More Things Star Wars

[Darth Richard II]

I had no idea Rey was supposed to be THAT young. 0.o

[Ran]

9 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

I had no idea Rey was supposed to be THAT young. 0.o

It's part of why people wondered at her competence in multiple diverse areas.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

1 hour ago, Switzeran said:

It's part of why people wondered at her competence in multiple diverse areas.

Because people are idiots.

Did Luke ever pilot anything more sophisticated than his speeder prior to the battle of Yavin?  Any combat training?  Yet space station go boom.

[Ran]

1 minute ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Because people are idiots.

Did Luke ever pilot anything more sophisticated than his speeder prior to the battle of Yavin?  Any combat training?  Yet space station go boom.

Per filmed scenes and the novelization, the T-16 he flew featured similar instrumentation to the X-Wing, having been produced by the same company. Biggs Darklighter, who attended the Imperial Academy before joining the Rebellion, vouched for him as one of the best pilots in the Outer Rim, and his more experienced superior accepted Luke into their ranks on that score. 

In the Star Wars universe, being a skilled airspeeder pilot = skilled starfighter pilot.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

5 minutes ago, Switzeran said:

Per filmed scenes and the novelization, the T-16 he flew featured similar instrumentation to the X-Wing, having been produced by the same company. Biggs Darklighter, who attended the Imperial Academy before joining the Rebellion, vouched for him as one of the best pilots in the Outer Rim, and his more experienced superior accepted Luke into their ranks on that score. 

In the Star Wars universe, being a skilled airspeeder pilot = skilled starfighter pilot.

Yeah, my car has a steering wheel and pedals and a formula one car has a steering wheel and pedals, ipso facto, just give me the trophy and the cash right now.  After all, we wouldn't want to embarrass anyone.

And going up against tie fighters and tubo laser turrets is totally the same thing as dusting crops.

[Ran]

Just now, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Yeah, my car has a steering wheel and pedals and a formula one car has a steering wheel and pedals, ipso facto, just give me the trophy and the cash right now.  After all, we wouldn't want to embarrass anyone.

We don't live in the Star Wars universe. They do. Lucas made the rules. You're being very strange on this, don't you think? You are defending Rey by calling Luke into question, when in fact you should defend Rey by arguing that the already-established rules of the setting regarding things like piloting competence make it a non-issue or something.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

27 minutes ago, Switzeran said:

We don't live in the Star Wars universe. They do. Lucas made the rules. You're being very strange on this, don't you think? You are defending Rey by calling Luke into question, when in fact you should defend Rey by arguing that the already-established rules of the setting regarding things like piloting competence make it a non-issue or something.

I'm not defending anything.  I'm merely pointing out the inconsistency.

Anikin Skywalker describes himself as the only human who was capable of being a pod racer, at the age of, what, seven?  Why?  Because "The Force".  At this tender age, he also demonstrates journeman-level mechanical aptitude by building his own pod from scavenged parts and even repairing and building droids.  All this with apparently zero formal training as he hadn't joined the Jedi academy yet and public schools on Tatttoine are pretty terrible I hear.

Incredulity from the fan community?  Not so much.

The Luke Skywalker story is basically the same, only he's a bit older and looks less like my niece than Anikin did.  He also whines more.

Incredulity from the fan community?  Nope.

Rey?  Oh, don't get me started on "Rey".

We are talking about a mythos that includes a magical space voodoo that gives people crazy superpowers beyond their years and physiology.  Often, basic abilities don't even have to be taught; they just are.

That's why people are idiots.

[Slurktan]

1 hour ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

I'm not defending anything.  I'm merely pointing out the inconsistency.

Anikin Skywalker describes himself as the only human who was capable of being a pod racer, at the age of, what, seven?  Why?  Because "The Force".  At this tender age, he also demonstrates journeman-level mechanical aptitude by building his own pod from scavenged parts and even repairing and building droids.  All this with apparently zero formal training as he hadn't joined the Jedi academy yet and public schools on Tatttoine are pretty terrible I hear.

Incredulity from the fan community?  Not so much.

The Luke Skywalker story is basically the same, only he's a bit older and looks less like my niece than Anikin did.  He also whines more.

Incredulity from the fan community?  Nope.

Rey?  Oh, don't get me started on "Rey".

We are talking about a mythos that includes a magical space voodoo that gives people crazy superpowers beyond their years and physiology.  Often, basic abilities don't even have to be taught; they just are.

That's why people are idiots.

The difference between how Rey is presented in comparison to Anakin and Luke is "Luck".  Anakin and Luke have to rely on luck to do anything (See Luke randomnly just shooting shit on the Death Star which luckily blows up a cannon) wheres Rey is presented as being amazing based on skill and knowledge (see her knowing the Falcon better than Han).  There is a significant difference.  If Rey had instead been presented as just being lucky no one would care about her being awesome at everything because then it would be just like Luke and Anakin.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

16 minutes ago, Slurktan said:

The difference between how Rey is presented in comparison to Anakin and Luke is "Luck".  Anakin and Luke have to rely on luck to do anything (See Luke randomnly just shooting shit on the Death Star which luckily blows up a cannon) wheres Rey is presented as being amazing based on skill and knowledge (see her knowing the Falcon better than Han).  There is a significant difference.  If Rey had instead been presented as just being lucky no one would care about her being awesome at everything because then it would be just like Luke and Anakin.

The compressor?  Why is that so crazy?  

[Jace, Extat]

3 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

The compressor?  Why is that so crazy?  

Yeah, it's just stupid peeps. She knew the Falcon because her slave master owned it.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

1 minute ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Yeah, it's just stupid peeps. She knew the Falcon because her slave master owned it.

Correctamundo.

[Darth Richard II]

Per new EU stuff she also had an old shop simulator in her home she scrounged up and practiced on all the time.

And she knew about the compressor as stated above. Hell that part is in the film.

if you want to get into her force abilities she sucks training knowledge out of kylo at the end of 7. Also made more clear in the EU but I thought it was obvious in the theater.

[Darth Richard II]

And let’s be honest, people care cause she’s a girl and has cooties.

[felice]

3 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Did Luke ever pilot anything more sophisticated than his speeder prior to the battle of Yavin?  Any combat training?

He used to bullseye womprats! Which experienced rebel pilots thought were an unreasonably small target. And his piloting skills were mentioned on multiple occasions.

2 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Anikin Skywalker describes himself as the only human who was capable of being a pod racer, at the age of, what, seven?  Why?  Because "The Force".  At this tender age, he also demonstrates journeman-level mechanical aptitude by building his own pod from scavenged parts and even repairing and building droids.

Incredulity from the fan community?  Not so much.

Were you around in '99? My recollection is that most people thought everything about baby Vader was awful.

[Darth Richard II]

We could also talk about how she obviously practices every day with her staff and then almost loses to Kylo anyway after she's been shot and Finn who *gasp* has no force training is able to get a few licks in.

[Darth Richard II]

19 minutes ago, felice said:

He used to bullseye womprats! Which experienced rebel pilots thought were an unreasonably small target. And his piloting skills were mentioned on multiple occasions.

Were you around in '99? My recollection is that most people thought everything about baby Vader was awful.

Yeah, but I don't remember anyone complaining about his force powers being "un realistic".

[Ran]

Quote

Were you around in '99? My recollection is that most people thought everything about baby Vader was awful.

There's definitely that factor. Anakin being so young was a huge mistake on Lucas's part. 

For my part, the issue with Rey was more the context of everything. We see her living hand-to-mouth since she was a small child, struggling to keep herself fed in this wasteland, in enough regular danger that she's learned how to fight well... but she's an ace mechanic, an ace pilot (who never actually piloted a ship, it seems), an ace hand-to-hand fighter (who's able to beat  a Jedi-trained force user with a lightsaber), a top notch scavenger (apparently), and on top of all this she's able to do some pretty hefty Force stuff with no training (compare her Force grab of the lightsaber to Luke's halting effort at the start of TESB, which takes place 3 years after he first learned he could use the Force).  At least Luke had a stable home life with the wherewithal to actually have an airspeeder, and wasn't basically scratching out a living day-to-day

I'm not sure why they felt they _needed_ to make her so  competent _and_ give her that backstory which made it hard to credit that she would be able to be so good at so many things at such a young age.  Did she really have to be an awesome mechanic? Would the story have been that harmed by it? Or a great pilot -- why was that specific thing needed? They couldn't have come up with her fumbling around with the Falcon and maybe Finn's training as a Stormtrooper having more to do with their surviving thanks to his having had gunnery training or something? 

So I think the real point of issue is that I don't really understand why everything and the kitchen sink was thrown into this character. It detracted, for me, at least once it was understood that there wasn't any kind of explanation for it other than she's just that awesome. The uber-competent character is certainly a staple of pulp literature and film -- James Bond can drive anything, fly anything, beat the best gamblers, hit a target a mile away, etc. -- but usually they aren't teenaged impoverished orphans. 

[drawkcabi]

1 hour ago, Darth Richard II said:

And let’s be honest, people care cause she’s a girl and has cooties.

[Werthead]

The contortions people put themselves through to call Rey a Mary Sue whilst excusing Luke's equally implausible achievements are bizarre, at best.

So let's take it from the top: Rey learned her mechanic skills from being a scavenger (you have to know WTF bits of a Star Destroyer are useful and which are not) and working on Unkar Plutt's junkyard, including on the Falcon itself (there'd been speculation that she'd even been on test flights in it, but dialogue seems to suggest not). Her keeping a flight simulator she found on the Star Destroyer is reasonable (it'd have dozens of them), although it would be preferable to have seen that mentioned in the film. Then again Luke apparently had a flight simulator and completely unmentioned off-screen special forces training simulator that allowed him to gun down multiple Imperial crack troops in ranged combat which no one mentions as being odd at all, so that seems fairly equal.

Rey's scavenger lifestyle sees her frequently battling rival scavengers for supplies and salvage, so she would need to develop hand-to-hand fighting skills, and she's doing that for years on end. The "defeating Kylo Ren with no effort" thing is also outright bullshit. Ren had just been shot by Chewie's bowcaster, was bleeding all over the place, was probably a bit PTSDed out from just killing his dad and he was suffering additional injuries from Finn (First Order Stormtroopers are specifically trained to fight Jedi in melee combat, as shown earlier on in the "TRAITOR!" scene), plus Ren was trying to capture or disable Rey, not kill her. Rey also appears to be far stronger in the Force than Ren, which allowed her raw strength to overpower his apparently superior training. I mean, the film goes to some lengths to explain this stuff. It even had frigging Obi-Wan talking to her and her mind-reading Kylo Ren just before she mind-controlled Daniel Craig, showing she was getting outside help (as clearly precedented by the Force Ghosts in multiple earlier films).

The suggestion that flying a crop duster would allow you to pilot something far more advanced than an F-35 is...fanciful, at best, and the explanations why this is logical strain credulity, as generally speaking controls are not standardised between two completely different classes of vehicle (personally I'd go with, "Luke was actually pretty shit and R2 made him look good," as a far more convincing explanation). If the answer as to why Luke can shoot down tons of TIE Fighters, kill multiple Stormtroopers and take on Darth Vader in lightsabre combat despite having no-one to practice against at all etc is, "Well, the Force," then the same explanation should suffice for Rey's achievements.

[felice]

18 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Yeah, but I don't remember anyone complaining about his force powers being "un realistic".

What Force powers? He's got great awareness/reflexes due to his connection to the Force, but as far as I recall we don't see him do anything actually supernatural till after he's had ten years of training. The ridiculousness of his mechanical skills was overshadowed by the unbelievable coincidence of him building Threepio and the stupidity of him blowing up the Trade Federation ship by accident.