ST Everyone forgetting Kylo was trying to *turn* Rey, not kill???

I see the same criticism everywhere, and by everywhere, I don't just mean these boards, but all over the internet.

"Rey couldn't have beaten Kylo, she barely knew how to use the force!"

Arrgh! First off, Kylo is still in training and was greatly weakened, physically and mentally. He is also toying with her, trying to get her to join him, he was not trying to kill her!

His mistake was completely underestimating her and giving her that moment to really reach for and find her power. She catches him by complete surprise with the strength of her next few attacks, and he nearly dies for it.

The whole thing was set up in earlier scenes, why do people keep acting like Darth Vader lost to farm boy Luke?

Keep in mind, even Darth Vader is surprised by Luke in ESB a couple of times. Luke had had only a bare minimum of training, and the Emperor has told Vader that Luke is powerful. Arrogance and the dark side go hand in hand.

Early on Vader thinks he's caught Luke in the carbonite trap, but Luke has jumped out, he praises Luke like a little kid with a B+ on his report card. Near the end of the fight, Non-Fully Trained Luke, in desperation, manages to land on a hit on Darth freakin' Vader's shoulder. If he had gotten a little luckier, we could have had an entirely different series.

And how quickly everyone forgets the end of Phantom Menance (Maybe on purpose?). Padawan Kenobi kills Darth Maul, a fully trained Sith that even his fully trained master Qui Gon couldn't handle.
Why? Because Maul was toying with Obi Wan at the end, and is completely surprised by the amount of power Obi Wan uses suddenly. Difference is, he does die for his arrogance.

 

Bull on both points 1 and 2.
1. Kylo has been training under masters such as Luke and not-Plagueis( because snoke is still a dumb name) since he was a kid so whatever training he had should have been more then enough to compensate in taking out Finn and Rey.
2. Kylo was not weakened at all, neither physically nor mentally. His wound did more to boost his power then decrease it as Darkside users draw their power on things such as pain and you see this clearly in the fight when Ren keeps hitting his wound to cause himself more pain. He was also not mentally weakened as he honestly did not seem to give a crap about his father dying other then the fact that he was now closer to the Darkside hence his "thank you" right after killing him. If anything he was now mentally better because of it rather then weakened.

There were plenty of parts where he came off as trying to kill rather then just toying, even then he should have done a better job and possibly cut off a limb seeing how he has far more experience then she ever did.

A complete rookie with possibly no experience in real lightsaber combat overpowers another who has far more experience then she ever had. Really does not make Ren look good in all honesty.

Luke had about 3 years of personally training himself in the force after a few lessons with Obi-Wan and then had more then a month's worth of training from Master Yoda who is called the greatest Jedi teacher of all time. Even with all that, he got his ass kicked by Vader even if he landed on blow and gained some compliments, he still lost badly.
Rey lived most of her life without even thinking the force was real and had less then a day where she finally started using force powers and never fought with a lightsaber or use a lightsaber against another opponent who had one and managed to beat him.
Luke's fight against Vader made far more sense and reflected the sense of power between experience and inexperience much better then Kylo vs Rey ever did.

TPM Obi-Wan had far more experience then Rey ever did in lightsaber combat and using the force. By the time of TPM Obi-Wan was considered one of the best lightsaber students in the order and was practically on the level of a knight by that time considering how he was ready to become one and he showed this by managing to win against Maul. Those are far better credentials then Rey who has no experience what so ever and still she just wins like that.

You forget that he was keeping up with both Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi and by the time he killed Jinn, one of the most powerful Jedi Masters by the fact he would have been on the council if he agreed with their ways more, he most likely was getting tired form the fight and still he managed to take down a raging Obi-Wan who was gaining strength from the Dark side because of Jinn's death. Arrogance would be right but the fact is also that Maul was fighting a prodigy and a high ranking Master and after basically beating both of them he was tired from the fight and combined with his overconfidence he was going to lose.

Kylo on the other hand only had a Stormtrooper Janitor who whether he can use the force or not, only had the experience of using his lightsaber against a nameless Combat trooper who kicked his ass, And Rey who until that day never used the force or a lightsaber once in her life in combat against another. Not only did he struggle against said janitor, he took a hit from him which is simply embarrassing for someone who was a student of Luke Skywalker and learning under not-Plagueis. His fight with Rey shows his lack of any skills by how he only overpowers her when she is scared and running away from him and right when she starts focusing he gets his ass kicked like a complete noob.

 

Nostalgia fan, you make many good points. I agree with you that Kylo should have bested Rey. 100%. In a logical film by film breakdown of jedi's and force logic.

I'm not entirely sure JJ and this Star Wars is playing by the exact same set of rules when it comes to ambiguous things like the force. Maybe they have a slightly different interpretation.

Maz says something like she has always known, to Rey, and to just let the force guide her. If she is very powerful (Luke Skywalker's daughter?) and is using the force at her will (she was) then she will be a handful for Kylo either way.

I still agree she should have lost the duel but I get why they went that way they wanted to see Rey with a small victory in the end. After all it's JJ's only film he probably wanted his own satisfying conclusion there even though it's one of three films to be made.

 

the simple answer is she has had training. You know at the Jedi academy.

 

You have seen the flashback. She was almost a toddler when she was left on Jakku.

 

1. Snoke himself says Kylo needs to finish his training. The rest is speculation, you have no idea how long he trained under Luke, whether Luke was any *good* at training, etc. I am not doubting that Kylo is powerful, only that he is not *all powerful* like a fully trained Sith or Jedi.
2. Sorry, but the movie clearly sets up Kylo as a character who is in turmoil. He's mentally unstable, shown as having immature tantrums, and is conflicted by his desire for the light side. The reason he kills Han is to convince himself he is irredeemably evil, to get rid of his doubt, to push himself completely into the dark. He can't bring himself to kill Han on his own, and basically asks permission to do so. He has *tears* in his eyes as he kills Han and says "Thank you." because Han had agreed to do anything for him. Yet, after his "unforgivable" act, his father's last action is to caress his face, basically telling him that he still loves him. I don't see how you can take away from that scene that Kylo would be anything but even more in turmoil, he's just killed his father for nothing. Instead of becoming more evil, his father has shown him how powerfully he's always been loved.
As for physically, he is obviously in pain and bleeding, we both agree on that. You say it makes him more powerful, I completely disagree. Again, what is the movie saying? The shot he takes is from Chewy's weapon, which the movie has made a point of showing to be quite a bit more powerful than the average blaster. He is shot by a grief stricken Chewy, a universally loved character, who has just watched his lifelong friend killed by this man. It's obvious the movie is giving Chewy a way to mete out some justice on Kylo, a hurt that makes a difference and lets Finn and Rey survive their encounter. It would be a cruel, unneeded, twist if the shot only made him more powerful. Kylo is already powerful enough to take those two in a fair fight. Again, Kylo's story is one of causing himself torment needlessly. The image of him hitting himself to try to counter the pain is just an analogy of how he's trying to stop his inner pain by doing things that only cause him more inner pain. It isn't the image of some badass taking a punch on the chin and asking for more.

He was trying to terrify her, convince her there's no other way out of the confrontation than to submit to him, to submit to her fear. The offer to train comes when it does because he thinks she's ready to break at that point. It instead just drives her to "let go of everything she fears to lose".

Err, were you not just saying how awesome Kylo was? However, I agree, Kylo is not nearly as powerful as he wants to believe.

So you admit the comparison is there though. It's about experience vs inexperience. Even the most experienced killer of force users ever, Darth Vader, still takes a decent hit from a young, not fully trained Luke. A hit that might of been much more devastating had Luke been a bit faster *or* Vader had been a bit slower.... like Kylo was when Rey, whom he thinks on the verge of defeat, bursts at him with much more power than she's shown up till that point. It's one hell of a strategy, even if it's not done on purpose.

Yes, Obi-Wan had a lot more experience than Rey, but he's still a padawan. Darth Maul is a fully fledged Sith who manages to fend off both Jedi and padawan for quite a while. Suddenly, the Jedi is killed, and the padawan, on his own, manages to come from a position of complete disadvantage to cut Maul in half. The comparison is very clear here, Maul let down his guard because he underestimated Obi-Wan and thought him beaten, and Obi-Wan tapped into a well of strength he may not have even known he had.

Look, the other fight between a padawan and a Sith is when Anakin takes on Dooku. Anakin, who has the highest force potential ever, and has been trained since a very young age, basically gets his butt handed to him. The difference is Dooku apparently took Anakin seriously, and didn't let his guard down.

Yes, I'm comparing the relative strength of a Sith vs padawan to the difference between Kylo vs Rey. Given a straight up fight, the former should always win against the latter. But if one underestimates their opponent and leaves themselves open to a surprise attack, there is a good chance they're going to get hurt badly, even if you won't admit what bad shape Kylo was in.

I didn't forget he was keeping up, that's part of my point.
"He was tired"? Um, ok. He probably didn't get enough sleep the night before either.
Interesting you bring up the term "prodigy", do you not think that's exactly what Rey is in the new movie?

So Kylo is either....
A. An utter badass who uses any pain to make himself even more badass..... but can't take a Stormtrooper Janitor and brand new force user.
B. A powerful young, still in training Dark Side user. Both mentally and physically battered to the point where even a Toilet Cleaning nobody can land a blow and a person who actually channels a great deal of force, and can use melee weapons well, can get the best of him on his worst day by surprising him.

....which do you honestly think the movie is trying to portray?

 

Yeah, people seem to ignore the fact that the Bowcaster was knocking stormtroopers multiple feet back. Apparently since Kylo has the force he should put a bandaid on it and walk it off lol.

 

I wonder if some people would argue that Rey couldn't have beaten Anakin while he's laying there, a roasted marshmallow, on Mustafar.

But he's the most powerful dude ever and she doesn't know anything!

 

Not just walk it off, punch yourself in it to make yourself angrier and more powerful!

Too bad he didn't have some salt and lemon juice handy, he probably would have become powerful enough to swat all the X-Wings out of the sky with the force and rule the Galaxy!

 

Chewie gave it a shot!!

 

The answer is B which is what they were going far and which was understood.

 

Poe
also tried to kill him

 

Well before Anakin was a roasted marshmallow yeah he would beat her. Once he was roasted and until he got fixed no he would not be able to beat her. Once he had the suit on though Rey would be dead.

All your points though are right on.

 

Irrelevant. The fact is that kylo has trained since he was child under two masters and has experience killing other Jedi as said by others with him killing many of the students at Luke's academy shows that being incomplete at training does not justify being poor at dueling. Rey as we have seen was still just a young child by the time she was left on Jakku and forgot about the force so she has no reason to be able to beat him if he has all this experience over her. If Luke was not a good teacher then that makes your argument for Rey even worse. It means the only type training she had was a few years as a kid from a bad teacher. So not a good way to prove your point if you are going to just degrade Luke as a teacher.

Whatever the movie set up for his character as someone in conflict it failed in that aspect. His only problem was not being edgy enough, oh I mean, not being in the dark side enough. His family were more of hindrance to him then anything else. He did not kill Han to convince himself he was irredeemably evil, he already was. Asking for permission or not, he still killed his own dad and he felt relieved by it, his tears were not because he was sad but because he was finally rid of caring about him and being closer to the Dark Side, hence his "thank you" which was him being glad to be over with it. And cut me that bull about him not being more evil because his father "touched his face and showed him the power of love" he immediately moves on from killing him and starts focusing his attention on Finn and Rey and nearly kills both of them so unstable or not he was not hurting inside from killing his father like you want to believe he was to the point it effected him that badly.

More powerful may have been a poor choice of word. "not hinder by it" would be better because he did not show to be held back that badly by it considering he seemed to have no problem swinging his blade and force pushing Rey so much that it knocked here out a bit. Strange he just forgets to try that again but then he forgets a lot of things like blocking a blaster shot from a roaring wooki right in his clear line of view when he stopped one right behind his back.

More like what are you saying? Spar me this side information about Chewbacca and his feelings that has nothing to do with the Debate. You could have just shortened this all down to "he took a shot from Chewbacca" and that would have gotten the point across faster.

The shot did not make him stronger dude. It was him using his own pain to power himself so he was not hindered by it.

You are completely making this crap up. Kylo is not hitting himself because SYMBOLISM, he is clearly hurting himself to get strength from the pain. If he really wanted to kill Finn and then capture or kill Rey he would be a complete dumbass to harm himself more when that would only make it worse.

Coming close to kill her is way too close to say he was just "trying to terrify her" he held her to a cliff where if she did not come with him he most likely would push her off to her death.

Don't put words in my mouth. I was saying how the hype about Kylo and his strength from side materials and the story make it completely illogical for him to do this poorly in the film. And seeing how he was supposed to have been apart of those 7 knights of Ren who all killed Luke's entire Jedi academy it makes it even more embarrassing for him to lose to someone far less experienced him.

"strategy" There was absolutely no Strategy, no planing, no thought of what Rey was doing until she heard Kylo say the force and then she pulled out an unreasonable amount of skills out of nowhere and completely overpowered him. Luke was again, trained by Yoda who is considered the greatest teacher in the entire Jedi order and yet Luke even with over a month's training only lands one hit on Vader and gets his ass kicked badly and humiliated throughout the entire fight. Rey with no prior training just immediately gets skills that even took Luke years to complete and defeats a Dark Side user who has fought and killed more Jedi then she has and yet he still struggles, not only with her, but with a freaking Janitor with a Lightsaber.

Nice try at shoveling my point away without discounting it. The fact is that Obi-Wan was a well trained Jedi on the verge of being a knight had years of experience out in the field and was one of the brightest students of the order at the time. He has far more reason to take out maul then Rey ever did against Kylo.

Padawan Anakin is so far above both Rey and and almost every other padawan that it is ridiculous to compare them.

I am not the one who needs admitting. For all the talk about him being wounded he was doing pretty fine swinging his blade and performing moves around to the point it does not look like the wound held him back as much as you keep wishing it was. And there is no excuse for Kylo taking a hit from Finn, not one. Guy may or may not be a force user and he has no weapon combat experience besides losing to a nameless Stormtooper. Dude actually pushed him back which makes it more humiliating. You also forget that side materials state that kylo has a special type of armor which only means the blast did not hurt him as much you are implying it did.

Nice sarcasm really did a god job to rebuttal my point. And no, Rey learning fast is less here being a prodigy and more of the force serving as nothing but a plot device to explain her gettign stronger without a reasonable explanation in terms of how she quickly learns things at an unnatural pace with out any teaching what so ever. Every other protagonist had years of training to get where they were while Rey just has it all happen at times that make no sense. Sad because outside of that I like her character but they seriously screwed the pouch on that and hopefully fix that in the next films. Even then Obi-Wan had experience where Rey had none so even with being a prodigy Obi-Wan made sense thanks to him being out and about improving himself with his master.

No, it's more like
Kylo is a inconsistent force user who flips from being able to block blaster shots from behind and kill multiple Jedi with in his same class, then failing to block a clear shot from a roaring Wookie who is in his line of sight and struggling with a Stormtooper and losing badly to a young scavenger with no lightsaber combat experience.

"can use melee weapons well" Does not translate to using a Lightsaber well enough to beat a more experienced opponent with the same weapon. And "surprising him? he was staring right at her while she was "tapping into her well of strength" so that is bull about him being surprised. He knew full well and yet he does nothing but stand there like a moron and then he gets overpowered badly. And no, Kylo was not so badly injured or much less in mental pain that it prevented him from fighting with his saber with no real signs of trouble and or preventing him form using the force to outrace Finn and Rey and force push Rey with enough power to knock her out. And you forget that Ren himself should have just as much if not more power since he is a descendant of Darth freaking Vader, while we still are not completely clear on Rey's parents.

And I love how you can't defend his poor performance against Finn. Even that seems to be something you can't make an excuse for.

I really don't give a ***t what the Movie was trying to portray because if it was to make him look like an intimidating and skilled villain it failed on both accounts.

 

It's funny how ignorant you truly are of force powers when you seem to have trouble over Kylo having the ability to channel his pain. My point makes far more sense then your pretentious point about him hitting himself because "it's symbolic of his pain!" nonsense. At least he has reason besides acting like an emo for god's shake.

 

She was 5 according to the star wars wiki (I don't know how reliable that is), and Anakin was 8ish when he was "Far too old", so a five year old could have easily had a few years of training. In fact we see toddlers waving lightsabers around in the prequels.

 

My take on it is that Ren is certainly powerful, but he's deeply flawed. He has skill, but lacks discipline. He's conflicted over just how truly dark he is, and how dark he needs to be. He overestimates his abilities. And, Dark Side or no Dark Side, he was shot and seriously wounded; the pain might give him mental focus, but his body is not fully functional. That had to cost him in both duels.

As for offering to train Rey, it might've been a trick. Or, it's another way he's paralleling Anakin: learn all he can from Snoke, gain a secret ally, then kill his master and take over. I'm sure we'll find out more about this next time.

Anyway, at this point, Ren seems to be at the same level as Anakin in AOTC. Question is, will VIII have him reach Anakin's level in ROTS, when he was more powerful and skilled, but still troubled and malleable.

 

im not sure why this was even a massive issue. kylo was portrayed during the whole film as an underwhelming dark side user. thats what i liked about him, he was flawed and desperately trying to live up to vader. rey also showed hand to hand combat skills. i didnt see too many issues with rey getting the best of kylo in the end to be honest. she already knew how to fight and was able to tap into the force.

also, we all know star wars is a skywalker tale. i think its clear rey is lukes daughter. skills and force ability is cleary strongest within the direct skywalker bloodline. rey has probably always been an untapped source of great ability that could surpass even a semi-trained kylo ren

 

Whatever reason is put forth to justify this scene, it needs to be acknowledged that Kylo Ren is far, far more powerful than Rey. This result basically needs to be a fluke, but I fear the damage is done.

 

Far, far more experienced, sure. Far more powerful? I think not.

 

The damage is done. People actually think Rey is as powerful as Ren. What a mess of a scene, my god.