thewesterwoman:

You know, as much as there is a time and a place for snarky brooding anti-heroes who go around making angry faces and mouthing off to every authority figure in the world, I finally watched TFA and honestly…I really liked how all the heroes were just so nice and good and the sort of protagonists you’d totally take home to meet your family? It was extremely refreshing.

Rey had no reason to save BB8 and plenty of reasons to ditch it at the first opportunity, but she hung on to it and helped it out multiple times at the risk of her own life and livelihood because…she’s just an Actual Hero, and Actual Heroes help people (and bots) when they need help. That’s it. That’s the only reason.

Poe had no reason to trust or like Finn, an actual enemy combatant, beyond ‘this is a person I can use to accomplish my mission’ but he did so anyway literally just because…Poe is a good guy and likes to think the best of people. So instead of letting his tough job and tough life make him embittered and and angry and distrusting, he just goes out and makes friends with the first sad stormtrooper to cross his path. And gives him his awesome jacket. Because he can.

And Finn, oof. He was raised from a baby to be a soldier and a weapon in a war he didn’t choose or ask for, he spent all of his formative years learning how to hurt people and being told that this was his destiny and his one and only path in life, and then on his very first mission he hears the order ‘kill them all’ and he looks at these innocent villagers and remembers all of his training and the consequences of disobedience and he still just…lowers his gun. He’s not gonna do it. He’s not the guy who hurts people. A lifetime’s worth of brainwashing telling him he has to, and he just…won’t.

Yeah. Cynicism and darkness in a protagonist can serve a storytelling purpose, don’t get me wrong. But we’ve been getting served a lot of it lately and I genuinely enjoyed how much of an aversion this movie was. Sometimes people are heroes because they’re just good people. It doesn’t have to be complicated.