yotsuya said:
Hardcore Legend said:
DominicCobb said:
DrDre said:
DominicCobb said:
Rey isn’t a Jedi yet.
Which begs the question what does Rey miss, that would prevent her from being called a Jedi? She has pretty much all the skills. She defeated Kylo Ren, resisted Snoke, and rejected Kylo Ren’s offer. What else is left for her to do, outside of defeating Kylo Ren again?
Being a Jedi is about more than just having all the skillz (which there’s no indication she has anyway). She defeated Kylo in a moment of weakness for him (and the next time she tried to face him she never even got to ignite her saber). She did not resist Snoke. And rejecting a single offer towards the dark side doesn’t mean that you’ll never face temptation again. Luke rejected Vader’s offer in ESB, don’t forget.
Rey has mastered every skill that every Jedi in the first 6 films exhibited. She did most of this within 30 minutes of having the Force Awakened.
-Force pull
-Mind reading
-Manipulation
-Levitation of objects
-Seeing the Future
-Mastery of lightsaber
Other than Force push,Force Ghost and this new projection thing Luke did, I can’t think of anything we have seen a JEDI do before that she hasn’t done.
And it is ok if she ends up being the greatest force user of all time. It is ok if she does new and exciting things with the Force. But as a viewer, in my opinion, she has to have ‘earned it’ narratively somehow. Either through a forgotten past or some other yet unseen reasonable explanation. Otherwise, using the Force isn’t a practice, a focus or a skill. It is a super power. And Rey is essentially Shazaam learning what new things she can do because she said the words “The Force”.
using the force for targeting
force communication
force jumping
force running
surviving poison gas
force choking
putting someone to sleep
catching force lighting
deflecting blaster fire
… just to list the ones that come to mind.
Spoiler alert: the first 15 minutes of Episode IX will be Rey watching an OT/PT highlight reel to teach her the powers she’s still missing. It’ll be set up like an episode of MST3K, with Rey mimicking what she sees on screen and laughing at Luke’s ESB training montage.
NeverarGreat said:
yotsuya said:
And let’s not forget that the Jedi Academy is a school. They come as children and the Jedi have to teach them literally everything. Reading, writing, math, science, history, as well as the Jedi powers, Jedi code, law, diplomacy, lightsaber combat, hand to hand combat, leadership, tactics, technology, piloting, driving, etc. Being a Jedi in the Old Republic is so much more than lifting rocks. But when you start ticking things off, a lot of that can be learned elsewhere. In the PT we never see Jedi powers taught. We see some younglings practicing with a lightsaber (an indication of how elementary what Luke is learning in ANH is) and we see two padawan accompanying their masters on missions. By that stage they have learned all their classroom lessions and are doing their apprenticeship in the field. In the OT we see one lesson with Obi-wan for deflecting blaster bolts and then lessons with Yoda levitating rocks (perfecting what Luke had done earlier in the Wampa cave without any instruction). That is all we know. Anything else is guess work. Rey went to Luke expecting training to manage and perfect her use of what she had learned from Kylo Ren, but Luke only gave her the basics. So she took the texts and left. Oh, from kind of a throw away line, evidently Ben Solo was the same type of natural she is.
So I really don’t understand this insistance that this violates the previous 6 films. I also don’t understand how it is Rian Johnson’s fault when the character was created this by JJ Abrams. Rian gave her a nice arc about facing her parentage and being rejected by Luke and accepted by Kylo, but she can’t join Kylo. He did not give her a bunch of new force powers on top of what she already had.
What Luke and the baby Jedi are learning is how to trust your extrasensory perception/prediction abilities. This is what allows Anakin to succeed at Podracing, and presumably what makes Luke such a gifted pilot as well. That is the one ability which is established as present at a young age. This is why I can see why Rey would be so good at piloting the Falcon - it’s an ability that requires you only sense the Force, and allow it to guide your actions with regards to self-preservation. This is also why I don’t think it’s crazy that Leia was able to do what she did in TLJ.
But telekinesis and mind control? These are things which we have only seen Force users do after years of effort. And I do think that the Wampa cave was meant to show that Luke taught himself some Jedi tricks in the years between movies, probably with some ghost Obi-wan help.
I don’t think anyone’s saying that Rian is primarily at fault for these issues. He merely continued in JJ’s trajectory, which makes me think that there’s some sort of explanation coming in 9, though the individual movies should stand on their own.
Abrams handed Johnson a mess in TFA. TLJ is not only a worthy successor to TFA, but a far better film overall, even if I don’t like what it did to the characters or think it fits well within Star Wars canon. The fan outrage that’s currently being slung in Johnson’s direction should be aimed squarely at Abrams.
My guess is Abrams had absolutely no planned trajectory for any of the arcs he established in VII. His previous work demonstrates he cares more about hitting you in the feels than telling a coherent story with a satisfying conclusion. The first season of his TV shows are great at setting up the universe, but they go off the rails after that.
Any solution they come up with for Rey will feel like a retcon because VII and VIII don’t stand on their own. It’ll feel like an excuse—a cop-out one makes up on the fly—rather than a reason. One of my fondest memories of my grandmother is her watching her favorite soap opera (can’t remember which one it was), and upon finding out everything crazy that had happened to the main character was all a dream, she sat straight up in her chair and yelled at the TV. “Oh come on! Give me a break!” She was one angry fangirl that day. Pretty sure that’s going to be me watching IX on Netflix in 2020.