Any fan backlash against Rogue One anywhere yet? [SPOILERS]

[eMeM]

The worst recce pilot ever, Snap Wexley, flew over it, convinently compromissing Rebel base's location in the process. I don't think they had any schematics except for their version of a series of aerial photos, luckyly the First Order teaches every stormtrooper how to blow up their superweapon and by pure chance thery happened to have a stormtrooper-janitor in the war room.

[The Romulan Republic]

The worst recce pilot ever, Snap Wexley, flew over it, convinently compromissing Rebel base's location in the process. I don't think they had any schematics except for their version of a series of aerial photos, luckyly the First Order teaches every stormtrooper how to blow up their superweapon and by pure chance thery happened to have a stormtrooper-janitor in the war room.

I am so fucking sick of the "LOL, Finn's a mere janitor so he must be worthless" meme. It reeks of obnoxious classism, and it ignores quite a few things.

1. A soldier might hold many different positions over the course of their career, some more menial than others. As of the start of the film, Finn was clearly well-regarded enough by his superiors to be assigned to Kylo Ren's personal force on a critical and likely highly classified mission. For that matter, their critical, top-secret super weapon probably isn't something they station just anyone on.

2. Finn's position was never specified in the film, beyond that he worked in waste disposal or whatever the term they used was, correct? People snigger, no doubt picturing some stupid loser with a bucket and mop, but on a station like Starkiller Base, the Sanitation Department might number in the thousands or millions of personnel, many of them in fairly high-tech. jobs. For all we know, Finn was an engineer and/or officer.

3. The social contempt for the poor and labourers notwithstanding, working in a menial position does not necessarily make one incompetent. One might simply be held back by unfortunate circumstances.

[Shroom Man 777]

Nobody would give Mick Rowe shit. But Finn I wonder why. (I bet he's famous in the First Order for their UNCLEAN DUTIES series where this one trooper does all sorts of unglorious but nonetheless vital tasks... Space Mick Rowe...)

I bet Finn's badass weapons wielding that saw him last a few seconds against that Kylo was because as waste disposal he probably had to fight CRAB BATTLES against dianogas and whatever nasties routinely crawl in SW trash disposal areas.

(PS I think what you're trying to say is people are being racist shit-eaters. Like a lot of the sci-fi community, as my DJANGOSTRICT 9 UNCHAINED thread on OSF went on about.)

[The Romulan Republic]

I expect he got his hand to hand training the same place that that stormtrooper with the electro-club thing did- the First Order actually trains troops to fight light sabre wielders apparently. Good for them for showing some competence and not going with generic useless lackey grunts.

[Shroom Man 777]

Or weapons-wielding opponents. Maybe primitive forehead ridged, battle'h-wielding kaplah-ing cosmobarbarians in the Unknown Regions.

[eMeM]

Excuse me?
I'm not doubting Finn's combat skills, I just don't think someone working in sanitation (and nothing in the movie points at him being an engineer or officer) on a planet-sized superweapon should know its weakspot.

[The Romulan Republic]

Excuse me?
I'm not doubting Finn's combat skills, I just don't think someone working in sanitation (and nothing in the movie points at him being an engineer or officer) on a planet-sized superweapon should know its weakspot.

Yeah, sorry. I guess I went off on a bit of a tangent their. The Finn/janitor thing really does irk me, as you can probably tell.

But as to him knowing the weak spot... yeah, its probably not something in his department. But its not like he had more than general knowledge really, was it? And if you work somewhere, especially if he was higher up than just a random maintenance man... well, you'll probably hear things, talk to officers in other departments. Maybe have to handle waste disposal in the shield control section of the station or something.

I don't know. I can buy it, more or less. Certainly their are much, much bigger plot weaknesses in the film.

[Shroom Man 777]

What if Finn's sanitation involvement also included sterilizing delicate instrumentation in the super weak spot volatile areas. Like how NASA has to super-clean its satellites before putting them in the rockets.

Vaporizing contaminants assuming they're microbic sized spherical masses of iron!

[Eternal_Freedom]

In fairness, he doesn't know the exact details of how to blow up Starkiller Base. He knows the layout, one of the Resistance officers points out it must have this thermal oscillator thingy and hitting that would cause big problems. Finn says "yep, they do have one, it's here."

That's hardly knowing how to blow the place up, especially since this wasn't a small target, it was a building big enough to fly a starfighter around inside. Maybe Finn, I dunno, had to learn the base layout as part of his waste management duties.

[Elheru Aran]

Maybe Finn, I dunno, had to learn the base layout as part of his waste management duties.

That's as good a rationalization as anything else.

"You will start in Barracks North on Monday. Once you've got that done, run the road-sweeper west till you're in Laboratory Gamma. Be sure and run the Mega-Maid-Vac over the exhaust vent assembly while you're at it..."

[Eternal_Freedom]

I actually intended that to be sarcastic, implying that of course he knows the layout (at least in general terms) he fucking works there.

[Elheru Aran]

Well, it might have been sarcastic but it works. Occam's Razor and all.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Fair point, I just hate it when people complain about Finn knowing how to blow up the uber-secret weapon when that's not what happens. Seriously, do people who bitch about things like that even watch the films they're whining about?

I'm suddenly reminded of a line from a Jack Ryan book: "Jack, it's not what you say it's what people hear."

[Civil War Man]

The whole "Finn was a janitor LOL" meme is actually a strength for him. To add to how others pointed out that working in sanitation means he probably had to know the layout of the place by heart, even if he didn't have to know how things precisely worked, he'd actually be in a good position to have a fairly wide understanding of the base, knowing a little bit about everything instead of a lot about one or two things.

And a lot of that is because of the obnoxious classism that TRR railed against, especially if he was the mop-and-bucket style sanitation worker. There's a reason why there's a common trope about low-level workers like janitors and secretaries being capable of wielding power far above their pay grade. It's because the people above them don't take them seriously, leaving them in a position to know secrets that they otherwise wouldn't be privy to. The snobby Imperial elite would consider Finn to be so far beneath them that they could easily be careless when talking to each other with him nearby, leading to him overhearing critical information that he otherwise wouldn't know. And they wouldn't even register that he's overhearing them, because they consider him to be barely a step up from the furniture.

[Knife]

The worst recce pilot ever, Snap Wexley, flew over it, convinently compromissing Rebel base's location in the process. I don't think they had any schematics except for their version of a series of aerial photos, luckyly the First Order teaches every stormtrooper how to blow up their superweapon and by pure chance thery happened to have a stormtrooper-janitor in the war room.

I am so fucking sick of the "LOL, Finn's a mere janitor so he must be worthless" meme. It reeks of obnoxious classism, and it ignores quite a few things.

1. A soldier might hold many different positions over the course of their career, some more menial than others. As of the start of the film, Finn was clearly well-regarded enough by his superiors to be assigned to Kylo Ren's personal force on a critical and likely highly classified mission. For that matter, their critical, top-secret super weapon probably isn't something they station just anyone on.

Yeah, but there is a limit that strains credibility. Janitor to crack shocktrooper is a bit of a stretch. Now Marine grunts onboard ship, and really any post, pull shit duty to keep them entertained. Some peeps detach from the main units and are used as warm bodies for various details. That I can see, but to go from janitorial to among the first picked for point destruction raid is a bit far.

2. Finn's position was never specified in the film, beyond that he worked in waste disposal or whatever the term they used was, correct? People snigger, no doubt picturing some stupid loser with a bucket and mop, but on a station like Starkiller Base, the Sanitation Department might number in the thousands or millions of personnel, many of them in fairly high-tech. jobs. For all we know, Finn was an engineer and/or officer.

"I'm not Resistance. I'm not a hero. I'm a stormtrooper. Like all of them, I was taken from a family I'll never know. And raised to do one thing. But my first battle, I made a choice. I wasn't gonna kill for them."

One thing. So they should make up their mind what that one thing is. Or adjust the dialogue a bit so he was just on a shit detail as punishment of something.

3. The social contempt for the poor and labourers notwithstanding, working in a menial position does not necessarily make one incompetent. One might simply be held back by unfortunate circumstances.

Here is my problem with Finn, and I do like him as a character but I'm afraid from what I've seen so far that he's badly written and just used as a Mcguffin for Rey. He's a Stormtrooper trained to do one thing but he sucks at it. Really, he is not much of a combatant. Plus the 'addon' things like sanitation just muddle it. Now if they showed the character reflexively rush into every situation blasting things without thinking about it, it would mesh with 'stormtrooper training' and even give opportunity for character growth and some comedic moments.

[Soontir C'boath]

Like how does the force tell you where the catch point is for the trigger in that specific spacecraft when you already need superhuman reactions and perception to do this, and the fire control system is literally turned off? Familiar controls means nothing at that point, they aren't that ship and the T-16 sure didn't have proton torpedoes.

My understanding is that Luke used to bullseye targets of similar size in the T-16 and the T-16 has a similar control interface due to being the same manufacturer. Luke doesn't even think the task is that hard right off the bat and the Alliance certainly didn't think it was a superhuman feat. As for the trigger, come on man it's not unreasonable to assume they gave Luke some quick pointers.

The force is some powerful fuck ass magic, and apparently one highly aware of non living material even when its not directly wielded by a living creature. A bit of flying skill is nothing in comparison to that kind of encompassing power, that can be used by the completely untrained, or someone with perhaps 8 hours of relevant jedi training.

See I think we differ here on how much Luke used the Force. You seem to think it was impossible but for divine intervention, where I think the Force only gave him a small 'bonus to hit' something not much smaller than a wamp rat- a feat he is apparently accomplished at long before he heard of the Force. Even so, surely consciously attempting to use the Force should be more potent than incidental subconscious effort?

Given Red Leader's own torpedoes impacted on the surface and Luke's seemingly looked like they were going to do the same until the crazy shit it pulled, I am going to err on the side that Luke using the force was the main reason they went in. Especially when the torpedoes are functionally different from laser bolts and the targeting computer was off.

The problem with your assumption is it has to mean the torpedoes intuitively know the pilot wants them to go inside the exhaust port. What if Luke just wanted to collapse the port entrance preventing anything to come out of it?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Given that the torpedoea entering the exhaust port was the entire point of the mission, it's entirely probable they were programmed to do that, and Red Leader's timing was a fraction of a second off, hence they hit the surface.

[Knife]

Do you think Luke reached out with the Force to telekenetically guide them or do you think it was a 'combat' precog type thing to know exactly when to shoot?

I've always been of the opinion that it was one of those things Kenobi talked about that the Force will obey your command but sometimes, as Luke said, controls your actions.

[Soontir C'boath]

Given that the torpedoea entering the exhaust port was the entire point of the mission, it's entirely probable they were programmed to do that, and Red Leader's timing was a fraction of a second off, hence they hit the surface.

Then with the targeting computer off, Luke couldn't have known the optimal time to exactly fire the torpedoes unless he used the force. Being accurate in a T-16 Skyhopper doesn't matter if the torpedoes already know what to do then.

[Eternal_Freedom]

To answer both those, I interpret it as the Force telling Luke precisely the right moment to shoot. After all, Red and Gold Leaders expected their runs to have a chance at success if they timed it right with their computers, so needing the Force to TK the torps into the port makes no freaking sense.

[Knife]

To answer both those, I interpret it as the Force telling Luke precisely the right moment to shoot. After all, Red and Gold Leaders expected their runs to have a chance at success if they timed it right with their computers, so needing the Force to TK the torps into the port makes no freaking sense.

Oh I agree, just clarifying what you meant.

[Soontir C'boath]

To answer both those, I interpret it as the Force telling Luke precisely the right moment to shoot. After all, Red and Gold Leaders expected their runs to have a chance at success if they timed it right with their computers, so needing the Force to TK the torps into the port makes no freaking sense.

At the end of the day, I don't mind at all the torpedoes acting as they did and we do have Jango Fett's missiles showing extraordinary AI as well in AOTC. At the same time, it was a pivotal moment with Ben coming in to advise Luke to use the Force instead of the targeting computer, so it's rather inexplicable to me, to downsize it as "pulling it out of its ass" as Kojiro seem to think its doing.

And frankly, if there was a moment where the Force pulls it out of its ass, I would say it happened in this movie with Chirrut having none of the bolts hitting him.

[Shroom Man 777]

Obi-Wan just telling him to "stay cool and zen maaaan" and thus allowing the Force to guide him on the right moment to shoot at that sweet spot is the best thing.

[hunter5]

I was never bothered by Finn being in sanitation. I mean even in modern military a great percentage of your day is cleaning areas you are in charge of.

[Galvatron]

I've always been of the opinion that it was one of those things Kenobi talked about that the Force will obey your command but sometimes, as Luke said, controls your actions.

That would explain a lot of what Rey did in TFA. Even she was amazed at how deftly she piloted the Falcon, so it wouldn't surprise me if the "awakened" Force controlled a great deal of her actions.

It would also explain the ease with which she used the mind trick and held her own with Kylo in single combat. The Force may have been with her to an unprecedented degree. Maybe.