A lot happened between then and the events that led up to The Force Awakens. The First Order grew for sure. It made itself into a looming threat to the New Republic and then struck out in full force, scarring the galaxy forever. However, the First Order is a combustible mix of the old and the new. Leaders like the frenetic fascist General Armitage Hux and emotionally unchained Kylo Ren are new to the party; leaders like Captain Moden Canady have been around since the glory days.
When the First Order dreadnought the Fulminatrix arrives in all its splendor to finish off the pitiful Resistance forces in the opening minutes of The Last Jedi, Captain Canady is on the bridge with the glowering presence of a man who hates working for his younger and less experienced boss. Canady is surrounded by rookies. You get the sense that he spends his evenings staring into a bottle of space booze, reminiscing about the days when oppressing the galaxy was done right by tougher people. He’s not wrong. Sure, sure…let’s be clear…the First Order are the bad guys, but there is something interesting about the ranks of the First Order being filled in part by an older group at odds with the inexperienced, one-note upstarts they’ve been forced to work amongst.
Every fiber of Captain Canady’s being, excellently portrayed by Mark Lewis Jones, is that of a more skilled leader resigned to his position and, eventual, fate. His grimace seconds before he dies is one of the finest character moments in all of Star Wars. It’s a galactic case of the Mondays.
In the heat of the moment, you can almost forgive yourself for rooting for a man who has spent his entire career on the wrong side of the fight. Moden Canady was a proud and dutiful commander of a Star Destroyer during the Galactic Civil War. He kept his allegiance to the core principles of the Empire and transferred his loyalty to the rising First Order. You have to think that he understood where the likes of Rae Sloane and, General Hux’s father, Brendol Hux were coming from, and where they wanted to go. A chance to rebuild the Empire and serve again? Check and check. Unfortunately for Canady, it was not as easy as that.
Canady’s final moments in life were a poignant insight into the true state of the First Order and a biting comment on the evil buried within. It was mindless, chaotic, and without honor. (Yes, again, the Empire was nefarious. The bad guys for sure, but, to many in the working class ranks of the system, it was an honorable career.) Canady wasn’t just an old cranky guy tired of working, who felt he was surrounded by eejits. He was surrounded by them.
The younger ranks of the First Order were arrogant, ineffectual, and convinced of their own superiority with no merit. They were evil for evil’s sake and their leaders were driven by fear. In The Force Awakens, General Hux rages and postulates. He’s so over the top, it almost devolves into parody. But as The Last Jedi opens up and Captain Canady watches the advantage of a perfectly good surprise attack vanish at the hands of one puny fighter, we learn along with him, that the First Order is all rage and no substance. Which makes them even more dangerous: they don’t even comprehend boundaries to their actions. To someone like Canady, removing the Resistance might just mean the First Order can settle into a nice, comfortable place of control over the galaxy. What he feels is needed is structure to a galaxy with no true center any more. General Hux won’t stop with the Resistance. His fear will lead to the world being burned down.
So, Captain Canady’s glares, grunts, and muttered rebukes play out in several directions. On the surface, it’s highly entertaining office politics that stretch beyond a galaxy far, far away and land in your job’s conference room. But on a deeper level, it’s a look into a rising power that has no checks and balances. As the last Resistance bomber races toward its target, Canady’s precious dreadnaught, Canady screams for it to be destroyed but it’s less of a command and more of a hope. Canady is doomed, and he knows it. Years of proud service, experience, and knowledge mean nothing. As the fires race toward him, the look on his face displays a bevy of emotions but settles on one thought: “Of course, I’m about to die. I work for idiots.” Grimace in peace, Captain Moden Canady. You deserve it.
88
Rose, Finn, and redefining the hero
Star Wars: Episode VIII—The Last Jedi
Writer: Rian Johnson
Director: Rian Johnson
One was a freshly minted hero of the Resistance who had never wanted to be one. The other wanted to believe in heroes when she was about to become one herself. The journey of Finn and Rose is really about finding yourself and becoming something bigger than you thought you could be. It’s about stepping out beyond your self-imposed limitations and finding the strength you believed you lacked. It’s about being forged by fire and emerging as something new. And this big journey begins in the most wonderfully small way. Finn and Rose meet as a hero running away and an awkward flight tech crying alone. From there, they become the new core of the modern rebellion.
Stormtrooper FN-2187 didn’t become Finn of the Resistance because he wanted to save the galaxy. Initially, Finn wanted to save himself. Once a prized cadet of the First Order, he showed early signs of being uncomfortable with the idea of being a faceless blunt weapon of the organization. (Perhaps that led to his time as a janitor. Afraid to shoot? Clean a latrine!) His first taste of battle left him shattered and unable to carry out his duties. Finn’s half-cocked crazy plan to spring Poe Dameron from the Star Destroyer Finalizer was based on fear of being found out, not on some overwhelming change in morals. He was running away.
It was while running away that Finn made his connection with Rey, his second, more powerful motivation. While his devotion to Rey was admirable and the key step in moving him closer to the better person he would eventually become, Finn’s desires remained selfish and reckless. His plan to return to Starkiller Base and knowledge of how to take it down isn’t a lie. In fact, it works, but the hail mary pass to win the game puts every member of the Resistance at risk and, as Han points out, the entire galaxy as well. And that hadn’t occurred to Finn. They’d just wave their hands around and use the Force…or something. All that mattered to him was saving Rey. When he meets Rose, Finn still has a one-track mind. “Where’s Rey?” he demands to know, and he is prepared to leave the Resistance…again.
Rose Tico was always about others. She and her sister Paige joined up to fight the First Order because they experienced firsthand what they did to their planet and people. Though tremendously smart and technically inclined, Rose was a worker bee. She accepted a smaller role, quietly serving the greater good in her drab engineer garb while looking up to others. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, mind you, just that Rose was meant for more.
Her sister, serving in a similar fashion as a simple bomber gunner, died serving others. They both looked up to Finn. His accomplishments, though true and important, had grown beyond the reality of what he was. So, when lil’ Rose Tico stumbles through her introduction to Finn, engagingly proclaiming that “doing talking” is tough for her, we’re introduced to a brand-new kind of Star Wars hero: the “every person” capable of changing the course of history.
The meeting of Rose and Finn is a deliciously layered moment. Finn is immediately faced with the raw emotions of someone grieving. Rose has lost her sister. That itself scares Finn almost as much as the arrival of Snoke’s First Order flagship. (By the way, in his haste to rescue Rey and leave, Finn fails to alert the Resistance of the Supremacy and other First Order toys. That’s how focused on himself he is.) Finn knows he’s a fraud and fears being found out. Hell, even the late, great Han Solo told him that he would be found out back on Takodana. Rose is immediately faced with the inspirational image of a true hero. In a short amount of time, the actions of Finn have already been packaged up as myth within the ranks of the Resistance. Finn—or the Finn as Rose says—helps Rose make sense of Paige’s death. At least, she thinks so in the first few moments. But never meet your heroes! Rose quickly sees that true image of a frightened man.