Esquire wrote: ↑2019-07-10 03:00am
The Romulan Republic wrote: ↑2019-07-09 08:56pm
1. Its relevant insofar as this is a discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of a specific scene in the Sequel Trilogy, and it absolutely is something that would have come up if the scene were shot in the way the OP suggests. And political subtext or implications is as much a valid subject of discussion when talking about a creative work as act, plot structure, themes, etc.
That's probably fair; I apologize for being overly snappy.
The Romulan Republic wrote: ↑2019-07-09 08:56pm
2. The only reason that this conversation is ongoing is because three separate posters felt the need to take me to task and engage in a lengthy argument over a single snarky comment I made at the expense of people who supposedly have nothing to do with this thread. Which to me does beg the question: why are you all so angry and defensive over my criticizing sexism towards Rey, if it has no application to this thread or anyone posting in it? Because it seems like every time I call out sexism against Rey, a bunch of people take personal offense, while adamantly insisting that it has no relevance to anyone on this board.
Have you considered that large chunks of the board being willing to jump down your throat on admittedly shallow grounds might suggest that you're going about things in a counterproductive way? The objection is generally that nobody who's actually here said anything like what you're objecting to. Whatever the rest of the internet gets up to is not relevant to the board; if you inserted even an obvious figleaf like 'I saw [x] on [website], isn't that a textbook example of [bad thing]' I think it would go a long way towards pacifying people.
The Romulan Republic wrote: ↑2019-07-09 08:56pm
3. I did not call you a Nazi, and I apologize if you took it that way. You can be sexist, however, or threatened by discussion of sexism, without being a Nazi. If sexism (conscious or unconscious) were limited to Nazis, this would be a much happier world.
I may possibly have been too sensitive to implications here. You may, similarly, have been too free with accusations in the past - this is a two-way street. Let's both of us not ascribe motives where it's not necessary to do so.
I mean, people post about stuff that didn't happen on this board all the time. And for that matter, I have seen some comments on this board regarding Rey and the Sequels (not naming names, because what good could possibly come of it?) that I consider sexist. But just to be clear: if I'm calling out someone on this board, I'll say so. If I make a general comment, without naming names or addressing it to a specific person, then it should be regarded as general commentary, and not an attack on anyone here.
As for the rest, fair enough. I'll own to being too trigger-happy on this topic sometimes.
FaxModem1 wrote: ↑2019-07-10 02:52am
The Romulan Republic wrote: ↑2019-07-10 02:20am
FaxModem1 wrote: ↑2019-07-09 02:30pm
I think a great idea for that throne room fight scene would be to have Rey use one of their staff weapons in the fight, as that's clearly a fighting style the actress and character is more used to, and having Rey shown as adapting to the fight like that should have been neat.
Indeed.
One thing I'm already disappointed about in RoS is that they have Rey using Luke's style of saber (because God forbid we ever change the status quo), rather than having her build herself a staff saber. I so wanted Rey with a staff saber.
If I were to guess, it's because for the Joe Six-packs, the last time we saw a force user who used a staff weapon in the films, it was a demon looking guy and that person killed the Jesus Hippie looking dude who is able to kill anyone who steals his daughter. Any sort of conflation with that will make her look evil by association. This is probably why we also haven't had any fencer style Jedi since Dooku as well, since it'd bring up the same imagery as Count Saruman the vampire guy who fought Gandalf.
Sidenote and personal anecdote: After I first saw The Phantom menace, on the drive home, my parents and I were discussing the movie. When talking about the climax, my VERY Christian mother thought the scene where Qui Gon was meditating while Maul roared himself up into a fury, IE, channeling their respective sides of the force, that Qui Gon was surrendering to him because he was on his knees. We had to explain to her that Qui Gon was resting, and that he wasn't capitulating to someone who looked like the devil, thereby giving himself over to evil.
Imagine that as the potential audience members the studio wants to spend their money on watching the movies, and that's why Hollywood cares about branding. Because sometimes, a simple idea such as getting on your knees to rest and channel energy is so foreign to American audiences that they have to such things spelled out for them. And a double bladed lightsaber, or one that seems like it, such as a staff, might be considered too close to the bad guys.
But, I hope we see a moment wherein Rey builds her own weapon, maybe under Maz's guidance or something, showing that she is becoming a fully fledged Jedi. But it will depend on what the studio thinks the audience is capable of understanding, and what they actually want to film.
While there are undoubtably going to be people in every audience who just don't get it, I also think that by and large, US media companies are too quick to underestimate the intelligence of their viewers. A good writer or director can convey new concepts in a way that most people will understand.
KraytKing wrote: ↑2019-07-10 03:17amYeah that was stupid. Yoda doesn't use the Force for combat. When he was a puppet they understood that. CGI proved too tempting to keep from making him ridiculous. And in the throne room, Palpatine didn't need them because he had Vader and he was overconfident in Vader's loyalty.
We had no idea what Yoda did or didn't do in combat prior to his duel with Dooku in Attack of the Clones. This isn't a contradiction of the OT- its something the OT just didn't cover, because it didn't fit the plot/circumstances of that story to do so. AotC/RotS Yoda is Yoda in his prime, leading the Jedi at the height of the Clone Wars. Why should he not do things that we hadn't previously seen? What this amounts to is you taking your personal headcanon, treating it as canon, and then criticizing the Prequels for not conforming to it.
Yoda's telekinetic abilities also work for me, because the ability to rely on the Force entirely to defend oneself, without needing to resort to a weapon like a light saber, is to me a mark of true mastery, and that canon is fairly consistent on that point.
As to Palpatine not thinking he needed guards because he was confident of Vader's loyalty, the exact same could be said of Snoke and Kylo.
My point is it's a stupid precedent. I'm telling you it's a stupid movie, and you're using another stupid movie to defend it.
In fact, the one thing Abrams could do to make this worse is explain away Rey's skill by making her daughter of God as well. The Chosen One bullshit was stupid when it first showed up, and it's stupid now.
My point is that whether you like it or not, its canon, and that Rey is not a "Mary Sue" for doing things that fit with the established rules of the setting.
Seriously? You missed my whole point. He had ten years. Ten years and he got his ass kicked anyway. Rey had a couple weeks, and sure, she was fighting a much less skilled duelist, but it is still notable. The difference is one of multiple orders of magnitude.
No, I get the point. Its just that the circumstances are so different that I don't think the two are really a valid comparison. Moreover, as I noted before, Force users don't necessarily all learn at the same rate (or at the same rate at all levels of training and experience), or excel in the same areas.
I personally hold very strongly to the view that learning how to use the Force in a technical sense is something that those with a strong connection to it and the right mindset can pick up quite quickly, and there are examples from all three trilogies and the Legends EU I can use to back up that conclusion. What takes time is learning
why to use the Force, and how to use it responsibly, as well as developing the experience and focus to use specific techniques (ie combat telekinesis) that require particular concentration of finesse.
So I don't think that we can presume a steady incline where each week/month/year of training equals this level of power and skill.
It is far from canon, but we don't have anything explicitly stating that Luke didn't also subconsciously use the Force for his twenty or so years of being alive. Actually, neither is it stated that Rey does that. So I find it just as believable that Luke was subconsciously using the Force to nail womp rats as Rey was using it to fly speeder bikes harder or whatever.
Absolutely. They both could have been making use of the Force subconsciously for years, and probably were, and thus were both able to do things that might otherwise seem implausible.
And just because Luke didn't demonstrably use it for hand-to-hand doesn't mean Rey can't. Different Force users might use those latent sense and reflexes in different ways. Why is it more implausible to use them for hand-to-hand (something Rey, again, clearly has prior experience in, unlike Luke) as well as piloting?
He uses the Force to do what he's been doing for years: fly down a narrow trench and hit a two-meter target. And Force augmenting a shot like that is very different from using the Force to beat trained duelists and use telekinesis and all the other shit Rey does/should do.
Rey uses it to do what she's probably done for years- fight off attackers in hand-to-hand.
Not sure I get your point here. Luke has more training than Rey and so should therefore be able to do better. Luke has two years to dick around with a lightsaber and figures out how to give Vader a few minutes challenge. Rey has a few hours and fights wounded Kylo to a standstill, then a few more weeks and fights proficiently. That is my problem. She is doing better in weeks than Luke did in years, because the script requires it.
My point is that you're underselling Luke's saber proficiency to make Rey's seem more ridiculous, and, again, comparing incomparable situations in an over-simplistic manner. I am not at all sure that killing a few of Snoke's guards and beating a wounded Kylo Ren is "doing better" than lasting several minutes against, and landing a hit on, Darth Fucking Vader.
Let's do this again.
Luke uses the Force, as he may have been for years, to adjust his aim. Not telekinesis, but enhancing his focus to aim better. Anakin doing that bullshit in TPM is exactly that, bullshit.
To be clear, when I say she shouldn't be able to use the Force, I mean in hand-to-hand combat or as telekinesis. Accessing the Force to focus herself for a shot, to find where Luke is hiding, to meditate, et cetera, that's fine. When she can fight through a room full of guards that are shown to pose some sort of difficulty for Kylo and fight Kylo himself to a standstill (yes he's wounded but he still beat Finn easily, and Finn had more training), that's when I take offense.
Thank you for clarifying what you mean by Rey not being able to use the Force. I'll repeat that I agree she should not be able to use combat telekinesis, but I have no problem with her using latent Force senses to enhance her hand-to-hand (I don't see why that's any more implausible than Luke doing it in ANH to enhance his piloting and targeting skills). Her telekinetics is iffy- its unprecedented to my knowledge for someone with that level of experience, but certain Force users have a natural affinity for certain abilities (battle meditation, visions, healing, etc.), and it may be that Rey has a natural affinity for telekinetics. I'll note that she has never yet performed TK under the stress and distraction of combat- she has never done it while under direct attack herself, or having to focus on anything else at the same time, which is the mark of a true master of Force combat.
I see Rey vs. Kylo in TFA as one of those things that may seem silly at a glance, but makes a hell of a lot of sense if you think about it. Kylo is bleeding from a gut wound from a weapon that tosses around armored storm troopers like rag dolls. Its amazing he's even standing, frankly, and he's only going to get weaker with each passing second. Fighting Finn first probably cost him strength he could not afford. And Rey plays that fight very smart, constantly giving ground, fighting defensively, as he wears himself out, and only then going on the offensive, slowly wearing him down. Which makes sense because, again, Rey is new to the Force, but she is not new to hand-to-hand fighting, if what we see of her life on Jakku is any indication. There's also Rey's state of mind vs Kylo's, which is riddled with self-doubt (a crippling condition for a Force user, possibly even more so than a blaster wound to the gut).
Both of these things are less of a factor in TLJ in the throne room- Kylo is not seriously injured, and he seems more together, more focused mentally (enough to dupe Snoke). And lo and behold, he is now almost an exactly even match for Rey, where before he was clearly losing, despite the fact that she now has more training and experience.
Let me rephrase: I expected it to be like ROTJ, where Palpatine didn't feel any need to defend himself against Luke. If I remember correctly, which is far from guaranteed with that dumpster fire of a movie, Snoke was pretty suspicious of Kylo already. So from a cinematic perspective, he should have had someone there to deal with Kylo so he didn't have to lower himself to the level of personal combat.
The cinematic decision would have the guards as Jedi killers because it maintains the threatening aura of Snoke.
That's one possible way to do it. I don't regard it as the only valid way. I don't think new films have to follow all the steps of the OT to succeed. If anything, they try to too much (or at least TFA did).
And, let's be fair, if it had been those guards against Kylo alone, they would have won. He and Rey both saved each other's asses in that fight.
Entire elite unit for betrayal by a very important, very powerful person. Doesn't seem too far fetched to me. Especially if Snoke is a cripple, unable to match Kylo in acrobatics, as he seems to be.
Maybe, but he seems very confident of his control over Kylo, and his proficiency with TK and lightning suggests he probably doesn't need acrobatics to defend himself quite well.
We never see Grievous fight impressively except in the now non-canon cartoon. He only gets beaten time and again, except against no-names. The Jango example I hadn't thought of, but it isn't very impressive in film: a quick shot and the Jedi goes down. Then he fights another Jedi and dies (a powerful one, but the effect is the same: we perceive Jango as unimpressive in Jedi-killing ability).
I disagree. Grievous in canon doesn't have as much physical prowess, but he makes up for it with some nasty tactical cunning. The stand-out example, and one which I don't think gets nearly enough recognition, is how he handles the situation on the bridge of the Invisible Hand in RotS.
Here's the situation: Grievous is trapped on the bridge of a crippled, crashing ship. He's cornered by two Jedi, either one of which is probably a match for him one-on-one. His crew is dead or in flight. So what does he do?
He blows out the fucking bridge window,
sucking himself into space (which he can survive due to his cybernetic parts). Then, just in case that fails to kill his opponents, he climbs over the hull to reach the escape pods and launches every pod, simultaneously providing cover for his own escape and trapping his opponents on a doomed ship.
If it had been any lesser pilot than Anakin Skywalker at the helm, Grievous would have killed two Jedi generals (one a Council member) and the Chancellor/Sith Lord, and altered the entire course of the war and galactic history. I wish we'd seen more of that Grievous, the one with the brain of a ruthless master tactician.
That's an interesting idea, but they do have three dimensions: block the first two bolts a meter from your body, then turn your blade and deflect the third half a meter from your body. But that's rather ridiculous, I must admit, akin to some of the Legends stuff.
Maybe TLJ Luke could, if he can pull those slick Matrix moves in real life, and not just in an illusion.
A duel-blade wielder such as Ventress could as well, of course.
Snoke's guards have the right armor. One of them catches Kylo's blade on his gauntlets. Anyway, I don't see what's so wanky about a Jedi being beaten hand-to-hand. Jedi have trained for a long time in hand to hand combat, that's why they're good. Also the Force, but they're just good at that because they've trained with that for a long time, too. Take a clone trooper. Trained in war from a much younger age, and with no code of ethics or need for quality of life to get in the way. So the training is much harder. Why couldn't we see one of these death machines fight a Jedi to a standstill? The other bonus Jedi have is their lightsaber, but there is both canon and Legends evidence of lightsaber-proof gauntlets.
Well, I suppose a very,
very skilled and well-equipped individual might be able to challenge a top-tier Force user in hand-to-hand (takes shameless advantage of any excuse to link to this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3tC8TPh9oQ )