Better than Luke and any other character in the SW universe at her same age, “because reasons”, without explaination […]
A.) We’ve got two more of these. I am absolutely sure we’ll get an explanation in the coming installments. I think when these are on video sitting next to each other of everyone’s shelves and you can watch one right after the other, people aren’t going to be bothered by the ambiguity here.
Now, I know people’ve speculated that there might be a reason for her sudden knowledge of the Force (like some sort of training at young age), but it wasn’t even hinted or questioned by anyone in this movie, so even if this were true for the sequels, saying Rey is a deus-ex-machina or “Mary Sue” in TFA it’s still understandable. After all, even with a shared plot, every movie should be able to technically stand on its own.
B.) We never get any explicit indication of how far along in his training Kylo Ren is. The only reasons I’ve come across for assuming he’s the man are 1.) he did that trick with the blaster bolt, and that kicked ass, so he must be amazing, and 2.) he wiped out Luke’s other students. That’s not a great indicator either because we have no idea how far along in the training they were, and in fact I have a theory that Kylo was able to off them all so easily because he was the only one with a lightsaber (I think Luke hadn’t yet taught his students to build them and that Snoke showed Kylo as part of his seduction, but this is all speculation). Anyway, other than that, he doesn’t face another Force user until Rey shows up. Yeah, he’s comes off as powerful in the first half of the film, but he’s essentially just bullying non-Force users. He’s a medium-sized fish in a small pond and he’s been that way for years. I have no trouble believing that when the shit truly hits the fan he kind of sucks at Jedi stuff.
He had at least some basic training, seeing he IS able to outdo both Finn and Rey. It doesn’t change the fact that Rey suddenly becomes more skilled than him.
Side note, it’s nice to get a chance to actually talk about things that happened in the movie without it getting bogged down by sweeping hyperbolic statements about the film’s overall quality. Let’s try to keep this up.
Sure, I’m all for good discussions!
Well I’m obviously out. :p
See you tomorrow or in a near thread 😄