Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26006155-20190617222636/@comment-26006155-20190625151931

If you’ll indulge me a moment, I’d like to share something with you. Here’s another example of using creative thinking as a compass for guiding theories:

The basis for my video “Finn the Mandalore” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9uhY0pS7mc

For the new Star Wars movies, Disney has a problem. Fan expectations are huge, and if they simply repeated the same plots over again, after destroying the fan-beloved Expanded Universe, they’d get panned. So they have to do something different.

But they also have to do something they know that the fickle fanbase will love. So they can’t go too far away from the source material.

So what, in the Star Wars universe, is a fan-loved aspect of the lore that is under-represented on the silver screen?

I found one: The Mandalorians.

Boba Fett introduced his people to the world in The Empire Strikes Back, and many fans consider him their favorite character in a competitive franchise.

The Mandalorians are the greatest warriors in the galaxy, and the only known people skilled enough to actually defeat a trained Force User… without using the force themselves.

They have the best equipment. They have the best training. They’re morally grey and can be your best friend or worst enemy depending on the situation. They’re also surprisingly socially progressive, because they’re not a race, but a culture that anyone of any race or gender can join… if they can prove they have the mettle to join by defeating the nearly impossible initiation challenges.

The Mandalorians are loved in Star Wars comics, books, and television shows, and their popularity rivals even that of the lightsaber wielding space monks, providing a worthy challenge to keep the Jedi and Sith alike on their toes.

But there is one media where they are largely absent: The Silver Screen.

In all of the first six movies, we see a grand total of 2 Mandalorians: Boba Fett and his father Jango Fett. And while their fight scene against Obi Wan in Episode 2, where they best the guy who would later go on to defeat the young Darth Vader, is amazing, you have to savor it, because you won’t see anything that cool from them ever again.

The Mandlorians are a huge untapped resource on the very movie screen they originally came from!

If Disney wanted to do something both familar, and different? They could make a Mandalorian the hero in the new movies!

…

So I studied Episode 7: The Force Awakens.

And noticed something immediately: Rey isn’t the main character.

The very first person we actually meet is Finn. And his very first combat mission has a ton of character development in it.

Out of all the stormtroopers, only Finn has the strength of character to overcome the First Order conditioning he’d had since he was a baby, and realize that shooting civilians is wrong.

Then, when Poe Dameron shoots one of this fellow troopers, Finn’s first instinct is to run to aid his fallen brother. Who, in his dying act, reachings up and touches Finn’s helmet.. Marking it with his blood.

Immediately, Finn is horrified as his friend dies. Then he looks around the battlefield.. And experiences repeated flashes of horror as he his brothers in arms both dying.. And killing innocents.

Finn lingers after Poe Dameron is captured, and Kylo Ren pauses in his walk, as if sensing something, then turns to gaze right at Finn. And for a moment, the two lock eyes. As if sensing, even here, that their paths will cross again.

As Kylo Ren talks to one of his officers, we get some very fast yet intricate information about The Elite Stormtroopers of The First Order: They aren’t clones. They were children entered into the program at a very young age. Denied names, they don’t even know where they originally came from. And their training has been top notch.

Unlike every other Star Wars movie, where the Stormtroopers are cast as blind, weak minded drones who die quickly in droves, the movie establishes that *these* Stormtroopers are actually a real threat. Two elite pilots almost take out Finn and Rey. One ground pounder pulls out an electrified weapon and proceeds to beat up Finn, and Luke’s Legendary Lightsaber doesn’t do a thing to help him. And rather than dying in a massive fireball as Starkiller Base blows up, the movie assures us that the stormtrooper legions safely evacuated beforehand.

In these new movies, Stormtroopers lives matter.

Why?

We learn more interesting things about Finn.

Although he was trained in sanitation, and this was his very first combat mission, Finn learns the ways of war remarkably quickly.

Poe sits him down in a tie fighter turret he’s never used before, and Finn remarks that the controls are really complicated and he isn’t familiar with them at all. But over the next 90 seconds (I clocked it) Finn succeeds in blasting stormtroopers, other ships, the command center and even two battleship turrets on the way out of the mothership. A rampage that leads Finn to yell “DID YOU SEE THAT?!” and Poe agrees with a grin.

Then, despite getting his butt handed to him by the stormtrooper with the shock weapon, Finn quickly gains experience helping sabotage Starkiller Base. All of which leads to his crowning moment: The fight with Kylo ren.

By everything we know from seeing how Force Users carve through hordes of soldiers Dynasty Warriors-style, little green Finn should have been dead the first time he swung Luke’s Lightsaber. Even wounded, Kylo is a frightening adversary that Finn should have Zero chance to beat.

But in spite of this, Finn not only manages to survive a 60-second duel with Kylo.. he actually manages to HIT Kylo with that lightsaber he was fumbling to try and use earlier, having not been trained in its use at all.

Who are the only non-force users in the Galaxy that can hope to fight a trained force use one and one, and expect to win?

The Mandalorians.

I think the First Order is acquiring, perhaps kidnapping, children from Mandalorian families. And cultivating the give for battle in their blood to make their Elite Stromtroopers.

Finn was the first to actually touch Luke’s lightsaber after Rey ran away from it. And he was handed it, repeatedly, by Maz Kanata in her castle.

Her castle that was flying the flags of all sorts of assorted clans when Finn arrived.

Maz is old. Slightly older than Yoda. And like Yoda, she’s wise.

But Maz also has a secret. She isn’t a force user. She’s a Mandalorian.

The second movie shows her kicking ass with blasters, then flying away in a jetpack, just like the legendary Boba Fett.

And if Finn needed someone to train him in the Art of War, and reconnect him with his Mandalorian roots? Chewy-intimidating Maz Kanata is a perfectly designed character to do this.

Finn is in a unique position to use his heritage as a weapon.

If Finn can discover his own roots, then relay this information to his fellow Storm Troopers, and return knowledge of their stolen lives to them, he might actually be able to turn the First Order’s stormtroopers against them.

And if the reason the First Order is getting Mandalorian kids, is because the current Mandalore is a corrupt menace who’s willing to sell the children of his own people to the First Order for coin… Finn might be able to single-handedly save both his people and The Resistance, by making the ritual combat challenge against this evil Mandalore right there on the silver screen, and become the ruler of the Mandalorians himself.

I’ve heard many people remark about how the new movies obsess about Rey, and turn her into a Mary Sue.

And how the movies waste so much time with that comic relief guy Finn, and his pointless relationships with people like Rose.

Man, are they in for a shock.