ST Lightsaber Combat in the ST

It is an assumption. If the outcome does not match the assumption, then question the assumption, rather than the outcome.

 

I just re-watched their fight.

Perhaps I'm not understanding what you're point is. My assumption was that he was trained (it doesn't really matter by who). And Kylo Ren was trained. It's clear in his fighting style during the fight -- he has more grace than even Luke had. I suppose this is reminiscent of the styles we saw in the prequels. Rey, on the other hand, is obviously struggling with her lightsaber. You can see it by just how much it wobbles when she fights.

EDIT: People have also identified Kylo Ren as using forms Shii Cho against Finn and Djem So against Rey -- further proof he was trained. Rey didn't know any of the forms.

 

I don't agree that he displayed more grace - and if he did, who did he learn it from? How could he learn more grace from Luke than Luke himself had? And would he have learned that grace from Snoke (whatever he is)? I don't assume that Luke thought that giving Ben significant saber duel training would have been wise for a troubled kid with too much Vader in him, or for any of his pupils for that matter. Who were they expected to duel with, anyway?

He appears overconfident. I don't believe he's ever had anyone test his duelling skills (Snoke mockingly calls murdering his father in cold blood Kylo's "greatest test"). It's because of this, and the other factors of a bleeding hip wound and the emotional turmoil he's trying to compensate for, that allow Finn to damage his right shoulder, his favoured side. He then makes heavy weather of chasing Rey all over the place after her first attack runs out of steam. He is visibly spent and on a decline by the time he manages to lock swords with his opponent, before unwittingly cueing her to summon a strength that she had not used up to that point. Rey's form at this point is almost identical to Luke's at the end of ROTJ when he almost turns. She just hammers away at Ren. And he's now out of steam and seemingly out of ideas when he makes the move of trying to grab Rey's saber ( a big desperate no-no in the duelling world).

I can buy that he's had some training. How dedicated he was to it and how impatient he was with Luke is demonstrated in his performance here as well as his whole performance and strategy throughout the film.

 

I agree with you on two points. Firstly, yes, I think he was a bit overconfident (or even reluctant to kill Rey, but we don't get into that). Secondly, I can imagine he didn't have many people to test his dueling skills since he left Luke.

On the other hand, I believe I read somewhere that Luke used information from the old Jedi Order to train his students, thereby perhaps improving his own fighting as well as being able to teach Kylo Ren fighting styles. Ren would have been able to duel with other students, too, for practice.

Also, Ren wasn't the only one injured. Rey had just been thrown against a tree. That's not something you can just brush off (like she did, unrealistically, in the movie). And, even with Kylo Ren's injuries, I believe this should not have caused him to lose the fight. Rey should not have been able to use the Force that easily, much less overpower someone who has had years of training.

 

Well that's another assumption about what Luke would like to teach his pupils. Whether it's from the Jedi archive or from his own initiative.

Kylo Ren's style didn't cue me to make any assumptions about how well trained he is. It appeared adequate to defeat Finn but not to properly defend himself. And then it was adequate to push Rey back to a cliff edge.

Rey took a bump and a fall that would put you or I in traction, but that's Star Wars. Sliding down a chute and landing hard on metal debris was a minor drama for Han et al in ANH. But that is in no way comparable with the wound Ren receives from Chewie's weapon, already twice established as formidable. If Ren was as committed and disciplined to even his basic training and ability as one might assume he would have seen that blast coming before Chewie even fired it.

I had hoped that you would have taken a cue from my comparing Rey's assault to Luke's on the Death Star II. The dark side is quicker, and easier. At the moment Rey is feeling the force and using her aggressive feelings, Ren is in a complete quandary about the promise of power that his cowardly actions were supposed to deliver but are not forthcoming and losing his control over the Force in general.

 

The new Marvel comics are worth a read. You find out tidbits like:

"Why couldn't Kylo Ren pick up a working used lightsaber at an antique store?"

"How could Luke survive a crazy fall into a bottomless pit on Bespin?"

"How did Vader know about Luke before the Emperor spoke of him?"

Essentially those strong with the force are harder to kill, in spite of their level of skill than a 'normal' person.

 

It wouldn't be the first time a trained Force user was taken unaware by an incoming projectile.

 

Anakin got the scar on his face and his limbs cut off...and he was the Chosen One. It's not unreasonable for a well-trained Force user to be injured or killed, obviously by blaster bolts. Look at all the Jedi who died on Geonosis.

His injuries didn't seem to bother him at the beginning of the fight -- he was fighting just fine -- fine enough to where he should have defeated Rey. He started losing after Rey "connected to the Force," which she shouldn't have been able to do very well yet. Her connecting to the Force didn't make his injuries worse.

Regardless of Rey and Ren's state, a trained (and I think we have both agreed Ren received training which, by the way, was my original point that you didn't agree with) force wielder would have to seriously lose control of the Force to best someone who's hardly heard of it. I don't think he lost his control over the force, certainly not enough to be defeated by Rey.

 

I agree with what has been mentioned before regarding this duel. It's not my least favorite, but I do agree with the fact that the playing field was evened out a bit more due to Kylo Ren's injuries. It's also possible he may not have had all that much training in dueling. He's constantly talking about Snoke giving him more training (and vice versa) throughout TFA-maybe he hasn't gotten too adept at saber skills yet. And yes Rey is also already used to fighting in hand to hand combat (not to mention wielding around her staff thing) so she's not completely alien to fighting like that. The Force basically just gave her an edge. And a narrow edge it was-she was mostly on the defensive (even after being KO'd after being tossed into a tree), until just at the very end there. By that time Kylo Ren had been injured a few different times.

Either way, I look forward to seeing what she can do with a lightsaber in the future (or perhaps Double-bladed lightsaber?). I expect her abilility would only improve from there-that was an impressive start.

 

DARTH_BELO

The Force had to give her more than just an edge, as you say, because her fighting improved drastically.

And, to anyone who's used a staff or sword, it is very different. They entail completely different movements. (Imagine the difference between shifting your arms to block a low side blow with a staff and drawing your arms across your body to block it with a lightsaber, for instance.)

Still, I agree, it will be interesting to see what else she does. I imagine she would do better with a double blade.

 

Finn did have military-grade training with melee weapons (Before the Awakening). Also, if you look closely, Kylo seems to be stretching out the fight. Once he gets tagged, he gets to business and finishes it in three seconds, or so. I do agree that Phantom Menace did have one of the great lightsaber duels.

The canonical explanation is that she was seen what he was going to do before he did it. That might've helped.

Watch the first part of the duel. One of the reasons Rey's form looks clumsy is because she's trying to use the saber like a half-sized staff.

Maybe. However, a double-bladed lightsaber can only be gripped in the middle, unlike a staff. That could throw a staff user off.

 

I broke your responses into sections.

1st section: I agree, even though it wasn't me you were responding to.
2nd section: I agree, that probably did help some. Personally, as you've probably read, I don't think it was enough which (to me) made her win impossible. But, yeah, I can see her getting a bit of that from the Force, just like Anakin did before he was trained.
3rd section: That's an interesting observation; I hadn't thought of that.
4th section: That is very, very true. That might even throw someone off more, lol!

Thank you for your response.

 

I see what you're saying, but.......he got a lot worse right after Rey "connected" to the Force. Perhaps it would have been more believable to me had it been a more gradual change. It also would not have been as good for the movie.

It was a cool fight, but I just don't find it believable the way they did it.

 

It depends on whether you believe that Ren cannot be defeated. Given the circumstances that are presented for both characters, there's nothing in the film that gives me any such belief that cannot at least be credibly suspended by the obvious intervention of the force.

 

I interpret it as both the Force flowing through Rey in her comeback and also leaving Ren. He's utterly spent at that point physically and emotionally, he's seen the Force 'go' to this girl instead of him, even when he's killed his own father to get it, so his own fear is playing against him too.

In the comic adaptation presentation of this duel, the art shows a lot of blood on Kylo Ren, making it much more clear that he was wounded and bleeding. Censorship likely explains why this wasn't in the film, but I find it interesting in any case.

 

Kylo Ren is trained by Luke Skywalker and later Snoke, and destroyed the entire academy with his knights of ren. Yet, against a janitor with zero force training or lightsaber training(Finn loses his first saber battle to stormtrooper TR-8R and only survives when Han intervenes and shoots the trooper right as he's about to kill Finn) Kylo struggles mightily and even gets hit by Finn's saber. We know from multiple previous moments in the film that Kylo can freeze people's entire bodies with the force, and render them unconscious with a wave of his hand(like he did to Rey). If he wanted Anakin's lightsaber so bad(he did) all he had to do was force freeze the janitor and chop him in half. And then, when he finally does actually manage to best Finn, he leaves him alive. Not very sith... heck, the first second he gets Kenobi chops Maul in half to ensure the job is done and he's a jedi.... That's the kinda stuff that made the fight meh for me, also the wildly convenient earthquake that separates Rey from Kylo at just the right moment!

 

Note that, according to Snoke, he's still hasn't graduated yet (whatever Snoke means by that). We also don't know much about what the attack on the Academy was like, so it's hard to say how much skill was needed to pull it off.

Up till getting tagged, Kylo was toying with Finn (who does have melee combat training, per Before the Awakening). Also, Kylo was in really bad shape at that point (he'd taken a powerful shot to the gut and was bleeding out and even the best swordman can make a mistake that a newbie could exploit.

I would like an explanation why Kylo doesn't even try his Force-freeze trick in that scene. My theory is that he was too spent or couldn't focus properly to do it.

Given what a nasty injury he'd given Finn, it doesn't seem that improbably that Kylo would leave him; I took it that Finn would've died from the injury without medical treatment and seemed to survive that long despite everything saying he shouldn't've. Besides, Kylo's priority was getting the saber and taking Rey in.

I will concede that the cliff was convenient, but it didn't bother me.

 

"Note that, according to Snoke, he's still hasn't graduated yet (whatever Snoke means by that). We also don't know much about what the attack on the Academy was like, so it's hard to say how much skill was needed to pull it off."

I agree, he made it clear that Kylo had not "completed his training". But even with that, he's been a trained jedi under the tutelage of Skywalker for quite some time, Finn has no force training/saber training. It's a stretch for me to imagine Finn even remotely messing with this guy's level of pwnsaucery. That being said, I wonder if Finn will be revealed to be force sensitive. That would be interesting, yea?




"Up till getting tagged, Kylo was toying with Finn (who does have melee combat training, per Before the Awakening). Also, Kylo was in really bad shape at that point (he'd taken a powerful shot to the gut and was bleeding out and even the best swordman can make a mistake that a newbie could exploit."

I agree 100% that Kylo would easily be able to toy with Finn, and it's the only plausible explanation, I still can't even see him taking a hit. The dude's a jedi/sith 30 year old with training, but I see what you're saying too.





"I would like an explanation why Kylo doesn't even try his Force-freeze trick in that scene. My theory is that he was too spent or couldn't focus properly to do it."

I agree, there needs to be an explanation for why he wouldn't use such an op move when the stakes were that high (grandfather's lightsaber being at stake should make Kylo have immense urgency to get it at any cost, which to me means attempting to toy with Finn goes against this concept. Kylo wouldn't mess around where Grandfather's holy relic of a weapon is concerned, he'd get that shiz ASAP.





"Given what a nasty injury he'd given Finn, it doesn't seem that improbably that Kylo would leave him; I took it that Finn would've died from the injury without medical treatment and seemed to survive that long despite everything saying he shouldn't've. Besides, Kylo's priority was getting the saber and taking Rey in."

I can see that as a fair point.



"I will concede that the cliff was convenient, but it didn't bother me."


Word.

Are you stoked for Rogue One? Will se see Vader's lightsaber turn on??? Gawd I hope so.

 

I see what you mean, although I wish we had a better idea of Kylo's skill levels when he left the Academy, for more accurate theorizing. Not sure if I want Finn to be a Force user; I didn't see any real evidence of it in the movie, and I think it should've been set up from square one if they wanted to reveal that in the future.

The Alan Dean Foster novelization pretty much confirms the toying theory, with the added detail that Kylo underestimated Finn. The Finn's Story novelization credits Finn's First Order training for his brief success. The junior novelization clarifies that Finn was trying to make himself seem less skilled than he was (to throw Kylo's assessment of him off) and tricked Kylo with a feint when he tagged him. Whether those details are enough to justify what we see onscreen is a your mileage may vary thing, but that seems to be the official story.

Too bad none of the books have shown what Kylo was thinking during those scenes (we pretty much only get them from Finn's perspective). It would be interesting to know.

I kind of though Kylo seemed confident in his victory up till Rey's grabbing the saber, so maybe he wasn't so pressed to grab the weapon that he didn't mind punishing a traitor that had caused him no end of trouble first?

Can't wait. Still haven't decided how much Vader I want in the movie. Right now, I'm thinking less is more.

 

All great thoughts. And yea, I agree, less is more where Vader is concerned. While it might be out of character for him to kill a subordinate with his lightsaber instead of force choking, it would be cool to see a lightsaber used in the film. Also, Obi Wan Kenobi is alive during this time period, it would be rad to see him.

 

I don' t think Rey should have been able to use the Force well enough for it to tip the balance in the fight, but I suppose (as the audience) we're just supposed to accept that she did.

 

Did Rey use the Force? Or did the Force use Rey?

 

Do you think there's anything the future movies could do, show, or present that would help soften this issue?

 

Mod Edit: Nope is right. Disallowed language means hand gestures, as well.