ST Rey's Various Abilities Discussion Thread

Didn't realise I was. Sorry.

 

Maz tells Rey what she already knows: Whomever she’s waiting for on Jakku is never coming back.
She also tells her that the belonging she seeks is ahead.
Then and there, Rey isn’t ready to accept this, but during the fight with Kylo, she embraces her destiny. The first step in that process is summoning the lightsaber. The next is giving in to the Force.
Finally, she decides to go to Luke.
This is a perfectly natural progression that to me seems very hard to miss. She lets go of the past and turns to the future. Simple as that.

 

^ Fair enough. But that describes plot points/actions not character motivation. Saying "She lets go of the past and turns to the future." is fine but how and why does she arrive at this decision?

Phrases like "embraces her destiny", "giving in to the Force" etc cannot subitute proper character motivation. Eg for what reason does Rey now want to find Luke and accepts that her parents won't return? Because the stranger Maz (who has no idea who they are and if they will return) told her? Why not go looking for them and their "destiny" (are they dead, slaves or worse?) instead of finding Luke? I would do this, I could not simply abandon those I love and waited for, especially family, without any evidence as to their fate, simply because I suddenly realized that I have Force superpowers and can defeat bad guys.

And is Rey really going to Luke to become a Jedi? Leia "desperately" needs Luke's help and needs him back. Did that goal change so that they send a promising young women to Luke so that he can train her (for years?) while the FO further murders? If there was one or two scenes between Leia and Rey in which Leia tells her a la

"Luke is your father, he also knows about your mother, find him and bring him back to us",

the plot points would connect and the motivation for Rey to find Luke would be evident and conclusive (this would be perfectly natural progression that seems very hard to miss). This does not happen in the TFA script, I think for mystery box reasons.

 

Because it's a part of growing up that everyone experiences.

Because her motivation to remain there for her parents to come get her was demonstrably flawed and her hopes utterly in vain.

The movie just doesn't waste our time expositing what it tells us visually.

 

Does a co-pilot make a difference beyond not inconveniencing the pilot? (Also, Rey does know how the ship works, which would help considerably, when coupled with her simulation practice and previous live experience.

For what its worth, she did have dog fight practice (Rey's Story). Also, the enthusing part about it being amazing was on a considerable high and directed at both her and Finn's teamwork to escape.

Droidspeak is an extension of her mechanical experience. (From my experience, movie logic like that is generally considered within reason). And as far as Wookiee goes, it's time to let it go. The question has been answered, it makes sense in context. If you like it or not, that you're decision, but it's not an issue.

I don't think so. Most of what she does is within reasonable bounds, given the rules that the Star Wars movies operate under.

Since that "error" is the result of a filming error, it's not a valid criticism. The only thing fixating on it will do is undermine your case. (Besides there are reasonable explanations.)

The worldbuilding of the franchise doesn't support that conclusion.

Wrong, Ezra Bridger, a Padawan with less than a year of training could perform it (per Rebels). Regardless of how much sense Rey picking it does or does not make (and the explanation is not half-bad, IMHO), it is not a Master-level skill, nor has it ever been identified as such. It is not a valid argument.

"Every time" is an exaggeration, since he curb-stomped her on Takodana. She also wasn't able to block his mind-reading on SKB right away either. And, as pointed out repeatedly, the final duel scenes are setup so her winning makes sense and is not because she's overpowered or something.

Context is everything. In the context of the Star Wars franchise, this scenario is not very far-fetched or "extreme." You have yet to demonstrate why it doesn't follow the rules.

I saw the Power Rangers movie, and it wasn't just a simple download. In fact, it was mostly about them learning the skills needed to be Power Rangers.

To be perfectly candid, your argument isn't that consistent with the previous Force concept, given that you have to ignore a lot of facts and points to make it work. I also feel that the basis of your argument is just "proof by assertion" at this point. If we want to continue this line of reasoning, can we move onto examining the "facts" or something?

First of all, true mastery is effortless repetition. We have yet to see if Rey can repeat anything she does on command or if she just hit the right frequencies while flying blind, so to speak. Anyways, the second act is called "The Last Jedi". Since it'll show Rey getting formal training, that will hopefully answer a lot of questions that have been raised.

No complaints r.e. Luke's ANH material.

She was willing to admit that she was lying to herself about her family coming back (Maz telling her this gets this going). She's able to resolve the need for waiting, since the reason behind that (wanting to belong to a familial unit) is filled by the friends she makes over the course of the movies. Since the family issue was the primarily reason she was holding back from the Jedi path, resolving that removed that roadblock.

 

I'd like to offer up my own interpretation on this subject, to maybe help bridge the divides between the two sides of this argument.

I love Rey. I admire her, root for her, feel for, relate to her loneliness and enjoy her character. I love that she's a strong female character. Super strong male leads who were fantastically strong and brilliant have been around a long time and I have a feeling the people claiming the recent trend of strong female superheroes and heroes is just some agenda didn't think the 80's macho male action star pushed any agenda and were just fun movies.

With that said, I definitely relate more intimately to Finn because he does feel more human to me. Bumbling and awkward and insecure and a little unsure how to do many things ("this is very complicated!" not knowing which wrench was the right one etc) and his first instinct is yes not to want to kill for the First order and deserting but he originally just wants to run away and not be involved in any conflict and is ultimately forced or guided into circumstances and relationships that compel him to become the hero he does. It's like Luke in ANH, good heart but kinda young and insecure and makes many mistakes and needs a lot of rescuing (Tusken attack, death star escape, han saving him in trench run etc) It makes his development in ROTJ all the more effective and powerful.

I honestly don't see how that could happen with Rey. Sure Kylo was greatly weakened and distraught but dramatically she still beat him so movie wise if Rey ultimately succeeds over him, it won't be as satisfying as Luke and Vader. I know Kylo is a villain in training and that's a new twist and will be cool to see him become more and more powerful as a villain (like Luke but dark side version).

Maybe Finn is the character we are supposed to most relate to and Rey more of a character we look up to and admire but I do agree Rey's excellence does make it difficult to identify with her.

 

It's almost as if some kind of "force" endows her with superhuman abilities. It's like how lil' Anie operated on a higher level by racing pods faster than anyone. Or how Luke flew a starship for the first time, & better than everyone else. Then pulled off a one-in-a-million shot without a targeting computer.

Can't believe you're making a big deal about this. It's not as if she had to target a nimble womp-rat, or a small exhaust port. It was a starship only a short distance away. For one of these Force prodigies like her, Anakin or Luke that's in no way hard to believe.

The problem lies with your assumptions. She worked for Plutt & dealt with beings at Neema Outpost. Knew other locals such as Teedo. Beyond that she could've had dealings with all manner of aliens.
Han understood Basic, Wookie, Rodian, Huttese, as well as some degree of binary droid (as established in TESB), & the language of that gang in TFA. That's 6 languages & counting. It's a wonder Han didn't put 3PO out of a job.

We never saw a powerful untrained Force adept try a mind trick on a weak minded dullard like a Stromtrooper. If Anakin, untrained at age 20 had tried & succeeded on the 3rd attempt would I call BS on that? Nope. Pls don't fall back on your dubious theses of "if we haven't previously seen it done it can't be done".

That's your description. What the Saga has shown is that the Force is always present within people, to varying degrees for each individual. It's about tapping into that power. So no "downloading" is ever required. Rey begins to listen to & channel her own Force potential.

What you've missed is that Rey's motivation for staying on Jakku was like a house of cards ready to fall. It was an absurd hope to begin with. She'd been deluding herself for years that her parents would return. Deep down she knew this. It only took others to point this out for her to eventually accept the truth. Which is a common & entirely human thing. It was also built upon the fact that she had no other path open to her. No alternative. The situation she found herself in after leaving Jakku provided one.

Not "better" just different. Jyn is a conventional non-"magical" character. She doesn't have the Force. Like it or not Anakin/Luke/Rey posses super-human abilities, even prior to training. Regular folk can't build & race super-fast pods at age 9. Or deflect laser bolts blindfolded with a lightsaber on the 2nd attempt. Etc etc.

TFA was also showered with praise & awards in that year.
I'm a big fan of Fury Road & Furiosa but I wouldn't hold up that character as a paragon of good writing. She is in fact quite underwritten, just a vague sketch of a character. Elevated by a great performance by the actress & a hugely entertaining film going on around her.

 

Yeah I would tend to agree with this, a lot of these points to me seem like motivations that depend on the audience to do the leg work based on very little actually offered on screen by Abrams. Giving something a very quick mention is not the same as logically building towards it and give it central focus in your film.

Focusing on the original topic of Rey's abilities the issue for me is not really so much than there "non Canon" but rather that the film itself seems to make little effort to acknowledge this when actually it could have been a central thread to the drama. If Rey's character for example had been introduced as someone who has this mysterious existing force abilities without the typical training as an almost involuntary reaction I think it could have bene much more impactful. Imagine for example we see some thugs attack her or perhaps some wreckage fall on her and she uses some telekinetic blast to stop it and/or have her dreams already be focused on Luke rather than introduce the vision latter on. That Rey would potentially have much more reason to fear her force abilities that might for example leave her isolated on Jakku as others fear her as well as being linked to her dreams of Kylo's rebellion and her abandonment. Her acceptance of them and then desire to find Luke would I think carry a lot more weight as result.

Instead as I mentioned I think the film took the path of audience wish fulfilment and nostalgia, Rey's acceptance of the force depended very heavily on the audience's prior attachment to the concept and what it ment to Luke's character. That's just a much simpler and easier path to take as a writer and director and it left the film freer to focus on fast paced action/humour but ultimately for me a rather shallow experience for Star Wars.

 

Cant please everyone. Anakin and Rey have both attracted some criticism. I'm sure if the internet were around in the 70s Luke would be complained about too. Personally I think Rey is a great character portrayed by an excellent young actress. Her powers aside, I find her the most appealing and most relatable character of the three within their respective first movies. In terms of her psyche she seems the most flawed & vulnerable. Still plenty of her story to go, hopefully including a backstory which could change the way we view her and her abilities.

 

How would you define logically building towards what we see Rey doing? What Rey does isn't defying any logic we may could have discerned from previous movies regarding how the force works. The main difference is it isn't devoting the same amount of movie time or deferring it to off screen time between movies. Becayse TFA and Rey's is its own story with its own circumstances, it is not necessary, or perhaps even desirable for it to adopt either of the previous examples.. Unless you equate the exact form of those previous stories with orthodoxy regarding the use of the force itself. Which the definitely are not. Those aspects were dealt with as and when the plot of those movies required them. They are no different from TFA in that respect. They all just happen to be different stories with different plots, characters and circumstances. It is a mistake to assume the propriety of either previous story in terms of what kind of story can be told. All three convey the same logic. They do not have to be materially orthodox in order to do so.

Perhaps it could but what determines that it should? I presume that by making it the central thread you mean expositing the ways of the force and the reasons that Rey ought to learn them in the same way as Luke was introduced to them in A New Hope. Well that was to get the audience up to speed too. It does not mean that a person cannot intuit the things that Luke came to appreciate without the formal exposition and formal show and tell (again, mainly for an unsuspecting audience's benefit in 1977) that characterised Luke's initiation to these things. That's been done. No need to go over it again. That's why it wasn't repeated with Anakin's story either. Instead, there was a ten year ,off screen apprenticeship. But that does not mean that Rey's initiation must fall on or between those two examples (either spelled out every step of the way, or taking up to ten years).

That is precisely how Rey was introduced. A convergence of circumstances created a scenario where her inherent abilities and gifts are crystallized and impossible for her to ignore (eventually). It's not necessary for the movie to devote time to set that up before it's permissible for those things to influence the plot. Those things can happen simultaneously or even backwards.

A new audience watching Han's heartfelt endorsement for the power of the force, the good and the bad (tragically embodied by his errant son) must get some appreciation for the force. And when Rey is subject to its power for a time before pushing back and getting success of her own. These do not require appreciation of the force conveyed by prior movies. In fact, it would appear that presuming the orthodoxy or propriety of how and when these things were conveyed on the back of previous movies seems to be what's prompting some to dismiss the value of these developments in TFA on their own terms. Which is quite a paradox.

No it's not. It requires trusting the audience. If the audience knows nothing of Star Wars and the force then they may well react in that same way that many, many adults did in 1977 - which is palm it off as high tech action and excitement involving appealing characters but with added cockamamie spiritual aspects that don't really need too much scrutiny in order to enjoy it. And many of those adults still enjoyed it.

 

Well I would disagree with that idea, yes I do think its generally necessary for a film to devote time to building up significant aspects of its characters motivation. In Rey's case there's really no direct implication of her having any force abilities until she senses Luke's LS and even then it takes the form of a vision and being told by Maz rather than actually showing any ability to use the force. The first time we see that is the mental duel with Kylo which she wins and then uses the mind trick to escape very quickly afterwards, those scenes themselves coming very soon after the section with Maz.

 

Yes, you didn't realize you were trolling by posting a bunch of annoying spam that was littered with nothing but emotes, effectively contributing nothing to the conversation. Suuuuure.

So, essentially have her character run counter to Vaylin's from TOR. Interesting.

 

Personally I appreciate the different storytelling method here with Rey. What would've been quite dull is seeing yet another young Force hopeful "discovered" & then being trained, slowly learning her skills. To some degree they've inverted that, where certain abilities have been "awoken" within her. She then faced some tests & then she seeks out her mentor. Now she has the challenge of trying to deal with those abilities, harness them & develop them further. I think this was a wise & fresh approach, remembering that the Saga is one big story that will always be viewed in order. When future viewers get to Ep 7 they're not going to want to see the same type of hero's journey as we've seen before. Now the challenge is how that's expanded upon in Eps 8-9 & how well it's all explained. Only with hindsight will we be able judge how Rey & her story all came together.

 

If they didn't want to go through the Force development at a natural pace, starting from the beginning again, they could have started with someone who is already a trained Force user. Starting with a noob only to skip her noobness seems to defeat the point a bit, one point of using a newb is to watch them develop.

 

Yeah they "could" have. There are lots of things they could do. IMO that's still too similar to what we've seen before. In the PT they skipped past Anakin's training. It happened off-screen between Eps 1 & 2. So there we had a ready made young Jedi presented in AotC. We saw the conventional 'getting discovered then trained' arc with Luke. I like the approach here with Rey, which is something different. A character who begins exhibiting certain abilities but doesn't understand why. She gets thrown into the deep end in the first movie even more than Anakin or Luke did, & is lucky to survive. Finally she seeks out a reluctant instructor. What some people seem to have a problem with is that she has "skipped" what they see as the necessary progression of a Force user. I find that view a very limited one. It's making rules based on a sample size of just two instances (in the movies). It presumes that in this vast fictional galaxy, concerning this mysterious Force that there's only one path & that's it. There are no other different & exceptional circumstances. It also ignores the possibility, often hinted at in the Saga that the Force itself could have some kind of will. That someone like Rey may just be a vessel & is being "used" for some grand or metaphysical purpose. I wouldn't be surprised if Rian Johnson touches on ideas such as those.

 

Do you not think that TLJ will show that development CT-867-5309?

What gives you the impression that Rey is "developed". She exposed Kylo's insecurities and weaknesses while discovering her own powers. It was enough to see her through.

 

Agreed. Rey at the end TFA is still hopelessly ill-equipped. She got lucky, as hero's often do early in their journey. Think Han coming to Luke's rescue in ANH, or Anakin's lucky & accidental hijinks during the Battle of Naboo. Chewie's bowcaster shot misses Kylo & Rey is easily defeated & apprehended.

 

The movie devoted a handsome sequence to outlining Rey's existence and her personality. Her industry, Her lack of esteem in respect of Unkar's exploitation of her work. Her sense of justice regarding the plight others, which flows quickly into righteous anger. Her sense of loyalty once she has bonded with BB-8. But let's not forget that she is blown along by circumstances. She doesn't find motivation to leave Jakku, the Tie fighters trying to blast her, BB-8 and Finn to bits provide that motivation. By the time she is about to leave Takodana to return to Jakku, circumstances, or rather the force, (rather than exposition) intervenes again to allude to the extraordinary origin of some the extraordinary gifts that Rey has already displayed.

Following this, Maz forces Rey to face the obscure and vain hope that she still has of being rescued on Jakku. It does not take audience legwork to understand this. What Maz does is suuggest a link between her abilities and a greater destiny than sitting on her butt in forlorn hope of rescue. She's almost an adult. We've just been provided by the vision of her abandonment on Jakku. The real question that would need answering is why would she continue to think she must remain there. What rational motivation is there for that?

The Empire Strikes Back (in 1980) did not need to devote film time to build up the aspect that Darth Vader was Luke's father to explain his motivation. Once that was revealed though, Vader's motivation (before his discussion with the Emperor) during the first half of the film changes completely and retrospectively. Then it's only a matter of some moments following that bombshell that he explains how Luke should join him and overthrow the Emperor.

Well there have been plenty of protests about Rey's fighting, communicating and flying abilities prior to that. It's refreshing to hear someone think they are unremarkable and only take issue with her sensitivity to the lightsaber. Although sensitivity has never been a quality that ever had to be logically spelled out beforehand. Understanding the sensation and its implications may take time. But sensitivity is sensitivity. It can be honed and focused but it does not take logical steps before you achieve sensitivity.

Isn't "being told" exactly what happens with Luke? One day Ben decides to tell him that he's the son of the Jedi and should also learn the ways of the force, oh and I hear you've become "quite a pilot". Aren't we simply told that Anakin is better than any human at certain things on Tatooine when we meet him? "Very soon" these people are saving the rebel Alliance or destroying the droid control ship of a Trade Federation army.

Is there a minimum amount of time? Are we supposed to have ignored it or been to the bathroom when Rey remarks about her astonishment that whatever skills she has learned up till then could make them prevail against the Tie fighers on Jakku?

Just what exactly is the "natural pace" of force development?

 

It's not your job to tell others why they were warned. As always, discuss the post, not the poster.

 

They did. Her motivation of wanting to belong to a familial group and a different life than a scavenger (and how those two came at odds) were clearly explained and shown. Her introductory scenes were all about this (as Martoto77 pointed out). It's repeatedly mentioned and shown (it factors into all her decisions, is evident in how she interacts with the people she meets along the way, and her last lines carry it forward). Whether the Force-sensitivity should've been set up at the same time could be debated, but I don't think it's so much a story about a person becoming a Jedi, but someone letting go of the past to embrace the future, if that makes any sense.

First of all, I don't think that becoming a Jedi (or a hero) is Rey's primary motivation, like Luke's was. As Yoda pointed out, he'd always wanted adventure and to leave his home and he did seem to think that becoming a Jedi would involve that (and, yes, following in his father's footsteps was another reason; people can have multiple reasons for doing something). So, I don't think they needed to set that up earlier, like they did with Rey's desire to connect with people and overcoming the mindset that has been holding her back all her life (it also seems to feed into that plot more than than anything else).

I also think that had they set up the idea of Rey being Force-sensitive from the get-go, the vision scene and Maz's conversation would've lost all its weight. Mileage may vary.

 

Could you, please, explain this?
I watched the whole movie, twice, which is a lot, but I don't remember her asking for a mentor/instructor.

 

O maybe girls just mature faster (with the Force) than boys.

 

The final scene. Thought it was generally understood that Rey isn't just returning lost property to someone.

 

Why "NOT"?