The Force Awakens: Why Finn Doesn't Make Sense, a Veteran's Perspective

Ahh, Finn. He managed to break my sense of immersion into the movie universe minutes after the title crawl! His brave story of miraculously breaking his Storm Trooper indoctrination to become an inept hero of the resistance is less than inspiring. It's not that he's wrong in his assessment that the First Order are evil and that what they're doing is wrong. It's that he shouldn't have so suddenly and conveniently come to that conclusion in the middle of his first fight without having ever fired a shot.

Pick-up your feet, because I am about to drop some knowledge.

Let me start with a little bit about my background. I'm a former United States Army Staff Sergeant. Staff Sergeants, and other Non-commissioned Officers, bear the significant burden of conducting the training of new and junior soldiers in the Army (hence the term "Drill Sergeant"). Additionally, I am a combat veteran who is diagnosed with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. If that's not enough to convince you, many of the things I'm about to tell you can be corroborated by the writings of psychologist and retired Army Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman, specifically his book On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society.

In The Force Awakens we are introduced to Finn as he is participating in his first combat. The drop ship lands, he charges off the ramp with his fellow Storm Troopers, and he is immediately overwhelmed by the chaos and violence to the extent that he not only never fires a shot, he is completely disabled by one of his comrades being shot and dying. He contributes absolutely nothing to the fight. Immediately afterward, he is so struck with anxiety over the horror of his experience that he resolves, right on the spot, to desert the First Order.

I call bullshit!

I'm sorry Cap, but it's true.

Let's talk about the methods used to train and indoctrinate modern soldiers. Recruits in the United States Army, regardless of occupational specialty, spend mind-numbing hours practicing the act of killing. Going to a military range is an almost religious experience in it's level of ritual and repetition. Hours upon hours are spent repeatedly loading, arming, firing, and unloading their weapons. Heck, I've spent hours of my life just repeatedly raising my weapon to my shoulder from the low ready position and then lowering it again without actually firing. The targets we shoot at are, very purposefully, shaped like people, so that we get used to the notion of shooting at human shaped things. The whole point of all of this practice and repetition is to raise a Soldier's ability to shoot threats to what's known as "Unconscious Mastery".

Unconscious Mastery is the point at which ones body can perform a complex task without having to think about it first. Everyone has achieved Unconscious Mastery of something. We all tie our shoes without thinking. Most people have achieved Unconscious Mastery of driving. Modern Military training provides soldiers with Unconscious Mastery of killing. When presented with a threat a soldier can, and will, engage the target without having to consider whether or not it's the right thing to do before doing it. This shortens combat engagements, increases soldier survival rates, and frees up the soldier's mind to do other things like draft casualty evacuation requests or talk on the radio. 

This doesn't just apply to shooting mind you: additional hours are spent on training on specific tactics, and not as individuals, but as teams. Hours are spent repeatedly clearing houses, taking objectives, reacting to incoming fire and various other battlefield tasks. Teams work together and practice to the point of operating together like a well oiled machine. Each person knows exactly what every other team member will do in any given situation even before they know what they will do. Even after each individual skill has been mastered, the practice never stops. It goes on, and on, and on.

When soldiers finally go into combat, they can't wait to put those skills to use. First time or hundredth time, they are pumped up with adrenaline and ready to go. That kind of feeling is infectious, everyone on the team feeds off of everyone else's excitement. It's a high that anyone who has ever played team sports is familiar with, only this time the sport is war. When the battle starts, all the adrenaline takes over and those unconsciously mastered skills kick in. Soldiers don't think, they just act. They don't, in the heat of the moment, think about the fact that their "targets" are people. They don't think about the implications of what they are doing. They are executing their training to accomplish their mission. 

Soldiers don't think about the chaos, violence and horror of combat until after the fact, sometimes long after the fact. Processing all of the things that happen in combat can be difficult, especially when those things conflict with your personal sense of right and wrong. Some people aren't able to process it in a meaningful way. That's what PTSD is, when the brain can't make sense of something horrible that has happened or been done. Many soldiers experiences are so tightly locked in their unconscious mind that they don't even realize they are trying to make sense of it until the nightmares start. That's what happened to me.

These are soldiers who are trained to only shoot at armed targets who present a real threat. These are soldiers who didn't learn to soldier until they were already adults. These are soldiers with morals and codes of ethics of their own that are separate from the ones that are instilled by their Army.

First Order Storm Troopers are none of those things. Finn is a child soldier, taken away from his family at a young age and trained to be a killer. In addition to years upon years of repetitive drills and training, he has also been chemically and hypnotically brainwashed into being a killer. First Order Storm Troopers should have unconsciously mastered soldiering to such a high level that they are practically living in their unconscious mind. They have no morals or ethics other than the First Order's, which are that anyone not of the First Order is subhuman and deserves to die.

Not killing should have never crossed Finn's mind.

"But what about the shock of seeing his friend die?" you say? Apart from the highly questionable conclusion that people who don't ever take off their helmets and are known only by numbers have "friends", I can tell you this: We train for that too.

I'll never forget the first time it happened. We were drilling squad tactics in Basic Combat Training, the Drill Sergeant came out of nowhere, shoved one of our squad to the ground and said "BANG! Hooper is wounded! What do you do?" We all stood around like idiots, which of course resulted in all of us being made "dead" and being forced to do burpees for what seemed like forever. The next time, we all made the mistake of trying to render aid at the same time. The next time, some of us secured the area while others rendered aid. What felt like a hundred repetitions later, we were able to react to a member of our team getting hit as if it had been a part of our plan all along. We didn't pause or think about it, we just acted. The same way we just acted when it came to engaging enemy targets.

Based on the reactions of the other Troopers in Finn's unit, I think it's safe to say that Storm Troopers don't get much in the way of field medical training. I'd be willing to bet that their doctrine is to just ignore the failure that got themselves shot and finish the mission. Maybe, they pick up the wounded and give them aid after the fight, but not during. Finn should have been too busy fighting and killing to notice his "friend" get shot.

In short, Finn's behavior in The Force Awakens doesn't make any sense. Sure, he might have eventually come to the realization that what they were doing was wrong, but it definitely wouldn't have happened in the middle of his first fight. Even then it's unlikely, since his only moral frame of reference was the one provided by the First Order. FN-2187 should have been entirely too indoctrinated, too pumped up on adrenaline, and too eager for combat to even notice what was happening. He should have killed mercilessly, been joyful in doing it, and scoffed at the pathetic wretch who got himself killed.

Finn is a fun and lovable character, but he isn't a Storm Trooper. His story simply doesn't make sense.