Knights & Knaves Alehouse

So, let's talk about characters and structure in Star Wars ...

In A New Hope we are introduced to three characters, Leia, R2-D2 and C-3PO.

* Leia gets captured and the two droids escape to Tatooine.
* The droids split up, but are then reunited, and then bought by Luke's uncle.
* R2-D2 runs away to find Obi-Wan and Luke and C-3PO give chase.
* They get into a fight, but then all three are rescued by Obi-Wan.
* Luke learns about his family history, then realises his uncle and aunt are in danger. He rushes to their rescue, but is too late.
* He returns to the group and agrees to help rescue Leia.

At this point we have been introduced to five principle characters, four of whom are plotting to rescue the one that has been captured (rescuing captured principle characters will be an ongoing theme).

* The group goes to Mos Eisley and hire Han and Chewbacca to take them to Alderran
* The group has an adventure on the Death Star. Luke, Han, and Chewie rescue Leia, supported by R2-D2 and C-3P0. Obi-Wan disables the tractor beam.
* Obi-Wan is killed, but everybody else escapes on the Millennium Falcon to the rebel base.

So, at this point we have six principle characters together and one "dead" (the six principle characters remain the same throughout the series, though one character is later added. Aside from him, at least four characters are always together in the same "place" at any one time until the end. Characters occasionally split off individually or in pairs to accomplish specific purposes or because they are captured, but there is a very definite core group.

* Luke and R2-D2 pair up (an important beginning) to assault the Death Star. He tries to convince Han and Chewbacca to help, but they refuse.
* Leia and C-3PO monitor things from the rebel base, playing no active role, but conveying emotional responses during the attack.
* Han and Chewbacca turn up in the nick of time and Obi-Wan's ghost gives Luke the confidence he needs to destroy the Death Star
* Everybody celebrates together.

In The Empire Strikes Back we are reunited with Luke and Han:

* Luke gets attacked and has a vision of Obi-Wan. Han rescues him. Leia, Chewbacca, R2-D2, and C-3PO worry about them (conveying emotions)
* Luke leads the defence of Hoth, eventually evacuating with R2-D2 (paired up again)
* Han, Chewbacca, Leia, and C-3PO escape Hoth and are hunted by the empire.
* Luke and R2-D2 meet Yoda who agrees to train Luke as a Jedi.
* Han, Leia, Chewbacca, and C-3PO meet Lando on Bespin, but he betrays them and they are captured by the empire
* Luke and R2-D2 rush off to rescue the other principle characters.
* Han gets frozen in carbonite and taken away, Lando has a change of heart, and R2-D2 rejoins the main group as they race to rescue Han.
* Luke is defeated and the group fails to rescue Han, but they do manage to rescue Luke and escape.
* Lando and Chewbacca depart to find Han, agreeing to meet up with everyone else later. Luke, Leia, R2-D2, and C-3PO look on (conveying emotions)

In The Return of the Jedi we are initially reunited with C-3PO and R2-D2:

* R2-D2 and C-3PO infiltrate Jabba's palace. Leia and Chewbacca infiltrate Jabba's palace, but fail to rescue Han and are captured. Lando has already infiltrated Jabba's palace.
* Luke enters Jabba's palace, is captured and about to be executed with Han and Chewbacca, when it is all revealed to be an elaborate rescue plan.
* Luke, Leia, Han, Chewbacca, Lando, R2-D2, and C-3PO escape Tatooine together.
* Luke visits Yoda, who dies, and speaks with Obi-Wan's ghost. He resolves to defeat the emperor, but cannot conceive of killing his father. He returns to the group.
* Luke, Leia, Han, Chewbacca, C-3PO, and R2-D2 lead a commando mission to Endor. Lando remains behind to lead a simultaneous star fighter attack.
* Leia gets lost. Luke and company get captured, but are reunited with Leia when their captors become their allies.
* Luke leaves the group to face the emperor alone.
* Han, Leia, and Chewbacca are captured, but soon rescued by their allies. Lando leads the starfighter assault on the second Death Star.
* Luke turns his father, defeats the emperor, and escapes the Death Star.
* Everyone celebrates.

In The Force Awakens we are introduced to two new principle characters, Poe and his droid BB-8.

* Poe is captured and BB-8 escapes with important information.
* Poe meets Finn and they escape together, but they are separated when their ship crashes.
* Rey meets BB-8, then they meet Finn. All three escape Jakku in the Millenium Falcon.
* They are captured by Han and Chewbacca, but become allies. All three travel to Takonda where they meet Maz.
* Finn has a crisis of conscience, but then the First Order attacks. Han, Chewbacca, and Finn are captured, but then rescued by Poe and the resistance
* BB-8 and Rey are attacked in the woods. BB-8 escapes, but Rey is captured. Han, Chewbacca, Finn, and BB-8 meet Leia and C-3PO.
* Han, Chewbacca, and Finn infiltrate Starkiller Base to disable the shield and rescue Rey. Poe and BB-8 lead the starfighter attack. Leia and C-3PO look on.
* Han is killed. Finn is incapacitated, but escapes with Rey and Chewbacca aboard the Millennium Falcon.
* Poe and BB-8 blow up Starkiller Base
* Everyone is reunited at the resistance base. R2-D2 wakes up and reveals the location of Luke.
* Rey, Chewbacca, (and R2-D2) leave to find Luke. Poe, Finn, Leia, C-3PO, and BB-8 remain behind.

Notably, The Force Awakens is not as tight as the preceding three films, partly because it never clearly establishes exactly who are the core characters, but it follows a similar pattern. Whereas the original trilogy had six key characters and one ancillary "slot" right from the beginning, The Force Awakens seems to have four key characters (Rey, Finn, Poe, and BB-8) and two or more ancillary slots (Han and Chewbacca for sure, maybe more for Luke, Leia, R2-D2, and C-3PO). By the end of the film the new and old principle characters are split unevenly into two distinct locations:

Resistance Base
Poe
Finn
BB-8
(Leia)
(C-3PO)

Ahch-To
Rey
(Luke)
(Chewbacca)
(R2-D2)

If we look at it without considering the old cast members as principles (or maybe just Chewbacca) then it fits with the main group and one or two split off members dichotomy, but the numbers and their importance are not quite right. Anyway ...

Weirdly, The Last Jedi opens not with two principle characters, but a couple of random resistance officers doing a not-very-good job of conveying the seriousness of an impending First Order Attack. However, it soon gives up on them and cuts to Poe and BB-8 taking on a Dreadnought with Leia and C-3PO looking on.

* Poe and BB-8 lead the defence and the resistance fleet escapes
* Meanwhile, Luke refuses to train Rey and Chewbacca breaks his door down
* Finn wakes up and swaps places with Leia, who is incapacitated. The First Order arrive and it turns out the resistance cannot escape
* Finn decides to sneak off in an escape pod to find Rey, but is incapacitated by Rose, who knows how to disable the First Order's hyperspace tracking ability.
* They pitch their idea to Poe and contact Maz, who advises them to leave the fleet and go to a Casino World to find a code breaker.
* Finn, Rose, and BB-8 leave, whilst Poe, Leia, and C-3PO stay behind.
* R2-D2 convinces Luke to train Rey, and Luke reveals that he caused Kylo-Ren to fall to the Dark Side. Chewbacca eats a Porg.
* Finn and Rose get captured. BB-8 rescues them, along with a master code breaker called DJ.
* Finn, Rose, BB-8, and DJ infiltrate the First Order, but are captured. DJ betrays them, but BB-8 rescues them ... again.
* Poe stages a mutiny, C-3PO refuses to take part, Leia wakes up and ends the mutiny.
* Rey and Chewbacca travel to Snoke's command ship and Rey hands herself over to Kylo-Ren. Together they kill Snoke, but then become enemies again. Rey leaves.
* Luke talks with the ghost of Yoda who then burns down the original Jedi temple with lightning (I shit you not).
* Poe, Leia, and C-3PO escape to an old rebel base. Finn, Rose, and BB-8 arrive. The resistance fights a desperate last stand against the First Order.
* Rey and Chewbacca arrive in the Millennium Falcon and destroy all of the First Order's air support. A Force Projection of Luke arrives and faces down Kylo Ren.
* Poe, Finn, Rey, BB-8, Leia, Chewbacca, and C-3PO escape on the Millennium Falcon with a handful of surviving resistance fighters.
* Luke dies on his island from the exertion, maybe with R2-D2.

I will agree with anybody who contends that The Last Jedi breaks with the previous films. It does so in many ways, and I think that perhaps most clearly it breaks with them in its structure. Instead of having a group working together to achieve an objective (IV: return the plans to the rebels/rescue Leia/destroy the Death Star; V: escape the empire; VI rescue Han/destroy the Death Star; VII: return the map to the resistance/rescue Rey/destroy Starkiller Base) with one or two characters splitting off to achieve specific and related goals (disable the tractor beam/train as a Jedi/defeat the emperor), The Last Jedi is about three character arcs: Rey, Finn, and Poe. They spend most of the film separate to the point that Poe feels the need to introduce himself to Rey after they escape at the end of the film (apparently, there was not enough time between Poe blowing up Star Killer Base and Rey going off to find Luke). Poe learns that there are alternatives to fighting, Finn learns to do the right thing, and Rey (most boringly of all) learns how to use the force, believe in herself, and not to trust Kylo Ren.

Superficially, there is an objective that Finn, Poe, (Rose), and BB-8 are working together to achieve, which is to enable the fleet to escape from the First Order, but unlike in the other films, they do not achieve their aim. Everything that they do is actually meaningless in driving the plot forward. They all could have stayed on board the flagship with the same end result for the plot, or indeed a better one if Leia and Holdo's secret plan had succeeded, but not for their character development, which is what was actually supposed to be important.

Love it or hate it (and I am neither a hater nor a fan of this film), this film had a totally different approach to the subject matter. It was not concerned with telling a cohesive adventure story (physics aside, so much of it made no sense), and the budding romance between Finn and Rose was completely irrelevant. Surprisingly, the social politics angle is largely irrelevant as well (Neither The Force Awakens nor Rogue One suffer from having female leads or diverse casts, and the good guys in Star Wars are always ... well, they are always fairly unambiguously good ... Anakin aside), because what really sets it apart is that it is all about character development, even if you think it is done badly ... which I do.

This rough analysis brought to you by my playing Lego: The Force Awakens with my four year old and wondering why there was no Lego: The Last Jedi.

Very nice, Matthew.

I actually go the other way in my analysis of the TFA core cast. I think it is pretty tight. Much (too much) has been made of TFA being a “remake” of SW, but if you wanted to map SW characters against TFA characters, my imperfect analogy would be:

Biggs --> Poe
R2-D2 --> BB-8
C-3PO --> Finn
Luke --> Rey
Ben --> Han
Han --> Han
Chewbacca --> Chewbacca
Leia --> Leia

The five (instead of six) main characters, therefore, are BB-8, Finn, Rey, Han, and Chewbacca. Two ancillary slots go to Poe and Leia.

Of course my analogy doesn’t quite work out perfectly (eg., Rey functions in part like Leia; Finn is the most inventive character, but he also functions in part like Luke), but, I tend to think of TFA as a remix or a fugue on OT characters and themes rather than a remake.

By "not as tight", I meant not as tight as the previous three films on account of having too many ancillary characters (Leia, C-3PO, R2-D2, Maz, and Luke). I think that rather than directly mapping characters to characters, it might be more useful to map character traits. For example:

Luke: Naive, Pilot, Force User
Han: Hothead, Pilot, Ambiguous Loyalties
Leia: Leader, Rebel

Rey: Naive, Pilot, Force User
Poe: Hothead, Pilot, Rebel (Resistance)
Finn: Ambiguous Loyalties

Going by the above, it is interesting to note that none of the new characters display the leadership qualities that all of the old characters have by The Empire Strikes Back, and that Finn's lack of depth in The Last Jedi could have been predicted from The Force Awakens. Finn is definitely a character in need of more attributes, which is a shame because he was potentially the most interesting, and has essentially been reduced to comedic backup. Arguably, he has a "heart of gold", but then all the heroes do.

As you say, Chewbacca is Chewbacca, and BB-8 is R2-D2, whilst C3-PO has no main role (arguably, some of his comedic value has been transferred to Finn). Other characteristics could certainly be identified, such as Luke's optimism or whatever. Han clearly takes on some of Obi-Wans's mentoring value, but he obviously shares that role with Luke, and neither completely fulfil his role. Leia's role is so slight in The Force Awakens that she is basically Commander Willard or General Dodonna, or Mon Mothma if we look outside the original movie.