One of the most beloved double acts of the modern Star Wars movies is that between heroic ex-Stormtrooper Finn and ace Resistance pilot Poe Dameron. The pair became fast pals in The Force Awakens and their friendship soon earned them a devoted fanbase who believe the duo should graduate into becoming a couple. It was a little disappointing, then, that Star Wars: The Last Jedi saw them split up for most of the movie.
This wasn’t the original plan, though. Writer/director Rian Johnson revealed to Collider that his first draft of The Last Jedi featured Finn and Poe teaming up to travel to Canto Bight, as opposed to the final version which saw Finn set out on the mission with Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), while Poe handled things with the Resistance. The reason for the change was that Johnson found the scenes between the two characters to be “boring.”
“[He was] hardest to write for, honestly, just in terms of figuring out what their story was going to be was Poe. Luke was obviously the hardest overall, but besides Luke, Poe was the trickiest. Poe is such a clear-cut, simple character in [Episode VII] because he’s Oscar Isaac and he’s the most charismatic man in the universe and he’s just rad.”
Continuing on, he said:
“Honestly, I actually wrote, in the very first draft I wrote of it, Poe went with Finn on the mission to Canto Bight, and the two of them were going to be together on the mission. And it didn’t work at all because those two get along so well and it’d be really boring.”
We’re not sure the legion of FinnPoe fans out there would agree with Johnson that watching John Boyega and Oscar Isaac’s characters getting along well would have been “boring.” Still, we do see what he means here.
From a story point of view, there would have been nowhere for either of them to grow if they were paired with each other again. Placing Rose with Finn, and forcing Poe to work with Amilyn Holdo (Laura Dern), meanwhile, served to let them both become better people and heroes.
This does bring into focus Johnson’s approach to making The Last Jedi, though. J.J. Abrams perhaps aimed more for fun with his outing, hence his pairings of characters who easily got along. Johnson, on the other hand, wanted to create as much drama as possible in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, hence shuffling up the dynamics between the characters. Even if that meant cutting a fan favourite pairing in half.