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Post #1151627

Author
Porkins4real
Parent topic
The Last Jedi: Official Review and Opinions Thread ** SPOILERS **
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1151627/action/topic#1151627
Date created
31-Dec-2017, 12:43 PM

yotsuya said:

In real life there are two ways to acquire skills. First you find a teacher study work hard and grow your skills. The second way which is not uncommon, is that life gives you lessons and teaches you and forges your skills. In Star Wars the typical Jedi fashion is to find a teacher and learn and study. This is the root Luke takes. And then the quality of teaching is dependent on the quality of your teacher. We all know that Kenobi feels he was a bad teacher which is why Anakin fell. But in The Force Awakens we were introduced to Ray who’d grown up on the desert planet of Jakku. It was a hard life and she learned many lessons from it and gained many skills. This is a contrast to where we find Luke on Tatooine at his uncle’s Farm. He doesn’t appear to have learned many lessons and is woefully unprepared to be a Jedi. So in the course of the movies he has to be retrained. As Yoda said he has to unlearn what he has learned. This means the lessons he grew up with or the opposite of what he needed. That means the skills he learned in life or not what he needed to be a Jedi. But Rey on the other hand did learn the lessons she needed to become a Jedi from her life on Jakku. So the difference in training between the two goes back to the difference and backgrounds and the different skills that they acquired growing up and living their lives. Yoda had to correct things that Luke had wrong and consequently he could lift the X-Wing out of the swamp. He could barely lift stones. But Ray has no such doubts no such bad training. Instead she grew up with the right skills to tap into the force. I don’t know how you find her story inconsistent with the previous movies. It is there in the original trilogy. Luke had to be retrained. Ever tried to do that? That is 10 times harder than learning it in the first place.

And as I posted before, Ray does not pick up Force powers out of the blue. Everything she does she learns from Kylo Ren. She was already a skilled warrior with a staff when we meet her. She’s able to pick up a lightsaber and hold her own before kylo gives her the small lesson to tap into the force and a moment to do it. Andrea’s able to defeat him because of that moment Kylo Ren is not his full potential. Then in the Last Jedi when they face the praetorian guards you see the power difference between the two. Rey struggles to fight one on one but Kylo is fighting two or three at the same time and does much better. There’s a clear skill difference between the two and Kylo comes out on top.

I’ve only seen the movie twice so far but I have picked up on quite a few things. First off, Rey’s portrayal exactly matches her portrayal in The Force Awakens so any complaints about that have to be leveled at Abrams. I find that all the characters are very consistent with how Abrams treated them. For me Leia was the big Improvement by becoming a much stronger leader than we saw before. And given the backstory of Luke from The Force Awakens the Luke we are presented in this movie is right on target. Abrams made several critical mistakes and his movie by using his typical storytelling I’m leaving huge holes for someone else to fill. I think some of the difference in the way people take this movie is whether or not then like to Abrams did and wanted to see it answered, or didn’t like what he did and didn’t mind that it got thrown out the window. I don’t think Abrams is a good storyteller so I really didn’t care that all these things that he’s so carefully set up or thrown out. And really it was more the fans that hyped Rey’s parentage then the movie did. Her parents were left a mystery but Abraham said himself that her parents were not in the movie. So she was never going to be a Skywalker. And Kenobi was in the movie so she was never going to be a Kenobi. He really set it up that she was a nobody and just didn’t reveal that fact. And he’s the one who failed to reveal who Snoke was. Why was that even left a mystery? He’s the one who didn’t answer that question. He’s a bad Storyteller you don’t leave those questions to him to another Storyteller to answer, you answer them yourself. Was there any reason for Snoke to be a big mystery? No none. So the expectations that people have that weren’t met it’s Abrams fault. And now Abrams gets to come back and deal with the story is and come up with an ending. Something he sucks at. The only hope I see you for the next installment is a glimmer of hope that Lucas head outlined what the first side of the story was supposed to be and that Abrams follows it and has an ending.

To have two arguments that are going on are Abraham’s fault. If Rey is inconsistent with the original trilogy it’s his fault. If we don’t like where we find Luke in the story, it’s his fault. Well that one’s actually Lucas’s fault according to what I’m reading. Lucas said he was going to be an exile, Abrams went with that and establish the destruction of the Jedi Order and the fall of Ben Solo to Kylo Ren. So all almost all these arguments go back to the stupid things that Abraham’s did and we’re not paying the price because they were stupid. But everyone’s now blaming Rian Johnson because he’s trying to recover a good story from the junk that Abrams left behind. I found his slow chase to be much more interesting than the stupid Starkiller base. I found what he did to be much more intriguing I liked where he went with the characters and I like how he subverted what Abrams had started and did something that I felt was far more in keeping with the characters. So the quality of Rian Johnson story lies in he was true to the characters he was given. You may disagree about Luke and that’s fine, but I think he went in a great direction I felt like the Luke I saw was a direct offshoot of the Luke I grew up with. This whole Rey/Mary Sue argument really belongs in The Force Awakens thread because that’s where it started.

Some good points but I can’t agree with it all being Abrams fault. Luke in exile could have played out to be much more interesting. for example - maybe Snoke was getting inside Luke’s head and he realized he was not strong enough to resist him in part becuase he has seen too much darkness to truly believe in the light. Thus he exiled himself so he would not fall under Snokes power. When Rey comes, it gives ‘new hope’ that snoke can be defeated with Rey by his side or that Rey herself can bring balance back…

Then you cn build snoke up, give him a back story and give the Third movie some clear direction - defeat snoke.