I want to apologise for any discomfort or distress I've caused anyone. I never meant to imply that anyone's feelings about their experience with the film were "wrong"; I just wanted to express what I found disappointing about the film. I do not have (nor should I have) the authority to determine what is absolutely correct or incorrect in a film, or how people should feel about those things.
Yeah, the whole "I won't even address this issue because other people argued something resembling this in bad faith and therefore you are wrong and stupid" thing is incredibly high-handed and condescending and I'm really not OK with it.
I don't really agree with what Alex said because I don't think that character development is linear or operates exclusively in that one way, and while I don't know if that's what he was implying, it did come off that way. I am willing to give him the benefit of a doubt, however, because he's a pretty thoughtful dude and I want to see where he goes with this. I also think you are a thoughtful guy, Kex, but you really do let being angry about these little things lead you to some ugly places sometimes.
I honestly associated MadassAlex with the sort of whiny nerd who isn't satisfied with anything, but I freely admit that's probably because I don't know the guy and I wrongly assumed the worst.
I freely admit that my main issue with him was that he didn't seem to actually read that Tumblr post I linked but instead tuned out because of the feminism talk, and that fed into my false suspicion above.
I read that article too, and it literally started off with saying none of this discussion would be happening if Rey was a boy, and that scrutinizing her rapid skill development is misogynistic.
I mean, if you'd like me to dissect their arguments, I can.
First off, I would absolutely be having this discussion if she was male. It's partly the same reason I didn't bother with Force Unleashed. Overpowered characters are fun in certain circumstances, but as part of a greater ensemble drama they tend to hurt things.
- Rey Knows Ships. Well, duh. She’s a scavenger. Presumably she’s spent years and years now surviving on her ability to take apart ships. And to be any good at supporting herself on that, she needs to know what she’s looking for. Knowing what the parts do and where they go are key to finding them and doing her job efficiently. She’s also probably had a chance to observe them being cobbled together in a variety of different configurations, and talked about them with other scavengers, so her mechanical understanding of ships is a key aspect to her job and survival. We see this skill go from wrecked ships to working ones when she knows how to fix the Falcon, but it’s a logical progression. She’s been screwing around with ship parts all her life.
A scavenger is not a mechanic, and experience crawling around a broken ship does not translate to running a working one without training. We have this job in real life -- it's called ship breaking. The social circumstances involved are distressingly similar to the Jakku practically-slaves, and it most definitely does not result in proficiency with any of the scavenged parts in an operational scenario, much less a working whole. A Bangladeshi ship breaker would probably not know how to fix or drive a battleship, or remotely hack its security systems to de-tentacle attackers at will just because they've spent a lifetime ripping scrap out of one.
At best, she'd know how to jerry rig her USB-drive bike, and fix obvious things like pipes spewing toxic gas.
- Rey Can Pilot. But not right away; Rey has a grasp on how ships work, as we’ve established. When put behind the controls of something that isn’t grounded for the first time, she’s not an immediate virtuoso – she can pilot her ground transport, so she has a vague concept of how controls work at least, and she works it out reasonably quickly. But her real talent continues to lie in being a mechanic over being a pilot. At no point does anything wax poetic about her piloting skills or compare her to Poe Dameron. Rey figures out the Star Wars equivalent of driving a car without crashing into a wall after having worked in a junk yard all her life. This is nothing super special.
I'd believe that she could probably get it off the ground and/or into space with some basic reading comprehension and intuition. Vehicles are surprisingly intuitive for the most basic functions. The ridiculous obstacle course she flies to successfully shake and destroy career pilots, not so much.
Also, the Falcon is a very specific kind of ship whose cockpit is in a very, very awkward position. Nobody, professional pilots included, would be able to fly that thing with any kind of precision without a hell of a lot of experience.
- Rey Can Fight. Anyone who is surprised by this needs to get their head checked. Rey is a pretty young women left to fend for herself since childhood on Jakku, a planet that is such a shithole it makes Tatooine look like a wholesome family resort. We see violence and we see people trying to take advantage of Rey financially and trying to jump her for BB-8. And this is presumably an environment that has been consistently this shitty. Her ability to fight and defend herself is a necessary response to wanting to stay the fuck alive. Continuing out of this:
No issue with the staff and general combat awareness, and for the most part I completely agree here. Though the blaster was a bit much -- one second she barely remembers the safety exists, and the next she pegs a moving target dead center at long range.
- Rey Can Use a Lightsaber. Hell, we see Finn use a lightsaber earlier. It’s a laser sword, it’s not rocket science. And we see pretty consistently that while Rey and Finn are both competent enough fighters, Rey is definitely better at melee (she’s probably got a lot of experience with that staff thing she kicked Finn’s ass with), where Finn does better with ranged combat, opting for a blaster when possible (where Rey, by contrast, forgets to take the safety off). These are the weapons they are comfortable with. So it makes sense that Rey fighting with a lightsaber would fare better than Finn with the same weapon.
I commented on this earlier. Not only is this much believable, but she visibly uses staff techniques with the lightsaber. It's probably one of my favorite parts of the movie.
- Rey Can Use The Force. It’s a Star Wars movie. SOMEONE is gonna find out they’re a Jedi. And it’s about goddamn time a girl got to be it. Also, Rey is coded really hard as a Skywalker (Daisy Ridley looks a lot like Natalie Portman’s Padme, growing up on a crap desert backwater is a Skywalker rite of passage, her costume even echoes Luke’s outfit in ANH), so it’s likely she’s connected to that legacy, in which case it makes total sense. As for her knowledge of the Force without training – Luke had all of 20 minutes of training with Obi-Wan on the Millennium Falcon before Obi-Wan kicked it, and he ended up using the force to blow up the Death Star later the same movie. Presumably, some people are just naturals. And also, Rey does have a teacher – just not a witting one. She observes Kylo Ren and learns from him. She feels what it’s like when he tries to get in her mind, and is able to turn that around after seeing and experiencing it first hand.
It's easy but very lazy to write off power creep when the Force is involved. Keep in mind, the extent of Luke's Force abilities by the end of the first movie was very poorly deflecting shit from a training drone, and briefly hearing voices in his head while operating heavy machinery.
Luke never substantively used the Force until the sequel, and even then he did so very poorly and lost the key fight handily (lol). It's been painted throughout the entire series as something that doesn't just come effortlessly like this.
I'm willing to write off the visions as a plot device, and I could...kind of see fighting off Kylo's mental attack given that he's a whiny unstable kid prone to getting flustered when he doesn't get his way. But she also whips out powers she's never seen or heard of before, like the mind trick. And that's a bit much.
First point: That is basically what she did on the Falcon at first, though, which feeds into your next point...
Second point: By the time Rey got to it, the Falcon had been hacked specifically so normal people could pilot it, and even at that, Rey was barely able to get it off the ground. I didn't think the movie particularly exaggerated her ability with it. It's worth noting that Han was the one who actually piloted it when it was defeating career pilots and the like, and that was after Rey removed the hacks.
Third and fourth points: No issues here.
Fifth point: Luke had no knowledge of The Force and the Jedi before Obi-Wan tapped him. Rey, on the other hand, would've had some form of knowledge of these things because of the legends she would've heard about Luke, which means that it was somewhat natural for her to use The Force once she knew that she was able to.
Man is a most complex simple creature: see what he weaves, and how base his reasons for doing so.
The only point I'll debate with you is that Rey doesn't know about the mind trick. The Jedi are legends, and stories about their mystical powers are definitely going to be passed around campfires or their galactic equivalent, which is only going to grow stronger after people learn about Luke Skywalker's exploits.
By the time Rey got to it, the Falcon had been hacked specifically so normal people could pilot it, and even at that, Rey was barely able to get it off the ground. I didn't think the movie particularly exaggerated her ability with it. It's worth noting that Han was the one who actually piloted it when it was defeating career pilots and the like, and that was after Rey removed the hacks
It was hacked ineptly, and the cockpit perspective is still a killer (seriously, fly the X-Wing Alliance trash compactor in the Falcon). Also, she outflew TIEs through a wreckage obstacle course before Han showed up, and that shot at the end was completely over the top (cinematically, awesome -- story-wise, lolno).
Yeah, I think I might just have a better tolerance for Rule of Cool than you, and that's okay.
My mind is admittedly really good at coming up with explanations for things if the plot doesn't fully provide for them, so that might be why I'm more willing to let these things slide than you or MA (still sorry for my attitude up there, BTW) are.
I was in a pretty bad place last night so what I said was colored by that but like
Discussions about "power levels" and the like are so viscerally annoying to me because they're inevitably cyclical, intensely subjective, and ultimately pretty inane.
It's not like there isn't something on the periphery of that-say, the increased focus on action removed a lot of the interesting "guile hero" stuff from the first three movies and made it seem like the heroes were relying on strength or innate skill in the Force rather than their own wits, or even just that it seemed like everything was bigger and more intense than in the originals to the point where it devalued lightsabers/the Force/etc.- but the focus on Rey as an avatar of that is so damn irritating because this kind of thing happens with every female action protagonist. It's not me not having faith in Alex it's me having seen this stuff a million times before and being given no reason whatsoever to believe anyone is formulating these opinions any differently.
So I figured I wasn't going to do anyone any favors by pretending I didn't think that sexist assumptions were at play here, and no, I don't think Alex or Bee are sexist. But damn, I spent a lot of time having my sexist, queerphobic, xenophobic bullshit go unquestioned and as soon as I started actively scrutinizing /why/ I was coming to a lot of the conclusions I did (as a result of other people challenging me)-without allowing myself to get defensive- I found out that, well, I didn't always like my reasoning.
Bee, I think you're underselling how OP Luke was a bit. Because in addition to hearing Ben's voice, the Force also gave Luke the superhuman reflexes to make a one-in-a-million shot with a proton torpedo. A shot that a targeting computer couldn't even make.
And then in Empire, Luke telekinetically retrieved his lightsaber. On Hoth, before he'd even heard about Yoda. Luke never got any on-screen training about telekinesis from Obi-wan. So either the Force can spontaneously teach new powers to its users without any external training, or we have to start assuming that Luke got some extra training off-screen, at which point we also have carte blanche to make up similar explanations for Rey.
I'll concede that Rey one-shot killing a Stormtrooper, the very first time she fired a gun, struck me as a little unrealistic even when I was watching the film.
Well, she clearly had experience fighting, and she immediately knew that the safety was on when the blaster wouldn't work, so she's likely not unfamiliar.
But you know who also wasn't experienced with blasters and yet managed to hold his own? (For the sake of this comparison let's assume Luke bulls-eyeing womp rats and Rey having had rather extensive experience with fighting are more or less equivalent.)
But again, can we try to see how much of a dead end this is, discussion wise? That's why I was getting so pissy. This stuff is so repetitive and I don't think anyone has anything to gain here.
The funny thing is, just from the fighting you see on-screen, Princess Leia had the best aim with a blaster of any character in the OT. And Padme had the best aim of anyone in the PT. So after my initial confusion, I just figured Rey was upholding that particular legacy.
Can we all agree at least that Rey is less OP than Anakin "podraces as a 12-year-old—a sport that regularly kills aliens who have super-human reflexes—and also successfully blew up an enemy battlestation the very first time he fell into a starfighter cockpit" Skywalker?
so, on the whole, Jedi Mind Trick thing: maybe it is really easy because stormtroopers have been selected and trained for obedience, suggestibility, and mindless obedience to force users? Those who are resistant to orders are reeducated.
As for resisting Kylo Ren's mind thing: Mind-messing-with independently-thinking individuals who have lived a life of self-reliance and whose concerns are How Do I Live To Eat Tomorrow has got to be harder than mind-messing-with soldiers or other people who function as part of a group (sublimating their wills to a cause or authority) whose concerns are How Do I Advance The Cause and How Do I Most Effectively Serve That To Which I Am Loyal. So, Poe would be easier than Rey despite anti-torture or anti-mind-control training.
As for beating Kylo Ren in a light saber fight: Ren was just shot by a laser crossbow that the movie had been building up for a while.
As for piloting: Lasers and walls and buildings are afraid of the millennium falcon. Rey wasn't dodging obstacles, obstacles were dodging the Falcon. This is why the music swells when the planet heroically leaps out of the way of a diving Falcon.
The funny thing is, just from the fighting you see on-screen, Princess Leia had the best aim with a blaster of any character in the OT. And Padme had the best aim of anyone in the PT. So after my initial confusion, I just figured Rey was upholding that particular legacy.
Can we all agree at least that Rey is less OP than Anakin "podraces as a 12-year-old—a sport that regularly kills aliens who have super-human reflexes—and also successfully blew up an enemy battlestation the very first time he fell into a starfighter cockpit" Skywalker?
Anakin was immaculately conceived by the force. It's hard to get more OP than him.
We don’t see a trace of esprit de corps within The First Order
If nothing else, taking a good look at the Republican Party (and the Democratic Party to a great extent, too) and how none of them seem to particularly like, let alone love, each other, I can very easily believe that we wouldn't.
They're conditioned and reeducated from birth. Espirit de corps is obsolete in that scenario.
Though the writer is kind of right. Finn is, like, kind of lacking a lot of the kind of deep-seated trauma that would come from rejecting a lifetime of indoctrination. That bugged me too.
Of course, all that reeducation is for naught if the person being reeducated is naturally squeamish to begin with, as Finn turned out to be.
That squeamishness is what motivates most of his actions. He does good, but more or less by coincidence.
My interpretation is a bit different. I agree that he's highly motivated by fear, but he also has a sincere sense of justice. His establishing scene on Jakku is what makes me think this; he's a Stormtrooper among his fellows in a position of advantage, so why wouldn't he go full metal fascist on the locals? He doesn't fire a single shot -- at anyone. He had nothing to lose by following the actions of his comrades, because there was literally no threat to him.
Arguably, the sight of his dying, bloody comrade might have given him pause for thought and fear, but I interpreted that moment as him coming to a realisation about taking life. That taken life being one of his comrades made it all the more real, and suddenly, he might have been able to empathise with his opponents.
He is certainly motivated by fear. But I think he flees because of his sense of justice as well. I interpreted his character as knowing that, one day, he must act against the injustice that surrounds him, because his true character is incapable of pointless violence. And when he does act, he knows he'll be found out, and some combination of tortured and killed. He's afraid because he's discovered a better self that can't tolerate the actions of the First Order -- it just took reality setting in for it to hit him.
Like in the case of Rey, though, I thought too little time was spent exploring his central character conflict. As a whole, the film has too many action sequences in my view, and at least a couple could easily be cut in order to spend more time getting to know the characters.
Yeah, that actually is a pretty interesting way of reading into Finn's character, and I think that I agree with it.
I really like the new characters overall, and in their way I actually find them more potentially interesting than most of the old characters.
(The only old characters that really completely grab me are Han Solo and C-3PO, I must confess. With TFA, on the other hand, I felt something for just about all the new characters.)
It remains to be seen, of course, whether the next films will actually take advantage of this potential. I really hope that they do.
But again, can we try to see how much of a dead end this is, discussion wise? That's why I was getting so pissy. This stuff is so repetitive and I don't think anyone has anything to gain here.
I'm not going to continue the power level discussion for the sake of the thread and general peacefulness between members here, but I do think it's relevant, because we fear more for a character's situation when we're not convinced they can make it through. I should have made myself clearer at first -- my issue isn't with Rey's "power level" as such, it's just how speedily she moves from the position of a scavenger to "basically a reasonable Jedi", and predominantly through back-to-back action sequences. I don't hate or even dislike Rey as a character, but I was disappointed with how little development she got in favour of back-to-back action sequences.
My initial problem, to be absolutely clear, had more to do with pacing and character development rather than "power" as such. I framed my argument in "power levels" because it was easier to describe how I felt drama and tension was dissipated in my experience.
For what it's worth, after a second viewing, I like Rey and the movie as a whole more than the first time around. But again, I don't want to upset or harass you, or pull you back into a discussion type you're not interested in having. Just so long as you're aware that I had reasons for what I'm saying that aren't motivated by gender malice or contrarianism, and that I regret that I caused you any distress or discomfort.
I'm completely willing to let it all be water under the bridge, and for what it's worth, this is hardly the first time I've upset others by being my particular version of wordy and unclear (just ask anyone from IJBM). I came here to sit back and talk nerdy -- that's what I'm going to do. And I've been in far too many internet slapfests to have any interest in holding grudges against people willing to maturely compromise and reconcile.
Know your lines? Of course you know your lines! But I don't want to just hear your lines...I wanna hear what's in YOUR SOULS!!
I saw it tonight, after spending several hours getting to a theater that wasn't crowded. Seriously, it's after Christmas and there's still packed theaters.
I love the new characters, probably a little more than the returning cast. Although I did like Han. And I don't think he's dead. Luke survived a fall from a great height too (okay yeah that lightsaber stab could have been fatal), and I don't see how Han could come back as a Force ghost if Harrison Ford is going to be in VIII as well, because, uh, Han never used the Force. I bet he's escaped somehow with a leg missing or some shit and at the end of VIII he'll show up and Luke will be like "what happened to you?" and he'll just be like "Don't even ask"
Of course, all that reeducation is for naught if the person being reeducated is naturally squeamish to begin with, as Finn turned out to be.
That squeamishness is what motivates most of his actions. He does good, but more or less by coincidence.
There were hints of heroism, though. Like how when Finn arrives at that market in Jakku, tired and possibly dehydrated, immediately after he gets some water, he sees some stranger girl getting attacked by two guys and his first instinct is to rush in and defend her.
Granted, Rey fights the thugs off herself before Finn can get there.
I see Finn as a guy who's motivated both by desire to do the right thing and by fear of the First Order. And doing the right thing doesn't win out until the third act.
I saw it tonight, after spending several hours getting to a theater that wasn't crowded. Seriously, it's after Christmas and there's still packed theaters.
I love the new characters, probably a little more than the returning cast. Although I did like Han. And I don't think he's dead. Luke survived a fall from a great height too (okay yeah that lightsaber stab could have been fatal), and I don't see how Han could come back as a Force ghost if Harrison Ford is going to be in VIII as well, because, uh, Han never used the Force. I bet he's escaped somehow with a leg missing or some shit and at the end of VIII he'll show up and Luke will be like "what happened to you?" and he'll just be like "Don't even ask"
The pit he fell into ignited into a freaking star, he's dead. I'm pretty sure Ford's just for a flashback.
I saw it tonight, after spending several hours getting to a theater that wasn't crowded. Seriously, it's after Christmas and there's still packed theaters.
I love the new characters, probably a little more than the returning cast. Although I did like Han. And I don't think he's dead. Luke survived a fall from a great height too (okay yeah that lightsaber stab could have been fatal), and I don't see how Han could come back as a Force ghost if Harrison Ford is going to be in VIII as well, because, uh, Han never used the Force. I bet he's escaped somehow with a leg missing or some shit and at the end of VIII he'll show up and Luke will be like "what happened to you?" and he'll just be like "Don't even ask"
The pit he fell into ignited into a freaking star, he's dead. I'm pretty sure Ford's just for a flashback.
Spoiler:
Ford is listed on the casting call for Episode VIII, so who knows?
I see there's a lot of comments here. instead of reading them, I will just assume everyone has already agreed with me that Kylo Ren looks like kid Snape.
I see there's a lot of comments here. instead of reading them, I will just assume everyone has already agreed with me that Kylo Ren looks like kid Snape.
I hope for a prequel called We Have To Talk About Kylo Ren
I see there's a lot of comments here. instead of reading them, I will just assume everyone has already agreed with me that Kylo Ren looks like kid Snape.
I hope for a prequel called We Have To Talk About Kylo Ren
Comments
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
I don't really agree with what Alex said because I don't think that character development is linear or operates exclusively in that one way, and while I don't know if that's what he was implying, it did come off that way. I am willing to give him the benefit of a doubt, however, because he's a pretty thoughtful dude and I want to see where he goes with this. I also think you are a thoughtful guy, Kex, but you really do let being angry about these little things lead you to some ugly places sometimes.
I am truly sorry for that.
Does anyone here know how to be polite and/or express opinions in terms other than ridiculous absolutes? Nuance and courtesy exist, people.
I'd edit out "whiny" but now you pointed that out so it would be pointless to do so.
I freely admit that my main issue with him was that he didn't seem to actually read that Tumblr post I linked but instead tuned out because of the feminism talk, and that fed into my false suspicion above.
I'll be glad if I was mistaken.
- Rey Knows Ships. Well, duh. She’s a scavenger. Presumably she’s spent years and years now surviving on her ability to take apart ships. And to be any good at supporting herself on that, she needs to know what she’s looking for. Knowing what the parts do and where they go are key to finding them and doing her job efficiently. She’s also probably had a chance to observe them being cobbled together in a variety of different configurations, and talked about them with other scavengers, so her mechanical understanding of ships is a key aspect to her job and survival. We see this skill go from wrecked ships to working ones when she knows how to fix the Falcon, but it’s a logical progression. She’s been screwing around with ship parts all her life.
A scavenger is not a mechanic, and experience crawling around a broken ship does not translate to running a working one without training. We have this job in real life -- it's called ship breaking. The social circumstances involved are distressingly similar to the Jakku practically-slaves, and it most definitely does not result in proficiency with any of the scavenged parts in an operational scenario, much less a working whole. A Bangladeshi ship breaker would probably not know how to fix or drive a battleship, or remotely hack its security systems to de-tentacle attackers at will just because they've spent a lifetime ripping scrap out of one.
At best, she'd know how to jerry rig her USB-drive bike, and fix obvious things like pipes spewing toxic gas.
- Rey Can Pilot. But not right away; Rey has a grasp on how ships work, as we’ve established. When put behind the controls of something that isn’t grounded for the first time, she’s not an immediate virtuoso – she can pilot her ground transport, so she has a vague concept of how controls work at least, and she works it out reasonably quickly. But her real talent continues to lie in being a mechanic over being a pilot. At no point does anything wax poetic about her piloting skills or compare her to Poe Dameron. Rey figures out the Star Wars equivalent of driving a car without crashing into a wall after having worked in a junk yard all her life. This is nothing super special.
I'd believe that she could probably get it off the ground and/or into space with some basic reading comprehension and intuition. Vehicles are surprisingly intuitive for the most basic functions. The ridiculous obstacle course she flies to successfully shake and destroy career pilots, not so much.
Also, the Falcon is a very specific kind of ship whose cockpit is in a very, very awkward position. Nobody, professional pilots included, would be able to fly that thing with any kind of precision without a hell of a lot of experience.
- Rey Can Fight. Anyone who is surprised by this needs to get their head checked. Rey is a pretty young women left to fend for herself since childhood on Jakku, a planet that is such a shithole it makes Tatooine look like a wholesome family resort. We see violence and we see people trying to take advantage of Rey financially and trying to jump her for BB-8. And this is presumably an environment that has been consistently this shitty. Her ability to fight and defend herself is a necessary response to wanting to stay the fuck alive. Continuing out of this:
No issue with the staff and general combat awareness, and for the most part I completely agree here. Though the blaster was a bit much -- one second she barely remembers the safety exists, and the next she pegs a moving target dead center at long range.
- Rey Can Use a Lightsaber. Hell, we see Finn use a lightsaber earlier. It’s a laser sword, it’s not rocket science. And we see pretty consistently that while Rey and Finn are both competent enough fighters, Rey is definitely better at melee (she’s probably got a lot of experience with that staff thing she kicked Finn’s ass with), where Finn does better with ranged combat, opting for a blaster when possible (where Rey, by contrast, forgets to take the safety off). These are the weapons they are comfortable with. So it makes sense that Rey fighting with a lightsaber would fare better than Finn with the same weapon.
I commented on this earlier. Not only is this much believable, but she visibly uses staff techniques with the lightsaber. It's probably one of my favorite parts of the movie.
- Rey Can Use The Force. It’s a Star Wars movie. SOMEONE is gonna find out they’re a Jedi. And it’s about goddamn time a girl got to be it. Also, Rey is coded really hard as a Skywalker (Daisy Ridley looks a lot like Natalie Portman’s Padme, growing up on a crap desert backwater is a Skywalker rite of passage, her costume even echoes Luke’s outfit in ANH), so it’s likely she’s connected to that legacy, in which case it makes total sense. As for her knowledge of the Force without training – Luke had all of 20 minutes of training with Obi-Wan on the Millennium Falcon before Obi-Wan kicked it, and he ended up using the force to blow up the Death Star later the same movie. Presumably, some people are just naturals. And also, Rey does have a teacher – just not a witting one. She observes Kylo Ren and learns from him. She feels what it’s like when he tries to get in her mind, and is able to turn that around after seeing and experiencing it first hand.
It's easy but very lazy to write off power creep when the Force is involved. Keep in mind, the extent of Luke's Force abilities by the end of the first movie was very poorly deflecting shit from a training drone, and briefly hearing voices in his head while operating heavy machinery.
Luke never substantively used the Force until the sequel, and even then he did so very poorly and lost the key fight handily (lol). It's been painted throughout the entire series as something that doesn't just come effortlessly like this.
I'm willing to write off the visions as a plot device, and I could...kind of see fighting off Kylo's mental attack given that he's a whiny unstable kid prone to getting flustered when he doesn't get his way. But she also whips out powers she's never seen or heard of before, like the mind trick. And that's a bit much.
First point: That is basically what she did on the Falcon at first, though, which feeds into your next point...
Second point: By the time Rey got to it, the Falcon had been hacked specifically so normal people could pilot it, and even at that, Rey was barely able to get it off the ground. I didn't think the movie particularly exaggerated her ability with it. It's worth noting that Han was the one who actually piloted it when it was defeating career pilots and the like, and that was after Rey removed the hacks.
Third and fourth points: No issues here.
Fifth point: Luke had no knowledge of The Force and the Jedi before Obi-Wan tapped him. Rey, on the other hand, would've had some form of knowledge of these things because of the legends she would've heard about Luke, which means that it was somewhat natural for her to use The Force once she knew that she was able to.
My mind is admittedly really good at coming up with explanations for things if the plot doesn't fully provide for them, so that might be why I'm more willing to let these things slide than you or MA (still sorry for my attitude up there, BTW) are.
I was in a pretty bad place last night so what I said was colored by that but like
Discussions about "power levels" and the like are so viscerally annoying to me because they're inevitably cyclical, intensely subjective, and ultimately pretty inane.
It's not like there isn't something on the periphery of that-say, the increased focus on action removed a lot of the interesting "guile hero" stuff from the first three movies and made it seem like the heroes were relying on strength or innate skill in the Force rather than their own wits, or even just that it seemed like everything was bigger and more intense than in the originals to the point where it devalued lightsabers/the Force/etc.- but the focus on Rey as an avatar of that is so damn irritating because this kind of thing happens with every female action protagonist. It's not me not having faith in Alex it's me having seen this stuff a million times before and being given no reason whatsoever to believe anyone is formulating these opinions any differently.
So I figured I wasn't going to do anyone any favors by pretending I didn't think that sexist assumptions were at play here, and no, I don't think Alex or Bee are sexist. But damn, I spent a lot of time having my sexist, queerphobic, xenophobic bullshit go unquestioned and as soon as I started actively scrutinizing /why/ I was coming to a lot of the conclusions I did (as a result of other people challenging me)-without allowing myself to get defensive- I found out that, well, I didn't always like my reasoning.
But you know who also wasn't experienced with blasters and yet managed to hold his own? (For the sake of this comparison let's assume Luke bulls-eyeing womp rats and Rey having had rather extensive experience with fighting are more or less equivalent.)
Can we all agree at least that Rey is less OP than Anakin "podraces as a 12-year-old—a sport that regularly kills aliens who have super-human reflexes—and also successfully blew up an enemy battlestation the very first time he fell into a starfighter cockpit" Skywalker?
As for resisting Kylo Ren's mind thing: Mind-messing-with independently-thinking individuals who have lived a life of self-reliance and whose concerns are How Do I Live To Eat Tomorrow has got to be harder than mind-messing-with soldiers or other people who function as part of a group (sublimating their wills to a cause or authority) whose concerns are How Do I Advance The Cause and How Do I Most Effectively Serve That To Which I Am Loyal. So, Poe would be easier than Rey despite anti-torture or anti-mind-control training.
As for beating Kylo Ren in a light saber fight: Ren was just shot by a laser crossbow that the movie had been building up for a while.
As for piloting: Lasers and walls and buildings are afraid of the millennium falcon. Rey wasn't dodging obstacles, obstacles were dodging the Falcon. This is why the music swells when the planet heroically leaps out of the way of a diving Falcon.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
it's not that it's a childish fanservice fantasy, it's that it's not my childish fanservice fantasy
That squeamishness is what motivates most of his actions. He does good, but more or less by coincidence.
I really like the new characters overall, and in their way I actually find them more potentially interesting than most of the old characters.
(The only old characters that really completely grab me are Han Solo and C-3PO, I must confess. With TFA, on the other hand, I felt something for just about all the new characters.)
It remains to be seen, of course, whether the next films will actually take advantage of this potential. I really hope that they do.
I will endeavour to act more civilly towards you in specific and in the thread in general going forward.
I love the new characters, probably a little more than the returning cast. Although I did like Han. And I don't think he's dead. Luke survived a fall from a great height too (okay yeah that lightsaber stab could have been fatal), and I don't see how Han could come back as a Force ghost if Harrison Ford is going to be in VIII as well, because, uh, Han never used the Force. I bet he's escaped somehow with a leg missing or some shit and at the end of VIII he'll show up and Luke will be like "what happened to you?" and he'll just be like "Don't even ask"
So, I might see this. Not sure when, though, as I prefer to avoid hype...
i thought it was fun