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The first episode of every Star Wars trilogy gives us a hapless and clumsy character to lighten the mood. This had first happened in A New Hope quite by accident with the infamous scene in which the Imperial Stormtrooper bumps his head when passing through a doorway (see here).

This becomes a theme however with the next two trilogies released. In The Phantom Menace we have Jar Jar Binks who has been banished from his underwater city due to his clumsiness and who literally runs in to Qui-Gon Jinn. Jar Jar’s haphazard clumsiness and buffoonery has been the source of so much negative criticism that it barely warrants any more mention. It is worth mention however, that the theme was (rather bravely) continued in The Force Awakens with the character of Finn.

Finn like Jar Jar has left his home, but rather than being banished he escapes from there because he quite simply does not fit in. Like Jar Jar he is considered to be defective and a version of his kind which is not up to standard and which has somehow malfunctioned.

Finn has a more sympathetic and tragic backstory than Jar Jar which is probably why no one objected so much to him continuing the trend. Finn’s panicky escape from the First Order is offset by the cooler demeanour of Poe Dameron and as such the two work together as a double act and Finn’s pinic-ridden moment of talking to himself during the escape sets the tone for his evolving character. This panicky and ill-coordinated Stormtrooper was no doubt inspired somewhat by the clumsy Stormtrooper from A New Hope and by the accident prone Jar Jar Binks who also talks to himself when he’s scared: ‘Better dead in here than in the core…Whatta mesa saying’, he says to himself when Qui-Gon gets permission from Boss Nass to take Binks with him.

Finn is incredibly accident prone, from his thurst driving him to an indignified moment of sharing foul water with the Happobore beast and to his running into Rey (as Jar Jar had run into Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan) at the exact and ill-timed moment when BB-8 and Rey are being chased down by the First Order, just as the Trade Federation had been advancing literally over the top of the Jedi. Finn, like Jar Jar before him, accidentally and unintentionally gets himself right in the middle of the action during a chance and comedic meeting in the middle of an evolving chase scene.

Another parallel between Finn and Jar Jar’s accident prone adventures happens early on in the movies when they find themselves first entering an unfamiliar settlement on a desert planet. The first thing Finn does is to drink the rank water at the Happobore’s trough and the first thing that Jar Jar does is to step in some ‘poodoo’. Such parallels suggest strongly that their characters fulfil comparable comedic roles within the films. They are both naïve, socially inept, accident prone, clumsy and completely out of their depth.

Both of these unhygienic incidents then lead almost immediately on to the two protagonists having an incident regarding a misunderstanding over a more or less accidental theft. Jar Jar can’t stop himself from grabbing a fish-chicken from a stall at the Mos Espa market without realising that he is going to have to pay for it which leads him then to get himself in to a fight with the champion pod racing Dug Sebulba. Similarly, just after the Happobore incident Finn finds himself confronted by Poe’s lovable astromech BB-8 who accuses him of having stolen Poe’s Jacket which leads him then to get hit with a stick by Rey. The sequence of events in both movies run side by side almost to the point of formula.

Arguably, the unpopularity of Jar Jar Binks led to his being given a smaller and more dignified role in subsequent movies in the trilogy. In the case of Finn however it had worked much better and his character continues to provide comic relief throughout The Last Jedi, from his breaking out of his bacta suit and walking around dripping water all over the place during the middle of a battle (as almost a parody of the more sombre Bacta Tank scene in The Empire Strikes Back), to his first interactions with Rose which lead him to get stunned and not being able to feel his tongue (a direct reference back to Jar Jar getting his tongue stuck and numbed by the power couplings of Anakin’s Pod Racer in The Phantom Menace).

So, in brief, the clumsy Stormtrooper in A New Hope had been an accident that became iconic. The clumsiness of Jar Jar Binks in The Phantom Menace had been widely reviled, whilst Finn as the clumsy, sidekick ex-stormtrooper in the third Trilogy has so far worked much better.

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All Star Wars action figures, vehicles, collectibles and Star Wars toys shown on this website are the 3.75 inch scale and from my own private Star Wars collection unless otherwise stated. Where possible original vintage accessories have been used but in some instances I have placed Kenner Star Wars figures with either reproduction weapons and accessories or for Hasbro figures close approximations have been used. This is mostly the case for modern Star Wars lightsabers where the correct item can be very difficult to identify on some ocassions. Vintage Star Wars action figures are shown with their original weapon or accessory when I have them. When a vintage Kenner action figure is shown with an accessory which is not original I have tried to point this out where possible.

All of the Star Wars action figures shown were purchased second hand, usually incomplete, and in bulk. They have been reunited with their original weapons and accessories where we could get hold of them.

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