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Post #1230314

Author
yotsuya
Parent topic
Episode VIII : The Last Jedi - Discussion * SPOILER THREAD *
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1230314/action/topic#1230314
Date created
1-Aug-2018, 12:12 PM

DominicCobb said:

They’re not in line with rules that people have established based on the previous 6, sure. But there isn’t anything that directly contradicts with what’s actually in the films. It’s only rewriting our perceptions of the universe, not the films themselves.

I think you nailed it. A lot of what I hear (not just here) is that it breaks the rules. And when the rules are spelled out, they aren’t actually rules that the movies dictate. Complaints about how Rey learns the force skills don’t make sense to me. One easy lesson on the Falcon (without Ben demonstrating) and Luke can deflect blaster bolts while blind. Without any lessons or examples, Luke grabs his lightsaber in the Wampa cave. That is the first time we saw any Jedi levitate an object. While it is true that we don’t see the entirely of how Yoda trains Luke, we see Luke levitate small things, up to R2, and then fail to levitate his X-wing. Yoda says it is because he doesn’t believe he can because it is too big. With Rey, we see her exposed to mind reading, force suggestions, levitation, fighting with a lightsaber and then she does them (not all without some failure). From what I see, she learned them as easily as Luke did. She just learned more in a shorter time. Nothing different about how she did it. Implying that there is means you are going off of something that isn’t actually in the OT. (we never see anyone learn new force skills in the PT so any comparison to Anakin is pointless - all his training took place between the movies)

So both Luke and Rey seem to pick up force skills with little training. We never see Luke learn the skills he uses after the Wampa cave. He force jumps out of the carbon freeze chamber. He calls to Leia mentally. He force chokes Jabba’s guards. He uses force suggestion on Bib Fortuna (and tries to on Jabba). His ability with a lightsaber has grown to where he is a match for Vader. And when you look at the films. Luke only has a short time with two masters. The short trip from Tatooine to Alderaan with Ben and the time on Dagobah with Yoda (which was during the time that the Falcon was traveling from Hoth to Bespin - either sublight or a slow backup hyperdrive depending on who you ask). That is far less than the 10 years Anakin spent training. So obviously the Jedi spent a lot of time training on things besides force powers. Yoda spent a lot of the time we see on philosophy rather than skills in what we see with Luke.

So I really have to ask how Rey learns these things faster than Luke did? She learns more skills in a shorter time, but on a skill by skill comparison, she learns just as fast, not faster. That is what the movies show. Where does the idea that she is learning too easily come from? She at least has an example for each of her new skills. Luke doesn’t. Luke learns levitation from desperation, not because he has seen it before. Deflecting blaster bolts (which he doesn’t use until ROTJ) is the only force skill we actually see him learn directly from someone else (and Ben doesn’t demonstrate). In that light, Luke is the super Jedi, not Rey. The biggest difference between them is that Luke has doubts and Rey doesn’t. She sees these things and does them (“do or do not, there is no try” comes to mind).

The answer to this is that Rey learns too much too fast and that seems wrong to some. It isn’t and doesn’t violate a single movie established rule of the Star Wars universe. She goes through a process we have never actually seen before - the learning of force skills by example. We don’t know what is normal except for what little we have seen with Luke. Luke learned somethings completely on his own (there is no evidence that Ben was trying to train him between ANH and TESB so we can’t assume Luke’s attempt to levitate his lightsaber was using anything more than Ben’s vague “Use the force, Luke,” instructions). And Kylo doesn’t seem surprised that she picks up things so fast. Snoke even gets a laugh out of it. No surprise from them or Luke. So it is fan surprise that she learns the way she does at the speed she does that is out of place. If it jerks you out of the movie it means you have build up an idea in your head that isn’t supported by what we have seen in the first two trilogies.