Hey Urban Acolyte Family.
My name is Prince, and I am an Urban Acolyte.
In this episode of Star Wars Chats, I want to talk about how Finn’s lightsaber scenes
were cut from the Force Awakens.
As it turns out, Making Star Wars leaked an early version of The Force Awakens on their
website about 6 months before the Force Awakens debuted in theaters later that year.
The first cut of the film, before the reshoots, was very different from the final version
that we saw.
In that version, Finn’s character was different.
Some of the scenes that we saw were different, and I think THAT version of the film would
give rise to some of the same questions, but it might also make us a bit more sure about
some other questions—one of those being Finn’s role in the new saga.
So the first BIG change from the early cut occurs on Takodana when Han and Chewie take
Finn, Rey, and BB8 to Maz’s castle in order to locate Leia and the Resistance.
Now something to keep in mind is that Han didn’t know where Leia was located.
Leia started the Resistance at the end of Bloodline while she was still living on Hosnian
Prime, so it sounds like Leia left for D’Qar around the time she separated from Han which
came after Ben joined Snoke and the First Order.
Okay, now remember how they got to Takodana and Finn decided to skip out on the mission?
He decided to leave with Captain Ithano for the Outer Rim—well, that didn’t happen.
Finn stayed with Rey.
Unkarr Plutt came to confront her about stealing the Millennium Falcon.Finn stepped in to help
her, but Chewie rescued both of them.
So Unkarr Plutt still had his arm ripped out of socket by our favorite Wookie.
Now since Finn never left with Captain Ithano, Rey was never alone to hear the Skywalker
lightsaber call out to her.
Finn was never outside loading the cargo ship to see the Hosnian Prime be destroyed by Starkiller
Base.
In this version, Finn and Rey saw beams from Starkiller Base.
Later Maz and Han also saw the weapon firing in the sky, so Maz takes them all down to
the storage area below the castle cantina.
Now recall in a previous video that I reported on the Forceback Vision.
In that video, I said that Maz actually may have stolen the Skywalker lightsaber from
Kylo Ren.
Many people called it “a nice theory” in the comments, but the thing is this—
it actually was not a theory.
JJ Abrams confirmed in the Force Awakens director commentary that one version of the Forceback
vision was going to tell the history of the lightsaber and how Maz acquired it.
So in this version, Maz had everyone join hands as she told them how the lightsaber
came into her possession.
Bodies are on the ground.
Luke turns up.
Then we see Artoo-Detoo upset as his master leaves him.
We then see a reprise of the hand taking the lightsaber and Nakka is revealed.
We then see a peasant dropping the lightsaber and starting a fire.
He panics and runs, but decides to go back for the lightsaber, saving it.
We then see a local trader walking away with the weapon.
The trader sells the sword to a prosperous man.
Then there’s a battle raging and the sword is being used by the clan against the Seven.
They are all dead and we see Kylo Ren approaching Rey.
The Seven are looting and Maz takes an object (Rey?) from the battlefield.
The Flashback ends, and Maz presents the lightsaber to the group.
Finn is attracted to the lightsaber, and he wants it.
Rey, on the other hand, is repelled by the lightsaber, and she runs away into the woods,
as we saw in the final version.
Now in Rey’s Forceback vision, we saw a battle where Kylo Ren killed a clan warrior.
In this earlier version, there is a battle between a group referred to as the clan and
another group specifically called The Seven.
In the Concept artwork, there are several pictures of what is likely concept art for
the Knights of Ren where this group is called “the Seven.”
It sounds like these clan warriors may have ties to some of the groups from Jedha that
we saw on Rogue One.
One of them was wielding the Skywalker lightsaber in battle against what may have been the Knights
of Ren.
For some reason Maz was present at the conclusion of the battle, and she managed to retrieve
the lightsaber before one of the Knights of Ren could get it.
I believe that the Seven, or the Knights of Ren, were actually trying to retrieve the
Skywalker lightsaber, because in this version of the film, it was actually the lightsaber
that contained the key to locating Luke Skywalker on Ach-To.
Now we know what happened next—the First Order came to Takodana, and Kylo Ren took
Rey as his prisoner.
The only thing that was reported regarding Finn is that Maz gave him the lightsaber,
after she used her own Force abilities against stormtroopers to get them out of the basement.
Finn fought off the stormtroopers using the lightsaber, and Maz was impressed by his skill
with the lightsaber.
Now after that battle, in the Force Awakens novel, Maz told Finn that she saw the eyes
of a warrior in him, but those lines were not in the film.
So what we would have seen was Finn have some sort of instant connection with the lightsaber
and a desire to use it in battle.
We didn’t see that at all in the final cut of the film.
We also did not get the opportunity to see him redeemed with Maz calling him a warrior
after initially saying he had the eyes of a person who wants to run.
This raises some questions about how Finn was presented, especially after learning his
background as one of the top stormtroopers to come through the First Order’s training
program, but I will hold off on those questions and explanations until I’ve presented everything
from the early cut.
So you might also recall a shot from the trailers where Maz Kanata is seen handing the Skywalker
lightsaber to Leia.
See, originally Maz was going to leave with the Resistance and go to D’Qar.
Once there, she would speak with Leia and tell her that Finn should be given the lightsaber.
At this point, Han gives his plan for how they will slip past the First Orders shield
defenses on Starkiller Base, and Leia gives Finn the lightsaber to take with him.
On Starkiller Base, Finn opens up about his past as a First Order Stormtrooper to Han
and Chewie, and he tells them why he defected.
It’s basically the whole,”I was raised to do one thing, but I chose not to fight
for the First Order” after he saw what they did to the Pilgrims of Tuanul Village on Jakku.
Now this is another difference from the final cut because Han, Chewie, and Finn have to
fight their way to the control panel to take down the shields to the base.
Finn used the lightsaber and not a blaster to get by the stormtroopers that they encountered.
When they get to the control panel, Finn actually does know the codes to take down the shields,
so there was none of this,”well, I worked in sanitation, I don’t know what I’m doing,
I only came to rescue Rey” stuff— the dude is obviously in charge and he knows what
to do.
They didn’t need to use Captain Phasma because recall that Captain Phasma was originally
not planned to be an important character.
As a matter of fact, Captain Phasma came from concept art for the Jedi-Killer, which was
who Kylo Ren started out as in the Michael Arndt treatment.
Kathleen Kennedy liked the design and wanted to keep it in the movie.
So for people feeling underwhelmed with Captain Phasma—it’s because she was basically
thrown into the movie at the last minute— just like that scene with her taking down
the shields and getting tossed into a trash compactor.
See, as I was saying, Finn knew the codes to take down the shield, but when he entered
them, he found out that the codes had been changed.
With time running out, he had no other choice but to destroy the generator powering the
sheilds’ control panel with the lightsaber.
Now this isn’t at all related to Finn, but the report on Making Star Wars describes a
scene during the aerial attack where Leia had a ship called “The Sledgehammer” basically
ram one of the First Order Star Destroyers to take them out.
Now we actually saw one of the hammerhead ships do this in Rogue One, so, if we’d
seen that, well, we would now know where Leia got the idea, since she was present at the
Battle of Scariff.
Okay, now I’m going to jump ahead to after Han’s death and the confrontation with Kylo
Ren.
I’ve not yet seen the video on Geekdom 101’s channel where we talked about if Rey deserves
to be called “Mary Sue,” but I mentioned the fight during our conversation—it may
or may not have made the final cut.
What I say is that in the original version, Rey does not beat Kylo Ren.
Finn fights Kylo Ren, and he is injured.
Rey takes up the lightsaber and they basically fight to a draw.
Starkiller Base begins to literally rip apart at the seams and an earthquake separates Rey
and Finn from Kylo Ren.
The last shot makes it unclear as to whether or not he actually survives—similar to how
Vader is seen spinning off into space at the end of A New Hope.
Of course Chewie rescues both Rey and Finn and they all leave aboard the Millennium Falcon.
Back on D’Qar, they discover that the lightsaber actually contained the key to finding Luke,
as I stated earlier, and Rey leaves for Ach-To while Finn has his injuries treated at the
Resistance base on D’Qar.
Now this leaves the question—the first version of this film obviously showed Finn having
a connection with the lightsaber and skills using it.
Is this completely because of his training, or is Finn a child of the Force?
It is possible to be proficient at lightsaber combat without being gifted.
We recently saw Sabine Wren train with the darksaber on the most recent episode of Star
Wars Rebels, and later in season 3, we will see a lightsaber fight between two non-force
users in Sabine Wren and Gar Saxon.
Contrary to what some people would like to believe—Finn is not the comedic relief of
the saga, and he’s no minor character.
From the very beginning, the Michael Arndt treatment had two heroes, Kira, a loner who
was an expert pilot and mechanic with fighting skills, and Sam who was described as “pure
charisma.”
The Kira character has pretty much stayed intact with the exception of her not previously
having training in the Force or possessing a lightsaber, but Sam went from a smuggler
like Han Solo to a stormtrooper raised by the First Order who defects and must carve
out a new identity.
So the question is why change Finn?
Why not leave him as we saw him?
Well, for this, I am going with what John Boyega said regarding Finn on his Instagram
account.
He said that the hardest thing about playing Finn was having to play scared all of the
time.
I mean think about shooting a film one way with Finn running around carving through Stormtroopers
with Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber…like you’re some kind of Jedi…and then you’ve
got to go back and reshoot this entire story as literally a completely different character.
What John Boyega went on to say is that if we had seen the Finn that I’ve just described,
there would be no room for character development.
I mean where else can Finn go if he’s basically already a Jedi with no training?
Think about what people are saying about Rey being overpowered or a Mary Sue?
Can you imagine the nerdrage from the fans if we had two completely overpowered characters?
“How can Rey use the mind trick better than Obi Wan with no training?”
“How can Finn fight with a lightsaber better than Luke in Empire Strikes Back?”
Also—remember that I said Rey fought Kylo Ren to a draw?
If Rey has been training with melee weapons for most of her life, and she’s supposed
to be a better fighter than Finn, it would completely overshadow Rey’s abilities if
we saw 15 minutes of Finn mowing down stormtroopers with a lightsaber, and then see Rey struggle
with Kylo Ren for two minutes…even if it is Kylo freaking Ren who just shrugged off
a shot from Chewie’s bowcaster…I mean, seriously, if anyone is a Mary Sue, it’s
Chewie’s bowcaster…that thing is like a wookie bazooka or something.
So there you have it, folks.
Finn was going to be a lightsaber wielding bad mofo in the early version of the Force
Awakens.
His lightsaber scenes were removed, and the character was toned down so that all of the
attention would be on Rey.
I’ve already reported rumors that Finn will emerge from his coma in Episode 8, and he
will be the FN-2187 who was the leader of his fire team and one of the best stormtroopers
to ever come out of Hux’s training program.
Will we see him do cool stuff with a lightsaber, and will he show any signs of his force sensitivity?
That we will have to wait and find out on December 15, 2017 when Episode 8 hits theatres.
But what do you all think about the Finn that we didn’t get to see?
Would you have rather seen this version of Finn in the Force Awakens, or do you think
it’s better so that he can be even more of a badass in Episodes 8 and 9?
Also, do you think that by having him spend that much time fighting with the lightsaber
that it would have been obvious that he was born a Child of the Force?
Let me know your thoughts down in the comment section below, and I’ll be checking back
to see what you have to say.
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Finn being a Child of the Force or this other video about the fan theory that Rey and Finn
were both going to be Luke’s padawan learners.
Well that’s all I’ve got for this video.
Thanks for watching.
Y’all Keep on Breathing, and May the Force of Others be with You….Always.