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Crazedwraith wrote:Except as I pointed out before. Luke's and Rey's backstories are different. To the point where it's much more plausible Luke the farmboy has flying experience than Rey the subsistence scavenger with no ship does.

Why does she have to own a ship to be pilot?

Galvatron wrote:

Crazedwraith wrote:Except as I pointed out before. Luke's and Rey's backstories are different. To the point where it's much more plausible Luke the farmboy has flying experience than Rey the subsistence scavenger with no ship does.

Why does she have to own a ship to be pilot?

She doesn't but she has to at least know someone with a ship that would train her. The movie just shows her as a scavenger living day-to-day on the rewards of her salvage. Leaving her with little time and no known way to get training.

wasn't there a line about her working on the Falcon for that guy who ran the "town" in Jakku.

If not, it's definitely implied.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/SSP05_hyperdrive

Mechanical work does not equal piloting lessons.

Finn: How did you do that?
Rey: I don't know.
Finn: No one trained you?
Rey: I've flown some ships, but I've never left the planet.
Finn: No one? That was amazing.

I never claimed she didn't say she could fly. I just claimed it didn't make sense to me that she could. YMMV.

What about Luke? He told us that he had a T-16 and use to bullseye wamp rats. To my knowledge, though, the movie never told how he learned to do all that.

FWIW, that Rey novella tells us about a derelict freighter that she found and restored to full functionality. It was also the first ship she actually flew. Without lessons.

Galvatron wrote:How did Luke learn to fly?

Do I have to repeat myself? Luke had a ship and the key point: A stable home life that gave him the leisure time to learn.

Scrapping a living doing odd mechanical work and scavenging does not give you the same opportunities for flight hours and training, in my opinion. As I said Your Mileage May Vary.

eta: You ninsta-editted me there but the substance of my point remains. If a book has to extra info on how she learned to fly that's a tacit admission that it wasn't fully explained in the film. (Though the be perfectly fair the old EU added in some fluff about the X-Wing controls being design to facilitate the exact jump from skyhoppers to snubfighters Luke had to make which is the biggest problem with him flying with Red Squadron at the end of ANH)

Lord Revan wrote:What helps with Tony Stark and hurts Rey is that Stark's major SoD streaching achiviements are also more spead out, the magnet that orginal arc reactor powered first ran out of car battery so it's not totally implausible that you possibly build something gave the same amount of power but was smaller and the mark I didn't have that many high power demand systems. When the Mark II and Mark III armors come along Stark has already built improved arc reactor using the tech from his home lab (and he presumebly have access to his company's research notes as well), so Tony Stark doesn't do that much "in cave with a box of scraps".

Where as Rey seems to go from 1 to 100 "because the Force wills it", there's no things like the Valley of the Jedi (from the legendaries that explains how Kyle katarn could go from essentially no Jedi powers to decently powerful in Jedi Outcast) to explain the sudden leap to skill.

To be fair, I always found the construction of Tony's first suite utterly ridiculous, and its probably the biggest reason why I don't like the original Iron Man as much as most people seem to.

Crazedwraith wrote:If a book has to extra info on how she learned to fly that's a tacit admission that it wasn't fully explained in the film.

I totally agree. However, if the film is otherwise enjoyable I tend to forgive those ambiguities, especially if there's already enough exposition to support a logical deduction.

Therefore, since Rey both had mechanical knowledge of the Falcon and said she'd flown ships before, does it really seem so far out of the realm of plausibility that Unkar Plutt lent her a ship from time to time in order to haul some of her heavier salvage back to Niima Outpost?

Also, can a kindly mod please split this discussion into new thread about the Rey controversy?

Crazedwraith wrote:

Knife wrote:Not sure anyone would wanna watch another 30 minutes of Rey scavenging, fixing, and perhaps piloting a flight to BF nowhere to establish these things. Rey's a pilot with as much on screen back ground as Luke.

Except as I pointed out before. Luke's and Rey's backstories are different. To the point where it's much more plausible Luke the farmboy has flying experience than Rey the subsistence scavenger with no ship does.

?Why?

I get the broad theme of WWII pilots who were raised on their daddy's farm with WWI planes to crop dust, but outside of that theme, there is nothing in ANH that shows Luke should be able to handle a space fighter like he did. Rey said she was a pilot before getting on a space ship and thought she was getting on some sort of freighter, not a supped up hot rod that it turned out to be.

It's like if both had driven a car a couple times and then hand Luke a F1 Indy car and Rey some guys restored 1970 GTO with a blower on the hood. You're saying you're ok with Luke but Rey did to well to be believable.

Shroom Man 777 wrote:The Tony Stark thing was SUPER ESTABLISHED before he went to the cave with a box of scraps. Like, we were shown how he was an asshat arms designer super-billionaire dude.

Yeah, like it or not it was. The old arc reactor was a family design, made back in the 80s as a PR stunt and we get dialogue to that effect, and that Stark is familiar with it. All Tony actually did was- 20 years later- miniaturize the same technology and if there's anything a modern audience can relate to over the last decade it's technology getting smaller. That makes it a smaller stretch on SoD than wholesale creation of new tech, and that was my point. You can get an audience from A to E with just a few lines of dialogue or visuals about B,C or D without heavy handed exposition.

Knife wrote:Not sure anyone would wanna watch another 30 minutes of Rey scavenging, fixing, and perhaps piloting a flight to BF nowhere to establish these things.

Scavenging doesn't even need to be shown, just the results of it. "That's the last of it loaded. Can you fly us back now Rey?" as she comes out of a hulk with a few bits and pieces to meet the other scavengers. "Sure. Finally found that inverter so I can fix that manifold for you too!" Rey's a scavenger like the rest of them, she's got some mechanical skills and she's a pilot. All you do is swap that scene in for her loading up her speeder bike.

You're saying you're ok with Luke but Rey did to well to be believable.

For me personally, yeah. Luke nearly crashes, takes a hit from the enemy and ultimately only avoids Vader because Han saves him. This is inline with 'Hey I'm not such a bad pilot myself' or 'I use to bullseye womprats' lines that set an expectation of flying ability, and that's before you factor in he's a force sensitive or he's got a combat experienced astromech on board. Each to their own of course.

What Rey said might've been hard to catch because of the JJ Abrams scatterbrained hyperkinetic scenes.

Oi. This is a big arguement I did not intend to be in. I didn't even give a shit about Rey bring able to fly. The mind trick was the bit that pissed me off.

Knife wrote:

Crazedwraith wrote:

Knife wrote:Not sure anyone would wanna watch another 30 minutes of Rey scavenging, fixing, and perhaps piloting a flight to BF nowhere to establish these things. Rey's a pilot with as much on screen back ground as Luke.

Except as I pointed out before. Luke's and Rey's backstories are different. To the point where it's much more plausible Luke the farmboy has flying experience than Rey the subsistence scavenger with no ship does.

?Why?

I get the broad theme of WWII pilots who were raised on their daddy's farm with WWI planes to crop dust, but outside of that theme, there is nothing in ANH that shows Luke should be able to handle a space fighter like he did. Rey said she was a pilot before getting on a space ship and thought she was getting on some sort of freighter, not a supped up hot rod that it turned out to be.

It's like if both had driven a car a couple times and then hand Luke a F1 Indy car and Rey some guys restored 1970 GTO with a blower on the hood. You're saying you're ok with Luke but Rey did to well to be believable.

"Why?" What? Do you not agree that someone who has his own ship and a stable home life will be able to do more flying that scavenger living day to day?

Yes, the fact that Luke's T16 experience lets him fly a snubfighter is silly but it's besides the point. I'm quite willing to grant Rey the same licence. But we don't know what and how she gained that experience and unlike Luke her back story doesn't really allow it as easily. It's not that both Luke and Rey say they can fly and I believe Luke and not Rey just because. It's that their different backstories make their claims have different amount of plausibility.

And it doesn't help that she actually flies a lot better than Luke. (As I also mentioned in regards to force powers in a post you seem to have overlooked) Luke takes part in a dogfight in open space. Gets shot and rescue and shot again and rescued again. Rey does super awesome low level flying, dog fighting, flying through the middle of crashed ships with layouts she can't know at top speed. She just get to do things better with less experience.

Btu as I've said, Rey's flying doesn't bother me greatly. I do take issue with the idea that you can't criticise her and not Luke without double standards being at play though.

Here are some excerpts from the novelization that might help clarify things, although I maintain that what was both said and shown in the actual movie was sufficient:

“Gunner’s position is down below!”

Turning, Finn headed for the indicated area. “You ever fly this thing? Or anything like it?”

As BB-8 looked on, she shouted back to him, “I’ve piloted all kinds of craft, but nobody’s flown this old crate in years!”

While she knew little more than theory when it came to maneuvering and fighting in free space, Rey had plenty of experience defending herself on the desiccated surface of Jakku. At least in the vicinity of Niima Outpost, she was familiar with every dune field, every canyon complex, every crater and escarpment. Keeping as close to the ground as possible, she rose and darted over rocks and dunes, grazing one upthrust ridge so closely that she took a chunk out of it. Unwilling to sacrifice distance to gain altitude in order to attack from above, the two TIE fighters stayed close. Just a little farther, she told herself as she clung grimly to the controls.

Just keep them off a little longer. She was heading for her favorite scavenging spot: the ships’ graveyard. Let them try to follow her in there! She banked hard, low enough to cut a crease in the sand.

Ahead lay the bulk of a downed Super Star Destroyer, its mass inconceivably large where it rested on the sand. Pulling on the controls, she drove the ship downward—and into the gaping breach that was the center of a ruined engine thruster. If she hoped this maneuver might dissuade their remaining pursuer, she was wrong. Unwilling to give ground, the pilot of the surviving TIE fighter took his craft in after her.

As he sat gawking out the turret’s transparent canopy, a disbelieving Finn gauged the proximity of the metal walls that were racing past on either side of them.

“Are we really doing this?”

Sparks continued to flare from their ship’s sides as Rey negotiated one increasingly narrow passage after another. Even a former crewmember would not have been as familiar with the corridors she chose. But she had not merely familiarized herself with them from a diagram: She knew them intimately, having inspected them individually and on foot or with climbing gear.

“That was some piloting!”

“Thanks.” She shrugged. “I’ve been flying every kind of junk you can imagine almost since I could walk.” It was her turn to smile. “Speaking of which, that was some shooting! I was worried you wouldn’t have time to react.”

How's that?

Need to rewatch. Abrams just has too many things happening too fast...

Galvatron wrote:Here are some excerpts from the novelization that might help clarify things, although I maintain that what was both said and shown in the actual movie was sufficient:

For crying out loud...

Me wrote:But as I've said, Rey's flying doesn't bother me greatly. I do take issue with the idea that you can't criticise her and not Luke without double standards being at play though.

I realise I've not made my position clear enough and got bogged down talking details. So please take this as a concession on "The Rey Can Fly" issue.

I consider Rey's pilot abilities to be less plausible to Luke's and I don't consider this a double standard for reasons of differing backstory I have outlined too many times. However I do not consider them entire unplausible. So, yes, she helped out fixing freighters and maybe learnt there. The novel seems to have more details that the film, that's cool. I concede this is entirely possible.

Rey's boast about flying "almost since I could walk" was obviously an exaggeration though. In the Rey novella, the Ghtroc 690 light freighter that she restored was the first ship she actually flew. However, it doesn't specify exactly when that happened.

Concession retracted?

Soontir C'boath wrote:And frankly, if there was a moment where the Force pulls it out of its ass, I would say it happened in this movie with Chirrut having none of the bolts hitting him.

I think this is a reference to Artoo and Threepio being unharmed in crossfire while crossing a corridor on the Tantive IV in ANH, sort of explaining why they weren't hit.

ray245 wrote:The only reason he needed it was because his Jedi mind trick failed on Jabba the first time. That's pretty much a case of divine intervention failing him, and very nearly killing him when eh went up against the Ranchor.

Luke already had a plan for stopping Jabba that didn't involve a successful mind trick. After all, he hid his lightsaber in Artoo and sent him off as a "gift" to Jabba. That's a pretty dumb thing to do unless you already know how things will play out. How could he know that Artoo would be in a position to give it back? Or that it wouldn't be found by someone searching for a trap within the droid?

Because he had already used the Force to determine what was going to happen in the end. What Luke did earlier (attempting to negotiate and attempted Force persuade) was either a part of the setup (gotta look the part) or an attempt to avoid the bloodshed if possible.

On the way to the Sarlacc, Luke commented something to the effect that he had everything taken care of. His version of Palpatine's line later: "everything is proceeding as I have foreseen."

That's the true power of mastery of the Force. It goes well beyond what the already impressive stunts an untrained or novice user can perform.

Speaking of untrained, you could interpret Luke's bullseyeing of womp rats as another instance of someone unconsciously tapping into the Force to improve his skills. Everyone's like "No, can't be done!" and he's like "What do you mean? I do it all the time!" Luke also was on par with the more experienced Han when shooting down the TIEs while escaping the Death Star; they each shot down two fighters.

Shroom Man 777 wrote:What Rey said might've been hard to catch because of the JJ Abrams scatterbrained hyperkinetic scenes.

Yeah, that's part of the problem. All the necessary foreshadowing was technically there, it was just blink-and-you'll-miss-it (and the fill-in-the-blanks for the dialog portions are only hard to resolve if you insist on keeping a particular headcanon of past events that are clearly wrong considering what was stated and subsequently shown). Yes, some of what Rey did goes beyond what we've seen before, but it's not completely out of line with what we've seen to be possible.

The two things that come to mind that are beyond what we've seen are mind-tricking the stormtrooper and Force pulling the lightsaber.

In both cases, we can keep in mind that Rey already knows stories about Luke. It's not any kind of stretch to imagine that she has some kind of familiarity with what Luke is capable of, even if she apparently thought they were fiction.

She already knew she could do some mind reading when Kylo made himself an easy target. She had an inkling that she could use the Force at this point, and saw Kylo trying to read her mind. His defenses were down while focusing on her, and so she pushed back on a Kylo that was completely unprepared. That gave her the confidence to try something similar on a stormtrooper. It didn't work at first. (The humor of the scene also serves to distract the viewer, so it becomes a candidate for fridge logic.)

It's hard to say how difficult mind-tricking a stormtrooper is supposed to be. I can't really tell if this is impressive or not.

In the second case, they were pulling the lightsaber in the same direction--it wasn't tug-of-war. But the time he realized what was going on, he would have had to pull in the other direction and it may have been too late. (In addition to the other factors such as his injury and possible confidence issues.)

The scenes could have been strengthened by having Rey use TK to get out of the binders, after a few attempts. Perhaps building up in intensity as she tried each time. That would make her use of TK in the final scene less abrupt. We can even have her fail to use a mind trick on the stormtrooper (after all, you can't mind-trick James Bond!), so she has to resort to another means of escape. That would have been better all around.

By that point we were in Starkiller Base so we were in full Abramitis. She might as well used the Force to extract from Kylo the MEANING of the NUMBERS on the HATCH there on this mysterious ISLAND that they crashed in in Starkiller Base.

Mad wrote:It's hard to say how difficult mind-tricking a stormtrooper is supposed to be. I can't really tell if this is impressive or not.

This was actually something I wondered. Would being brainwashed and indoctrinated from birth make one more resistant to suggestions that go against ones indoctrination? Or would it indicate a weakness from a lack of personally developed conviction? The ANH trooper was just a guy doing a job, probably not a zealot and was happy to just wave everyone past so long as he felt he wasn't gonna get in trouble for it. The FO troopers though are, I believe, supposed to be more clone like in their indoctrination.

I

n the second case, they were pulling the lightsaber in the same direction--it wasn't tug-of-war.

I got the impression she was off to his left, a bit behind him but certainly not in line.

The scenes could have been strengthened by having Rey use TK to get out of the binders, after a few attempts. Perhaps building up in intensity as she tried each time. That would make her use of TK in the final scene less abrupt. We can even have her fail to use a mind trick on the stormtrooper (after all, you can't mind-trick James Bond!), so she has to resort to another means of escape. That would have been better all around.

See this is the part where the 'mental state' argument falls apart. Rey's been forced from her home she clings to, hunted, shot at, captured and taken to an evil enemy base where she now finds herself restrained and being mentally violated. Even if she had reason to believe she was as special as The Luke Skywalker™ her mental state should be that of a terrified teenage girl being held captive in enemy territory. If we're gonna say Ren's mental state affects him, surely Rey's has to affect her.

In her case, she decided "screw you I'm gonna kick ass" like an underdog taking on Triple H in Wrestlemania.

Kojiro wrote:This was actually something I wondered. Would being brainwashed and indoctrinated from birth make one more resistant to suggestions that go against ones indoctrination? Or would it indicate a weakness from a lack of personally developed conviction? The ANH trooper was just a guy doing a job, probably not a zealot and was happy to just wave everyone past so long as he felt he wasn't gonna get in trouble for it. The FO troopers though are, I believe, supposed to be more clone like in their indoctrination.

I don't know. I'd speculate that it could differ by person, even with the same indoctrination. Also, do those selected by the First Order all become stormtroopers? Or do they get filtered into different programs after observation?

II got the impression she was off to his left, a bit behind him but certainly not in line.

The lightsaber still flew past his head, even if it wasn't a perfect line. Same idea still holds. A tug-of-war situation likely would have gone differently.

The scenes could have been strengthened by having Rey use TK to get out of the binders, after a few attempts. Perhaps building up in intensity as she tried each time. That would make her use of TK in the final scene less abrupt. We can even have her fail to use a mind trick on the stormtrooper (after all, you can't mind-trick James Bond!), so she has to resort to another means of escape. That would have been better all around.

See this is the part where the 'mental state' argument falls apart. Rey's been forced from her home she clings to, hunted, shot at, captured and taken to an evil enemy base where she now finds herself restrained and being mentally violated. Even if she had reason to believe she was as special as The Luke Skywalker™ her mental state should be that of a terrified teenage girl being held captive in enemy territory. If we're gonna say Ren's mental state affects him, surely Rey's has to affect her.[/quote]

Not quite sure how that applies to what you quoted.

Still, heroes rise in the face of adversity. and, well, Kylo Ren hasn't been shown to do much more than throw a temper tantrum in the face of adversity. (I have a feeling the completion of his training is meant to address that.)

Mad wrote:Not quite sure how that applies to what you quoted.

It was from earlier and other discussions where the mental state of Ren is given as a reason why his powers aren't functioning at full efficiency. Basically if Ren is weaker for his duel against Rey because his head isn't on straight the same should apply to the escape attempt/probing.