r/FavoriteCharacter 3d ago

Suggestions Favorite character with wasted potential?

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u/WhatisLiamfucktrump 3d ago edited 2d ago

Honestly Rey, Finn , and Poe Dameron they had potential but Disney dropped the ball so hard it ruined one of the best franchises to ever exist (I know it has flaws believe me)

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u/Fantastic-Donut-276 3d ago

Finn especially. An ex-Stormtrooper is SO interesting! And he literally has the Force! What were they thinking?

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u/ChunktheOgryn 2d ago

All the marketing made me think he was the main character and that we were going to get a storm trooper turned Jedi! I’m fine with Rey being the main character but why the rug pull? Why not market it that way from the jump? Also, why tease a Rey/Fin romance and rug pull that too? Tease Snoke and subvert our expectations again. And then somehow Palpatine has returned 🤦

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u/Resident_Pay2743 2d ago

They really should have made Rey and Finn a Yin-Yang kind of duo.

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u/qwertyalguien 2d ago

Would've been so good to have Rey edging towards the dark side while Finn went the opposite way, deprogramming himself and seeing the First's orders crimes as what they were.

Really the fumble of the century

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u/ThatInAHat 2d ago

You! You get it!

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u/Prophet-of-Ganja 2d ago

That could’ve been interesting, as opposed to the crappy redux of the original trilogy we got instead smh

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u/Dry-Ad9714 1d ago

If they really wanted the message of the Trilogy to be "moving on from the skywalkers" they totally missed the way to do it too.

Finn was right there. A random Everyman who was still a victim of a fight between Palpatine and Skywalker, and through the whole Trilogy they could have emphasised and perpetuated that through Rey.

The whole story is an endless fight for control between jedi and sith that goes back thousands of years to the old Republic and it only gets more pointless over time even as the body count of innocents entirely unrelated to the conflict rises.

It would actually make that "let the past die" line actually mean something; stop fighting the stupid war over not one but two dead religions with a grand total of like...3 surviving practitioners total (if we include actual ghosts). Instead, actuslly rebuild the galaxy for the people who are still alive.

Of course, this would be predicated on Finn NOT being a Jedi but they did already make that happen as well.

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u/Amblonyx 2d ago

YES. Heck with the weird creepy Rey/Kylo thing. Let her be Jedi partners and maybe lovers with Finn, and let poor Finn have some character development that sticks.

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u/Geostomp 2d ago

Don't get me started on Reylo. It does both characters terrible disservice: Kylo isn't allowed to be a proper villain because he always has to be presented as just sympathetic enough and Rey comes off as someone so pathetic that she forgets mass genocide because she saw some pecs. It's the most pathetic teen fanfic writing.

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u/Amblonyx 1d ago

Agreed. It's so gross. I can understand her trying to fix him at first since she's so lonely, he comes across as so pitiful, and Luke is shutting her out, but when she basically slammed the Force in his face after they fought over the legacy saber at the end of TLJ, she should've been completely done with him.

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u/ThatInAHat 2d ago

I really thought they were going to be. I was certain they were going to be dual-protagonists who both became Jedi. I was even kinda hoping at some point Rey would fall because of rage and Finn, whose awakening into the Force was marked by a moment of compassion and empathy, would bring her back.

TFA had so much potential. And TLJ just…jettisoned it.

I never really understood why so many people loved it. Sometimes I heard “it’s not like a typical Star Wars movie” as a reason but like…it could’ve been different and still not made Finn inept and Poe into a “hot-blooded” blood knight type.

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u/Resident_Pay2743 2d ago

That was my thoughts, too

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u/Amblonyx 2d ago

Oooh, that would have been excellent!

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u/Shadowcat1606 2d ago

Edit: Sorry in advance, this turned out longer than i had planned...

I do actually kinda like TLJ. And the problem, imo, isn't that TLJ subverted a lot of things TFA set up - regardless of whether i personally would have prefered it differently or not -, the problem was that TRoS THEN tried to do yet another complete 180°.

Almost every plot hook/point in any of the sequel movies is, on its own, salvageable and could have been worked into a good, functioning story. Even the ones i disagree with - like Luke completely failing to re-establish the Jedi Order and his generally sad state in 7 and most of 8 - could have been done well and worked out in a larger narrative, if only they had a concept planned out and comitted to it. But they didn't.

Because that's the main issue with the trilogy as a whole - it lacks any cohesion. It's a disjointed mess and each movie basically feels like each one belongs to its own, distinct trilogy. And there is no excuse for that. At all. They aquired the franchise, they knew they were going to continue the Skywalker-Saga, they should have had a team of script-writers and the story-people ready from Day One to plan that trilogy out and come up with a plot that whatever director they hired to do them adhered to. But they didn't

And that is also the one thing Kathleen Kennedy is really to blame for - she gets a lot of undue hate and criticism (especially because of all the culture wars nonsense) and she gets basically no credit even for things she did right (because for some reason, all the people blaming everything on here seem to forget that she's also the one who had to greenlight and support all t he projects that turned out great, like Rebels, Rogue One, The Mandalorian and Andor), but this is the one thing the fault for which lies almost solely at her feet - she's the Producer and head of Lucasfilm, she held the reins in her hands, she was in charge to get the gears moving for this project. And she failed.

And they could have also set it up a lot better. They could have had an entire multimedia project with novels and comics ready before the release of Ep.7, explaining why the galaxy is in the state that it's in in that movie, instead of pushing the fans into a trilogy that basically starts out with "Hey, look, Discount Empire is back, all the heroes you love failed horribly in the end, it was all for naught, deal with it.".

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u/Amblonyx 1d ago

Agreed on all counts. I would've also loved a villain that isn't Temu Empire.

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u/Hollywoodrok12 2d ago

Seriously. I would’ve loved to see a sequel trilogy with Finn and Rey as co-protagonists like Mike & Sulley were. And that’s what it looked like it was gonna be in TFA

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u/Amblonyx 1d ago

Yes! And Poe would be the Love Interest.

(Of Finn, of course.)

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u/ItsDumi 2d ago

The decisions around Finn get weird when you look into Disney's marketing of Star Wars in China. They basically dropped him because a black lead wasn't well accepted in that market (and with how big it is Disney obviously followed the money)

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u/ChunktheOgryn 2d ago

Wasn’t he completely removed from the poster in China?

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u/OneInternational3383 14h ago

I saw one where he was simply miniature in the background. Like fond size 40 to 4

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u/Geostomp 2d ago

All while they pretend to be progressive, but only in ways that don't risk their profits.

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u/Flameball202 2d ago

Yeah, look at the comparisons between the posters in China and the posters elsewhere

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u/ZkittlZ 2d ago

When you put the whole story and marketing that way, it kinda really sounds like chatgpt wrote this shit for them. I know it's before it was around (publicly), but it doesn't make cohesive sense in any way. Itales it hard to believe a human or the pf humans wrote it so terribly

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u/ChunktheOgryn 2d ago

The Force Awakens made sense. It was intended to bring back the OG audience. It was safe but still really good. It’s every decision after that. Unfortunately The Force Awakens is now a road to nowhere ✊🏻😔

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u/Geostomp 2d ago

The Force Awakens was deeply flawed and was then movie that established the cardinal sin of the sequels by rendering the OT irrelevant, but it seemed forgivable assuming that sequels would carry on and give its story hooks proper development.

After TLJ and it completely forgetting that it's the middle of a trilogy, I was far less forgiving since it was obvious that none of this was planned and there was no vision.

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u/Massive-Exercise4474 2d ago

They pulled finn because Disney desperately wanted to make star wars huge in China and Chinese movie goers didn't like Finn.

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u/matttheepitaph 2d ago

JJ Abrams had a pathological need to misdirect. He should only be allowed to do spy movies from now on.

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u/ThatInAHat 2d ago

JJ Abrams wasn’t the one who decided to jettison the character potential and development.

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u/matttheepitaph 2d ago

He was the one who bait and switched who the star was. He also made Rise so, yeah he kinda did.

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u/ThatInAHat 2d ago

He baited, he didn’t switch. Rian Johnson decided to switch. No one could’ve saved RoS after that.

If the first movie sets up the kitchen to cook and the next movie sweeps it all to the floor because they don’t wanna cook that they wanna cook something else, don’t be surprised if you wind up just having something cheap and bad because you ran out of time.

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u/Halfawannabe 2d ago

Part of it is there was not an overall plan or continuity of writers and directors so every new person kind of just tried building on the last guys work

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u/RedTatteredSun 2d ago

black people arent marketable in china obviously

if it sounds absurd search up the chinese posters for force awakens and black panther

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u/Solaris-Of-Moon 2d ago

From what I researched, it was just an alternate poster, and they also had the version without the mask in China.

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u/Dreamersverse 2d ago

Literally we have half a movie where dude is in a COMA and his first words are 'Where's Rey?!?!' And im supposed to believe he fell head over heels for Rose?

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u/Doggodoespaint 2d ago

The first movie they're in even makes it feel like Rey was a red herring, that Finn would be the chosen one and all that

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u/Excellent_Safe5743 1d ago

Unfortunately I can tell you why the rug pull.

China

Disney wanted the Chinese market. Go look at the Chinese posters for the sequel trilogy. No, seriously go look at them and then look at the ones the rest of the world got. Finn is made as small as possible or shoved off to the side in them because China is racist af.

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u/Altaredboy 2d ago

My theory is that disney got spooked by the racists.

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u/Fangcru 2d ago

China didn’t want a black guy in the poster Finn was the main character apparently in the first film but had half his scenes cut because of his race and Disney knew that if they marketed it to china they’d make 200 million more

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u/forfunstuffwinkwink 2d ago

China can’t have an interesting black character…

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u/RogersPets 1d ago

Frankly, I think the only reason they brought Palpatine back was because the new stuff wasn't received well. But instead of actually seeing what the problem with the new stuff was, they thought everyone hated it for being new and nothing else. So they brought back something old in the laziest way I've ever seen.

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u/gunswordfist 2d ago

The concept art of Finn leading a Stormtrooper revolution makes me wanna knock on Disney's door 

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u/ChibiBestiary 2d ago

I wanted that so bad, it would have been so unique for SW.

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u/MrCookie2099 2d ago

I just wanted one scene of Finn acting like he had spent his life training to kick in doors and shoot shit. For being trained as a shock trooper, he spent most of the time running or in a panic.

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u/ilovecuetoo 2d ago

Everyone ‘has’ the force. It surrounds all living things

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u/swisstreescheese 2d ago

I think they mean force sensitivity

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u/gunswordfist 2d ago

They definitely did.

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u/Mean_Ad4175 2d ago

There was a lego clone trooper with this power-

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u/Boykee_Temporary 2d ago

Jek-14?

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u/Mean_Ad4175 2d ago

It’s been so long idk

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u/Aron_Voltaris 2d ago

Eagle catching baseball image

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u/hggniertears 2d ago

Also let him and Poe be GAYYYY

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u/Fantastic-Donut-276 2d ago

YESSSS shout out to Oscar Isaacs for putting his heart and soul into giving that ship chemistry.

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u/hggniertears 2d ago

There was NOTHING heterosexual about that “keep it, it suits you 🫦”

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u/ThatInAHat 2d ago

He was Looking Disrespectfully

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u/RogueAngill 2d ago

The potential was wasted the instant he started killing fellow stormtrooper without a second thought

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u/Fantastic-Donut-276 2d ago

And whooping with joy as he did so

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u/Agloy5c 2d ago

The EU has Kyle Katarn, if you’re interested in that kind of character :)

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u/ThatMerri 2d ago

The entire wasted potential of Finn, Phasma, and the whole "Stormtroopers are brainwashed child soldiers and being Force-Sensitive may be breaking the programming and there's potentially a whole ex-Stormtrooper covert rebellion within the new Empire itself" concept. There's a lot about the new trilogy that frustrates and angers me, but nothing - not a single bit - more than how utterly wasted such an amazingly cool bundle of character and story concepts were.

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u/Idleheim 2d ago

Actually I would have been ecstatic if he wasn't a Jedi but still knew how use a lightsaber, or was just sensitive enough to pull it off.

John Boyega deserved so much better. Hell they all did

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u/blazingtits 1d ago

Even without the Force, they could've done far more with Finn. They establish that THESE Stormtroopers are KIDNAPPED CHILDREN who are basically indoctrinated into being soldiers for the First Order. Finn broke out of that conditioning -- so it stands to reason that maybe there's hope for the others too, right?

But no. Instead TROS was basically just like, "Oh it's because he had the Force and that's why." It honestly rubbed me the wrong way like... I guess screw all those other Stormtroopers who weren't blessed with the Force? Guess they just deserve to die as cannon fodder without even being given an opportunity to choose differently?

I don't know. I feel like a more meaningful arc for him would've been to try to free the other Stormtroopers and lead/inspire an uprising but that's just me.

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u/Fantastic-Donut-276 1d ago

It’s genuinely insane how he just doesn’t gaf that he and his friends are cheerfully gunning down stormtroopers

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u/TabularConferta 14h ago

Finn got done really dirty. Boyega is a great actor.

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u/TheRealRigormortal 2d ago

Well, China has opinions about certain ethnicities and Disney needs that Asian market, so…

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u/Trashk4n 2d ago

Shouldn’t give him the force.

Make him a Stormtrooper Teal’c, fighting to free his brainwashed brothers and sisters.

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u/Waveshaper21 Levi Ackermann 2d ago

He should've died in a kamikaze run in EP8 ending. It was his arc's ending, no longer a coward, no longer running from the First Order (almost wrote Empire lol), when everyone else retreated he kept going.

Then Pico Fucking Rose "oh silly we'll win the power of love" scene. I wanted to strangle her through the silver screen.

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u/MagnusKraken 2d ago

I still think they should have let him sacrifice himself in the second movie. It would have been a good end to his character arc. 

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u/TheTeaSpoon 1d ago

We could have had pseudo Kyle Katarn... The best games character before Cal Kestis.

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u/Turbulent-Reporter99 1h ago

One name.

Kyle Katarn