ST The Development Of The Sequel Trilogy

Sure, it's the same evidence I keep providing - Rey left him free and healthy twice when she twice had a chance to stop him.

Kylo vowed to massacre the Resistance to the last man to her face, and she reacted by leaving him healthy and free on his giant spaceship full of weapons and an army at his command.

Rey shipped her body there to be captured by the guards and Kylo and snoke. No I don't buy that suddenly the non-force sensitive non-PG guards that were so far away she escaped no problem were suddenly a super serious threat more compelling than taking the guy now in charge of mass abducting and mass murdering across the Galaxy

Based on the fact that no one ever did it before and it is a pretty handy dandy force power. Rey is special and can do very special things no one else can.

Healing Kylo and leaving him free isn't something a good person would do. That's my entire argument. Making some point theoretically dunking on Kylo isn't more important than protecting the Galaxy from Kylo.

Leia really died saving Rey from Kylo in the timeline. I don't agree with the way people spin that as Leia sacrificing her life for Kylo because that's not what was happening. And anyway, honoring Leia, as much as I love Leia, isn't more important than stopping the guy in charge of mass abductions of children across the Galaxy.

Too kind to a mass murderer and mass child abductor? Yes, to the detriment of the people he murders and abducts.

She's prioritizing her selfish wants over the people Kylo hurts. That was worded badly in that caring for Kylo isn't narcissistic (though it ishorribly written and stupid on her part), but obsessing over Kylo's soul over the people he hurts is. She is obsessed with completely self absorbed things for her and Kylo while ignoring all the harm he brings to innocent people across the Galaxy that don't have the privilege of being half a dyad with her.

Yes what I said are the only reasons the films provide for Rey to like Kylo or personally care for him. We know she's attracted to him. We know it's implied all over the place that they're soulmates. We know the dyad thing is explicitly in the film.

Yes we've established that we are discussing our opinions. I never said otherwise. In exactly the same way, you are expressing your opinion and I'm not claiming that by expressing an opinion you are pushing your opinion as fact. We are engaging in exactly the same way countering each other's points. I'm not pushing anything on you.

Yes right all kinds of context that doesn't change the fact that Luke and Obi never put Vader ahead of the greater need to try and protect the innocent.

 

Yes. And no! LOL, I have to be awkward....

These films, you're right, do have a very strong "point of view" of their own on what is good and evil. They are an elaborate morality play on a big canvas, and that's what makes them badass. But their broader, cosmic point of view, you might say, is built out of smaller, more localised points of view. The whole thing constitutes a symphony. Lucas has spoken to the PT being founded on the premise that nobody thinks of themselves as evil. People often think of themselves as doing good when maybe they're very estranged from good. It finally "explodes" out in text in ROTS: "There are heroes on both sides. Evil is everywhere." And Padme echoes this text to Anakin when she tries to get through to him on the corruption that is essentially consuming the Republic at a worrying pace: "Have you ever considered that we may be on the wrong side?" Interestingly, as Carl Sagan warmly informs us in "Cosmos", the term "consider" actually means "to be with the stars" (or more accurately: "to observe the stars intently"). Star Wars. But anyway...

Kylo is something of an extension of this same philosophical slant. Rian Johnson found an interesting way to bear down on what Lucas did in the PT with his three "point of view" Rashomon-inspired flashbacks concerning the moment it all went wrong between Luke and Kylo at the training temple. You never get to see what actually happened. The film progresses and skitters between a "mild" flashback, an "extreme" one, and one that seems to "reconcile" the former two. But who knows what the actual truth really is? The truth is something delicate and ephemeral. Yet I think Yoda offers the best insight on what the Dark Side does to Kylo -- by way of his commenting on what it's doing to Anakin at a tragic moment -- in AOTC: "Pain... Suffering... Death, I feel. Something terrible has happened. Young Skywalker is in pain. Terrible pain." Kylo is pretty much gripped by the same torment and confusion his whole life. I think we can sympathise with him on that level, without completely agreeing with his actions, much less the consequences of those actions.

And hey, the Empire, Vader, Tarkin, the Emperor, Darth Maul, Dooku... These characters have always had their fans and people loyal to their enigmatically dark ways. Does that mean people live by their values? Not really. But there's a certain "forbidden fruit" aspect to the Dark Side that many people are magnetically attracted to. It's vicariously thrilling. Darkly sensual, arresting, exhilarating, alluring. TESB makes fascism seem intricate and sexy. There are people bound to blow their top and protest like Rey protesting to Kylo that her parents never threw her away like garbage. But look at the beautiful lethality of a Star Destroyer, the distinctive engine roar of a TIE Fighter, Vader's gleaming helmet, the clean attire of the Imperial officers, their neat workstations. The Dark Side clearly brings a morbid appeal. And don't forget, in-universe, many people see the Empire as a force for good, even though the films are depicted from the point of view of the rebels. But Imperial tech and Imperial organisation is cool. Who wouldn't want one of those speeder bikes on Endor?

It's okay. I was "having a moment". Just wanted to get some things out. I enjoy a level playing field. Whatever people think of these movies, they should be allowed to express their opinions. And it seems that that used to be possible for some movies more than others. Yet those others are now the ones under attack. It's funny.

Interesting. Do you think it can all be pinned on Finn and the high hopes that people had there? I think, to be fair, people had high hopes for Rey, and they do genuinely feel that the latter two entries that didn't meet those hopes. So it's not all a Finn thing. Nevertheless...

You mean because the actor is a charismatic black guy? While it would have been great to have a black guy with a white woman -- or even better: a black female lead with a white supporting actor -- it should be whatever fits the story and whatever the chemistry suggests. In Rey and Finn's case, Finn was being constantly portrayed in TFA as a schlub. A heroic, well-meaning schulb, but still a schlub. He bumbles all over the place, drinks from a space pig's trough, lies about his identity, is initially assaulted by Rey, told to stop taking her hand, constantly sweats and exclaims when things happen... I could go on. If the movie was leaving open the possibility of a romance between them further down the line, it certainly didn't go out of its way, in my opinion, to suggest Rey was impressed by Finn as a potential romantic suitor. On the other hand, I think Rose and Jannah took something of a shine to Finn, and he was the one doing a bit of friendzoning (oh, no, there's that term again) in those instances.

Has it been definitively established who Jesse Plemons was auditioning for? Based on what I've read, Finn does seem likely, admittedly. Conceptually, I like the idea of Finn. He is apparently a mixture of a character in Lucas' treatment (the loyal sidekick) and JJ's own idea (or an idea that, when proposed, JJ instantly liked) of having a defector stormtrooper. It is a little hard to buy into, however, in the finished film, due to all the bumbling that takes place (though John Boyega certainly does his level-best to sell it), as well as the fact that Finn otherwise seems very well-adjusted to life outside the First Order, despite being taken as a child and inducted into their militaristic ways, and that being the only mode of existence he ever knew. Where's the anger, the rage, the PTSD, or any kind of strangeness or aloofness on his part? None that is really there. On the other hand, I do understand people's enthusiasm for the character, and I can see how they may have exited the trilogy disappointed.

 

I’m not sure what you’re referring to here. Luke’s never defeated Vader before when ROTJ starts. In fact no one has outside of that time his wingman panicked and crashed into him, and even that was only a mild inconvenience for him personally(by that I mean Vader himself was totally fine, he just failed his objective). That’s what makes him such a threatening villain.

Rey “nearly died” for all of two seconds even assuming killing her was Kylo’s goal at that point, because it hadn’t been the rest of the movie. Which was kinda my point before about not having time to credibly go from devastating defeat back to winning again in one movie. There’s a reason people think Palpatine’s sudden return is because Kylo wasn’t cut out to be the Big Bad that TLJ set him up to be. And again, the fact that Rey didn’t do it all on her own doesn’t change the fact that one person got stabbed and one person didn’t, and the person on the wrong end of that deal has never been Rey before so why start now?

I mean you might as well have said all that happened to that Naboo Starfighter is a tank hit it in the engine and it crashed. That guy didn’t have plot armor though so I’m pretty sure he didn’t walk away unharmed. Anyways I haven’t got the slightest clue what Kylo was doing there but I agree that it wasn’t fighting.

I can follow the logic from “the father thing didn’t do much for me” to “Luke trying to redeem Vader didn’t make any sense” to “Rey trying to redeem Kylo didn’t make any less sense”. I do think the situations are objectively different enough though to account for why a decent chunk of people buy one but not the other. I also think the execution on Rey and Kylo makes things worse than it could have been. The audience never gets access to whatever past of Ben’s that is supposed to be so convincing to Rey. It’s always “too much Vader in him” and “Snoke had already gotten to him” and “he murdered his classmates for something they didn’t do at the drop of a hat”. (Oh yeah, and he ran off with the rest but we never need to know what happened to them.) On the other hand Anakin has a whole movie where the audience only knows him as a Jedi and “a good friend”.

 

Passions need no rationalizing. Rey and Kylo liked each other which started with physical attraction and then their Force Bond allowed them to see into each other as persons. That's why Kylo is the one that picks up on Rey's loneliness and empathizes with it while her friends don't (Ja-kuuu, who wants to go back to Ja-kuuu? that's a junk planet). That's why Rey makes distinction between Ben, whom she loves (I would take your hand. Ben's hand) and Kylo who is an enemy. It's really simple and it works for a lot of people, not all of course, but enough people to develop a very significant following.

That said, Luke has 180 degree turn because Vader is his father so he feels obliged to do something about him although he doesn't have much proof that he is worthy of trying. Heck, he doesn't even know the guy beyond his bad rep which is far less than what Rey and Kylo/Ben have. Luke starts to love Vader after learning about their relation. he didn't feel that there was good in Vader before the reveal. So it's ambiguous whether he actually felt it through the force or their relation made him want to believe such thing was true. After all, Padme wasn't strong with the Force but felt there was good in Anakin, so I'd say it isn't about magic but very relatable "I want to believe". It's no different for Rey because she loves Ben so she wants to believe. And as I said already, she knew more about Ben than Luke knew about Anakin at that point.

 

Quick comment, I did like your Dr Who bits, good stuff.
So if I come across as a bit terse, sorry I am not trying to be mean or insulting.

What parts of the galaxy is supportive of the FO, are they ever mentioned in the films?
The FO controls some of the galaxy yes but it is clearly a small part, a majority is not ruled by them.

Yes it does. If a text says "This person seized control of company A, that means this person has taken control of the company, not parts of it.
If a text says "The enemy seized control of France", then that means they control France, not parts of it.
If a person cleaned the house then I would take that as the whole house, not just the living room.
The simplest and most logical interpretation of this line is that the FO is attacking the whole galaxy, that total galactic domination is their end goal.

Which fits which what was said in TFA,

So the FO is attacking the whole galaxy and is taking military control of it, which again was beyond the GE making the FO stronger than the GE.

Nope, the invasion was always part of their plans.
So again, to totally conquer one PLANET, took maybe 50 ships and tens of thousands of soldiers and several days.
And with no opposition what so ever.

Here we are talking about the galaxy and no matter if it only parts of it or even as little as 500 systems, to conquer that would take a huge fleet and loads of soldiers.

No they didn't given the clear evidence that more systems and races joined the rebellion and it grew in strength.

Again I point to TPM, Naboo offered no resistance and it still took loads or ships and soldiers several days to take full control of the planet.
This isn't as simple as one soldier coming down and saying "This planet is now ruled by the FO."
The FO has to put a lot of soldiers on the ground, seize control of the government, important installations, any military hardware on the planet etc.
This takes time and requires soldiers.

So even IF every planet in the galaxy was as weak as Naboo and offered no resistance, it would still take time to fully conquer all of it.

Military base vs small moon.

I do agree with you but AotC never mentions ships or fleets that the Republic has.
And those ships the clones have at the end of the film are not explained. Where they part of the order for the clone army? Did the Kamino build them as well as the clones?

They Mujahideen were a threat to the Soviet forces in Afghanistan, they caused the war to be costly both in terms of military and diplomatically.

Part of the reason why the Bay of pigs failed was that the President held off further air support because of international pressure when news got out.

TFA sets up the situation, the NR supports the Resistance to fight the FO. For that to make sense, the Resistance has to be able to hurt the FO and be a credible threat. Which is supported by events in the film.

For TLJ to then say "The resistance was in no way a threat to the FO." means TLJ ignores and contradicts TFA.

The way TFA sets up the galaxy is in parts like the cold war, the NR vage a proxy war against the FO though the Resistance.
That situation has obviously changed at the end, the NR capitol is gone as is the FO big weapon, SKB.
So both sides has suffered a loss.

A common complaint against TFA is that it borrows too much from ANH. Which is fair but I do think that there were some differences, that the FO does not rule the galaxy, it is smaller than the NR.
You could have gone in a different direction with this.
That now we have a war between two somewhat equal sides which would be a first in SW.
In the OT the Empire is way more powerful than the rebels and in the PT, the war is fake and run by the same person.

But TLJ doubles down on borrowing from the OT, now the NR is totally gone and the FO will soon rule the galaxy, making it much more the the Empire 2.0. The resistance is no longer a proxy for the NR, now they are the rebellion again.

? The Soviet Union did have nukes by 1949.
The US policy was that of massive retaliation if the Soviet forces were to attack Europe, either with regular forces or nukes. At least from somewhere in the 1950's.

Did the US have plans to attack first? By the 60's, no such attack could work as even a small number of soviet nukes would mean everyone looses.

What republic navy? Are you talking about the PT or ST?
If the PT, then in AotC, Mace says that if the seps turn hostile, there aren't enough Jedi to protect the Republic. Suggesting that the Republic has no other defenses.
A thought echoed by Dooku when he says that their new army will overwhelm the Jedi and then they can enforce their demands on the senate. Again no mention of other forces.

If the ST, the GE was not that long ago and there is now an active threat, the FO.
The new Jedi academy has been destroyed and Luke has vanished.
So the situation is now quite tense.
And unless we assume that for some very stupid reason, every last NR ship was in that central system when it was destroyed, there would be NR ships still surviving.

Because her powers are clearly way more powerful than other Force sensitives.
She can do things with no training, Luke even says that only once before has he seen power like this.
Clearly Rey is exceptional.
And Snoke talks about Darkness rising and light to meet it. Meaning that the light side will bring about a champion.

And I was mostly talking about Anakin. Who was apparently created by the Force and with the goal to kill all Sith or just Palpatine.

Except again, the Force created Anakin with the goal to kill Palpatine.
In these cases, the higher powers offer advice or guidance but the regular people are the ones who have to do most of the work.
No one but Anakin could kill Palpatine, only he was powerful enough to do so.
And he isn't there to advice or help the Jedi change their ways or anything.
He is a Force-Terminator, created with one goal, kill Palpatine.

But you bring up this bit;

Anakin is already dying because of what Obi-Wan did. So not acting means Anakin will die anyway and it will be on Obi-Wan. So he can not dodge that responsibility.
And I really doubt the Jedi way says that a Jedi should leave a dying enemy to suffer horribly before death comes. Esp if the enemy is dying because of what the Jedi did.

First, I would think it is more common for orphans or people that don't know their parents to have some interest in them than to not care at all.
My grandmother never knew who her father was, she was adopted but had contact with her mother, my great grandmother. They got along fine but my grandmother could never get her mother to tell her who her father was. And that bothered her for her whole life.
Not that she wanted to meet him or anything, just the answer to who he was would be enough. But she never got that.
Plenty of people also do research into their family history. Who their great-great grandparents were, what they did and so on.
Not to meet them, since they are long dead but just to know more about them. Just curiosity.
That is quite human nature. "Who am I, where did I come from, where am I going?"

Second, in stories, long lost relatives, siblings, parents are very much a thing.
Take "His Dark Materials" where the central character Lyra finds out that her mother is someone that she sees as an enemy. This clearly has an impact on her.

Third, Luke's situation is very different from Rey's.
In ANH he is established as curious about his father and he wished that he could have known him.
He has father figures, Owen and very briefly Obi-Wan. But he still is interested in his father.
Which I think is quite realistic. A bit more questionable is why he doesn't ask Obi-Wan about his mother.

Luke is then told that his father was a great hero, a Jedi and that he was murdered by Vader.
Given that Luke has romantic ideals about heroism, this appeals to him and builds up his father image even more. And he might also have a goal, to avenge his murder.
So he eventually decides to go with Obi-Wan, when his home has been destroyed and he has nothing left on Tatooine. And he wants to become a Jedi, like his father. So that desire is clearly due in part to said father.

Now in ESB, Luke is beaten down by Vader and has his hand cut off. And then Vader tries to tempt him but Luke refuses. Then Vader drops the bomb, he is Luke's father.
This shatters Luke, not only the image he has of his noble hero of a father but also that Obi-Wan and Yoda, his mentors and people he trusted, lied to him. Potentially destroying his trust in them. They lied to him about this, what else have they lied about?
On top of all this, Luke's only alternative is certain death.

And Luke chooses death. "So you have chosen death!"

He lives but the way forward is now filled with doubt.
Can he kill his father?
Also, when Luke fought Vader, Luke got his backside handed to him.
So there is considerable doubt if Luke could even prevail in a fight with Vader.
Add on top of that, you have Vader's master, the Emperor.
Who given that Vader bows to him, is likely even more powerful.
But Luke has to conquer both Vader and his emperor. Tall order to say the least.

Rey has it very differently. She has not learned anything near as shattering as Luke, she hasn't been lied to in the same manner as Luke has.
She was not beaten very handily by Kylo and Snoke, who did beat her, is now dead.
Rey has also seen clearly that Kylo isn't interested in turning back.

As for why Luke has faith in his father.
One, he had a connection to his father even without meeting him.
His father mattered to Luke, which is not that uncommon. Which is why the truth hurts so much.
If Luke did not give two craps about his dad, then Vader saying "I am your father" would be met with "So?"
Which I don't think would make ESB better.
Two, Luke does sense that there is good in his father and Obi-Wan tells him both in ANH and RotJ that his father was a good man.
So he is faced with a problem, can he kill his father, a person of some importance to him and who he can sense some good in? If he does not, then does the Empire win?

Luke has not made up his mind totally when he goes to Endor, he is still mulling over his options.
But when Vader is there and comes down to the forest moon, now Luke has to decide quickly.
He can not stay with the rebels as Vader can sense him and this would ruin the mission.
He can not leave as the shield has to be lowered which won't happen now that Vader knows Luke is there.
Trying to hide on Endor, away from the rebels is also futile, Vader will find him.
Trying to get to Vader and kill him is very unlikely to work, Luke is alone and Vader has a big military at his back.
So he surrenders to Vader, he hopes that he can reach the good inside his father and get him to come with him. That is pretty much his only option.

That fails and Luke is resigned to his fate, to die on the DS2 in the rebel attack. His only comfort is that the emperor will die with him. But he is soon robbed of that.
When he starts to fight, he has no plan to reach his father or reason with him, he is too angry.
But he does calm down and stops his fight and he is again able to sense the good in his father still, the conflict.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

Come on, you could tell she was all a flutter as soon as Kylo removed his hat in TFA to reveal his perfectly coiffured hair. She was expecting a monster in a mask and then she was like "Oh la la...."

 

Just catching up on the last few pages. There's also this that I wanted to respond to:

Funny you use the word "trumps". Do you consider Rey to be morally equivalent to the current POTUS? I ask because you're calling her narcissistic. People earlier got on my case for referring to Han as a "sugar daddy", but this seems like a much worse abuse of words. As @K2771991 has said, Rey clearly reaches out to Kylo when she feels there's a chance, which is hardly the actions of a narcissist (unless, maybe, they are only thinking of their own gain). Similarly, she sometimes attacks Kylo, verbally and physically, in defence of her friends. Like on Pasaana, when she attempts to murder him and fights with him over the transport, which she believes has Chewie inside of it.

By your own standards, the Jedi of the PT must be all a bunch of narcissists, since they clearly put great stock in the Force's will. Look at Yoda and Obi-Wan's actions at the end of trilogy. They literally run off from the newly-minted Empire and leave the galaxy to its fate. Couldn't they have taken another shot -- together, this time -- at Palpatine? Couldn't Obi-Wan or Yoda have snuck behind Vader and pulled out his batteries, or at least tried to give him a wedgie? I mean, they do nothing about the incumbent threat, other than immediately disappearing into exile. When Luke shows up on Dagobah years later, Yoda is even reluctant to train him. Some guardians of peace and justice!

Kylo himself doesn't seem too happy about the First Order "harvesting more of the galaxy's young", to quote that senior officer at the conference table. He has his back to the gathered officers when tactics are being discussed, and you hear this low, disapproving "Dark Side" rumble from Kylo when these words are being spoken. Moments later, he chokes and flings that other poor sap to the ceiling. Despite becoming Supreme Leader, Kylo clearly has some "issues" with First Order doctrine, and these start to rise to the fore when Rey flashes back up on his radar. Which shows there was a certain method at work in Rey sparing him.

And honestly, Rey can't save the whole galaxy. Even she is realistic enough in her most inspired/fervent moment to see that her bringing Kylo back to the light "could" shift the tide and that it "could be" how they win. There's a lot of work to do, even if Kylo turns (which, of course, he doesn't), because things are far from good; and in the words of Leia on Crait: "The galaxy has lost all its hope." A few days before those words are uttered, Rey is just a scavenger living on an obscure "junkyard" of a planet. Yet she puts everything on the line to try and get Kylo to turn -- and she almost succeeds. I'm really not seeing how that qualifies her for the n-label.

 

Lol


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Ha! It's like a sexier version of the helmet-removal scene at the end of ROTJ, with the added shock of "I am your father!" ("I am your beau!") thrown in.

 

Damn. Watching TROS again. They really missed a huge opportunity in not having Ben go back to the Resistance base to see his mom’s body and own up to his crimes. Then help lead the assault on Exogol.


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The "relationship" between Kylo and Rey truly suffers from TLJ literally starting a day after TFA. The day before, she had witnessed Kylo:

1) Forcibly invading her mind
2) Murdering his father/her father figure
3) Attempted murder of her best (only?) friend
4) Attempt to seduce her to the Dark Side

...then all of sudden within days she starts sympathizing with him because he got all pouty. If they had put some time between the two movies - even a few months lets say, for Rey to be with Luke and hear his side of things and (via holonet or something) her from Leia and her recollections of Ben, she could've realistically formed a complex view of Kylo as not being as black and white as she thought, as she would struggle with this. And when they would then start the Force Skype stuff, it would be more realistic to me because the Skywalker Twins could've humanized Ben to her in a way that her one day of interaction with Kylo (who only did malevolent stuff around her) never should have been able to.

 

That does'nt mean she does'nt care about his victims - your inventing motivations for the character that we don't know exist and have no reason to think do exist.

And when he did that she tried to attack him to defend the peaple he threatened, and then afterwards fled to go assist those very peaple in battle agianst his forces.

Rey did'nt think she was going to get captured.

The Supremacy is a 60,000,00+ meter wide ship with a crew of over two million, and Rey is one unarmed woman with a moderate and fledgling understand of the Force. She has to get from the throne room to the nearest hanger, wherever that is, and peaple would already be on the way becuse the ship had just suffered damage and one of the first things to take care of in that situation would be to go see if the Supreme Leader is okay - I'd imagine that they would call first, and then freak out when he did'nt answer. Furthermore she's in Snoke's throne room, which would logically be within a high-security area.

It's just not reasonable for someone to even consider taking Kylo with them in this scenario, becuse the odds are so agianst them to begin with that the only rational response to thinking "maybe I should take Kylo with me" is "I'm probobly going to die or get captured anyway, so why make the odds worse?"

Just becuse we've never seen someone do it before* does'nt mean it did'nt exist or was some rare ability - we don't see Force speed until TMP or Force lighting until ROTJ, but that does'nt mean they did'nt always exist.

(*we actually have, as it happened The Mandalorian before TROS came out and was performed by a baby no less, which tells us that it can't really be very hard to do at all, and also happens in the Mortis Arc in TCW, in the Ashoka novel when she heals the crystal she from Sixth Brother's saber, in Uprising if I remember correctly and seems to be used by Obi-Wan in ANH and possibly aslo ROTS)

If Rey was so far gone at that point that she all set to run away to go hide on an island and let Palpatine conquer the galaxy with his fleet of planet-destroying ships, why do you think she would be thinking of hypothetical future mass abductions of children by Kylo? Given how the scene was presented she was showing one last act of mercy and then calling it quits to go hide on Ach-To and die becuse she considered herself to much of danger.

You still really haven't provided any actual evidence of this being the case.

You say "Rey obsesses over Kylo's soul over the peaple he hurts" yet when faced with the opertunity between trying to convince Kylo to turn and saving his victims in TLJ she picked his victims.

Rey never once in the ST - even when trying to get Kylo to turn - ingores his crimes. Even when she heals him and spares him you have no evidence that she was ingoring his crimes, past, current or future.

Actually we don't know that.

And we have plenty to go on for why she sympathizes with Ben (like is a strong word, becuse even she herself admits in the novel she did'nt actually know him).

Rey is shown in both TLJ and TFA to be trusting, empathic and incrediably compassionate and understanding (also most naively so) - not to mention overconfident - and TLJ shows us they have a psychic link/Force bond and shows Rey learning about Kylo's past and the reason he falls to the Dark Side right after she herself has a brush with the Dark Side and wanting to bring him back for mainly strategic reasons.

Yes, Finn's intervention helped as well, my bad - look an me, underselling Finn agian. As for Kylo not wanting to kill her in that fight, I'd say that's debatable, as he seemed to be going all in - an one of his strikes that nearly broke through her guard would have been fatal.

It's probobly my favorite in the entire francise becuse of the brutality and "rawness" of it. The ST fights are'nt "clean" like the OT duels or "flashy" like the PT duels, and I really dug that.

Poe and Kylo say hi

The truth is in the last telling of the event that we're shown after Rey confronts Luke. The movie gives us no reason to think that is'nt the case.

Not me, those things are death traps!

I'm talking about when Luke let go and surrendered himself to the Force in order to let it guide his actions when he took the shot that destroyed the Death Star. Rey did the same thing he did in TFA, except that the Force was guiding her actions in a swordfight rather then lining up an impossible shot.

If person A only manages to hurt person B becuse person C threw a rock at person B and distracted them, that's not really a display of person A's fighting ability so much as it's a display of person B's rock-throwing skills.

He was trying to piss her off to see what would happen if she did (he wanted to see if she would give in to the Dark Side and give him evidence that she was who Palps said she was). He flat-out says as much to her in the film.

Well of course. As I've said not everyone is going to buy what was presented and that's just fine - pleny of peaple did'nt (and still don't) by the Anakin/Padme romance in the PT, and I myself did'nt by Luke wanting to save Vader the first time I saw the films.

That would have been the ideal choice, yes - one of my biggest issues with his redemption is it's made all about him, rather the about his victims, and having him have to face them and own up to what he did would help make things more believable, I think.

Oh Bob, don't you ever change...

I mean she literally saw into his past - she has more first-hand information on who Ben Solo was then Luke does regarding who Anakin Skywalker was, and IMO just as much reason to care.

I mean, plenty of us veiw Rey and Kylo's relationship as belivable but also don't view it as being romantic.

 

LOL no I have always used that word because it makes the point about something being more important than something else. I think it's useful. I'm laughing that you bring that up, though, because I use the word all the time in texts and stuff on my phone and it always autocorrects to "Trump," who I also discuss frequently

I feel like you keep drawing parallels that are not remotely similar and then saying "by your standards, this is the same!" I mean... no. That's not my standard. That's just you trying to characterize what I'm saying however you want. Yoda and Obi-Wan were actively being hunted and the Jedi had just been massacred. Hiding from being massacred and trying to reason with Anakin are not remotely the same thing as, say, healing and freeing Sheev, which would be the equivalent of Rey's behavior.

Who cares if Kylo seems happy with what his army that he is in charge of is doing with his approval? That makes no difference to the children his soldiers are stealing.

True, Rey can't save the whole galaxy. She could have, twice, saved innocents from Kylo and chose not to.

I'm an actions speak louder than words kind of person. Her choices prove her priorities.

...? She ran away to help the people run from the mass murderer she left in a position to mass murder them? Okay, sure, but that doesn't erase leaving him free and healthy to continue mass murdering them. It's not an interesting or relevant point to me personally.

Of course she did...? She was immediately captured and cool with that. It was all part of her brilliant plan to save Kylo's poor victimized soul.

Well I guess I'm unreasonable by your standards then. I don't think it was reasonable to even consider leaving him free and healthy in those circumstances, let alone treat that as unquestionably the correct thing to do.

Agree to disagree. Force healing is an awesome and unique trait that would have benefitted jedi in countless situations across the canon if they had the ability to use it.

Because what on earth else is she fighting for if not fighting to free the galaxy from the FO's (and therefore Kylo's) tyranny???? If Rey isn't fighting for that, if it wasn't on her mind, well okay wait, actually I think we are agreeing. We agree that Rey wasn't thinking about that, and I think that's bad, and you don't.

No she didn't. She picked Kylo healthy and free to the detriment of his victims. Twice.

Agree to disagree. I take the kiss as 100% proof that Rey is attracted to Kylo. Or if you prefer, "Ben," who is the exact same person/she never knew him anyway if people consider him a different person.

 

That's the problem with the character. he was never conceived as a storm trooper with everything that goes with it. He was originally a smuggler but they changed his background due to redundancy but kept his lucky-go-happy persona that didn't jibe with his background. If he was a recent draftee than sure. But he was basically a PG rated Unsullied (with all body parts intact of course).

So this is why I don't think he ever had a potential. Storm Troopers are not supposed to be sanitized nice guys who never hurt a fly. It doesn't matter whether they were Manchurian Candidates when they did the killing or had somewhat higher level of consciousness, they have a reputation and the initial excitement over character concept was due to such expectation. A gritty grunt with some baggage escaping. I mena, how could a trooper be anything else? However, Finn was basically JJ taking a trooper action figure, drowning him in a sanitizer and then pulling out his skeleton and naming it Finn. STINO (Storm Trooper In Name Only). His main concern was that we liked Finn immediately as opposed to make him authentic and then win us over in the course of the movie or more than 1 movie.

Contrast that to Han. Shooting Greedo first was something that a smuggler would do. So total badass who you shouldn't cross. Lucas trying to sanitize that with Greedo-shooting-first was rightfully scorned because it took the edge and authenticity from the character. Moreover, fans loved him precisely because he felt authentic. Finn was never authentic nor that was the goal for the character. They wanted somewhat exotic background to look edgy in marketing but main deal was to integrate him into good guys group as soon as possible and not only that but have him fit in as if he never belonged in the military. There's nothing soldiery about Finn. He doesn't carry himself as a soldier, he doesn't have anything in his posture or speech or attitude that would betray military training. That just shows that this part of him was never important to the story. It was just a brief synopsis for toy boxes.

So you have a STINO who quickly swaps more interesting group (FO) for less interesting one (Poe, Rey, Resistance) within first 15 minutes and from that point onward he's given cheesy lines that mostly do one of 2 things - enthuse about being in Star Wars and enthuse about Rey. The former is something that both Rey and Finn were saddled with (Luke Skywokka! Hahn Sowlow! Woo hoo! That was awesome! Woo hoo!). I know many people thought it was delightful but I found it grating from the get-go especially when done with the already discussed JJ's penchant for having characters talk over each other as if they are on Jason Ward podcast.

So this was a terrible foundation because Finn turned out to be just some dude like those from Seth Rogen comedies. He didn't need trooper background for that and that background actually hurt the character for it didn't make sense. I honestly don't think that there was ever any plan or idea for him to reach out to other troopers. They wanted reboots of ANH, ESB and ROTJ and trooper revolt didn't fit in Rebels Beat Empire finale that ROTJ reboot would require. JJ did pay some very half-arsed homage to this fan theory (Finn and Jannah group) but the biggest takeaway was how half-arsed it was and Rebel Fleet was still the dominant thing along with Throne Arena.

 

Bingo. It launched thousand fics, fanarts, metas, podcasts, videos because Oh La La was felt. Actors did a great job here and it's one of the best scenes JJ directed in ST. I said in another thread re: Ben and Han in TROS. he has it in him to direct great character scenes when he takes a break from running from setpiece A to B, etc but he just isn't interested.

 

I don’t see what any of that has to do with my point that narratively speaking Kylo is not the threat to Rey that the story needs him to be because the next time he defeats her will be the first. The how or why doesn’t matter. No one’s on the edge of their seats wondering if the Road Runner will be able to elude Wile E. Coyote this time just because the last time he had to break the laws of physics and run into a painting as if it was real to do it.

He was trying to piss her off by...running his TIE into her lightsaber at high speeds?? I’m just not following the risk/reward on his plan here.

 

Oh, don't worry, your fine.

The Corporate Sector does, though that's not in the films. As for in the context of thefilms themselves they say nothing of the amount of territory the FO controls - we're not told wether its large or small, what its size is relative to the New Republic or even how large the New Republic itself is.

The text crawls are'nt meant to be taken literally, and besides we know for a fact from other works that their not trying to conquer the entire galaxy so even if that was the films intent it's not actually what is going on.

Yeah, but the only reason they had as many ships as they did was becuse of the blockade, which until Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan saw the army assembling in the hanger bay the outside galaxy assumed was all that was taking place. They probobly could have just captured the planet with the troops carried aboard one or two ships.

Which the FO has.

It's just that, as big as their militery is, it's both smaller then the NR Militery was before they blew Hosnian to bits and smaller then what the Old Empire had - and for all we know their army was larger then that of the NR.

When does ESB mention any systems and races having joined the Alliance?

Yes? And?

All TLJ tells us is that the FO will control the major systems within weeks. They don't tell us the fighting would be over after that point.

Accounting for scale they're essentially the same thing.

The most logical assumption would be that they were already in service with the Judical Forces and Yoda just took them to Kamino to pick up the troops.

Yeah, but they were'nt a threat to the Soviet Union itself. There was never any treat of the Mujahideen rolling into Moscow and lifting the star and cresent over the Kremlin.

The NR supports the Resistence for the same reason anyway supports insurgents when engaged in a cold war - to keep your rival distracted and weaken their sphere of influance. The Resistence was a proxy the NR was backing to undermine the FO rule becuse they did'nt want to fight them directly, not some massive armed uprising against their rule.

TLJ actually shows the Resistence as being stronger then in TFA, since in the latter movie they have warships in the former they only had a single squadron of fighters.

The FO lost a militery base/strategic weapon, while the NR lost not only their capital, but the vast bulk of their naval forces and virtually their entire civilian leadership. The Republic lost way more the FO, as evidenced by the fact that in TLJ the former has collopsed and the latter is still going strong.

Smaller then the NR (though this is never said in the films), yeah, but by how much? You seem to be approching it as if the NR is the USA and the FO is like North Korea, but for all we know it could be more like the NR is the US and the FO is India.

The point I'm making is, nukes or no nukes, the US would'nt preemptively attack the Soviet Union just becuse they might hypothetically attack Europe in the future.

Just like the NR is'nt going to preemptively attack the FO just becuse they might hypothetically attack the galaxy later.

Did the US have plans to attack first? By the 60's, no such attack could work as even a small number of soviet nukes would mean everyone looses.

I was talking about the NR Navy - the New Republic was intentionally designed in a way that it was mostly demiltrized in favor of allowing worlds to mantian their own defense forces while the goverment retained only a small force for defense and peacekeeping duties (essentially a middle ground between having a militery and having no militery like the Old Republic).

As for the PT the Republic did have other defenses - the Judical Forces - which is where most of the non-Clone officers in TCW came from (and, one can presume, many of the ships used by the Republic Navy early in the war).

There were - the bulk of the fleet was destroyed at Hosnian, but not all of the fleet - the TLJ novel mentions that the remaining task forces were subsqently dissolved by the surviving senators in order to defend their homeworlds

For someone whose "clearly way more powerful" than other Force-sensitives Rey sure stacks up pretty poorly when you take her displayed feats and compare them to just about everyone else.

I bet good money on Kanan over Rey, for christ sakes, and probobly even S4 Ezra.

Assuming it did just becuse it created Anakin to bring balance to the Force (and bring balance=/=killing Palpatine) does'nt mean he was actually going to go do that. Anakin still had free will and the future is not a set thing in Star Wars - Vader could have just stayed evil, or even just not fallen in the first place, and that was outside the Force's control.

Only he was...powerful enough to pick up an elderly 5'6 man and throw him down a bottomless bit?

Literally anyone could have killed Palpatine on the DS under the circomstances presented.

Anakin literally could have been anything else given any number of events that included both personal choices and events outside his control.

And if the Force created Anakin with the soal goal of killing Palpatine they sure dropped the ball on that, lol

I think you might be missing specificly what I'm saying here - I'm agreeing with you on the fact that he can't dodge responsablity - what I'm pointing out is given the manner in which his monologue is phrased he would have still spared Anakin if Anakin was just laying knocked out a floor inside, hand all four of his limbs and was in no danger of burnign alive.

Yes, your right. But other peaple would have no curiosity and would'nt care.

Peaple's personal tastes affect their judgement and view of fictional works and the character in them, so some while some peaple would find what is presented with Luke caring about Vader to be belivable, others would not - and the same goes for Rey caring about Kylo.

One could presume becuse Luke never heard about Padme growing up - for all Owen and Beru knew Padme was just a freind of Anakins (which she was at the time they met her) - so he did'nt think to ask becuse it had never really factored into his thoughts.

Hell, for all we know Obi-Wan told Luke about Padme (or told him as much as he thought appropriate) either while they were driving to Mon Eisley or while the Falcon was in transit.

Rey and Snoke never fought, and in the one fight Rey and Kylo had by the end of TLJ she got trashed.

Incidently in one of those two situations the thing she did right after fleeing from were he was out-cold on the floor was...help save innocents from him. So in TLJ at least it's not so much that she chose not to save innocents from as it is she did chose to save innocents from him, she just did'nt go about doing it in the way you would have perfered.

Your right, I meant to write she saw his "future" - or rather, what she thought was his future.

Kylo's a pretty big threat to Rey if both times they fight he has a clear advantage and she only wins becuse of outside intervention.

Would'nt you be pissed off if someone you hated started chasing you down in their car?

I would be - hell, I'd be pissed if someone I liked did that; I might be infatuated with Natalie Dormer but if I was out for a walk and she showed up in a humvee and tried to chase me down I'd probobly start sympathizing with Cersei Lannister a lot more...

 

This is like if Luke was face to face with a defeated and helpless Sheev, so with a clear opportunity to defeat him, right before Sheev plans to destroy a Rebel base with the DS, and then running away to jump in a X-Wing to shoot at the Destroyer he's on from the X-Wing. And in this scenario, Luke is doing this at least partly because he really really personally likes Sheev for some reason.

 

Kylo isn't Sheev though - he's Sheev's minion - more like Vader than Sheev.

It may work as a better analog in TLJ when Kylo thinks he's Snoke's heir and new ruler of the First Order - but not TROS.