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Colin Trevorrow no longer directing Episode IX.

He was sent to the waiting room where he had hours to contemplate his situation. I once had to wait in a line for 6 hours just to confirm my address, medical info. And 3 or 4 hours to get a wisdom tooth pulled. I guess governments don't run on customer service.

So FN-2187 walked in and signed the roster, noticing he was number 82 on the list. He sits down and reads a magazine. After 30 minutes he hears them call number 12.

He could only put up with it so long...

They didn't want to include this scene due to pacing issues.
Could have been a scene on par with the Zootopia DMV scene, though.
 
We also are not entirely sure how long he walked in the desert. Only that it was a long ways, and he eventually stripped off most of his stormtrooper armor. Stormtrooper armor does have some survival gear on it, but he likely used that on the walk. It does have a cooling system, though it may not work without the helmet being on. Or it doesn't have the power to work for long deployments, as he may not have gone back to charge it up after his earlier mission.
 
Show me where it says he doesn't go to reconditioning. As far as I can tell, that's just an assumption people are making. Do I have to read the novelization to get that piece of information?
there is no assumption at all. It's common sense for anyone who watched the movie and paid attention to events.
 
We also are not entirely sure how long he walked in the desert. Only that it was a long ways, and he eventually stripped off most of his stormtrooper armor. Stormtrooper armor does have some survival gear on it, but he likely used that on the walk. It does have a cooling system, though it may not work without the helmet being on. Or it doesn't have the power to work for long deployments, as he may not have gone back to charge it up after his earlier mission.

Really speaking it was probably only a matter of hours. Rey & BB-8 arrived at Nima Outpost that same morning, which is when Unkar Plutt recognised the droid for what it was. He sent his goons after Rey as soon as she walked away and they were accosting her just as Finn showed up. So yeah, all of that was most likely before noon.


Anyway, as for Finn going to reconditioning: I don't see how anyone can reasonably make that case. Surely had he gone to reconditioning he would have been reconditioned, no? And that would be the end of the movie.
 
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^I was just about the say that. I would assume he would have been reconditioned back into a loyal Stormtrooper if he had actually gone to reconditioning.
 
^Indeed one can go one more logical step forward and presume that half the point of running away at all is precisely to avoid being reconditioned. I think it's safe to assume it's not a pleasant process.
 
^ I addressed this in my first posts on the matter. Finn's different somehow from the usual trooper. Whatever processes they use to keep troopers in line don't work on him. GIven that, it's entirely possible (though, yes, it would seem unlikely) that reconditioning will have no effect on him. Beside's, Phasma's line is clear: he was sent. So, we have to fill in some blanks to explain things on our own in any case. That is the whole issue. Why does Phasma say that for all she knows he went, if we're not supposed to assume he went? Are their records so poor? Couldn't the writers just have had her check and say that he never showed up, at least? If it really doesn't matter, then why bring it up at all? For that matter, why aren't they all just going, "Blah, blah, blah," in some incomprehensible alien language?
 
Really speaking it was probably only a matter of hours. Rey & BB-8 arrived at Nima Outpost that same morning, which is when Unkar Plutt recognised the droid for what it was. He sent his goons after Rey as soon as she walked away and they were accosting her just as Finn showed up. So yeah, all of that was most likely before noon.


Anyway, as for Finn going to reconditioning: I don't see how anyone can reasonably make that case. Surely had he gone to reconditioning he would have been reconditioned, no? And that would be the end of the movie.
Not to mention, we did not see him do it. We saw him get reprimanded by Phasma, told to go to reconditioning, then he is rescuing Poe instead. To me and everyone I know who I've talked to about this in the last couple of days, the consensus was the same. He skipped reconditioning and rescued Poe. Not one person saw it any other way, because that is what we are explicitly shown in the movie.

Why does Phasma say that for all she knows he went, if we're not supposed to assume he went? Are their records so poor? Couldn't the writers just have had her check and say that he never showed up, at least? If it really doesn't matter, then why bring it up at all?
To show as far as they are concerned the matter is dealt with? That as far as those characters are concerned they feel the Finn matter has been dealt with and doesn't need to be worried about? To lay out how surprised they will be when they find out that is NOT what he did?
 
^ I addressed this in my first posts on the matter. Finn's different somehow from the usual trooper. Whatever processes they use to keep troopers in line don't work on him. GIven that, it's entirely possible (though, yes, it would seem unlikely) that reconditioning will have no effect on him. Beside's, Phasma's line is clear: he was sent.
Just because he was sent somewhere doesn't mean he actually went there.

The CEO of Paramount, the company who produces the Star Trek, Mission Impossible, and Cloverfield movies, is pissed that JJ Abrams is doing another Star Wars movie. The last guy who was in charge was also pissed when he did The Force Awakens.
 
Not to mention, we did not see him do it. We saw him get reprimanded by Phasma, told to go to reconditioning, then he is rescuing Poe instead.
Just for the sake of being pedantic: Phasma actually just tells him to report to her division. The bit about him then being sent to reconditioning is revealed later in an exchange between Phasma & Hux.
So he did go to the division where he was evaluated and then sent on to reconditioning. It is presumably at this point he thought to himself "bugger that" and went and got Poe instead.
 
Just for the sake of being pedantic: Phasma actually just tells him to report to her division. The bit about him then being sent to reconditioning is revealed later in an exchange between Phasma & Hux.
So he did go to the division where he was evaluated and then sent on to reconditioning. It is presumably at this point he thought to himself "bugger that" and went and got Poe instead.
How I've always watched it.
 
Yeah, I've already cited that as one of the possibilities, like, several times already.
So what you're proposing is that FN-2187 (whom we just saw have serious second thoughts about this whole "being a Stormtrooper" thing, profound enough that it *caused a disturbance in the force* strong enough to briefly draw Kylo's attention from 20 foot away) obediently went to get his brain vacuumed. After which he just decides to free the prisoner and run away all the same?

And the point of this redundant line of reasoning is what exactly? I mean are you really so dense you must be spoon-fed every last minute detail, with nothing that's blatantly implicit having even the slightest relevance?
 
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So what you're proposing is that FN-2187 (whom we just saw have serious second thoughts about this whole "being a Stormtrooper" thing, profound enough that it *caused a disturbance in the force* strong enough to briefly draw Kylo's attention) obediently went to get his brain vacuumed. After which he just decides to free the prisoner and run away all the same?

And the point of this redundant line of reasoning is what exactly? I mean are you really so dense you must be spoon-fed every last minute detail, with nothing that's blatantly implicit having even the slightest relevance?
I'll just paraphrase and condense what I already said up front when I brought this up to begin with.

We have a palette of choices to choose from to decide what it is that actually happened, and some of these choices are mutually exclusive, with radically different implications for what had transpired. That's not a narrative. So many events in the film depend on Finn's defection, so it's not like this is a trivial or esoteric point.

As to what I'd propose, I already made one proposal that involved adding only a few more seconds to the film that would have cleared it right up, but having mulled it over I think I'd prefer something like the following.

Finn could have been getting escorted by a couple of troopers to reconditioning when he decides to turn. He has to kill them both which upsets him all the more; they were also his brothers in the corps. Fortunately no one notices. Everybody else thinks he's getting taken of, right? He hides the bodies. He's in a hurry to rescue Poe not just because he's worried about getting caught doing that, but because he's worried about the bodies being found and it getting reported that he never showed up for reconditioning. I don't believe there's any evidence that something like this didn't happen, and given everything that's been said arguably it's quite believable that something like it did. Phasma after all seems to believe he was going to get taken care of in reconditioning. Something happened to intervene. So, why not something like this?
 
I'll just paraphrase and condense what I already said up front when I brought this up to begin with.

We have a palette of choices to choose from to decide what it is that actually happened, and some of these choices are mutually exclusive, with radically different implications for what had transpired. That's not a narrative. So many events in the film depend on Finn's defection, so it's not like this is a trivial or esoteric point.

As to what I'd propose, I already made one proposal that involved adding only a few more seconds to the film that would have cleared it right up, but having mulled it over I think I'd prefer something like the following.

Finn could have been getting escorted by a couple of troopers to reconditioning when he decides to turn. He has to kill them both which upsets him all the more; they were also his brothers in the corps. Fortunately no one notices. Everybody else thinks he's getting taken of, right? He hides the bodies. He's in a hurry to rescue Poe not just because he's worried about getting caught doing that, but because he's worried about the bodies being found and it getting reported that he never showed up for reconditioning. I don't believe there's any evidence that something like this didn't happen, and given everything that's been said arguably it's quite believable that something like it did. Phasma after all seems to believe he was going to get taken care of in reconditioning. Something happened to intervene. So, why not something like this?
Because it feels unnecessary to me. Not saying it couldn't be explained in some what better, but I also don't see what scene adds to Finn's story, as missing troopers would have been identified by Phasma as well.
 
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