I love Finn so much, and I love how thoughtfully and how beautifully John Boyega inhabits the role–
He’s spoken in interviews about how he sees Finn as a much needed departure from overly assured, macho, hypermasculine heroes, and it’s SO visible in the movie–
Finn is so vulnerable, so flawed, so human-
I love how he wears his emotions on his sleeve:
“Keep calm, keep calm…” “I am calm!”
“I was talking to myself…”
How both he and Rey look overwhelmed and terrified at the prospect of flying a ship-
How he runs to save (what he thinks is) a poor girl being attacked and outnumbered by thieves (let’s remember that Finn is unarmed and outnumbered too!!)
BUT then he turns right around and runs for his life when she runs after him with a weapon:::
He’s BRAVE, but it’s bravery that’s tangible, not the Movie Hero’s insensate lack of fear.
Finn is so funny, but he doesn’t have the zingy one-liners of a guy who has it all figured out- Mostly he’s making witty observations or stating an ironic truth, or bantering with Rey or Han-
He and Rey both feel so young and they relate like people– Finn may be attracted to her, but aside from wanting to impress her he never gives any indication-
he doesn’t hit on her or make innuendos or act like a man is generally supposed to act in movies to prove he’s a DUDE-
Finn just reacts with joy and excitement that he’s found such an awesome, badass friend— just look at the way he and Rey rush to compliment and gush over EACH OTHER after flying the Millenium Falcon for the first time. He’s so not cool!!
He should probably be shrugging and squaring his shoulders like “Oh yeah, that’s me: hero of the resistance, glad you could keep up…” if he wants to keep up the charade that he’s part of the Resistance,
but he’s THRILLED and he forgets his Cool Guy persona and wants to gush and nerd out like a little kid, and tell Rey how cool she is, and say “No no, I only hit the target cuz you set me up for it!!”
I’ve totally lost my train of thought, but yeah Finn is a wonderful character and I love him a lot
You know, on that note
There’s something so FREAKING CHARMING about how he asks Rey if she has a cute boyfriend. I can’t put my finger in it! I don’t know why it utterly MELTS me, but it does. The way he’s like “Do you have a boyfriend? Cute boyfriend??”
I can’t say why I adore that little detail so much, but I do
oh god but like. the best ships are the ones where they’ve been shown to work great as a team. where the characters balance each other out without eclipsing the other person but, instead, bring out the best in each other to get a job done or fix a problem. if i die young bury me in mutually beneficial partnerships
“Love doesn’t discriminate
Between the sinners
And the saints
It takes and it takes and it takes
And we keep loving anyway
We laugh and we cry
And we break
And we make our mistakes”
a quick Aaron Burr painting, after listening to more of Hamilton
Can we take one second to talk about how, on this day each year since 1887, a group of men in outdated clothing gather to lift a large, supposedly clairvoyant, rodent into the air?
I would prefer to know what Daisy Ridley was saying, but I also could still look at these forever and feel that somehow my soul is ever greater for it.
“Luke will never get to see Han again. He more than likely felt him die, and when the falcon landed on the island, he knew that Han wasn’t on it anymore.”
“At the same time, in Miami, starting out it is difficult. You do get cast if you’re a Latin man, because you look a certain way. Casting directors, often – it’s easy just to see people of a certain ethnicity as just one thing. For me it was important to be an actor, first and foremost. To me it was the most important thing, I wanted to be able to play anybody, and where I’m actually from to be secondary”
“Imagine; I used to have really long blonde hair, always wearing heels, lots of make-up. I had been someone who was highly feminised and had chosen to look that way, partly because I was 6ft 3in but also I was into that aesthetic. I knew it had to be stripped away. I knew this would be an important part, not just for my work but in terms of my own development, because I would be confronting elements of myself that I didn’t want to confront (…) To see yourself displayed as unattractive, large, masculine, it’s quite tough… But I know it’s just perspective. A social conditioning that causes us to view these traits in a woman in a negative way.” — Gwendoline Christie
Another thing is, I’ve read that some people have complained that somehow The Force Awakens is just a rip-off of A New Hope. But those people must not understand parallelism, or visual callbacks—
which are the stuff of constructing meaning and good storytelling—
and instead are essentially arguing for more random, arbitrary scenes and story lines.
