In “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” the audience first meets him when he yells “traitor” at Finn during the attack on Maz’s Castle. As a Stormtrooper he deploys a Z6 Baton which he proceeds to beat up on Finn with. Because of his line of dialog, fans dubbed him TR-8R (try saying it). But it turns out he has a much richer backstory than that.
The Stormtrooper was actually assigned the name of FN-2199 and was part of the group Finn trained with. This is all explained in the movie tie-in young adult novel “Star Wars: Before the Awakening” by Greg Rucka. His nickname among the group was Nines.
The Z6 baton is used as part of the elite riot control squad that the First Order deployed to squash uprisings or enforce order. It’s not explained how a lightsaber can’t cut it, but that makes it a pretty considerable weapon, even if it is mostly non-lethal.
FN-2199 was performed by stunt performer Liang Yang and voiced by Lucasfilm sound editor David Acord who has worked on Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, The Force Awakens, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and Star Wars: Rebels.
Online fans started to take a liking to FN-2199 when he first appeared in the trailers and has since been the subject of a number of animated gifs and memes. Here’s one of my favorites.
It was great of Star Wars to share this additional information with us. It doesn’t change the fact that FN-2199 meets his end at the point of a blaster bolt from Chewie’s crossbow. There’s a small chance FN-2199 survived the blast, but its unlikely he’ll be reappearing in future films.
Via StarWars.com
To me he will always be TR-8R
Before VII I never thought much about the people behind the masks – their race or gender; but in The Force Awakens we find a woman, Captain Phasma, Blacks, Finn, and now Chinese, TR8R. They were all just faceless automotons. My bad.
Hey, has anyone else started to see the Millenium Falcon as a character, more than a prop, in the same way as the droids?
Comments are closed.