Star Wars: Episode 7, 8... and BEYOND!

Lord Noctis

Harbinger of Darkness
AKA
Caius Ballad
In regards to Rey's staff skill translating to lightsaber skill, it kinda works that way in real life, to an extent. I'm not saying learning to fight with a staff will make you a master swordsman or anything like that, but the basics of melee combat remain largely the same regardless of what weapon you are using, or even if you aren't using a weapon at all. Therefore, if you become highly skilled with a staff you will not have an equivalent skill with a sword, but you will have a solid foundation to work with.

I spent about five years training in martial arts, including multiple types of weapons, and thats what my experience has taught me.
 

Clement Rage

Pro Adventurer
Lando and Han both owned the Falcon for years, Poe is an X-Wing pilot. They didn't pull any of those stunts their first time in a new ship. Poe tries to escape in a TIE fighter (not his favoured craft) and gets shot down. Just because she doesn't equal the best pilots in the galaxy on her first time in A dogfight doesn't mean she wasn't very impressive here. Finn's gun was frozen early in the dogfight, so she was on her own for a long stretch of it.

Sorry, but I just have to say that Poe manages to evade fire long enough to take out several key turbolaser batteries and nearly escapes from a Resurgent-Class Star Destroyer in a TIE FIGHTER before getting taken out by their cannons. That's crazy.

Like Tres said, I wasn't saying that what she did wasn't an impressive feat for her. I'm saying that it's not NEARLY as ridiculously unimaginable as people seem to keep implying that it is with these comparisons. People in Star Wars pull off this sort of thing with limited experience without it being even remotely controversial, and I don't see why Rey keeps getting flak for it.

Because those other people are typically already good at whatever skill it is they're using, or have years of training behind them. There is no equivalent anywhere I'm aware of where somebody picks up a lightsabre for the literal first time and then defeats in combat someone that has been trained in its use, or having Force Powers used on them ONCE and immediately being able to replicate them.

Well, let me just put this to rest definitively with two quotes from the Visual Dictionary of The Force Awakens, then:
• "Rey has learned self-defense as a matter of necessity. With her battered but durable staff, she has perfected thrusting, swinging, and striking techniques to keep away unruly thugs."
• "Rey's fighting skill with her staff translates well into other short-ranged melee weapons, including those she has never wielded before."

Heheh, that's some mighty specific phrasing there. You almost think the writers realised that was questionable and put that in to cover themselves.

Additionally, Luke telekinetically pulls the lightsaber to save himself on Hoth, which is before he receives any form of formal Force training from Yoda so that's not exactly true either.

No formal training... but three years of time, enough to be practicing himself. Rey found out she was force sensitive at most a couple of days before this, with no time at all for training or practice, and pulls it off almost instantly.

s I said before, everything up until Rey starts to push him back is still him 100% on the road to triumph. The path to the Dark Side is all about pain, and this confrontation was his final test (since he's yet to complete his training), so he's living in it. His toying with Finn doesn't matter or come at any real cost, because he absolutely destroys him. He's also not toying with Rey, he's holding her off to convince her to join him rather than attempting to kill her. There's nothing that he's doing there that's unreasonable.

Really? Cause we've had lots of monologues about the nature of the Dark side, and they generally feature anger and hate, not pain. Also, up to now you've been arguing that the wound was a huge handicap, now you're saying it was actually not that big an obstacle?

Should we agree to disagree? I don't think we're going to convince each other at this stage, and I'm feeling like I'm coming across as trying to stop people enjoying something they liked, which wasn't the idea of this. I did not dislike the film, I just thought certain things could have been better.

In regards to Rey's staff skill translating to lightsaber skill, it kinda works that way in real life, to an extent. I'm not saying learning to fight with a staff will make you a master swordsman or anything like that, but the basics of melee combat remain largely the same regardless of what weapon you are using, or even if you aren't using a weapon at all. Therefore, if you become highly skilled with a staff you will not have an equivalent skill with a sword, but you will have a solid foundation to work with.

I spent about five years training in martial arts, including multiple types of weapons, and thats what my experience has taught me.

Fair enough, but there's still a period of adjustment before you start beating the brown belts, right?
 

Lord Noctis

Harbinger of Darkness
AKA
Caius Ballad
Fair enough, but there's still a period of adjustment before you start beating the brown belts, right?

Sure, but if someone took a magnum and blasted a hole in the brown belts gut then that period of adjustment is gonna get a lot shorter, on account of the brown belt not being able to fight anywhere near as well as he normally would.
 

X-SOLDIER

Harbinger O Great Justice
AKA
X
Because those other people are typically already good at whatever skill it is they're using, or have years of training behind them. There is no equivalent anywhere I'm aware of where somebody picks up a lightsabre for the literal first time and then defeats in combat someone that has been trained in its use, or having Force Powers used on them ONCE and immediately being able to replicate them.

Primary Skill Accomplishments:
• Luke manages to survive dogfighting combat that many other highly trained Rebel pilots fail, and also makes a shot that other a pilot assisted by a targeting computer fails by using the Force to assist his naturally trained skill shooting from a flying craft.
• Rey manages to survive in melee against a trained opponent, and overcome him by using the Force to assist her naturally trained melee skills.

Secondary Skill Accomplishments:
• Luke fights off various Stormtroopers despite having limited combat experience.
• Rey manages to fly long enough for Finn to shoot down the TIEs despite limited flight experience.

Luke is never confronted by another Force user before honing his skills (nor is Anakin). Both Luke and Rey learn how to pull a lightsaber to themselves without any training. Rey manages to eventually resist a mental invasion technique and figure it out enough to use it herself. However – we also have to put her untrained power in perspective to Kylo Ren's – since both the mental invasion/incapacitation and blaster bolt/human freezing Force techniques are COMPLETELY new, and already well beyond the power of anything we've seen so far in Star Wars.

...But you don't get comments about him being OP, because she manages to reciprocate one of those powers of his, and best him in melee combat when he's injured, despite the fact that he Force pushed her into a tree and knocked her out less than a minute earlier. Because it's a big victory for her, it seems like a more significant loss for him, but he's still a much bigger threat than people seem to give him credit for.


Heheh, that's some mighty specific phrasing there. You almost think the writers realised that was questionable and put that in to cover themselves.

Or it's a visual dictionary explicitly explaining basic facts beyond debate :awesomonster:


No formal training... but three years of time, enough to be practicing himself. Rey found out she was force sensitive at most a couple of days before this, with no time at all for training or practice, and pulls it off almost instantly.

Luke knows about the Force about the same period of time when Obi-Wan has him "use the Force" to make the shot to destroy the Death Star.

(Also, as I've noted multiple times before this, the Force had zero telekinetic capabilities in Episode IV, as none of those emerged until V).


Really? Cause we've had lots of monologues about the nature of the Dark side, and they generally feature anger and hate, not pain. Also, up to now you've been arguing that the wound was a huge handicap, now you're saying it was actually not that big an obstacle?

Yoda's quote is: "Anger leads to Hate. Hate leads to... Suffering."

I'm not saying it wasn't an obstacle. It was a grievous injury, but it's a part of the process of attempting to embrace the Dark Side, and something that he would see as a part of the trial of what he was attempting to achieve. In fact, it all falls together pretty closely:
• Anger with Han Solo.
• Hatred of Finn.
• Suffering from Rey.


Should we agree to disagree? I don't think we're going to convince each other at this stage, and I'm feeling like I'm coming across as trying to stop people enjoying something they liked, which wasn't the idea of this. I did not dislike the film, I just thought certain things could have been better.

I'm happy to discuss this as long as you'd like. I don't think you're coming across that way, fwiw. I'm not saying things couldn't've been done better, I just think that a lot of your perceived weaknesses with the presentation also exist with the other Force-using heroes, and thus I don't see why they're an issue with Rey.





X :neo:
 

Roger

He/him
AKA
Minato
Like Tres said, I wasn't saying that what she did wasn't an impressive feat for her. I'm saying that it's not NEARLY as ridiculously unimaginable as people seem to keep implying that it is with these comparisons. People in Star Wars pull off this sort of thing with limited experience without it being even remotely controversial, and I don't see why Rey keeps getting flak for it.

Anakin's feats in Phantom Menace WERE plently controversial in my experience, just not as controversial Jar Jar, Gungans in general, trade negotations, racist stereotypes expressed in aliens, the acting, the cgi and midichlorians. TFA is by no means as bad a movie as TPM, quite great, in fact but it is not above any flak getting at all.
 

Cthulhu

Administrator
AKA
Yop
I've seen / read the original theory. There's some compelling evidence / pointers that they had to do an 180 on the original plan of revealing him as the big bombad after the terrible reception. Too subtle / too slapstick.
 

Super Mario

IT'S A ME!
AKA
Jesse McCree. I feel like a New Man
If that was the case for Jar Jar's original plan, I wish GL would have revealed the twist in TPM around the end instead of partying around Naboo and celebrating their liberation to allow the plan they originally had to go through to back paddle on the fandom hating on Jar Jar and possibly allow his plan to come to fruit. Even reading the theory I now understood why I felt so surprised Count Dooku just popped out of nowhere when I saw Episode 2 as a kid. Reading the original reddit thread is like finding out about Keyser Sohze...IF this prove to be true.
 
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The Twilight Mexican

Ex-SeeD-ingly good
AKA
TresDias
I have a question for X (or whoever else wants to answer). You've mentioned that Force powers didn't include a display of telekinesis until "The Empire Strikes Back," but I always (ever since I was a kid) thought that Luke was using telekinesis to guide the the proton torpedoes that blow up the Death Star in "A New Hope." I mean, just look at how they move.
 

X-SOLDIER

Harbinger O Great Justice
AKA
X
I have a question for X (or whoever else wants to answer). You've mentioned that Force powers didn't include a display of telekinesis until "The Empire Strikes Back," but I always (ever since I was a kid) thought that Luke was using telekinesis to guide the the proton torpedoes that blow up the Death Star in "A New Hope." I mean, just look at how they move.

I was referring to the fact that it's (largely) a subtle effect in IV. The Force is more of a minor influence on its surroundings - be they people or objects and less of a, well... "force" like it is in the other films. Obi-Wan misdirects Stormtroopers, Vader chokes someone, and Luke makes an essentially impossible shot. They're entirely limited to subtle interferences with people or objects, and an extended awareness of surroundings.

In Episode V that very much changes to things Luke pulling the lightsaber to himself and levitating rocks, Vader ripping out and hurling chunks of Cloud City at Luke, Yoda lifting up X-Wings out of swamps, etc. We don't even see any remote hints of that sort of power in the Vader Vs. Obi-Wan confrontation in IV, but from Episode V on, they're a staple of Star Wars Force Users.

The Force in IV is something that Han Solo could easily not believe in – because everything about it seems very nearly indistinguishable from luck, but from V on when the Jedi badassery starts to take center stage, the Force turns into much more of a controllable Power and less of just a meditative Influence. That's really what I meant by it not being telekinetic when I referred to it before. While you could nudge things with the Force in IV, it doesn't give any indication that Luke, Vader, or Obi-Wan could just lift C-3PO into the air – especially because of how the Jedi spoken of as being a hokey ancient religion of old sorcerers, rather than the sort of powerful combatants that they became (and would've been infamous for – even by A New Hope) as the story of Star Wars grew in the later films.





X :neo:
 

Cthulhu

Administrator
AKA
Yop
Re: telekinesis, it's probably due to special effects and shit and they couldn't be arsed in the first movie, :monster:

Re: JJ Binks, it doesn't really matter if it's "true" or not, they didn't end up revealing it / putting it in the movie (or the second), ergo it didn't happen, :monster:

It might yet though. BB-8 is the sith master, I just know it. How did he avoid getting shot? How could he accidentally meet Rey & co?

I've also seen shooped images of a guy in a green suit controlling him. The real Sith master? :o
 

Ite

Save your valediction (she/her)
AKA
Ite
If you watch Clone Wars it's pretty obvious that Jar Jar is incredibly force sensitive. Clone Wars actually made me like Jar Jar, because he was just a ridiculous NPC, as opposed to in Ep 1, where he's a ridiculous PC stealing screen time from characters that actually matter like Bail Organa and the Jedi Council, whose members are never actually introduced!!
 

X-SOLDIER

Harbinger O Great Justice
AKA
X
Clone Wars & Rebels have done SO much good into making the Prequels and the OT feel more cohesive. I can't speak highly enough of them.




X :neo:
 

Ite

Save your valediction (she/her)
AKA
Ite
Saw the pilot for Rebels. Hated it. Is it worth a proper go really? I couldn't stand the animation style, it's too Disney Mouse House for me. Wasn't sold on the Aladdin kid either.
 

X-SOLDIER

Harbinger O Great Justice
AKA
X
Do you remember how Clone Wars is a little rough for about a season or two before it really hits its stride? Rebels goes through that by half way through its first season, and this season (Season 2) is coming to rival my favourite Clone Wars episodes. The art style is derivative of Ralph McQuarrie's original Star Wars concept art in the same way that Clone Wars was derivative of Genndy's Clone Wars series' art.

If you enjoyed Clone Wars, I've little to no doubt that by the end of the first season of Rebels, it will have its hooks sunk firmly into you.




X :neo:
 

Clement Rage

Pro Adventurer
Because those other people are typically already good at whatever skill it is they're using, or have years of training behind them. There is no equivalent anywhere I'm aware of where somebody picks up a lightsabre for the literal first time and then defeats in combat someone that has been trained in its use, or having Force Powers used on them ONCE and immediately being able to replicate them.

Primary Skill Accomplishments:
• Luke manages to survive dogfighting combat that many other highly trained Rebel pilots fail, and also makes a shot that other a pilot assisted by a targeting computer fails by using the Force to assist his naturally trained skill shooting from a flying craft.
• Rey manages to survive in melee against a trained opponent, and overcome him by using the Force to assist her naturally trained melee skills.

Secondary Skill Accomplishments:
• Luke fights off various Stormtroopers despite having limited combat experience.
• Rey manages to fly long enough for Finn to shoot down the TIEs despite limited flight experience.

X :neo:

Sorry to be dragging this back up, feel free to ignore me.

Luke survives in a dogfight, but most of those other rebel pilots you mention failed during the trench run, which he wasn't in the first two times. He also had plenty of support, got into serious trouble and needed help to deal with one TIE fighter. He also has R2 repairing the damage he takes. He makes the shot, but needed a huge amount of help and support to make it to that point, including, Han, Wedge, R2-D2, Obi-Wan's Force Ghost, and the first two trench runs to highlight the dangers (Having watched it, that first trench run guy is really selfless, using his last seconds to communicate vital info to the rest of the team.)

Rey manages to survive in a long melee engagement using a weapon she has never used before against someone that uses it as their primary weapon, when he can also use the Force to boost his abilities. I'll admit that she can fight, but if you look up lightsabres, it won't be long before you find a sentence like 'very difficult to use', 'requires skill and training' in most of the sources that talk about it. They're not treated like something you can just pick up and use effectively on instinct.

Secondary Skill Accomplishments:
• Luke fights off various Stormtroopers despite having limited combat experience.
• Rey manages to fly long enough for Finn to shoot down the TIEs despite limited flight experience.

Luke doesn't fight them off alone (not to mention they're under orders to let them escape), and flying a spacecraft is a fair bit more complicated than firing a gun. Especially an unfamiliar, very old craft in tight quarters that isn't designed to be flown by one person. She keeps flying for a long time pursued by two TIEs, where Luke needed help to get rid of one.

Both Luke and Rey learn how to pull a lightsaber to themselves without any training.

Luke takes three years. Rey takes three days, tops. Less than a week, anyway.

...But you don't get comments about him being OP, because she manages to reciprocate one of those powers of his, and best him in melee combat when he's injured, despite the fact that he Force pushed her into a tree and knocked her out less than a minute earlier.

If he used those techniques successfully against Luke, I think we'd see 'overpowered' come up.

I just think that a lot of your perceived weaknesses with the presentation also exist with the other Force-using heroes, and thus I don't see why they're an issue with Rey.

Luje has one key skill, piloting, that he uses the force to enhance in his first movie. Rey has piloting, engineering, force powers, and lightsabre combat, and less support (no Jedi ghost guide or previous instruction, no wingmen, no time with a lightsabre beforehand (even just swinging it around out of combat to get used to the weightlessness and stuff.

Sure, but if someone took a magnum and blasted a hole in the brown belts gut then that period of adjustment is gonna get a lot shorter, on account of the brown belt not being able to fight anywhere near as well as he normally would.

Our metaphor is stretching a bit, but if said brown belt ran you down in a foot chase and beat someone else while apparently going easy on them, you might be wondering how much damage that shot actually did.
Anger leads to Hate. Hate leads to... Suffering."

Huh. That is interesting. I was thinking more Palpatine's monologues.

Because it's a big victory for her, it seems like a more significant loss for him, but he's still a much bigger threat than people seem to give him credit for.

The thing is, it's hard to see how that is going to be manifested. There are no other Jedi for him to demonstrate his skills on. Rey will also have levelled up by the time they meet again. And they already blew up a galaxy.

Also saw Rebels pilot episode and didn't like it, by the way. Maybe should give it another shot
 

X-SOLDIER

Harbinger O Great Justice
AKA
X
Luke survives in a dogfight, but most of those other rebel pilots you mention failed during the trench run, which he wasn't in the first two times. He also had plenty of support, got into serious trouble and needed help to deal with one TIE fighter. He also has R2 repairing the damage he takes. He makes the shot, but needed a huge amount of help and support to make it to that point, including, Han, Wedge, R2-D2, Obi-Wan's Force Ghost, and the first two trench runs to highlight the dangers (Having watched it, that first trench run guy is really selfless, using his last seconds to communicate vital info to the rest of the team.)

Rey manages to survive in a long melee engagement using a weapon she has never used before against someone that uses it as their primary weapon, when he can also use the Force to boost his abilities. I'll admit that she can fight, but if you look up lightsabres, it won't be long before you find a sentence like 'very difficult to use', 'requires skill and training' in most of the sources that talk about it. They're not treated like something you can just pick up and use effectively on instinct.

All of the other Rebel pilots had "plenty of support" too – but still got killed and failed to make their shots. By the time Luke makes his run, the majority of the other fighters from the assault had been taken out, so I don't know what you mean by he had "plenty of support" in comparison to what everyone else had. ALL of the other pilots had Astromech units and other fighters assisting them, too. The only thing Luke had that they didn't was the Force.

Again - Rey's survival isn't a big factor here, because he's not attempting to kill her, he's attempting to get her to join him, and bring her to Snoke like he was commanded to. Her besting him is an accomplishment, but again – despite the incredible level of power and experience that Kylo Ren has, he's still suffering a grievous injury that's thrown back and one-hit-killed literally everyone else it's ever hit. The hit to the midsection is limiting his mobility in addition to being painful. His injury is an equivalent handicap to her not having used a lightsaber but being exceptional with a similar melee weapon. That's why when she uses the Force, she beats the odds.

Both Luke AND Rey are impressive, but neither one really any more so than the other against the odds that the film presents them against. The difference here is that the stakes and scale of what a powerful Force User is is vastly different from IV to VII, but their accomplishments are equivalent.

Luke doesn't fight them off alone (not to mention they're under orders to let them escape), and flying a spacecraft is a fair bit more complicated than firing a gun. Especially an unfamiliar, very old craft in tight quarters that isn't designed to be flown by one person. She keeps flying for a long time pursued by two TIEs, where Luke needed help to get rid of one.

First: Luke needed help because the TIE on him wasn't flying through a cover-filled environment that their target was familiar with while at a low-altitude tracking disadvantage. The TIEs were in Rey's backyard, whereas Luke was in the Empire's backyard with no cover.

Second: Her flight with the two TIEs isn't very long. It's absolutely nothing when compared to length of the Death Star assault (or Anakin's Podracing).

Third: All of Rey's feats are against opponents already at a disadvantage. Just saying.


Luke takes three years. Rey takes three days, tops. Less than a week, anyway.



If he used those techniques successfully against Luke, I think we'd see 'overpowered' come up.

What about the fact that, even in the Clone Wars, at the peak of the Jedi's power, we've never seen anyone even remotely capable of stopping a blaster shot midair – let alone then just keep talking while holding it there because that act doesn't even take his full concentration? Kylo Ren is crazy powerful, but the focus of the extremity of his power isn't questioned because Rey bested him injured. It's a massive double standard.



Luke has one key skill, piloting, that he uses the force to enhance in his first movie. Rey has piloting, engineering, force powers, and lightsabre combat, and less support (no Jedi ghost guide or previous instruction, no wingmen, no time with a lightsabre beforehand (even just swinging it around out of combat to get used to the weightlessness and stuff.

Again, the Force capabilities and difficulties that are faced by Luke in Star Wars Episode IV and the Force capabilities and difficulties that are faced by Rey in Episode VII are two completely different beasts and their protagonists have to be differently capable accordingly, but there's still a bit more to it than just that.

• Luke grows up with a restrictive family but he still goes flying (and shoots things from his T-16) because he wants to apply to an academy to get away from Tatooine. He has basic engineering skills from the work he does on the moisture farm, but he never really needs to use them. He doesn't have life skills for fighting, which is why he needs to have a LOT of training in that area. Being strong with the Force boosts his natural skillset which means he's a damn good pilot and better at other things.

• Rey grows up without any familial support, and her biggest asset is her own self-reliance and capability, which is why as a roughly nineteen-year-old human, she's got lots of experience with melee combat & engineering and a little bit of piloting just from her every day life on Jakku. Being strong with the Force boosts that skillset, which makes her a capable pilot, a clever engineer, and a decent combattant in her first lightsaber battle.

• Anakin gets piloting and engineering skills VASTLY superior to hers or Luke's, at half their age – not at all because of normal life experience, but because of his preternatural Force capabilities making him nearly superhuman from birth. He's difficult to compare to Luke or Rey because his untrained life experience is only half of theirs, and most of his skills are because of the Force, and not because of his every day life as a normal human being.

Basically, if Rey is at an advantage it's more because of what she's come to be capable of just as a normal person growing up, and not something JUST granted to her being a Force user. Then, as a Force User, the obstacle that she's up against is Kylo Ren who's far and above anything we've ever seen before.



The thing is, it's hard to see how that is going to be manifested. There are no other Jedi for him to demonstrate his skills on. Rey will also have levelled up by the time they meet again. And they already blew up a galaxy.

Well, we don't know ANYthing about what the upcoming film is gonna have in store. We don't know if Kylo Ren will have to kill the Knights of Ren (if they're even still alive) or something else, or at what point we'll see the two of them pitted against each other.

Also, no one blew up a GALAXY, unless I seriously missed something. ;)


Also saw Rebels pilot episode and didn't like it, by the way. Maybe should give it another shot

If you've watched through Clone Wars, I cannot recommend it highly enough.




On a TFA-related note, General Hux's background is really interesting, because
like most officers in the First Order, he's the child of an Imperial officer who left into the Unknown Regions. He and the others grew up learning that the Empire ended the Clone Wars and brought order to the Galaxy before the Rebellion and the New Republic disrupted that and threw the Galaxy back into an inefficient democratic quagmire. On top of that, his father was the one who came up with and first implemented the Stormtrooper program of abducting kids and training them (essentially) from birth. Then you have Kylo Ren – a semi rival of his, as both of them directly reporting to Snoke – being VERY MUCH non-Imperial background continually confronting him about the effectiveness of his troops, which is an incredibly personal insult. Knowing that just makes me love the sort of tension the two of them have when they're at odds with one another even more.




X :neo:
 

Super Mario

IT'S A ME!
AKA
Jesse McCree. I feel like a New Man
I wonder who is a more efficient leader, General Hux or General Grievous? For some reason I want to see a scenario with these two against each other.
 

Super Mario

IT'S A ME!
AKA
Jesse McCree. I feel like a New Man
Saw the pilot for Rebels. Hated it. Is it worth a proper go really? I couldn't stand the animation style, it's too Disney Mouse House for me. Wasn't sold on the Aladdin kid either.

It was bad for the first 8 until Tarkin stepped in. Once Tarkin came they proved to us that even Disney can kill folks.

Also try to bear Alladdin using a pea shooting slingshot before he got an epic upgrade.
 
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