The Force Awakens Robbed Fans of an Awesome Andor-Like Star Wars Story
In what way, you might ask?
Well, leading up to The Force Awakens, Disney and Lucasfilm teased us with the promise of a massive, Andor- like "adult" story about a man forced to serve an oppressive government who discovers he can be more than what they forced him to be... and then they delivered nothing of the sort.
No, really, the sequel trilogy really did Finn (John Boyega) dirty.
The ads would have you believe that he would be one of the main characters, if not the most important one – after all, it was the tradition of Star Wars movies to have an ensemble cast, with several characters in the main roles.
But in The Force Awakens, he bounces back and forth between supporting character and comic relief, and in subsequent films, he is sidelined.
And the most notable symptom of the disregard for his character is the fact that his background as a former Stormtrooper is tossed aside and largely forgotten within twenty minutes of Episode VII.
He switches sides almost immediately, apparently due to the shock of seeing a fellow Stormtrooper die, and then no one in the script except for a random Stormtrooper extra even remembers that he was supposed to serve the First Order at some point.
Surely Finn himself has no problem with his supposed years of brainwashing and conditioning, or with the need to shoot his former comrades. What a disappointment and what a waste of a premise.
And while Disney also baited us with the idea that he would eventually become a Jedi, nothing came of that either, except for a scene where he picks up a lightsaber only to motivate Rey by getting destroyed by Kylo Ren.
In fact, existing in the plot only to serve as a supporting character for Rey sums up many of the problems with the casting of the sequel trilogy, but Finn is hit particularly hard.
Episode VII ends with him as a bait-and-switch, and while the following two episodes could have saved him, they never did. In the end, Finn's only purpose in the trilogy was to facilitate plot twists that primarily affected other characters, and to provide tasteless humor.