hydrospanner said:
I thought it was pretty obvious that Rey is the protogontist.
Bingowings said:
Rey is definitely the lead, in the way Luke was. Finn is more like Leia in being a potential love interest and if the Poe Dameron fan theories come to anything it’s a potential triangle with Finn as the critical vertex.
The protagonist has a desire that they actively pursue throughout the course of the story.
Example: Luke wants to travel to Alderaan with Obi-Wan and learn the ways of The Force.
Example: Luke wants to train with Yoda, to become a Jedi Knight like his father before him.
The protagonist also faces a critical choice at the start of the last act.
Example: Obi-Wan dies, but Luke carries on and decides to join the Rebel attack on the Death Star.
Example: Luke defies Yoda’s warning, and aborts his training to run off to Cloud City to save his friends.
In TFA, Rey starts out as the main character. The first act places her in her ordinary world, at home on Jakku.
At the Act I climax, she flees for her life when the First Order attacks, and suddenly she finds herself entangled in the main plot. She eventually has a goal – to get BB-8’s map to The Resistance. So far, so good.
(Extra Credit: the very best kind of protagonist has both an external goal AND an internal goal they are trying to achieve. In the original Star Wars, Luke’s external goal was to get R2-D2 and the Death Star plans to the Rebels. His internal goal was to learn the ways of The Force from Obi-Wan. This is superior story design to TFA, in which Rey’s only goal was an external one…to deliver BB-8 and the map. Someone might be tempted to interject that Rey’s internal goal was to “make friends” or “realize her Jedi powers” or something like that, but she 1) turned down Han’s offer and wanted to return home and 2) she ran away from the vision and otherwise never actively struggled to increase her force abilities until the last 20 minutes of the movie or whatever.)
Anyway, the story then moves into Act II, and this is where “Rey is the main character” starts to fall apart. Han and Chewie take her (and Finn) to Maz’s castle, but then they are attacked by the First Order, and Rey is captured and taken prisoner. From this point forward, she is no longer the main character. She has no idea what Starkiller base is, or whether or not BB-8 made it to The Resistance. She just woke up in some prison, and her goal is to escape. Her story becomes a subplot. She makes no crisis decision heading into the last Act, nothing. From the time she is kidnapped by Kylo, she is no longer the main character in the movie.
So who is? Well, Finn makes a crisis decision to put everyone in the galaxy’s lives at risk so he can reunite with this broad he just met the day before. Han makes a crisis decision to go and save his son. The lot of them are all actively trying to blow up Starkiller before The First Order kills them. And so on.
The plot is an incoherent mess, and imperialscum was unequivocally right with his comment. There is no main character. The script looks to be an amalgamation of several different concepts, written or influenced by various people. Together they turned into a Frankenstein’s Monster, which is what happens when the entire production doesn’t unite behind one singular vision.
TV’s Frink said:
Hilarious.
You are entitled to your opinion on the film, no question, but when it comes to screenwriting knowledge, you don’t seem to have any, so maybe it would be best if you listened more and talked less when these topics come up.