johnson just wants to be Kylo.
Considering nothing
If what @reys–speeder says is true, and @themandalorianwolf provides at least partial confirmation, it may explain something I noticed about the TLJ novelization (link): The Finn-Phasma duel is very different in a number of small details from the version in the novelization. At the time I thought this might simply be the nature of action scenes, but then I read the throne room scene and no jarring discrepancies jumped out at me, at least none that I could spot from memory alone. If Johnson didn’t film and possibly didn’t even write the Finn duel that may explain the extra “drift” from the script.
Also, the second unit director generally doesn’t film scenes with the primary cast but rather films background characters and large-scale battles. The duel was a pivotal scene for Finn that featured him prominently. If it’s true that Johnson left the scene to the second unit he was treating Finn as effectively a background character and not a part of the main cast.
@lj-writes @reys–speeder @thelastjedicritical
After watching more BTS I noticed something odd about the scene. Rian Johnson is present during the scene direction, but isn’t present for actual bts of filming, which is confusing.
I can’t find anything on him when they’re filming. Though he could be somewhere else watching a monitoring, though considering Johnson is always shown watching and/or giggling.
Now call me a tinfoil hat wearing nut, but my personal theory is that Johnson was there for the filming of alternate version of the Finn vs Phasma fight, which I believe is honestly the original version. I think the one that was kept in the movie was the re-shot version.
I came to this conclusion because in this video Christie, Tran, Boyega, and Johnson talk about the Finn vs Phasma fight like it’s the deleted version that has an actual confrontation behind it and dialogue that sounds scripted, while the one left in the movie sounds like improve from John and Christie.
Also
When watching the version in the movie, there is a glaring continuity problem after Holdo does her suicide run. Phasma and her troopers transport to the other side of the hanger, but in the scene before they had been right next to Finn and Rose ready to execute them.
Compare that to the alternate version that was deleted that actually matches the continuity.
I can’t honestly pretend to know if Johnson was there for both shoots, but I do believe Johnson wasn’t there for the version version shown in the movie.
I saw this because almost everyone who watches both scenes say that the alternate scene feels like it should have been in the movie and matches continuity, while the movie version feels tacked on and like a filler fight to give Finn something to do.
You know, if we’re going to be getting canon Finnrey I’m almost relieved they’ll spend most of 8 apart and the bulk of their interactions will be in 9, now that JJ is coming back. Nothing Rian has said gave me confidence that he’d treat the relationship right. I’d much rather have JJ, who gave us the interactions that imploded our hearts, wrap things up.
I think it’s extremely insulting to be anti-rian johnson when the movie hasn’t even come out yet! Talk about premature labelling…
Depending on the count Finn had equal screen time as Rey or more in TFA, so the reduction was entirely in TLJ. And a sizeable number of TLJ stans don’t think Finn was a protagonist in the first place–I’ve heard him compared to Qui-Gon Jinn or Mace Windu–so to them that’s just the way things should be.
The mentor who died in one movie or the only black Jedi they know.
Finn’s screentime was reduced by about 20 minutes compared to TFA…
In TFA Finn and Rey were miles above everyone else in screentime, and storywise clearly were the co-protagonists, with Finn actually actively starting the entire story …
TLJ retconed that. For that alone the movie is awful. (Not to mention there was more Finn material filmed, important material in fact that RJ cut for unknown reasons *cough*)
The entire Kylo show btw doesn’t result from Kylo having gained significant screentime.. his screentime stayed pretty much the same compared to TFA but Finn in particular and also Rey lost a lot of theirs. This explains the shift of the focus, together with the fact they Rey’s storyline is mostly about poor Ben and not herself, and Finn’s is literally filler material.
Finn has approximately 7 deleted scenes, 8 if you count whatever scene this flight suit came from. What I find weird though is how Finn’s cut scenes aren’t short things the film can do without like Kylo staring out a window, they’re actual character driven scenes.
It also strikes me as odd Finn is the only character to have an entire alternant scene! Which makes me think that this version of Finn’s confrontation with Finn is from an entirely different character arc.
tbh I’ve had a particular horror vision in my head for a while… and this vision says that John expected a totally different film in terms of Finn’s arc. That even more things that we don’t know about were filmed and then scrapped as soon as Johnson was in the cutting room … Like RJ couldn’t get away with minimizing Finn’s role to this degree while filming but then once this was over, he could wield the scissors and rearrange everything until it fit more to his original idea, ie. Finn as the comic relief who doesn’t do that much. And then John saw the movie and realised what was done to his arc and couldn’t do anything about it.
Maybe. Could be possible. No one just has that many deleted scenes. Also put in mind that Finn in his flight suit-
Has a different haircut than the rest of the movie and this footage was taken during principal photography. Now I’m not sure if everyone knows this, but hair doesn’t grow overnight, especially hairstyles like that. Us african folks ain’t a chia pet. John woudnt just show up to set with a different cut. He would have to of cleared this look. That means John potentially has an entirely different group of scenes that were changed in re-shoots.
Yes! It makes no sense for him to turn up to filming with a completely different haircut! Look at how early he started growing out his hair for IX even before we knew that’s what it was for! Training for TLJ started shortly after the end of the TFA promotion, so why on earth should he get a haircut during this period if it wasn’t for the movie?
Also wasn’t Rose’s background story initial in the movie and they then reshot the scene and left it out?
Also this is John during the promotion of the Force Awakens. Different haircut, particularly visible bc it’s longer and the line in his hair is on the other side, unless the footage from TLJ shooting is mirrored for some reason but I don’t know why that should be the case.
Usually when people get that type of haircut, the line is on both sides for balance.
I really don’t know why anything happened. I just know that there had to of been some changes, even JJ admits that he changed parts of the TFA script because he didn’t like them or the implications.
Timeline-wise, one of the first things to get leaked about tlj was the filming of John and Kelly “getting flirty” on what we now know to be a Falthier and that photo was released in March of 2016 iirc. It’s my opinion that the casino plot on Canto Bight was Rians top priority for Finn.
My tin foil hat is on, but I don’t think rian ever had many alternative ideas for Finn. I don’t know who is responsible for coming up with Finns arc on the supremacy, or for the plot involving Finn fighting alongside Paige, but it is unlikely to have come from Rian himself. I don’t even think Rian was present while shooting the Finn vs Phasma duel—I have to double check this, but I believe the secondary director was there filming that. And we have bts footage of Rian observing daisy and Adam training, but nothing of John.
Yeah I’ve looked in BTS and there’s not jack of Johnson, and I mean even the throne room scene is more about Kylo then Rey.
Johnson just wants to be Kylo.
Considering nothing
If what @reys–speeder says is true, and @themandalorianwolf provides at least partial confirmation, it may explain something I noticed about the TLJ novelization (link): The Finn-Phasma duel is very different in a number of small details from the version in the novelization. At the time I thought this might simply be the nature of action scenes, but then I read the throne room scene and no jarring discrepancies jumped out at me, at least none that I could spot from memory alone. If Johnson didn’t film and possibly didn’t even write the Finn duel that may explain the extra “drift” from the script.
Also, the second unit director generally doesn’t film scenes with the primary cast but rather films background characters and large-scale battles. The duel was a pivotal scene for Finn that featured him prominently. If it’s true that Johnson left the scene to the second unit he was treating Finn as effectively a background character and not a part of the main cast.
L.J.'s Obsessions 