ST Why can't the "mind meld" be the catalyst for Rey's Force knowledge?

Memories and information were exchanged rapidly in that moment. Isn't it entirely possible Rey caught glimpses of Kylo's training as well as several of his own Force manipulations? Imagine it almost like the Kung Fu program memory upload in the Matrix. He tried to steal her memories and extract info. Instead, to his surprise, the reverse happened.

Why can't that pivotal moment in TFA serve as the catalyst for her rapidly developing powers afterward?

 

That would work for me on a micro scale (eg, just the mind trick), or as a minor player in the macro revelation Rey seems to have, to would be a tough thing to buy, especially when this is the first sign of flash training ever, against someone with the most impressive, and singular achievements in the force. I would also prefer this kind of thing to be introduced with for instance a well trained force user who just happens to not know tetimutis (yoda's lightning absorption and other similar powers), facing someone who does, and learning it through a mind meld. but it definitely works as a memory catalyst like the saber vision.

 

It's lazy writing. Luke had a realistic character arc. Rey is a Mary Sue. From homeless scavenger to dueling Sith Lords in one day. Next time the writers need to flesh out the story properly.

 

A clearly force-sensitive scavenger who dueled a clearly injured bad guy (not even a Sith Lord)...

 

No matter if you are gifted in the force or not you would need training to master the art of Lightsaber dueling. It's a jedi art that requires years of training. I'm naturally good at playing the guitar but I wasn't playing classical masterpieces the first time I picked one up. I;m a hardcore fan. Love the PT and OT . Don't try to explain away the lazy writing and poor character development this movie had. The producers should be held accountable for their failure to make a good SW film.

 

It was the lightsaber. She has some form of psychometry which awoke the Force inside. Guess her Midiclorians were half asleep.

 

We need to stop setting limits and rules on how a force user obtains and how they use the trappings of the Jedi ie sabers.
Luke deflected a few laserbolts just prior to blowing up the DS. He first dueled Vader on Bespin and Vader was measuring him. By letting the hate flow through him he battered Vader on the DS 2. But mainly, Luke never trained for years to be able to use the weapon or his power.

This new series takes the best of the ot, pt and select EU and works hard at weving them into something new. I

As for Anakin, he came standard with the powers and abilities Rey has,and had zilch trainig.

 

Kylo is NOT Sith Lord, period end of story. And overpowering him does NOT automatically make Rey a master. She pulled a few cool moves, mostly by instinct it seems. And she beat a partially-trained, badly wounded, overconfident, emotionally-conflicted kid, that's it. That doesn't make her a master. That doesn't mean that she could beat, say Vader, or Sheev, or even Snoke. Or do the things that Yoda or Obi Wan can, etc.

Overexaggeration is the order of the day it seems.

 

My thought was that the lightsaber has something to do with it.

-Her abilities really start to emerge once she's in proximity to it, and it was previously owned by both Anakin and Luke (too immensely powerful Force users).
-Kylo wants it for himself.
-He has Vader's helmet, and possibly a bowl of his ashes as well.

So maybe it's like the EU idea that artifacts can store power. Also, if she's part of Luke and Anakin's family, that certainly would play a role.

 

As I said in another thread, I'm okay with that theory as a justification for he dueling skills, since she was holding the lightsaber during the fight, but not for her ability to use the Mind Trick and Force Pull.

If all a Jedi had to do in order to gain Force mastery was some kind of seconds-long mind meld, why bother with the Jedi Order's training system? Somebody would have discovered the mind meld instant training at some point during the Order's 24,000 years of history. They could teach the apprentices only non-force skills, morality and discipline, teaching them just enought Force techniques as to observe their behaviour and test them, and once they were adults with a fully formed personality and the Jedi Council was reasonably sure they wouldn't turn bad, hand them an Holocron and let them soak in all the knowledge, and voila! instant Jedi Master!.

 

Are you saying the lightsaber is basically enchanted and that is giving her the skills? I could use some clarification on what would you would be accepting as justification for her lightsaber skills.

 

The lightsabers are supposed to hold a crystal soaked in the Force by their creator. Psychometry is a thing in the EU. Rey could be instinctively using psychometry in order to learn how to use the Force, she could be channeling Anakin's and Luke's moves when she fought Kylo Ren.

However, what I can't accept is that it could be permanent, because if it is so, why doesn't every Force sensitive does it? Why bother with training when you could just pass lightsabers and holocrons down to disciples and give them instant mastery of the Force?

I dunno, maybe that does happen. Maybe the reason they force apprentices to craft their own lightsabers instead of passing old lightsabers down is to avoid children learning too much too soon. Maybe Luke did it to some extent, and that's the reason he learned so fast. But if it's so, they should acknowledge and explain it, and incorporate it into the canon lore.

 

As mentioned if there was a mind meld technique in the Star Wars Universe, it would have been used for hundreds of years by now.

So the only information we know for sure that Rey gained was that she learned he had fear inside him. And calling it a mind meld suggests it's a calmer act than the invasive mental assault that it is.

 

It sounds like you are trying hard to rationalize the scene. We've all been there I suppose.

 

What exactly is the current rationalization for Rey reading Ren's mind?

 

I think this theory is undermined by the portrayal of Luke's struggle to remain focused when training with Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back. If an analogous mind meld were that simple, then Yoda (out of any Jedi) could have fast tracked Luke's training, especially since there was a valid need to train Luke quickly given he was their new and final hope.

 

Yeah, that's the reason I said I can't accept Rey learning complex techniques like Mind Trick.

 

Well, the thing that surprised me the most in that scene is that she actually knew both what a Jedi mind trick was and how it worked. It's not like there were thousands of Jedi in the galaxy during ANH, there was only about two left. At best, a Jedi mind trick may have been rumoured as that "really cool thing the Jedi used to do".

 

It's far more believable she would know of the feat than be able to perform it.

Not only did Rey exhibit the same natural aptitude for vehicular control that Anakin and Luke did, she performed combat feats that would be beyond both of them if they were her age and similarly untrained.

I'm not sure what's more ridiculous currently, her ability to read Ren's mind, or her ability to best him in a duel. But, believe me, I think both are ridiculous with a passion you can only begin to comprehend.

 

I had a similar thought earlier today, funnily enough. I already do accept everything Rey did in the film, but if we were to find out a new Force ability (new to us) is the ability to Force Mimic, I would love that.

Maybe Force Mimic was an ability where it gives on the ability to duplicate and with maximum proficiency. Perhaps it was what happened during the Lightsaber duel and her instant ability to read Kylo's greatest fear, but that abilities gained are temporary. The Jedi Mind Trick took three times to work on the Stormtrooper afterwards. Aside from being much better than Luke at mastering the whole calming down and removing emotion in order to allow the Force to do it's thing, her Force Mimic did provide enough hints so that in the short time afterwards, she was able to remember what she had just done with Kylo, practice, and then utilize as a now-legitimate ability of her own.

Lightsaber fighting proficiency, on the other hand, would take much longer and require more teachings and training

But that's the thing. Not all Jedi can do what other Jedi can do. Some have Force abilities that others do not and cannot have. Ezra in Rebels has some Force Empathy power that apparently isn't a universal Force power; Obi-Wan, Luke and Anakin had this (lizard thing he rode on, Rancor to some degree, and that arena beast). Kanan tells Ezra that he doesn't have that ability nor could he. Ezra also seems to have what Rey has with touching objects and seeing flashbacks of history that have an emotional connection to the object and not necessarily requiring the object's own participation.

 

Very little is officially known about Rey's relationship with the force. A lot seem to believe she was trained as a child and that is where she leaned jedi techniques and then those memories were repressed by herself or someone else.

I feel that she has a new type of ability, one we haven't seen before. The force seems really out of balance when her powers awaken. If she was similar to Luke and needed her hand to be held during her first steps in the force, she would be either dead or converted to the dark side.

 

A force mimic is kinda what she is, that's a good name for it, Tan-Weesel

 

Well if the current understanding of her being abandoned on Jakku at age 5 ends up being incorrect, and she did have jedi training, at least the scenes in the movie will eventually make sense. But, the need for this should establish how ridiculous the scenes currently are. You propose that she is something entirely new to the Star Wars film series, and you may not even realize how ridiculous your proposal has to be to justify how ludicrous her feats are in this movie.

Perhaps I misunderstood you. She could have been trained until she was 5, and have this training be significant because of what she is. Proposals such as this really show how ridiculous this character is.

 

Rey is not as ridiculous as a character you make her out to be. She brings lot of mystic to the franchise as she is a new character, with these stunning powers. If it is logic you seek, you will not find it as Spock has passed away. This movie brings a lot of elements from the PT, the OT, and the EU. You can seek for logic within the pages of the EU, as that is where you will find the answer you are looking for.

 

Her piloting is another example. In that post-TIE scene where Finn and Rey are talking over each other excitedly, I believe Rey even mentions not knowing that she could do 'that'.

There's something in one of the books where she made her own ship with a hyperdrive. She could have Force Mimic-ed many pilots and engineers on the planet in all that time. We know she never left the planet since she was left there. That reminds me of another question I've always had but also always forget...what exactly is a pilot in AGFFA? Luke's considered the best bush pilot by Biggs. Are like speeder drivers considered "pilots"? Also, now that LEGO came out with a T-16, that kind of also helps me see Luke as a pilot a little more than just driving around speeders; I always wondered what a T-16 was.

Anyways, back to pilot Rey. Aside from what happened in the books, she couldn't have had that much practice nor could she have had that much access to such ships to practice. And we know she didn't leave the planet. But she was super certain that she qualified as a pilot, AND that she was confident to pull the stunt through the Star Destroyer. Part of that is still her total familiarity with that particular wreckage, sure. But not the Falcon stuff - it's intricacies and the loop timing and aligning Finn and the turrets with the TIE.

Some evidence to support the piloting Falcon stuff. Maneuverability and controls being basic piloting, I can see as universal among all ships. Her expertise piloting it could be the Force Mimic ability unconsciously by being present in a shipyard amongst other pilots. But then there's the inner-workings. The thing with the toxic gas sounds standard, but the compressor bypass and other things only happened once Han and Chewie were present. The main evidence being, I believe twice, Rey finished Han's sentences in regards to the Falcon. We know Chewie's the main engineer, but then again there's Han's "No! That one goes there, this one goes here!" In any case, she could have again Force Mimic-ed Han and Chewie unconsciously which is what made her know Falcon crap. The fuses and that console in the freighter...she'd never been on that freighter before. At the time, I just thought, wow she really just knows where to go to control different stuff on ships. With the fuses, she did kind of mess up, but by the time she had to free Finn from the Rathtar she got all stare-y and focused at the screen, not just to time closing the door, but as if she was looking from interface to interface figuring out how just that system worked.

On Starkiller Base, how did she know that exact lever would open that exact hatch? Could be Force Mimic on anyone there. She ran around and hid in that whole place pretty successfully like she always knew where she was going too. Even knowing to look for that one thing to yank out because she pulled out the same part from the Star Destroyer earlier in the film.

If Luke or whoever did drop her off on that planet, knowing that she has that particular ability would support not feeling the need to be around like Obi-Wan had to with Luke. She'd naturally mimic her way through the ways of that planet to survive. This could also tie into why Unkar Plutt was with her when she was left, but it feels like whenever Rey comes to get her rations, he's just some guy to her and she's just "the girl" he wants a droid from. Whoever dropped her off probably gave him a bajillion rations to take her, then she started doing freaky stuff that scared him soon after and not with the foresight that he could capitalize on that, quickly abandoned her before she could have a lasting memory of this guy who was there at her strongest memory.