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The Last Jedi (spoilers): Only a Sith deals in plot holes


Kalbear

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15 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

 I need it to be what it is, plucky underdog white hats who, in spite of incredible, overwhelming odds, defeat a cartoon villian of exceptional evilness, with a side helping of redemption and unresolved pg sexual tension.   

Didn't the villain(s) won in this one? The resistance forces have been reduced to the amount of people that can fit in the Falcon. At best, some seeds for a rebellion in 20 or so years have been laid. If there was no episode 9, it would be a rather bleak ending.

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1 minute ago, Darth Richard II said:

Why? It's true. Want me to post the actual content of the position? You can hate the film all you want but if you think there's some conspiracy with the critics reviews...I dunno man. I won't even go into detail about the meta user score again, I feel that's been gone over enough here and other places.

Dude, if you are trying to say that the people who don't like TLJ don't like it cos they are racist and sexist then you need to just leave the room and go lay down. Just leave it alone.

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5 minutes ago, Eggegg said:

Dude, if you are trying to say that the people who don't like TLJ don't like it cos they are racist and sexist then you need to just leave the room and go lay down. Just leave it alone.

He's not saying all -- he's acknowledged you are welcome to your viewpoint - however much a number of us disagree.

Don't excuse or turn a blind eye to the significant alt-right-type backlash. Read a handful of Rotten Tomatoes user reviews -- SJW and all that bullshit whining is extremely prevalent.

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14 minutes ago, Wouter said:

Didn't the villain(s) won in this one? The resistance forces have been reduced to the amount of people that can fit in the Falcon. At best, some seeds for a rebellion in 20 or so years have been laid. If there was no episode 9, it would be a rather bleak ending.

Eh, sort of the same with ESB.  It's honestly the same framework (white hat hero's journey - this one has the trip to the underworld).  But I'm OK with that.  I find it comforting and familiar, even the bad special effects aliens :)

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8 hours ago, Happy Ent said:

The new movies are loved by critics exactly because they align with the desired values of the mainstream. The new movies are female and politically progressive. The movies make no attempts at telling a good story; instead, they are externally motivated: it’s about deconstructing a narrative that exists in The Real World, about deliberate choice casting were made based on essentialist characteristics of the actors (sex, haplogroup). These are very visible signals: you need to embrace these movies for the their exogenous ambitions; the endogenous traits (story, plot, wordbuilding, etc.) are a sideshow. Every critic understands this. And a critic would make a moral blunder by not aligning themselves with progressive values.

You can see the same dynamic even in this thread. We cannot resist taking sides based on the political signal we’re sending. Criticising these movies makes you a bad person.

People who dislike TLJ are misogynous, male, white, racist conservatives, stuck in Jungian archetypes, masturbating to Jordan Peterson youtube clips.



While I certainly agree that these movies, and others, are often made with a sociopolitical agenda in mind and will recieve more positive reviews based on the back of that, I think the bolded is honestly a farcical statement especially pertaining to TLJ, and the last line demonstrably untrue and completely unfair. Much of the discussion around and criticism of TLJ is precisely centered on the storytelling choices, ones made not because of political agenda but because Johnson was evidently and openly trying to steer the saga in a different story direction than the one expected from this series and ones like it. The lack of special origin for Rey, the failure of the grand plan, the doubt in and 30-year-sulk in Luke- I like all of those things, but there are many people who- completely validly- look for something simpler in Star Wars.

And other plot points, even as someone who really liked the film, simply weren't very well handled (to various degrees of unsuccess), and while some criticism of some of them- Holdo vs Poe for instance- clearly is politically motivated, others are obviously taking issue not with what they were but how they were fitted in.


I mean, the point isn't invalid. Many of the problems the film does have come from the tension between the inherent conservatism of old SW and the new spin attempting to be put on it. The aforementioned Holdo v Poe plot being perhaps the most obvious, because the filmmakers didn't quite have the confidence to make it completely clear that Poe was wrong in that situation, which would have potentially alienated many of the Han Solo demographic in a film where Han himself is no longer around to carry them. But to make either the film or the criticism all about the politics is a huge oversimplification of everything that's going on.

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34 minutes ago, Eggegg said:

Dude, if you are trying to say that the people who don't like TLJ don't like it cos they are racist and sexist then you need to just leave the room and go lay down. Just leave it alone.

No, I'm saying

1. the people who started the RT petition and some of the review bombing are racist and sexist

2. People who think there is some conspiracy to pay of critics to affect the RT score are crazy in the head, and should maybe examine why they think so

He's not saying all -- he's acknowledged you are welcome to your viewpoint - however much a number of us disagree.

Don't excuse or turn a blind eye to the significant alt-right-type backlash. Read a handful of Rotten Tomatoes user reviews -- SJW and all that bullshit whining is extremely prevalent.

 

Yeah, this. Thanks. The alt right backlash is fairly, eh, I don't know if large is the right word. Intense maybe?

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41 minutes ago, Eggegg said:

Dude, if you are trying to say that the people who don't like TLJ don't like it cos they are racist and sexist then you need to just leave the room and go lay down. Just leave it alone.

Of course it is not true for all the people. But it does seem to be an important component.

There is an analysis I not completely agree with but is nevertheless interesting to look at in this context at Vox.

https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/12/18/16791844/star-wars-last-jedi-backlash-controversy

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Too much progressivism: In the early going of the backlash, this was the easy culprit to point to. The broad strokes of the Last Jedi response sure looked like the broad strokes of Gamergate or the backlash to the all-female Ghostbusters remake. And there are lots and lots of tweets and user reviews and responses that focus on the idea that the film’s strongest characters are almost all women, who usually know the right thing to do, while its most evil characters are white men with complexes about being given what they think they deserve.

...

But saying there’s a lot of cultural anxiety around this particular generational handoff is an understatement. And when you consider that Star Wars fandom has long been presided over by white guys, it’s natural this would lead to angry policing over what Star Wars is and isn’t. And that policing can be ugly and lead to toxic fandoms in which people who aren’t white men don’t feel comfortable.

But while there’s a lot of this going around, and it’s tempting to write off the backlash as wholly defined by anti-progressivism, that also wouldn’t be accurate. There are plenty of other complaints and criticisms from fans that range from nitpicky to more concerning.

Some other sources of criticism seem to be based on entitlement, continuing in the article.

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The movie is uninterested in fan theories: Remember the part where I mentioned the guy who’s mad at Disney for making the so-called expanded universe non-canonical? On plenty of Star Wars message boards, there’s always been a little anger at the new trilogy for not adhering to established expanded universe ideas like Han Solo and Leia being happily married, or Luke Skywalker running a Jedi Academy. Instead, the movie suggests that after Return of the Jedi came a slow devolution into disappointment and ruin. (Hey, just like how the ’60s panned out, right, baby boomers?)

...

The characters’ journeys aren’t what was expected: This is probably the fan critique with the most meat to it. But it’s also, ultimately, the one that has the most personal spin on it. Do you think that Rey’s journey in the film shows the slow dawning of her realization that she has agency in and of herself and doesn’t need it to be given to her (as I do), or do you think it silos her off in the middle of a plot that takes her movie from her?

 

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1 hour ago, Eggegg said:

Dude, if you are trying to say that the people who don't like TLJ don't like it cos they are racist and sexist then you need to just leave the room and go lay down. Just leave it alone.

Many, many people who don't like TLJ don't like it because they're racist and sexist. 

Chances are good that if the reason you say that you don't like it is because of plot holes there's a really good chance that you objected to the thing viscerally and clung to plot holes as your rationalization. 

I don't know for certain if that is the reason that YOU specifically don't like it, but denying that people are upset about it for these reasons is denying the same thing about TFA, with very similar arguments about it.

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5 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Many, many people who don't like TLJ don't like it because they're racist and sexist. 

Well, apart from all the people who really enjoyed The Force Awakens but are not keen on The Last Jedi, of course, which is quite a lot of people.

I think it's more accurate to say that some people who didn't like TLJ because they're racist and sexist and they probably didn't like TFA and RO for the same reason, and those I think we can all agree are fuck nugget arseholes whose opinions can be disregarded. I think dismissing all or a majority of criticism as invalid because it's racist and sexist and ignoring the very fundamental, well-argued criticisms rooted in the film's problems with characterisation, continuity and theme is disingenuous, however convenient (note: I'm certainly not saying you are doing this, but there are plenty of kneejerk reactions to the criticism of TLJ out there which are).

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4 hours ago, kuenjato said:

This is a point not-often brought up in arguments about Rey's "mary sue-dom" -- she grows up impoverished, basically having to fend for herself from a very early age. She is obviously well-versed with the staff and able to fight off junkers in the first film. It's not a stretch to say that she could at least hold off a wounded, not-trying-to-kill Kylo Ren in TFA's climax.

Yep. If you're willing to believe despite zero actual screen evidence that Luke is a good pilot and can fly an X-wing as well as any of the actual rebel pilots, but aren't willing to give the same credit to Rey despite actually seeing her fight, the problem isn't with the lack of setup.

4 hours ago, kuenjato said:

Kalbear, I'm curious -- now that you've had some time to reflect, does the movie still resonate as strongly with you? More specifically, the inclusionary aspects and how they are ultimately implemented. Personally, as the father of a half-Korean 7-year old girl, I'm very happy that SW has a strong female lead that ultimately maintains positively under duress, and that a major subplot of TLJ features a Vietnamese woman depicted as competent and bold. However, I was not at all impressed by the execution of these elements -- it feels "Disneyfied" , i.e. conspicuous virtue-signaling rather than successful development of a narrative, explicit pandering as opposed to a more natural creative actualization. Of course, going by HE's thesis, the politicized end-goal means narrative is ultimately unimportant to the designs of the corporate head & creators... 

As would be expected given that I've taken a public position, my position has only solidified further, and it resonates more with me. I continually think about some of the funny bits and laugh, I think happily about the Porgs, I read more about the design and development of the movie, I watch some of the specials on the actors. 

I think that it was Disneyfied the same way that Princess Leia was in 1977 - a conscious decision to make better choices, to show empowered characters across the spectrum, and to introduce good characters. Rose, I think, is especially good in this way and is not remotely disneyfied - in that she's not some gorgeous woman, she's not particularly glamorous, she's allowed to be funny, and her outfits aren't going to be cosplay any time soon. Rose is clearly a Johnson insert in my mind - because she is his viewpoint of Star Wars. Hers is the closest moral pinning to the movie. This is someone who fights on despite grief, has a clear good vision for why she fights, sees the underbelly of the system and what is broken about it, and is uncompromising in her views despite several places where it could be easier. It's hard for me to believe that she is a Disney insert given how completely anti-commercial her message is, and how revolutionary her goals are. She, more than anyone else, represents what I think Johnson's view of the new rebellion should look like. I didn't find her a token, or pandering, or anything at all. 

I can agree that the Canto Bight sequence is the movie's weakest link (largely because it takes time from the movie's strongest parts), but I don't think that it has to do with tokenizing or pandering or virtue signalling at all. 

4 hours ago, kuenjato said:

People talk about ESB being the benchmark of the series, and it will never be topped or, at this point, even approached. ESB came out of the unexpected lucky-break of Star Wars hitting it big. Lucas & co. were riding on a thin line before, during, and after its production; it was risk-taking cinema, emerging from (and influenced by) the auteur trends of the 1970's (even as that aesthetic was imploding via Heaven's Gate), and it was concerned with telling a story as opposed to selling tickets. There is almost no humor in ESB; contrast TLJ, which literaly starts with a Yo Momma joke. ESB has long, slow sections, some heavily introspective. ESB ends on a downer note. While Johnson has stated that he had creative freedom on this film, I can't imagine there weren't dictates on modern humor & spectacle so that Disney continues to maintain a billion+ box office.

Rogue One was the closest this franchise has come to ESB, and it was completely gutted and re-made in the process. I can't see this happening again.

I think that Rian Johnson had a lot of creative freedom in this, and that he was so heavily rewarded with another whole trilogy speaks to it. He's clearly a massive Star Wars fan, he has his own vision about things - but he certainly compromises here and there, and collaboration is how he apparently works. It's interesting to me that you bring up TESB as an example of it being so risky, because that's the one where the artistic vision of Lucas was compromised on most. He had a different director, writer, the actors had a LOT more leeway into how things were going to go, they ad-libbed more lines including some of the most famous ones, and the main notes from Lucas were apparently around what toys and merchandise they were going to have. TESB is the least alien-centric movie of the series (there's Yoda, Ughaunts, the Tauntaun and Wampa, and really about it). Watching Looper and its style of humor and storytelling there is a lot of similar beats here as well. Same with Ozymandias. 

The notion that Disney has some massive amount of flex on what things are going to happen and how things are going to work is, I think, heavily influenced by people who believe that only corporate greed could ever produce things like diversity. 

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9 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Well, apart from all the people who really enjoyed The Force Awakens but are not keen on The Last Jedi, of course, which is quite a lot of people.



Or all the people who thought TFA was bleh but really liked The Last Jedi. Which might not be quite as many people but it's definitely an extant demographic.

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@Werthead gets it.

In reading/listening to the avalanche of feedback over the last couple of weeks it's very clear that many, many fans who are head over heels for The Last Jedi didn't think The Force Awakens had much going on, and vice versa. Others I know loved Rogue One but don't have much good to say about the new saga films, and, again, vice versa.

All three of the new films feature female leads and a mixed-race supporting cast, and yet fans who feel the same way about all three films are in a minority at best.

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6 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Well, apart from all the people who really enjoyed The Force Awakens but are not keen on The Last Jedi, of course, which is quite a lot of people.

Sure! There are some who enjoyed TLJ more than TFA by a large margin too. I'm not saying all people who disliked TLJ are racist or sexist, but I do think for a variety of reasons that those who thought TFA was annoying in that way think TLJ is INCREDIBLY BAD OMG. 

6 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I think it's more accurate to say that some people who didn't like TLJ because they're racist and sexist and they probably didn't like TFA and RO for the same reason, and those I think we can all agree are fuck nugget arseholes whose opinions can be disregarded. I think dismissing all or a majority of criticism as invalid because it's racist and sexist and ignoring the very fundamental, well-argued criticisms rooted in the film's problems with characterisation, continuity and theme is disingenuous, however convenient (note: I'm certainly not saying you are doing this, but there are plenty of kneejerk reactions to the criticism of TLJ out there which are).

Yeah, I think that TLJ is significantly more feminist in its message, in the character focus and egalitarian in design, and as a result those who were slightly triggered by TFA are absolutely outraged by TLJ. 

I have seen a whole lot of people who resort to pointing out plot holes in TLJ and somehow those plotholes all focus on how unrealistic Leia, Holdo, Rose and Rey are. 

Again, my thesis is this: many people out there are bothered by the implicit power unbalance they see between men and women in this movie, specifically how the women are largely all correct and in charge, and the men keep fucking up. They don't like this. They don't like seeing men not in charge, or men being shown to be wrong, or men failing. But they have no actual conscious consideration of this, because the norm for them is simply seeing men in charge, succeeding, and being listened to. They have no way of saying 'the reason I'm upset with this is because the societal norms I'm used to are being challenged'. They simply know that they are upset. And because humans work this way, they start looking for things that would justify their being upset about things.

That doesn't make their criticism invalid necessarily, and there's plenty of plot holes and pacing issues big and small to criticize, but it does mean that the notion of why they enjoyed the movie or not isn't easily about things like plot holes or pacing issues. 

And if you're wondering why this didn't trigger as much with TFA, it's because largely of Leia. She was in 'charge', but she didn't have the plans - she listened to Han and Finn plan to get Rey, she was nominally respected but not obeyed, and she had very little to do. Leia was front and center here, and her message of leaders, not heroes was a pretty big thing. 

 

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I certainly don't mean to suggest that every ne who disliked/hated any of the films is in with the alt right.Just that the alt right tis getting really fucking loud about the whole thing and ignoring it seems kind of, I dunno, willfully ignorant.

 

Edit: People think Holdo was unrealistic? Doesn;t she spend most of the film fucking up?

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19 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Well, apart from all the people who really enjoyed The Force Awakens but are not keen on The Last Jedi, of course, which is quite a lot of people.

I think it's more accurate to say that some people who didn't like TLJ because they're racist and sexist and they probably didn't like TFA and RO for the same reason, and those I think we can all agree are fuck nugget arseholes whose opinions can be disregarded. I think dismissing all or a majority of criticism as invalid because it's racist and sexist and ignoring the very fundamental, well-argued criticisms rooted in the film's problems with characterisation, continuity and theme is disingenuous, however convenient (note: I'm certainly not saying you are doing this, but there are plenty of kneejerk reactions to the criticism of TLJ out there which are).

Well exactly. I’m sure there are some very vocal people out there who dislike both movies for those very reasons but I’ve read a ton of very critical reviews of the movie and none have mentioned race or gender, nobody on this thread is talking about it either. It’s perfectly possible and more likely that a lot of people who don’t like movie don’t like it because it’s not that good. It’s not cool to label people a racist just because you don’t agree with them. 

And I think that sort of knee jerk reaction is exactly what Darth is doing here btw. But I don’t think this conversation is going anywhere useful so let’s move on

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1 minute ago, Eggegg said:

Well exactly. I’m sure there are some very vocal people out there who dislike both movies for those very reasons but I’ve read a ton of very critical reviews of the movie and none have mentioned race or gender, nobody on this thread is talking about it either. It’s perfectly possible and more likely that a lot of people who don’t like movie don’t like it because it’s not that good. It’s not cool to label people a racist just because you don’t agree with them. 

It's cool to label them sexist because they're sexist though.

Quite a few people were talking about gender earlier, and continue to do so - things like Rey being a Mary Sue or how stupid it was that Leia could use the force or simply how they hated Rose for, I guess, existing as a concept. You, yourself, believe that it is implausible that a scavenger for 15 years who has lived in some of the worst conditions possible would not be able to learn how to fight despite actually being shown this in the movie (and in both TFA and TLJ!), but it totally is fine that Luke can fly a starfighter because he had one line of dialog saying that he flew a Cessna back home. Why is Luke's background as a moisture farmer somehow more suited to space combat but a person who literally carries around a staff and beats people with it is not suited to beating people up?

To @Ran and his continued points about tearing down the OT to make this look better, I'm not - I'm looking for consistently leveled criticism. This is what Star Wars has always been about, and like, and with. The idea that years of training are important, for example, is completely obliterated as a concept from ANH from the getgo, where Luke has basically no training, has never shot a gun, has never flown in space, has never been offplanet. And yet within maybe the space of a day or two he learns how to use a lightsaber to deflect blasts, can use a gun turret to blow up tie fighters, is killing people with a blaster, can fly an X-Wing as well as anyone...and this is just glossed over, apparently. 

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As to the @Happy Ent thing, the biggest objection to it that I have is that there's some notion that Star Wars eschews hard work or training or anything like that - or, for that matter, that the Jedi somehow believe in it. The Jedi don't believe in hard work to get things; they know that some are strong in the force, some are not, and it doesn't matter how much you train. The whole premise of believing in Luke being able to beat Vader and the Emperor when Obi-Wan and Yoda go and cower for 20 years should tell you all about that; if they thought they needed hard work, they would have started training Luke early on. Instead, they completely ignore him. 

What the Jedi believe in is control. They must have absolute control over everything, and everything must be done in precisely the right way. They have reasons for this - namely, they are afraid that a loss of control would send someone over to the Dark Side, and that is something they cannot allow under any circumstance apparently (though given Dooku and Vader they apparently also suck at this). They believe that things should be the way they are because they should be, and nothing should change. They are not conservative or liberal in the Western view of things; they are static. There is no Western analogue for the Jedi. They are instead closer to some of the older Eastern systems, where following elders, ancestor veneration and previous information are by far the best, and what merit there is goes with how well you stick with following the old arts. 

And Star Wars rejects this as a failed system from virtually the moment we meet Luke, and continues to do so throughout the series. The idea that this is somehow new to TLJ as a concept should be obviously dismissed. The biggest problem is that Luke goes from being one of the rebels of the system to almost precisely the same kind of person that Obi-Wan and Yoda did - someone who refuses to fight after failure and lets the next generation take up the burden that he created. 

It should be noted also that Rey not only tells Luke to fuck off and tries her own thing, she also recognizes the value that older information may have and actually takes the books with her. Again, the idea that TLJ is against knowledge or learning is obviously wrong; what it (and ANH and TESB and ROTJ and the prequels) is against is the notion that the only way to do something is the way it has been done before. 

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The idea that years of training are important, for example, is completely obliterated as a concept from ANH from the getgo, where Luke has basically no training, has never shot a gun, has never flown in space, has never been offplanet. And yet within maybe the space of a day or two he learns how to use a lightsaber to deflect blasts

In a scene directly mentored by a Jedi master, and inconsistently, but sure. He can use the Force. Obi-wan guides him into how to start doing it. After ANH, Luke spends 2-3 years knowing he can use the Force, and seemingly made efforts to explore what that meant. 

Who taught Rey anything? Who mentored her? No one, apparently. She just starts doing Force stuff because. This post-Lucas Rebels show apparently makes this canonically okay, though, as the Ezra kid apparently is the same. So Rey's not really special in the new canon. Fine. I find it weird, but this may go into HE's commentary of a radical reconceptualization of things for the 21st century, a rejection of knowledge and experience as traditional or conservative constructs.

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can use a gun turret to blow up tie fighters

I can blow up stuff in a B-29's turret pretty well on the computer...

I mean, I'm not going to go crazy over the idea that someone with some practical gunnery skill (which Luke explicitly has, as noted in the film!) will figure out point->shoot and will understand leading his target.

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is killing people with a blaster

Kind of assumed farmers in the wilds of Tatooine know how to defend themselves from Tusken raiders and the like.

FWIW, I don't have an issue with Rey knowing how to fight. I had more of an issue with non-Force users wielding lightsabers effectively without training, but I guess it was an EU thing that it took a Jedi's Force-sensitivity leading to self- and environmental awareness sufficient to be able to safely use one without accidentally chopping off some of your own bits when swinging a weapon with a weightless "blade". And her defeating Kylo Ren felt a bit too easy to me, even knowing his injury and emotional distraction having killed his father and so on, but that's a very small thing. It was more that it fit into all this other stuff she was doing that, put together, didn't seem to have any explanation beyond the fact that it was a clue that there was more to her than meets the eye. Until it wasn't.

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can fly an X-Wing as well as anyone

I fully accepted that his being the best bush pilot in the Outer Rim directly translated into space flying skills. I see canon includes the idea that his T-16 (the one he'd bull's-eye womp rats with) was made by the same manufacturer as the X-Wings, had similar instrumentation, and was used to train X-Wing pilots. But basically the idea that space flight = planetary flight, works for me. Didn't have a problem with X-Wings swooping and banking and so on either, you know.

(FWIW, Pilots were put into front line squadrons in the U.K., Germany, and Japan at various stages of WWII with little more practical experience than a handful of hours of training. I think the need for pilots was so great during the Battle of Britain that pilots were put in the air with just a dozen hours of training, IIRC. So as long as you expect magical banking spacecraft are pretty much exactly like aircraft, and so training is 1:1, Luke definitely had sufficient training.)

But Rey, who taught her to fly the Millenium Falcon? She's a scavenger living in a hut, so impoverished she trades scrap for food, and yet here she knows how to evasively fly a small freighter through narrow gaps and outmaneuver TIE Fighters. (I gather some book explains it as VR training?) And so she's had time to learn to be an expert hand-to-hand fighter, an ace pilot, an ace mechanic, and stumbles across how to use the Force to cloud minds and grab things at a distance and... 

Lets just say that Rey as a character is substantially more skilled than Luke from the get go, while being a penniless, orphaned, self-educated scavenger. Who's also innately super-powerful -- more powerful than Luke! -- in the Force, and starts figuring out how to use it on her lonesome. Apparently. If Luke feels overly gifted, what's Rey? If Luke feels just about right, again, what's Rey?

 

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55 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

It's cool to label them sexist because they're sexist though.

Quite a few people were talking about gender earlier, and continue to do so - things like Rey being a Mary Sue or how stupid it was that Leia could use the force or simply how they hated Rose for, I guess, existing as a concept. You, yourself, believe that it is implausible that a scavenger for 15 years who has lived in some of the worst conditions possible would not be able to learn how to fight despite actually being shown this in the movie (and in both TFA and TLJ!), but it totally is fine that Luke can fly a starfighter because he had one line of dialog saying that he flew a Cessna back home. Why is Luke's background as a moisture farmer somehow more suited to space combat but a person who literally carries around a staff and beats people with it is not suited to beating people up?

To @Ran and his continued points about tearing down the OT to make this look better, I'm not - I'm looking for consistently leveled criticism. This is what Star Wars has always been about, and like, and with. The idea that years of training are important, for example, is completely obliterated as a concept from ANH from the getgo, where Luke has basically no training, has never shot a gun, has never flown in space, has never been offplanet. And yet within maybe the space of a day or two he learns how to use a lightsaber to deflect blasts, can use a gun turret to blow up tie fighters, is killing people with a blaster, can fly an X-Wing as well as anyone...and this is just glossed over, apparently. 

You're being unfair. Luke shot womprats with his shitty rifle and flew his landspeeder.  How's that different from taking on a company of stormtroopers and flying a starfighter??

I'd love to do a spoof where when the rebels review the Death Star plans, there's an added video file from some grizzled mechanic complaining that those airy-fairy scientists fucked up the exhaust so he welded in a sheet of durasteel mesh to protect it.

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