Appreciate your thoughts, Act on Instinct! I totally think that is fair view.
Off topic, but I read a good comment the other day regarding Finn’s plot in TLJ. A reddit user u/FatherOop, made this suggestion:
My only real issue with it is that, while Finn’s arc is going from just caring about Rey to caring about the larger cause of the Resistance, from the moment he embarks on the quest to Canto Bight, helping the Resistance = helping Rey. His actions are effectively indistinguishable from someone who’s already committed to the Resistance, so the message is not as clear as it could be.
What I think would have worked better (and man do I hate making suggestions like this, but here goes) is if instead of Finn handing the cloaked binary beacon (the thing that lets Rey know their location) to Poe before leaving the Resistance Fleet, Finn actually takes the beacon to Canto Bight. They try and fail to find the Codebreaker (just like in the movie), step out into the balcony (just like in the movie), and Finn reflects something along the lines of
”hey… we’ve failed to find the Codebreaker, and it looks like the Resistance is going to be extinguished. Rose, why don’t we just stay here? Rey will find us here and we’ll all be safe. We could leave everything behind and start a new life.”
And only then does Rose break into her monologue on what she’s fighting for and why they have to defeat the First Order. After that, they get arrested, meet DJ, and the rest of the movie goes on as usual. I feel like just having this moment helps the audience understand that Finn still very much hasn’t joined the Resistance yet, but starts to the more he and Rose connect.
I really like this thought, because it minimally changes the film we got, but it addresses what I think is the heart of the issue with Finn’s story. Where Finn is at the beginning of the versus the end of the film is not as clear as it could have been. I think adding one or two of Finn’s deleted scenes at the beginning of the film, plus making small changes like this, would probably have helped make Finn’s arc clearer.