I totally agree with your main premise that Star Wars is supposed to be weird, sort of inconsistent, or super fictional at parts. I suggest my main problem with Disney is that those weird, inconsistent, or super-fictional parts tend to be in the wrong areas of the universe instead of the right ones. A lightsabre is supposed to be a superweapon, while Darth Maul getting robot chicken legs is more believable than Rey magically inheriting crazy good lightsabre techniques at the very beginning and people surviving constant lightsabre stabbings. That's my two cents, but if you enjoy it then don't let my view get in the way of your entertainment.
Disney Star Wars General Discussion
- Thread starter x Tame Impala
- Start date
She didn't though. Even by Episode 9, both Rey and Kylo have very crude saber fighting ability. The weirder thing is that Kylo/Ben is more amateurish considering he trained with Luke and had a lot more time to practice. But compare any lightsaber combat in the sequel trilogy to the prequels and it's night and day. As much as I recognize the sequel trilogy was deeply flawed, I think the more raw and unrefined lightsaber abilities of these two characters was on purpose. Both Ridley and Driver trained a lot for their duels, the way Hayden Christensen and Ewan McGregor did. The difference is Obi Wan and Anakin were masters with a saber. Rey and Ben were not.
At best the pair pulled off some neat tricks against Snoke's guards in Last Jedi. They definitely gave Rey's force mastery a speed run, but I wouldn't agree that she instantly became an expert lightsaber duelist.
The fact of the matter is that, within days of learning about the Force and picking up a lightsaber for the first time, she defeated a person who had been training in the Force and lightsaber combat for most of his life. Then, a few days later, after receiving three lessons from Luke, she was able to defeat a handful of trained Imperial guards all at once. The point isn't that she was suddenly as good as Anakin or Obi-Wan, but that she got as good as she did as quickly as she did. It's like if you introduced a Rubik's Cube to a kid and, a week later, she could solve it in under a minute. You probably wouldn't downplay the accomplishment by pointing out that experts who have been practicing it for years can solve it in only seconds and blindfolded.
NyQuil
Big F$&*in Q
You mean the guy who is heavily wounded after having taken a bowcaster shot to the side from Chewbacca?
Remember how he's pounding his side constantly during the battle?
I'm not sure how much more blatantly obvious they were trying to get in terms of letting the audience know that he was not at 100%.
The fact of the matter is, the first time they encountered each other, Ren blocked her blaster fire and easily disarmed her and disabled her.
The "Mary Sue" people always leave that part out for some reason.
Here's Rey being easily tortured by Snoke.
Rey was not one of the major reasons why the sequels were subpar.
Last edited:
Don't care about my opinion because you should enjoy what you enjoy. Nevertheless, the lengths people will go to defend the Disney Star Wars is very strange to me. Sometimes you just gotta call a spade a spade and know that it is rubbish for what it is.
She was a great character, but Disney simply ruined it by making her a legendary Mary Sue and making Finn utterly pointless as well. At this point, he's in there to fit the "Need Black Character" chequelist.
Days within learning about the force Luke was able to attune to it to land a near impossible shot to destroy the Death Star. And he got by with fairly minimal training with his encounters with Vader. I mean if you want to dig for contrivances and conveniences you can find plenty in the OT, but that's neither here nor there. I don't mind that people are bothered by Rey's aptitude and rapid growth. I'm just pointing out that I don't think it's accurate to say she mastered it.
Just because she beat Kylo in TFA who was injured and seemingly not trying to kill her doesn't really point to her suddenly being a master. She had just enough experience using a staff to survive on Jakku to hold off Kylo's initial barrage where, by every objective standard she was defending and retreating. Then you get to a point where Kylo forces her to a cliff edge and he tries to convince her to turn to the dark side, which indicates the aim was never to kill her. If anything the majority of the fight was a show of strength. Then, implicitly, Rey taps into the force and with it guiding her she catches Kylo off guard with her own push back which still isn't terribly good form. It's just aggressive and surprising enough to throw Kylo off.
But that's just my view of the scene, I've argued it in the past ad nauseum, and at this point I don't care if people are still bothered by it. And I don't care much if people are upset with her self training and high aptitude. Personally, I have bigger issues with the overarching narrative of the sequel trilogy than that and the only real way you could solve the Mary Sue issue is to reworking the story would be to have Luke train Rey for at least a year between films, but that really wouldn't have done anything to solve the other narrative issues with TLJ bleeding into TROS' issues, so it really would need a full script rewrite of all three movies (finding Luke can't be urgent if he's got the time to adequately train Rey).
In any event, I was really more making the general point that neither Ben Solo or Rey were masters of the lightsaber craft from a visual standpoint.
Last edited:
I mean I've got a wealth of criticisms about the sequel trilogy now that's it's over. I wanted them to be good and there were elements of it I enjoyed, just unfortunately delivered in a sloppy package.
I just think the Rey 'Mary Sue' business is small potatoes compared to bigger problems with the sequels, yet people really fixate on the Mary Sue stuff.
Don't get me wrong, while I'm a fan of Ridley's performance as the character, I don't think she was written nearly as well as she could have been. It's just people really overblow how flawless she is presented as. The idea, mileage enjoyment of said idea varies by viewer I'll admit, but the idea is that her aptitude and quick learning came from the force awakening and acting through her. Similar to how Luke managed to accomplish great feats with little training. And it created a convenience that allowed the studio heads and directors have a new Jedi hero do cool things with the force with developments in special effects. I'll admit that's part of it.
I don't think it was the most inherently compelling thing to have her great at so many things so quickly without a different back story, but I don't know that I'd want my Jedi protagonist to be an incompetent either who finds some implausible way to achieve victory. Rey probably would have been better off and better received if she had, for instance, been a former student of Luke's and was displaced by the fall of his Jedi academy and she starts the series keeping that a secret, but they went the direction of starting her with the same kind of hero's journey Luke went on. I don't begrudge anyone finding the flaws and faults with that, but again, I think there's bigger issues with the sequels than Rey having attendant 'chosen one' level force aptitude.
You forgot that Rey released the Rathtars on Han's freighter in TFA and put everyone in danger. So does everyone else who says "Rey never makes mistakes"You mean the guy who is heavily wounded after having taken a bowcaster shot to the side from Chewbacca?
Remember how he's pounding his side constantly during the battle?
I'm not sure how much more blatantly obvious they were trying to get in terms of letting the audience know that he was not at 100%.
The fact of the matter is, the first time they encountered each other, Ren blocked her blaster fire and easily disarmed her and disabled her.
The "Mary Sue" people always leave that part out for some reason.
Here's Rey being easily tortured by Snoke.
Rey was not one of the major reasons why the sequels were subpar.
A glancing, non-crippling shot to his side isn't what I'd call "heavily wounded," especially when it should've mostly cauterized the wound and Sith are able to overcome pain, as you pointed out earlier.
Also, he was still able to toy with Rey and put her on the run through the first half of that fight. The movie makes it clear that the reason why she eventually gets the upper hand isn't his injury but her realization that she should be using the Force.
He did that while he was "heavily wounded," as well.
NyQuil
Big F$&*in Q
He wasn’t actually trying to kill her for the most part.
I thought that was pretty clear as well.
We're actually talking about it now because you singled it out in SEPH's post. It feels like the fixation is on objecting whenever it's even mentioned and pointing out that there are other issues with the trilogy, even though no one disagrees.
I don't see how that supports your point that his injury was holding him back. If he wasn't trying to kill her, then he was holding himself back.
Last edited:
NyQuil
Big F$&*in Q
The point is that there are plenty of reasons why it's reasonable that Kylo Ren did not defeat Rey, as he easily did earlier in the film.
NyQuil
Big F$&*in Q
Sure, calming herself and accessing the Force certainly helped.
Just like when Luke calmed himself down, completely untrained, he was able to deflect laser blaster bolts that he couldn't see with a light saber he'd never used before, with a fully obscuring blast shield on. Kind of like solving a Rubik's cube with a blindfold on.
Or when Luke, calming himself down, completely untrained, manages to bullseye a 2m aperture with two proton torpedoes without using the targeting computer in his X-Wing.
Or when Anakin, completely untrained, manages to fly through a vicious space battle and take out the droid flagship relatively unscathed, despite never piloting a spaceship in his entire life.
Why injure Kylo Ren at all? Why go out of their way to show him wounded? Because he's only getting weaker with every moment that goes by.
It helps to explain how an injured foe who may or may not be fully committed to ending her life, and clearly underestimating her, manages to lose part of their duel.
I don't know why it isn't possible that both factored into the end result.
Last edited:
I don't agree that those are reasonable explanations for him losing to an untrained amateur using a lightsaber for the very first time. Could you defeat a seasoned pro at a sport that you've never tried before just because he has a nagging injury and isn't trying to kill you?
Luke learning from Obi-Wan to calm himself down and use the Force to time his actions seems a bit different than Rey learning from no one how to gain super strength in combat against someone who's experienced in the Force and using it against her.
For starters, because you argued earlier that the Sith can overcome pain and injury and because Vader decisively won his first duel with Luke despite not wanting to kill him. Just having an explanation doesn't make it consistent or believable.
Last edited:
Pranzo Oltranzista
Registered User
- Oct 18, 2017
- 3,951
- 2,841
NyQuil
Big F$&*in Q
Praetorian Caps
Registered User
- May 15, 2018
- 740
- 1,065
The reason Rey became affluent so fast is because she formed a Force Bond with Kylo Ren (during the interrogation scene when he says "don't be afraid I feel it too"). When two force sensitive beings have one, all their thoughts and experiences are shared, like when Neo had all his martial arts training downloaded into his mind. So all of Ben Solo's training and experience got zapped into her mind in that instance and she was able to slowly but surley access it throughout the saga. Like for instance the only time she used her powers in TFA was only after Kylo did it; he was probing her mind then she was able to do it back on him and then use the Jedi Mind Trick on James Bond. When Kylo Force push her she was able to use the force pull while other half was trying it. Then finally when she was at the cliff and gave into the force her lightsaber style matched Kylo's to a tee and even became more aggressive like him (also to note Ben became more calm and less angry the more he was around her). So yeah she became powerful very quickly because the force connected her body, mind, and soul to an already powerful force user who was Darth Vader's grandson and Luke Skywalker's nephew, and all of his power and experience at her disposal from the get go.
This was taken from Bastilla Shan and Darth Revan's story line from The Knights of the Old Republic, who Rey and Kylo were heavily modeled after; two enemies have romantic feelings for each other despite fighting on opposing sides and form The Force Bond among all their fighting.
Last edited:
Their Force bond isn't introduced until The Last Jedi. It doesn't explain why she defeats him in The Force Awakens. You might argue in hindsight that that's where it started, but that's not how they work. Force bonds develop slowly over time as a master and pupil form a connection and are certainly not a replacement for training. If they were, Jedi Masters would simply transfer all of their thoughts and experiences to their pupils with a quick stare and there'd be no reason for them to spend any time together. Shan and Revan formed an instant bond, but that isn't canon and was very different circumstances, with someone who was already a Jedi Master using the Force to save the life of a Sith Lord. I don't think that it makes sense or has precedence in canon for Rey to have become as skilled as Kylo because of their accidental Force bond. I think that the intention of the writers was that their bond was a consequence of her being strong in the Force, not the other way around.
Last edited:
She wasn't more skilled. Watch the scene from just a fight choreography perspective. There's absolutely nothing refined or skilled about the way she counters back. It's completely basic but aggressive swings and a stab. Kylo was caught off guard and previously injured. The extra benefit Rey got out of nowhere from tapping into the force wasn't better technique. Just more strength behind her strikes that Kylo wasn't expecting.
Praetorian Caps
Registered User
- May 15, 2018
- 740
- 1,065
It was introduced in TFA and I told you the exact instant it happen. It was laid out for the audience how it works and what exactly it was in TLJ, but Ep 7 set it in motion. The links I provided predicted their Bond and its basis and came out a year before The Last Jedi came out so some saw and predicted Rey and Ben's unique connection from the hints.
And Force Bonds can't be forced or manufactured, they either happen or they don't. That's why Jedi masters can't just download their knowledge into their padawans.
Bastilla and Darth Revan were the protypes that Rey and Kylo were based on. They weren't meant to follow their story beat for best so how their connection did or didn't work is irrelevant and like you said they're not canon anymore, Ben and Rey's is. And their FB was a Dyad a much stronger and powerful form of it. Connections of their magnitude are extremely rare and goes beyond even what a traditional Bond does.
For some reason the forum wouldn't let me post the link but the name of the article, that predates TLJ, is below.
My One and Only, or why Force Bonds are so important: The similarities between Revan/Kylo and Bastila/Rey (and why this comparison was intentional) By Ohtze
Last edited:
I was referring there to the skill that she showed in TLJ and later. I said in my previous post that it was sudden strength that turned her TFA duel with Kylo.
Whether the bond was planned and hinted at from the beginning or not, there's no reason to believe that that's why Rey became so strong in the Force so quickly. That part isn't hinted at, but what is, before she even meets Kylo, is that she has a natural gift for the Force, and that seems to be the intended explanation for her quick learning.
Last edited:
Ah. Yeah. In that case sure. I still don't think Rey got to an expert level after her brief training with Luke but she was shown to be more than capable of holding her own.
