Star Wars 5 Ways Finn Was Wasted By The Sequel Trilogy (& 5 Poe Was)

Star Wars: 5 Ways Finn Was Wasted By The Sequel Trilogy (& 5 Poe Was)

The Star Wars sequel trilogy may have divided fans, but most agree that Poe Dameron and Finn are great characters, even if they were underused.



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Star Wars 5 Ways Finn Was Wasted By The Sequel Trilogy (& 5 Poe Was)

The recent Star Wars sequel trilogy disappointed a lot of fans. Thanks to Kathleen Kennedy’s wandering-through-the-dark-with-a-flashlight approach to developing the trilogy, it barely holds up as a complete story. But its main characters were all intriguing additions to the universe when they were introduced in The Force Awakens, particularly reformed Stormtrooper Finn and hotshot pilot Poe Dameron.

There’s no denying that both characters were played brilliantly by John Boyega and Oscar Isaac, two of the finest actors working today and arguably the pair with the best chemistry in the whole trilogy, but their characters were let down by weak writing and the fact that the story didn’t have a roadmap from the beginning.

10 Finn: Was Always Tethered To Rey

Star Wars 5 Ways Finn Was Wasted By The Sequel Trilogy (& 5 Poe Was)

After The Force Awakens set up Rey and Finn as dual protagonists with equal footing, the rest of the trilogy inextricably tied Finn to Rey’s aimless arc, denying him his an arc of his own.

Finn spends the whole of The Last Jedi looking for Rey, then spends the whole of The Rise of Skywalker yelling her name because he wants to tell her something — and he doesn’t even get to tell her what it is!

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9 Poe: Was Conceived As A Soft Rip-Off Of Han Solo

Star Wars 5 Ways Finn Was Wasted By The Sequel Trilogy (& 5 Poe Was)

With his confident swagger, dry humor, and expert piloting skills, Poe Dameron was conceived very much as the Han Solo of the sequel trilogy.

Oscar Isaac has the acting ability to play a virtually infinite range of well-rounded characters, but he was given a Star Wars role so one-dimensional that by the time he did the press tour for the third movie, he was happy to tell interviewers that he should’ve let the filmmakers kill him off in the first one.



8 Finn: The Sequel Trilogy Couldn’t Make Up Its Mind About Stormtroopers

Star Wars 5 Ways Finn Was Wasted By The Sequel Trilogy (& 5 Poe Was)

Finn’s character arc got an intriguing setup in The Force Awakens. He was a Stormtrooper who defected from the First Order and joined the Resistance. He was established as a brainwashed orphan who was forced to fight for an evil empire. This put an interesting twist on the Stormtroopers, because they were just cloned cannon fodder in the original trilogy.

However, after that initial setup, the sequel trilogy couldn’t decide if Stormtroopers were expendable or misunderstood. The Force Awakens wasn’t even consistent with it because Abrams threw in that gag about Finn being a custodian that negated the whole thing. The Rise of Skywalker reintroduced this element with Jannah’s army of ex-Stormtroopers, but that storyline was majorly undercooked.

7 Poe: Backstory Was Inconsistent

Star Wars 5 Ways Finn Was Wasted By The Sequel Trilogy (& 5 Poe Was)

There was a ton of backstory crammed into Poe’s scenes in The Rise of Skywalker, as his history as a spice runner is revealed during a trip down memory lane, but it was inconsistent with the backstory established by outside comics and novels and even by the previous movies.

When a character’s backstory contradicts itself, it becomes increasingly difficult to be drawn into their world because it calls attention to the artifice of the story, and the story itself fails to hold up.

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6 Finn: The Rise Of Skywalker Ignored His And Rose’s Burgeoning Relationship

Star Wars 5 Ways Finn Was Wasted By The Sequel Trilogy (& 5 Poe Was)

Rose Tico showed a lot of promise in The Last Jedi — she was fierce, relatable, and Kelly Marie Tran was an exciting new talent — but the character received a lot of backlash and Lucasfilm, sadly, bowed down to that backlash and sidelined Rose with virtually no dialogue or screentime in The Rise of Skywalker.


This was a huge shame, because Finn developed a strong dynamic with Rose in The Last Jedi that still had a long way to go and then The Rise of Skywalker completely ignored their burgeoning relationship.

5 Poe: Last Jedi Storyline Was Nonsensical

Star Wars 5 Ways Finn Was Wasted By The Sequel Trilogy (& 5 Poe Was)

On top of separating him from Finn, with whom he shares the best chemistry, Poe’s storyline in The Last Jedi makes no sense. Holdo leads the Resistance to believe they’re all being marched to their deaths, prompting Poe to stage a mutiny, instead of just telling them her real plan.

Poe is constantly painted as the bad guy who needs to wind his neck in and bow down to his superiors, but he consistently proves himself to be a stronger leader than Holdo and frankly, Leia, too.

4 Finn: Force Sensitivity Was Never Explored

Star Wars 5 Ways Finn Was Wasted By The Sequel Trilogy (& 5 Poe Was)

The climactic lightsaber duel in The Force Awakens introduced the notion that both Rey and Finn were Force-sensitive and semi-adept at lightsaber combat. The sequel trilogy was set up as the tale of them both becoming Jedi. However, Finn’s Force sensitivity was never explored.

Apparently, what Finn wants to tell Rey all throughout The Rise of Skywalker is that he has the Force, but he never actually tells her that on-screen, never mind actually uses it.

3 Poe: His Humor Was As Cringeworthy As The Prequels

Star Wars 5 Ways Finn Was Wasted By The Sequel Trilogy (& 5 Poe Was)

Apparently, most of Poe’s comedic dialogue in The Force Awakens was added during reshoots and a lot of it was improvised by Oscar Isaac.

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But his scripted moments of humor could be as cringeworthy as the prequel trilogy at times, like The Last Jedi’s opening “your mother” joke that would’ve been more at home in a Robot Chicken Star Wars special than an actual Star Wars movie.

2 Finn: Would’ve Made A Better Hero For The Trilogy Than Rey

Star Wars 5 Ways Finn Was Wasted By The Sequel Trilogy (& 5 Poe Was)

The point of the sequel trilogy — if there was one — seems to be to tell kids that anyone can be a hero; you don’t have to come from a special bloodline like the Skywalkers. The focus of this was Rey, but The Rise of Skywalker’s revelation that she is from a special bloodline undid the whole message.

Finn would’ve been the perfect hero through which to explore these themes. He’s an orphan who was never even given a real name and was trained from childhood to fight on the side of evil. The story of Finn becoming a Jedi would’ve been a much more compelling throughline for the trilogy.

1 Poe: Didn’t Meet Rey Until The End Of The Last Jedi

The Star Wars sequel trilogy set up Rey, Finn, and Poe as its answer to Luke, Leia, and Han’s dynamic in the original trilogy. However, while the original trilogy’s central trio developed a tangible rapport by the end of their first movie, the sequel trilogy’s central trio didn’t even share any scenes until their final movie.

Poe didn’t meet Rey until the end of The Last Jedi, and their friendship in The Rise of Skywalker felt incredibly forced. It was too little, too late. And if that wasn’t bad enough, after establishing a lovable back-and-forth with Finn in The Force Awakens, they barely shared the screen for the rest of the trilogy.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/finn-poe-underused-star-wars-sequel-trilogy/

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