I love what you’re saying Rogue (not that I necessarily grasp all of it of course, but I like the vibe of it!) but I would add that attaining the ‘effortlessness’ implied in the Taoist way would (ironically) require effort. Think of it in terms of being a musician. It would take hours of blisters and finger-cramps and listening and learning for a guitarist to be in that zone. No-one’s going to pick up a guitar and nail it first time just because they had their baser thoughts in check. That’s the beautiful thing about the Karate Kid - he had to wash cars and stand like an Ostrich and go through all kinds of stuff to get to that place. Kershner famously said he wanted “something powerful going on in Luke’s soul” and within the (arguably) limited framework of a SW film he achieved that. The SE feels more like bullet points - ‘we need lightsaber fights, we need a Dark Lord, we need a cantina’ etc etc. Any depth to Rey’s experience seems (to me) to being created by the fans themselves rather than by anything JJ and/or Rian are doing.
Well, to use your Karate Kid example I think the idea in the ST is that Rey has essentially spent her whole life waxing cars (whereas Luke is mostly just any old kid, wasting time with his friends between chores at home).
I believe I have said much the same thing before.
As have I. We’re arguing in circles. The way the force works in the films is not narrowly defined so the interpretation that the ST takes is not a canon-betraying one, regardless of whatever Lucas may or may not have said outside of the movies (I was reading the Rinzler ESB book and at one point he suggested stating outright that Luke is a level 2 and he needs training to face the Emperor who’s a level 9 or something - that’s dumb as fuck and should be ignored as it’s not in the movie). The new films should be able to forge their own path.
Whether you like it or not is a different matter. But the approach is justified.