The Problem With Canto Bight

(WARNING: THIS POST IS NECK DEEP IN SPOILER TERRITORY)

Earlier today I finally had the chance to rewatch The Last Jedi (Movie Pass rules, y'all).  I enjoyed it the second time, just as I enjoyed it the first.  To me the movie is a well-made, exciting sequel to The Force Awakens that gets a lot of things right, though not quite everything.  Not everyone agrees, though.  Personally I think The Last Jedi is so divisive because it is somehow, paradoxically, both incredibly similar yet strikingly different from the Original Trilogy and The Force Awakens.  I could say more, but this post isn't about my opinion of the movie as a whole.

One of the most common criticisms of the movie is of the story thread involving Finn and Rose going to Canto Bight in order to find a codebreaker to help them mess up the tracking device that has allowed the First Order to track the Resistance ships.  A lot of people complained that this whole story thread was "pointless" because our two heroes don't succeed in delivering the code or otherwise doing something from that ship that ultimately helps them defeat The First Order.

Simply put, those people are wrong.  However, that doesn't mean there isn't a serious problem with Canto Bight.  There is.  But we'll get to that in a moment.

The real problem, obviously, is how these intergalactic war profiteers choose to dress.

First, let's tackle the fact that Canto Bight is significant.  The movie not so subtly explains that Poe's habit of repeatedly risking everything on incredibly risky plans to save the day is wrong.  We've gotten so used to one in a million gambits succeeding in most blockbuster movies that we don't know what to think when they don't, and that's exactly what this movie is trying to get at.  Finn and Rose failing means that the trip to Canto Bight is a lesson for the characters in service of the theme of the story.

Not just a lesson for Poe, either.  The whole movie preaches the (very basic, yet very important) message that past failure is something to be learned from.  This theme is the through-line of not just the Canto Bight story thread, but the entire movie.  Luke is stuck drowning in his past failures, until he decides to learn from his past while stilling moving forward and undoing the wrongs he has caused.  Kylo Ren wants to discard the past entirely, rather than learn from it, clearly on course by the end of the movie to repeat many of the same mistakes his grandfather did while he was Darth Vader (insert that saying about those not learning from the past being doomed to repeat it).  Rey still holds onto the idea of her parents as space wizard royalty, unable to accept the idea that her past isn't linked to the stories of galactic wizards and space monarchs that she grew up on, until Kylo forces her to confront the truth.

Canto Bight therefore serves to reinforce the thematic undercurrent of the entire movie, as it serves as a failure for Poe, Finn, and Rose to learn from.

So, yeah, it's pretty silly to say that this story thread is pointless.  That doesn't mean it's without problems, however.  And I think this problem is something that a lot of people intuitively picked up on but didn't know how to articulate, hence the vague accusations of it being "pointless" when talking about it.  The main problem here is a problem of character agency.

Damn it, not (secret) agent characters.  Character agency!

For anyone unfamiliar with the term character agency, it simply means how much a character's choices and subsequent actions affect the plot.  Not in the generic, big picture summary of a character (Poe Dameron fights the First Order as a Resistance pilot) but in the minute-to-minute minutia of the story.  Let's stick with Poe Dameron as an example.  We wouldn't say he has character agency because he is a fighter pilot.  Rather, we have to track his actions scene by scene.  In the opening sequence he destroys the turrets bombing the Resistance fleet, then goes against Leia's orders to retreat and destroys a giant spaceship at the cost of all of the Resistance's bombers (as well as many, many casualties).  From there he clashes with Holdo over what to do with the fleet.  He sends off Finn and Rose to their mission, then even stages a friggin mutiny, managing to hold control of the ship until the Canto Bight mission fails and Leia reclaims control of the ship.

I could go on, but I'll stop there.  The main point is that Poe is constantly an active participant in the moment-to-moment happenings of the plot, whether or not his actions produce their intended goals.  Nothing just happens to him, he is always making choices and acting on them in ways that have consequences.  The same can be said for pretty much all the main players of The Last Jedi: Rey, Kylo Ren, Leia (when she's awake), even Luke, as his initial refusal to do anything is itself a choice that produces important consequences.  Basically, character agency is about being an active participant in the plot.  How each character participates tells us about who they are, and the effects their actions have are what (should) drive the plot forward.

The main problem with the Canto Bight story thread is that Finn and Rose don't really have character agency once they get there.

Now, everything leading up to the Canto Bight side quest absolutely does give them agency.  Finn and Rose use their special knowledge as characters to figure out the existence of the tracking beacon and what they need to do to disable it, they choose to act on that knowledge to save the Resistance, they team up with Poe (who still hasn't learned his lesson on the dangers of betting it all on a risky gambit), they go to Canto Bight.  So far so good.  They're making big choices that both reveal about who they are as characters while moving the plot forward.

And even when we get there, it's not so bad because we get some good character moments.  Finn, who lived a suffocating, contained life as a storm trooper is floored by how marvelous Canto Bight looks.  Its glamorous, opulent atmosphere captivates him, but Rose tells him to look between the lines and see what that sort of opulence is built on: war profiteering, exploitation of the poor (including child slaves), and animal cruelty.  She then goes on to say she wants to bring it on down.

Time to seize the means of (galactic star destroyer) production!

Then they get arrested when they are on the cusp of finding the codebreaker, and everything goes downhill.  But it's really, really important to realize something here: getting arrested is not the problem.  It's that they don't actively make meaningful choices for most of the rest of the movie.  Rather, they become passive participants, merely along for the ride as things just sorta happen around them.

When they get arrested, they don't do a single thing to find Benicio Del Toro's hacker character.  No interesting choices or actions that tell us about their characters or push the plot forward.  Instead they miraculously stumble upon this hacker by complete luck and he breaks them all out (without any help from the two of them). After they turn the corner, they do nothing to evade capture from the guards because, surprise, BB-8 has tied up all the guards there!  Which, aside from magically getting them out of danger in a way that doesn't offer Finn and Rose any difficult or interesting choices, makes no sense when BB-8 required saving from Rey in the first movie against literally just one junkyard scavenger when Rey first met him.  So now Finn and Rose have both found their codebreaker and escaped without doing anything noteworthy at all to accomplish either goal.  Nothing here shows us about who they are as people or contributes to everything going on around them.  It's not at all earned.

Then, when they're going through the service tunnels, the only real choice they make is... free a bunch of animals instead of child slaves.  Yikes.  At least they made a choice that pushes the plot forward, I guess?  After that they engage in a cringeworthy Prequel Trilogy-esque chase scene on those space chocobos and are almost captured... until Del Toro and BB-8 bail them out, again.  On the ship Rose does exercise agency by choosing to give her pendant to Del Toro in payment for his services, showing the audience that as a character she is willing to part with things that mean a lot to her if it means protecting those she cares about in the present.  More choices/active participation like that would've been nice.

But then, when Del Toro's character is breaking the shit out of some codes, they get caught.  Again, getting caught is not the problem.  But their subsequent escape is not a result of anything they do.  They only get out because Holdo sacrificed herself to buy time for the escaping Resistance fighters.  They they escape after Finn beats Phasma (who has been rendered pretty unthreatening to the audience after being unceremoniously thrown into the trash heap in The Force Awakens) by being lucky enough to have a rising platform catch him.

But at least Mission: Create A Character As Cool-Looking But Useless As Boba Fett was a smashing success!

So, to sum it all up, the only time Finn and Rose have any character agency between first getting captured by security on Canto Bight to rejoining the Resistance is (1)when they choose to free the space chocobos and ride them through Canto Bight (cringeworthy) and (2)when Rose gives Space Hacker her pendant (actual good character moment).  In that entire span of time, those were the only two times Finn and Rose had meaningful agency.  That's why so many came away feeling this part was pointless, even though it certainly wasn't on a thematic level, a plot level, or on a character level for Poe (and even Finn and Rose in the beginning).

The point of this post isn't to shit on the movie (which, like I said above, I very much enjoyed; I plan to write a post about an aspect I really liked tomorrow).  Rather, I wanted to look at the part most people didn't like and analyze exactly why it didn't work.  Sometimes in discussing movies, we focus on saying why something we loved was awesome or why something we hated was terrible.  There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but I think it can be helpful to also pick apart specific things we thought did or didn't work in any given movie, regardless of whatever opinion we have of it as a whole.

Thanks for reading!

The One Problem I Had with The Force Awakens

This last Thursday I finally finished my first semester of graduate school.  I also saw Episode VII: The Force Awakens that night.

Many people who have written about Episode VII have felt the need to talk about what the original Star Wars trilogy meant to them.  Unlike a lot of the people who attended the premiere, I am not a hardcore fan of the series.  I quite enjoy the original trilogy and would even call A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back great movies, but I don't hold the same level of reverence for the series a lot of people do.  That's not to pretend I'm above geeky obsessions; half of this blog is me picking apart geeky works of fiction that I unapologetically love to obsess over.  It's just that I didn't grow up with Star Wars the way many of the more dedicated fans have, and as a result it doesn't represent more to me than a well-done, exciting trilogy- which, of course, means I still hold it in high regard.

With that said, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie.  I think, other than the dazzling visuals and imaginative universe that are trademarks of the Star Wars universe, what truly made this movie good was its cast of characters.  I loved the introduction of Finn, Rey, and Poe; I loved the way they fit Han Solo, General Leia, and Luke Skywalker in; more than anything, though, I loved the dynamics between these characters and the relationships this film created.

I also very much enjoyed the absence of a character internet writer Seanbaby

perfectly described as "a floppy-eared moon fuck in black face"

That's what made the film for me.  Yes, they cut and pasted a lot of the same story beats from A New Hope.  Considering how much pressure they had from the fans to make movies that "actually felt like Star Wars" I don't blame them for adhering so closely to the original trilogy.  But while the story beats borrow a lot from the beginning of Episode IV, the characters in this movie are very much their own.  Their interactions and journeys are enough, at least to me, to call Episode VII a success.

I've seen a lot of criticisms of the new film, some of which I think are unfair and some of which I think are fair but didn't quite ruin the experience for me.  An example of the former is the complaint that Kylo Ren doesn't feel as intimidating as Darth Vader; the movie makes it clear that an intimidating, inhuman villain like Darth Vader isn't what they are going for in Kylo Ren.  An example of the latter is the complaint about how Han stumbles across Finn and Rey; the level of perfect coincidence is definitely ridiculous and made me cringe as a writer, but as a viewer I was just glad to see Han Solo show up again on the big screen even if what got him there was kinda silly.

But there was one major problem I had with the film that jarred me out of the experience: it had to do with Finn.

In what will be obvious to most people reading this but not quite everyone: SPOILERS AHEAD.  You should only read on if you have already seen the movie.

Finn is introduced to us as a storm trooper who doesn't like violence and hates his role as a storm trooper for the First Order, the successor to the Empire from the original trilogy.  The inner conflict is seen through Finn's body language before we even see his face.  As part of the group sent to Jakku to rough up Max von Sydow's village to find the map that contains the location of Luke Skywalker, Finn sees an ally of his get gunned down right before his very eyes.  This nameless storm trooper's bloody hand desperately flails around as he is killed by one of the resisting villagers, leaving blood-stained finger prints on Finn's helmet.  This kicks off Finn's arc as a storm trooper who hates the violence he finds himself mixed up in.

This is not the look of someone who enjoys being surrounded by killing.

Shortly thereafter Finn helps Poe Dameron, one of the Resistance's top pilots, escape from captivity.  When Poe asks Finn why he is breaking him out, Finn responds with "because it's the right thing to do" after everything he has seen.  It's a well-done moment that begins Finn's arc from storm trooper tired of killing to someone who fights for the Resistance against the evil First Order.  When done right, this character archetype can be one of the most interesting types of characters out there.

Then his arc loses consistency only minutes after Finn breaks Poe out of his cell.

 When Finn takes Poe to the hangar to escape, they end up commandeering a TIE fighter.  Poe, being the pilot he is, takes the controls of the TIE fighter.  That leaves Finn in charge of the turret attached to the back.  When he climbs into the turret seat Finn's struggle is entirely external, trying to figure out how the controls for the turret work.  As soon as he figures out how to work the controls, he gleefully starts killing his former allies as he makes his escape with Poe.

The tone shift is jarring.  In the scene before he stood somberly over his dead ally, clearly upset to see the death of one of his own.  Then, in the very next scene, he's blasting away at the only people he'd known ever since he was kidnapped as a child and forced into the storm trooper army.

The horrors of war are truly too much for one man to bear...

unless that man gets to shoot a totally fucking sweet laser turret!

Speaking of being kidnapped as a child and forced into the First Order army, let's think about that for a moment.  If a large portion of storm troopers are people who were kidnapped as children and forced to become soldiers, that makes Finn's lack of remorse even more weird.  How many people does he kill who are just as scared as he is, but haven't summed up the courage to defect from the First Order?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying he should've not shot at them or that this needed to be a film where he is constantly haunted by unrelenting guilt for the entirety of the film.  What I am saying is that it was off-putting to see Finn, a person who knows the plight of the common storm trooper better than anyone, switch from being shaken by the death of a fellow storm trooper to gleefully shooting at them without even a hint of hesitation.

This trend continues throughout the movie.  We see later how much he fears The First Order, especially when he wants to flee to the outer system to escape their reaches, but we never see much about his connection to his former fellow troops.  Later, when he first picks up Luke's light saber, we see him face down a fellow storm trooper who busts out what looks like a laser chainsaw that calls Finn "traitor!" before initiating an attacking.  I thought this might be a former friend of his, yelling "traitor!" because they feel betrayed by Finn switching sides.  Maybe they would have an emotionally impactful showdown and we'd see Finn feel some sort of inner conflict about fighting former comrades of his.

Unfortunately, it just turns into a normal fight against a generic storm trooper who just happens to have a cool looking weapon.  Finn goes on to keep mowing down storm trooper after storm trooper without a second thought.  Later he helps blow up the Starkiller, which is the size of a small planet.  As someone who used to work there Finn surely had to have people he knew there, but he helps initiate the plan and carry it out without any sort of internal turmoil.

Who needs moral ambiguity and nuance when you have a motherfucking lightsaber?

Again, I'm not saying Finn shouldn't have done anything he did.  The First Order is clearly terrible and, even if the storm troopers might be human beings coerced into fighting for them, any storm trooper who fired a gun at the Resistance were fighting on the side of planet-destroying fascists.  They needed to be dealt with for the good of the galaxy.

But when you have someone who grew up a storm trooper, who knew the human side of them, who understood that many of them probably didn't want to be there but felt like they had no choice, it's strange to see Finn kill wave after wave of them without even blinking.  Even a throwaway line or facial expression to show any hint of conflict would've shown hints of an internal struggle that Finn was trying to overcome.


So that was my biggest problem with Episode VII.  Rather than having a character arc that shows Finn gradually come to terms with the fact that he has to fight former comrades of his, we go from him being shaken up by the death of a comrade to joyfully shooting at other storm troopers in the time it takes some people to take a dump.

Regardless, I still very much enjoyed the movie.  When the beginning text crawl and music started I found myself more excited than I thought I would be.  Despite how early I had woken up that day and how much I had done, I never felt the least bit tired.  The movie raced by and I felt like it ended too soon, despite a run time of two hours and fifteen minutes.

I can't wait to see where this trilogy goes.  This movie set up a lot of promising character arcs and interesting directions for the dynamics between them to grow.  Hopefully the next two movies include more complex character moments for Finn and everyone else. Given what this movie showed me, I have confidence they'll build something wonderful.