ST Rey's Various Abilities Discussion Thread

Rey and Luke are not the same character. Luke was a farmboy who had no idea how to fight. Rey on the other hand has been fighting her entire life. Big difference. Either way I saw it as the Force deciding Rey is more worthy to have the Skywalker saber.

 

The Force has been "Awakened", I would think that means it's Pretty Strong and it's an extremely Unusual Event!

It was mentioned that Rey could fly The Millenium Falcon better than Han Solo. That was only because Unkar Plutt had made some wonky alterations to the ship that Han was not aware of!

 

I can't stand Rey.

She hears of the force. Hours later:

- Flying the Millennium Falcon against experienced TIE Pilots
- Resisting Mind Control
- Mind Controlling James Bond Storm Trooper
- Absolutely zero lightsaber training but ends but beating Ren

Nothing was organic with this character. She was beyond over the top.

 

Rey was flying the Falcon before she heard of the force. She’d spent a lot of time with it while on Jakku, and seemed to be a solid speeder pilot. Luke also never flew an X-Wing before, and yet hours after leaving Tatooine, after only one short lightsaber practice session with Obi-Wan, he was flying an X-Wing on a major Rebel mission to take down the Death Star, and succeeds over all the other experienced pilots by...using the force. After a few minutes of training. That’s a far greater responsibility, and far more massive, than anything Rey was able to do in TFA (up until she confronted a wounded Kylo Ren who wasn’t even trying to kill her). So why does Luke get a pass and not Rey?

 

Pilot Skills:

Luke: It was referenced several times Luke was an experienced Pilot ( Kenobi acknowledging it, Luke confronting Solo, and Luke's Comrade from Yavin 5). The rebels needed all the help they could get so recruiting Luke wasn't a stretch.
Rey: Nothing acknowledged prior experience in the movie and its been some time since I read the TFA Book, but the only experience I recall Rey ever having was using a simulator (not even close to the real thing).

Force Use:

Luke: Brief Training

- He reached out to the force for guidance (and Ben was with him)
- Blocked a few shots with a light saber

Rey: Zero Training
- Resits Mind Control
- Mind Controls a Trooper
- Calls a Lightsaber to her in the heat of a battle over Ren's
- Beats Ren in a fight

To answer your question. One character that had very little training with the force with smaller feats and past experience being a pilot is light years more believable than the other character with absolutely zero experience in all fields doing far more advanced feats.

 

Guiding a proton torpedo into a tiny space while evading Darth Vader (who had shot down every other pilot he pursued) is a small feat? Come on.

And Rey’s capacity for piloting was indeed acknowledged. When Finn said they need a pilot, she said she was one. Whether she learned via a simulator, or other small ships (and she does pilot a smaller ship in one of the ancillary books), it’s not much different than Luke flying T-16s on Tatooine. And of course Rey wasn’t flying with Poe and the Resistance on a majorly difficult mission. She just escaped a few TIEs and almost crashed the Falcon in the process. Luke, having never flown an X-Wing before, not only flew perfectly (unlike Rey who dented the Falcon in a few spots). He outmaneuvered Darth Vader! Sorry, but that’s not “light years” more believable than Rey’s little escape from a few no-name TIE pilots.

 

Regarding the money shot, Ben's Spirit was with Luke coaching him. This wasn't the first time Luke reached out to the Force for guidance. Rey wasn't sure if the Force was even real.

Luke never outmaneuvered Darth Vader. Vader blasted apart his friends trying to shield him (except Wedge). Luke was about to join them until Han had a change of heart

 

Luke does indeed outmaneuver Vader. Vader keeps trying to fix Luke’s X-Wing in his sights, but Luke keeps evading him. It’s a core part of the trench run.

All Rey did was escape from a few TIEs. AND - this is critically important - she did it by flying through a junkyard landscape she was deeply familiar with (established in the film), against TIE pilots who’d never been there. She was the native on her own turf, beating back the stronger enemy. A realistic feature of many a modern conflict, where the weaker enemy has home field advantage. And as soon as Rey gets them into space, where she’s never been, they’re swallowed up by a freighter.

On the other hand, Luke darts in and out of TIE and Death Star blaster fire (including Vader’s) in a place he has absolutely never been, and on the Rebellion’s most critical mission to date, and then scores the winning shot without any human or computer assistance.

It’s crystal clear. Complaints about Rey’s Falcon-flying feat are hugely overblown. Especially when you compare her piloting to Luke’s. Double standard, through and through.

 

Luke acknowledged he had experience flying into more narrow places and taking trick shots. No mention of past experience for Rey in the movie other than a simulator in the book.

Actually, Rey never flew the Falcon before. When Finn and Rey got into the Falcon, Finn asked her if she flew this ship before. Rey said she hasn't.

*And as much as I love a good back and fourth discussion, I'll make this my last post about this particular opinion. I don't see either of us changing our views on this so it will be a matter of agreeing to disagree*

 

add :
- Telekinesis
- Force visions

she was just given too many powers too quickly . I just laughed when she mind controlled Daniel Craig .

.

 

Well, you don't like a character, you don't like a character. I can get that. Heck, most people loved Gwen Stacy in the Amazing Spider-Man movies; I found her to be one of the worst love interest characters ever.

I do feel that there are some migrating circumstances at play here, either from what we know about the franchise in general and for other canon sources.

Rey has flown ships before (she tells Finn that when they're celebrating their escape and we see one such instance in Before the Awakening). The Before the Awakening tie-in novella expanded on that; she'd salvaged and repaired a flight simulator program that she used in her off-hours:

The Rey's Story novelization also establishes that the sim program included a fighter training module, complete with AI enemies that she would use as well (pp. 1 - 5). So, she did have a lot of training hours when she started up the Falcon, including dog fights, like the TIEs that where chasing her.

I don't really see how that's a problem, since muggles who are strong-minded enough can resist mind-based Force tactics. Specifically, Cad Bane managed to resist resist two Jedi Masters and a Knight mind tricking him at the same time in the Clone Wars episode "Children of the Force":



In A New Hope, Princess Leia resisted Vader's mind probes when being tortured. While she was Force-sensitive, no one knew that and Vader didn't find it unusual that a muggle resisted it, just that it would take longer than expected. So, in context of the franchise, Rey could've had some "natural" resistance to being mind probed/tricked outside of her Force-sensitivity. (There's no suggestion that either Bane or Leia had special training, just that they were strong-minded, and Rey seemed to be a strong person in the first place).

Beyond that, it is possible that Rey was unconsciously using the Force to help. We do know that Force-sensitives can unconsciously use the Force without training, per The Phantom Menace, the Rebels short "Property of Ezra Bridger," the Rebels episodes "Spark of Rebellion" and "Droids in Distress," et al.

The novelizations all indicate that she was tying to replicate what had been happening when Kylo was mind-reading her and she forced the probe backwards. Make of that what you will.

Rey was trying to use her melee combat skills with the saber. I personally think the only reason she won was because Kyo was seriously handicapped in that fight. Had he been in good shape, I think he would've won.

We know that can be self-taught; Luke did that in the Heir to the Jed novel, which carried over into The Empire Strikes Back. It can also be used totally untrained (Rebels episode "Droids in Distress"). Also worth noting, when she grabbed the saber from Kylo, she had the better "grip" on it (Rey's Story, Ch. 15, p. 128); Kylo's use of telekinesis was compromised by the pain of his wounds by that point (junior novelization, Ch. 20 p. 174).

So, in context, this is a non-issue. There's nothing about what Rey does with telekinesis that we haven't seen untrained Force-sensitives do before.

That was the Force showing her things, not her actively channeling it to do something. So, that wouldn't count.


I've honestly felt that, in regards to Force usage, the character is close to baseline normal when compared to what other untrained Force-sensitives have been shown to do in the franchise in the past. The only thing that seems a little out place is the mind trick and even that does have an explanation to it (and no reason in canon to believe that it not a good one).

 

What is crystal clear, is that you regard flying a vessel - the 'Falcon - when you can only see out the right side of the cockpit, because there is solid, opaque ship on the left side, as easy as flying a starfighter where you can see out both sides, and judge the distances between the edges of your s-foils and the very straight Death Star trench.

That a novel backs the Rey escapade with a flight simulator is one thing, but based on movies alone, there is more onscreen evidence in ANH to back up Luke's flight prowess, than there is in TFA to back Rey's.

 

That's a very literal take, IMHO. Nobody in the films has ever commented on the Falcon being a particularly challenging ship to fly because of its design.

 

Rey tells Finn she’s a pilot. That’s all the justification needed. It means she has knowledge of flying.

And the thing a lot of “Rey is overpowered” critics always neglect to mention is that Rey is flying through a junkyard that she’s been living in and around for years, while the TIE pilots are totally new to it. That alone is decent justification for her ability to outmaneuver them.

And that Falcon/ X-Wing field of vision argument is one of the funniest things I’ve read here in a while.

 

The simple facts are these. Whatever a powerful young Force prodigy spends alot of time on in their youth they develop superhuman abilities at. Whether it's podracing, building droids & podracers, flying ships or bulls-eying difficult targets from speeders. Rey is no different. In her case it was flying ships, mechanical repairs, climbing & leaping around & fighting with a melee weapon. Therefore she's entitled to have developed an incredible ability at all of those things, just as Luke & Anakin did with their pursuits. Anakin at age 9 could race pods faster than anyone, as well as build complex droids & podracers. Like I said, a strong sense of the Force endows people with super-human abilities, even without training.

In addition there's Rey's probing of Kylo's mind. The movie shows Kylo extracting information from her. Her dreams, feelings & memories. When she reverses it towards him it stands to reason that she gained knowledge & information from him. In fact we know she does. She immediately discovered his feelings about Vader. Who knows what else she gained. It's no coincidence that her use of the mind trick was in her very next scene.

So, what we have with Rey is a powerful Force prodigy, perhaps not dissimilar to Anakin. Now imagine that Anakin spent a further 10 years growing & developing on Tatooine. By the time he got to 20 years old imagine all of the things he could do. He'd be very powerful. Esp if he'd grown up constantly fighting & protecting himself. Of course he wouldn't be fully trained like we saw in the PT but he'd be formidable to say the least. Rey's abilities are extraordinary, in the true sense of the word. Just as Anakin's were in TPM as a kid. That's the point though. These aren't the stories of Billy or Betty Bloggs the below average Jedi. There are movies about these characters for the very reason that they're exceptional. They're supposed to push (or expand) the boundaries of what is possible.

 

Following what has been said above, just my two cents on the writing.

Rey seems as if written as a fanfiction character-composit of the best elements of Luke, Han, Leia et al: She can do anything, is loved and admired by everybody, and is better at everything. Within a few hours she ends up as the captain/main pilot of the coolest ship in the galaxy, having possession of Luke/Anakin's legacy saber, Han's iconic blaster and having R2-D2 and Chewie as her sidekick cheerleaders.
My gripes in detail:

1. “God Mode Character” Rey has ad hoc abilities and powers, whenever the story needs her to look good, despite her story background of being a 19-year old, starving scavenger struggling to survive. Characters speak of her as if she was the second coming (Kylo: “She gets more powerful every moment”). Examples:

- Rey wields sudden pop-up Force abilities (mind trick, telekinesis, mind wrestling) that took Luke and other Jedi several movies/years to learn; learning the ways of the Force seems redundant, you can simly close your eyes and "download" it (JJ) on master level (mind tricks)...​

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- Rey has amazing stunt-piloting abilities with a bulky, unwieldy freighter (Falcon) and without a co-pilot (!) speeding and spinning through a ship graveyard and through a destroyer under heavy fire - without her having ever flown the Falcon before.​

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- Rey can even hit blindly mid air with the Falcon turret when she is not even sitting on the turret gun but piloting the Falcon (“How did you do that ? I don’t know! It was perfect...!”),​

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-Rey has incredible aiming abilities, despite seemingly not having shot a blaster before. She only misses one single shot, then blasts away all soldiers with one hit at a great distance running away from them.​

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- Rey speaks ALL languages of the aliens she accidently meets, including "binary droidspeak" (it was establishes in the OT that humans can’t do that - Luke never could except with cockpit translator/C-3PO); she even speaks Wookie though Wookies are not space travelers/are not seen on Jakku.​

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- She is an ace engineer ("I bypassed the compressor") and rocket science mechanic;​

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- Rey even knows how to disable the Security System (doors) on the Starkiller base (“The girl knows her stuff”).​

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- Rey despite her frail, half-starved condition is a master climber with great spelunking and stick fighting abilities.​

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- She is an incredible escape artist: she manages to escape the FO by using her ad hoc Jedi mind trick abilities, climbing and shooting skills​

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2. "Better than You"/ "Copycat"-Character: Rey regularly bests other character at their game, or rescues them and/or drains competence from them, thus compromising story and character backgrounds:​

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- The lifelong soldier (and sanation worker) Finn looks incompetent and foolish next to Rey (fighting, piloting, languages, Starkiller security), is physically beaten by her, and must be rescued by her several times.​

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- The main antagonist Kylo Ren, the 30-year old MASTER of the Ren (and Jedi killer), who is established as very powerful, is beaten, maimed and emasculated (broken saber) by Rey physically and on mind-level several times – first with Force powers, later with the light saber and Force powers again. All that despite of Rey having no proper Force or light saber training. Poor Kylo finally has to be rescued by a clumsy deus ex machina plot device (opening chasm) to be save from her.​

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- Rey constantly advises and bests Han (and Finn) with her mechanical and engineering ingenuity regarding Han’s ship - driving him to angrily leaving the cockpit ("Away Ball"), and resulting in him offering her a job quickly.​

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- Multilinguist Rey also renders C-3PO useless as a translator; BB-8 seems completely useless because Rey does all the mechanical repairs and engineering to improve the Falcon alone, and she even hacks the Starkiller doors!​

3. Spotlight stealing: Most importantly, Rey main ability is that she is instantly loved, admired and desired by everybody including her enemies (BB-8, Finn, Han, Chewie, Kylo Ren, Snoke etc), even when this compromises story logic and character backgrounds. Some examples:

- Leia Hugged First: Leia passionately hugs and comforts the stranger Rey after the death of Han (and supposed death of her son at Rey’s hand) even though Rey only knew Han for a few hours (sentimental rendition of the Han-Leia love theme in the strings). Two details make it much worse: Old friends Chewie and Leia completely ignore each other after Han's death so that Leia can hug Rey. Further, unlike in ANH, Leia ignores her surviving pilots she commands who won the battle and have lost fellow pilots. Only Rey's POV and glorification count, the fact that Leia and Chewie are old friends and the emotional link to late Han, and have always hugged before (Han's carbonite scene etc) is rendered irrelevant;​

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- Rey takes over the captain and piloting position on the MF after Han dies (she sits in the pilot seat) – Chewie the 600y Wookie remains copilot on his ship even though they just met a few hours before;​

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- Rey the lowly scavenger is sent on the most important galactic Resistance-mission to find Luke - but not his sister Leia (who “desperately” was looking for him) or other Resistance fighters who know Luke! Rey walks up the island, Luke’s old friends Chewie and R2-D2 mysteriously stay back waiting with the ship. The mission was bringing Luke back, not to send him somebody who he can train there on the island.​

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- Even long lost light sabers and dead old MASTERS (Yoda, Obi Wan) call out to Rey - this never happened before with any other Jedi (even “Space Jesus” Anakin) - demonstrating how special Rey is.​

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- Despite being set up as a starving scavenger woman living in the desert, Rey has unblemished looks: she is the only young, beautiful woman around; she wears make up and lipstick and sports impressively white teeth and a super-posh theater accent despite of her background in poverty .​

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- Rey’s traumas and conflicts disappear at a writer’s convenience: First she melodramatically runs away from Maz/the saber, but later she willingly goes on the mission to meet Luke seemingly accepting that her parents won’t come back. What convinced her, what made her leave Jakku/her parents behind in favor of Luke, what are her motives and motivations?​

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- Kylo removes helmet before Rey, though from the narrative POV it would have made sense that he only shows his face to Han;​

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- R2 wakes up as soon as Rey arrives, thus resolving the (underdeveloped) map-mystery plot by a deus ex machina event.​

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If you compare ANH-Luke with TFA-Rey as a defining standard candle the writing becomes all the more apparent....​

 

The above is mostly based on exaggeration & hyperbole. I'll highlight a few examples.

Luke had never flown an X-Wing before. Little 9 year old Ani had never even flown a starship before! At least it was established that Rey was already familiar with the Falcon. This is a non-complaint. Next.

Huh? Rey lined up the ship & Finn made the shot.

Reminds me of how Luke, having never used a lightsaber before can deflect a laser bolt - blindfolded!

Reminds me of Han speaking with that droid on top of the Falcon in ESB. Maybe he used the Force. Either that or droid-speak is possible to learn.​

Is there any definitive reason why she couldn't have once known a Wookie? Who says they're not space travelers?? Or perhaps the Force aids her in communicating with aliens. Nothing wrong with certain individuals having new & unique Force powers.​

Either that or she'd worked on the Falcon before. Actually she did. She mentioned that.

How would she be so familiar with Imperial-style design & tech? Maybe she'd spent years salvaging & working with Imperial parts.​

As any powerful Force sensitive person would be after years of practice. I hear a poor 9 year old slave-child was once the fastest pod racer ever.

Yeah, Kitster looked pretty inept next to lil' Anakin too. Damn those show-off Force adepts.

Wasn't he already injured from a bowcaster bolt? A weapon that sent everyone else flying into next week? Wasn't he also under orders to capture & not kill her? Two pretty significant handicaps.

Only regarding the changes that had been made since he lost the ship. Modifications that she was aware of. Which of course made her a very appealing new crewmember.

Finally, a good point. Yes Abrams has acknowledged this. Ideally Leia would've first had a moment with Chewie. However there should be no issue with her & Rey's connection. Which obviously is based upon the Force.

She pilots the ship with Chewie on that one trip. Where is it established that she's taken over as captain?

No, the mission was to find him & make contact with him. Clearly Leia knows that Rey is special. She probably perceives a potential connection between Rey & Luke. Besides, Leia has responsibilities as a General. She also sent Poe to determine Luke's whereabouts. She didn't go herself. Generals delegate.

I thought dead Jedi Masters had called out to Anakin (Qui-Gon) & Luke (Obi-Wan) ?

Ridiculous.

That's one opinion. I think it makes more narrative sense to not have that reveal distract from the emotional core of the Han scene.​

 

Arguing that Kylo was injured when Rey defeated him kind of miss the point. The problem we have here is that the central vilain of the film, the personnal threat to our heroine, has already been beaten in the very first instalment of this trilogy. And it wasn't just a lucky hit or something. She humiliated him completely. Before the movie was released, when we heard spy reports saying that an earthquake would separate the two sword fighters during the big lightsaber duel, everyone on this board assumed that Rey could escape Kylo Ren that way. Little did we imagine that the earthquake would instead save the vilain from the young et inexperimented heroin.
What is Rey supposed to do now ? Making her loose against Kylo in episode VIII would just feel like filler before she regains her strength and kick his butt once and for all in IX.

"The Last jedi" is going to have a really hard time to rise the stakes again after TFA. Kylo Ren was humiliated. Phasma was humiliated. Hux is just a raving schoolboy who has lost his toy when the Starkiller base was destroyed easily. Snoke has done nothing to earn his spot of new archivilain.
We need more reasons to care.

 

Totally disagree. Rey surprised a wounded & emotionally messed up Kylo Ren. That encounter will have little bearing on the rematch. I think we'll find that all of the villains will be far more formidable in TLJ.

 

Yeah. So what?

So it's supposed to have been predictable?

]

Perhaps become arrogant, impatient or driven by her emotions.

So you were annoyed at not predicting how episode VII would end, and you're annoyed that you've guessed how Episodes VIII and IX may end.

From your post it would seem that knowing beforehand what should happen, when and how is necessary for you to care.

I care. I care about exactly how Rey was able to defeat Ren, and exactly how Ren was incapable of defeating Rey. I have two more movies to look forward to that have a duty to that care.

 

Oryx-I
Yes, agreed from a dramatic POV this was anticlimactic. But if we single out this point, the scene was badly written from a writing and execution angle too. I would be happy if Kylo lost because of the wound, but unfortunately this is NOT what is shown in the movie: It was the beauty (Rey) that killed the beast, not the wound!

- Kylo is defeated by Rey already before he is hit (Force probing/mind struggle), AND he runs to big daddy Snoke to cry about it!

- Kylo is later hit by a weapon that usually sends it's victims flying through the air - not so with Kylo (inconsistency)! A hurt animal is much more dangerous, they say!

- Despite being hurt Kylo is still able to overtake unhurt Finn and Rey in the forest (Force teleportation, speed...?), then he mightily Force slams Rey into the trees;

- Then he fights with Finn, tormenting Finn, toying with Finn by letting him get up again - no haste or fear of bleeding out at all (the fight references the Vader-Luke dual in Empire including the shoulder hit). Kylo fights elegantly, no sight of impairment by the wound, this is not how a wounded man fights.

- Then he loses in the saber Force tug-of.-war against Rey (again).

- Then Kylo fights Rey: Like Finn she is chanceless, fleeing as she should from such a superior foe, Kylo even offers to train her (no haste or fear of bleeding out again);

- Only after Rey closes her eyes, asks "The Force...?", and "downloads" the Force, only then Kylo becomes chanceless and humiliated (saved by a chasm and presumably his greatest rival Hux).

 

Your point being?

And by the way. You are utterly wrong about Kylo fighting well against Finn with no handicap from his injury.

 

My point is described above, it was not the wound that defeated Kylo Ren, but Rey downloading the Force (JJ's words, not mine). Kylo was overpowered by her before he got shot (mind probing), and after. Thus, the wound argument is moot.

Only a Sith deals in absolutes. I will write what I must....which reminds me: I actually forgot about an important aspect: Kylo even USED his wound by punching it, like a samurai warrior cutting himself before the fight for increased adrenaline/pain alertness. Thanks, mate.