ST That's Not How The Force Works... (or is it?)

Given that every force using character has been formally trained up until this point, I find this statement odd.

 

Including a 9 year old Anakin?

 

And Luke in ANH and the first part of ESB? Not sure 5 minutes of batting practice in the back of a van counts as training.

 

You mean "The One". The most naturally gifted of any Jedi ever? The one who technically accomplished less than Luke did? Granted Luke was older, but all Anakin did was show he had amazing "reflexes" and some blind "luck". He wasn't busting out advanced techniques like mind control and telepathy, which is apparently a force power now? That one sure could have come in handy in the past, like when they were interrogating Zam? I guess Master Obi-Wan hadn't learned that one yet. Maybe Rey can show his force ghost that technique in VIII while she is training Luke.

 

He certainly demonstrated telepathy in the Jedi council chambers. And we don't know who Rey is yet. Are we really just going to recapitulate the Rey is overpowered debate? It's a bit tired.

 

Yes, telepathy. A Force power which was depicted in both ESB and ROTJ.

 

And TPM, AOTC, and ROTS to lesser extents. I certainly count sensing someone's mental state across the galaxy as telepathy.

 

Anakin never demonstrated telepathy. He was asked what was on the screen. He could sense what was there. He wasn't reading anyone's mind. Telepathy of that kind is not a Jedi technique. They can sense emotions. They can't download information.

 

Sooooo.... He sensed the cup felt bad? I don't get it.

Besides, Vader read Luke's mind in RoTJ.

 

The Jedi sense everything around them. Do you think Anakin didn't sense the material objects around him while podracing?

Luke's feelings betrayed him in RotJ. Vader could sense this intense emotion, it was the emotion that told Vader what he needed to know, the love for a sister. Kylo extracts information from frosty Poe Dameron, raw information. Then Rey does it against an unemotional Kylo as well. It doesn't fit in with established canon.

 

Ok well, I strongly disagree. Not sure how sensing an exact image of something not in your view is the same as having heightened reflexes and situational awareness. I mean, that skill is epsilon away from reading Mace's underwear label.

 

This is some high-grade hairsplitting. Sensing "love" (an emotion) is not going to tell you anything more than that.

 

The screen is an object. No different from the rocks on Dagobah that Luke manipulates. A Jedi can see the object in their mind.

Hairsplitting? Love comes in many different forms. You don't love a sister quite the same as a brother. Nor do you love them as you would your own child. Sensing what kind of love would be quite telling.

 

So what makes a mind off-limits, then?

 

What makes it off limits is the established canon. There are times when both light and dark side users would benefit from such an ability. Why didn't Vader extract the information about the transmission and Leia from Captain Antilles? Don't you think that might have been more productive than breaking his neck and throwing him into a wall? This telepathy thing has come out of nowhere. The same place humans speaking droid came from, I'd imagine.

 

You mean like Han in ESB?

 

Why didn't Obi-Wan use Jedi super-speed to reach Maul and Qui-Gon in TPM?

Why didn't Obi-Wan in ANH somersault over Vader and take him out from behind, like he did to Maul in TPM? (Age is not an answer here. Cf. Dooku.)

These things have never been consistent.

It strikes me that a lot of this is about the head-canon we all create as fans. There's nothing in canon to rule out telepathy, and to me it seems like such a logical conclusion of what we've seen on screen that it never even occurred to me to question it. Yet someone else will say it conflicts in an egregious way.

Yet I'm sure there are some fans who can't tolerate the telepathy in TFA yet think midichlorians are perfectly in keeping with what we know of the Force.

I guess we just interpret the films differently.

 

Yeah I'm not willing to revisit these debates further. We've all had it out at this point and have our positions and viewpoints. I have an expansive view of the force and the SW universe, others like lore and canon and don't want to see further change. One is not better than the other.

 

They've actually been pretty consistent. Obi-Wan meant to die against Vader. Why didn't he use super speed? Maybe because he was just knocked down 100 feet and was recovering? My speculation on this reasonable bend of the rules is nothing like introducing an entirely new rule.

There is no "head-canon". This is part of what many find so insulting about TFA. Lucas didn't tell us what the force could do, he showed us. The saga pretty well defined what the best of the best could do, and what everyone else could do. The limits were pretty clear.

What does "it seems like such a logical conclusion of what we've seen on screen" mean? You haven't even pointed to an example where this is slightly logical, yet when confronted with evidence to the contrary you can write it off with ease. Some people just take Star Wars a little more seriously than others. To me it is a meticulously crafted work of art. To others things happen just 'cause and it's all really just chaos without rules anyway so anything goes!

 

Ah, I get it now. "No true Scotsman" and all that. What is your goal here, out of curiosity?

 

Love for a maternal figure. A powerful love to sense I'm sure. I find Ki-Adi's words are meant to display the coldness of the order. Anakin is a 10 year old boy taken from his mother, of course he is going to be oozing emotion. For Ki-Adi to dismiss them as mere "thoughts" says a lot about the order. It isn't Anakin's desire to think of his mother, it's an emotional reaction.

Why again didn't Vader extract data from Antilles? Obi-Wan and Anakin from Zam? It's a lame plot device is the main reason. If everyone can just read minds why does any action even need to take place? Everyone already knows everything. An argument could be made that telepathic communication is possible, but this is still not entirely provable. Vader calls to Luke but they never establish a dialogue. It's the emotions connected to the words they are sensing. The only time we see telepathic force communication is with force ghosts, and I was under the assumption this is what made that particular state of being so powerful? If not, what? All of this aside, telepathic communication is quite different than forced extraction of information.

 

Yeah, OK. IOW, "It's all cool as long as I like the movie".

They sure do...

 

Some people really want to turn a mysterious and mythical thing like the force into a set of RPG rules. To me that's terribly boring.

Let's just say what everyone else is dancing around: no one is allowed to write new Star Wars except George Lucas, and if they have the audacity to do so, they aren't allowed to do anythIng he didn't (subject to fan interpretation).