If Anakin can survive having his remaining three appendages cut off and burned up beside a river of lava, I don’t see why Palpatine, the galaxy’s most powerful Force user, couldn’t have survived falling down a shaft. It’s not like Jedi don’t have levitation abilities. He could have just hovered onto a catwalk, skeedaddled to a shuttle have been long gone by the time the station blew up.
Jedi and Sith didn’t have levitation abilities, until TROS. That is the problem with the ST, they just invented new Force powers as they go. Even death and injury are pretty much irrelevant now. It’s become a story with zero stakes. Had JJ directed ROTS, Anakin would likely just have grown those limbs back.
Are you talking about self-levitation? Because levitation has been a thing since Empire and even then Luke’s jump out of the Carbonite chamber could be construed as self-levitation. I would also think that if a Jedi can lift something with their mind, they would also be able to push against something to speed up or slow down their own momentum.
I didn’t mind the Force healing since Rey can only do it in this movie at the height of her power, and it also foreshadows Kylo’s bringing her back to life as a surprisingly apt thematic conclusion to the Anakin ‘save people from dying’ theme all the way back in Episode 2.
Yes, I’m talking about self-levetation. I would also say presenting Rey being brought back to life as a good thing, conflicts very obviously with the main theme of Lucas’ PT, where conquering death was clearly presented as unnatural, and an extreme exponent of the dark side.
Using the Force to cheat your own death is clearly a Sith thing, since the Sith think inwardly, only about themselves. Anakin wants to save those he loves, but clearly not at the cost of his own life. He only wants to save them because of his own fear of loss. However Kylo uses this ability for someone else at the cost of his own life, a fairly selfless act and in keeping with the Jedi way. Besides, there are countless fairy tales where the hero is brought back to life through magical means and it is rarely seen as anything other than good and miraculous.