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SimpleMovieCommenter (21)
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The difference between Rey and those male characters you mentioned is [b]most of those characters have a background that include a reasonably assumed period of training before they get introduced in their movie.[/b]
James Bond is a veteran spy agent. John McClane is a veteran cop. Bruce Wayne trained since he was a child before becoming Batman. Tony Stark tested out and trained with his armor before he got better at being Iron Man. Luke Skywalker was a Bush pilot before he became a Rebel pilot and Luke got Jedi training in each movie which tested him against progressively harder Jedi stuff. Harry Potter got training and he always needed help.
Rey is not at all "literally super-powered just like her predecessors". Don't you dare compare her absurd background and development to Luke. He had to through the classical Hero's Journey. Rey fucking skipped the Journey in a fucking single day and made Luke look like a chump.
2) And actually, why the hell didn't he just use the Force to knock her out or freeze her in place? And as for Finn, I think its because he got his ass kicked and defeated. Because if a soldier who probably has formal melee training got his ass kicked, than how the fuck is a starving scavenger from Jakku supposed to do better?
3) "Let's also not forget that Luke didn't NEED to fight Vader one-on-one at any point before Empire Strikes Back... Although Vader could already sense Luke's power in the Death Star trench years beforehand."
I don't understand this point. And Vader sensed Luke's power in the Death, so what? Luke is Force-Sensitive, thats all.
4) She totally did develop faster than Luke. In a DAY. She needed a more proper development because otherwise she becomes absurd.
5) My anger over Rey is because she is a POORLY-WRITTEN character and she's getting rewarded for it. And get over the term "Mary Sue". There's also the "Gary Stu", like the TV version of Ramsay Bolton, which most people agree over.
So, sorry to disappoint you but I don't hate strong female characters because they're female. Otherwise, I would hate characters like Leia, Xena, Sarah Connor, Charlie's Angels, Lara Croft, Furiosa. Hell, even Jyn Erso was better written than Rey.
Your argument has some pretty poor presumptions:
1) You assume Kenobi trained Luke for literally minutes. Have you never ever heard of scene time compression? Do you not recall that the Falcon went into hyperspace, we are treated to the Death Star blowing up Alderaan scene and then we transition back to the Falcon? Hours or even a whole day could've passed by the time the movie transitioned back to the Falcon. Its obvious that Luke and company spent a hell of a lot more time than "minutes".
3 years later, yes, Luke trained with Yoda for perhaps a few days. But during that 3 years, Luke was also a REBEL SOLDIER. Its easy to reason that he gained combat experience, that he trained in melee dueling using Rebel resources and sparring partners, that he practiced on the Force.
And then by the beginning of ROTJ, 6 months have passed, in which Luke had doubtlessly been training more and more with MASTER YODA, including improving lightsaber skill. And remember, during the second duel, Vader was arguably conflicted about his son, and Luke drew on the Dark Side to win.
Rey doesn't have anything CLOSE to that. And by the end of the FIRST movie of a new trilogy WITHOUT any real development in a SINGLE DAY, she has already defeated a powerful Force User main villain AT HIS OWN GAME.
2) Yes Kylo Ren was shot in the gut, but for the majority of the duel, he and the movie pretty much behaves as if the wound doesn't really affect or slow him down at all. He takes his sweet time toying with Finn and contemptuously displaying his skill and physical strength by actually overpowering Finn. And he pretty much dominates Rey in a proper duel, again not really displaying that his wound affects him in any way.
SO WHAT if he's not Darth Vader? He's still a Dark Jedi with 10 years of training and experience under Luke and Snoke and he also fought and killed Luke's Jedi. He still has FAR MORE training and experience than Rey.
--->to be continued
The reason for continuing years of anger is because the problem of Rey is simply that BIG and because I love Star Wars a lot. Rey is a LONG-TERM problem that will continue to affect Star Wars.
Nobody ever merely complained about a female with Force powers. Nobody complained about Mara Jade, or Jaina Solo, or Aayla Secura, or Bastila Shan, or a female Revan.
The problem is Rey's background and "development" just doesn't justify her abilities. Precedence and consistency have been thrown out.
Why would I not also hate JJ Abrams for this? I do. After all he's the director. And I also hate his damn Mystery Box which he inflicted on Star Wars. I also hate Kathleen Kennedy for obsessing about making a "strong female character" movie first and a Star Wars movie second.
[quote]Nostalgia blinds people to the fact that the OT was no more pre-planned than the currently trilogy is. But since they grew up on the OT they're willing to cut the OT some slack; the current trilogy, on the other hand -- no way. [/quote]
The OT gets some slack cut because there was no guaranteed exception of a sequel or trilogy. It was entirely new. AND because Ep.IV was written to be a self-contained complete story with some wiggle room by the end and no stupid mysteries or cliffhangers reserved for a future sequel that didn't exist yet that may never get made.
With the new sequel, there has ALWAYS been an expectation of another trilogy for years. An Ep.7, 8, and 9. They had YEARS to PROPERLY pre-plan out a trilogy. But with TFA released, more people should've realized they were just winging it and crossing fingers. And TFA suffers from the poor planning.
What did "make things right" even mean from the start?
In order to make things right, there must have been something "wrong". And while there were certainly some things wrong with the Prequels, the answer should never been going from one extreme to the opposite extreme.
Normally I would brush this line off as one of those inside-jokes using gender humor in the usual context of how a woman can figure out if her boyfriend/husband isn't being honest.
But in the context of TFA and Kathleen Kennedy, this line's purpose was for artificial empowerment.
[quote]Rey was overpowered. I know it's a complaint that's been said before but it needs mentioning. Great mechanic, fine I can buy that since she's a scavenger, it fits her character. Great duelist, yep she's shown using a staff as a weapon throughout so I can buy her handling a lightsabre well, been an ace pilot.... eh, maybe since she's force sensitive which apparently helps piloting skills (Letting Anakin pilot pods because of his jedi reflexes for example). But been such a great shot with a blaster, even though it's shown she's never held one before? Nope. Mastering the force immediately to use force persuasion and been able to best Kylo Ren. Nope. That made her cross into Mary Sue territory.[/quote]
Great duelist? No. A staff is a completely different weapon than a saber and you cannot effectively transfer the skills. And the most that she has maybe ever fought very intermittently are unskilled thugs by whacking them in the head with a stick. How the hell does that support masterfully using a lightsaber for the very first time and beating a veteran duelist at his own game with no dirty tricks? It would be like Luke Force Pulling Obi-Wan's lightsaber and then dueling Darth Vader to victory. Except that never happened.
Piloting skills by the Force? I don't understand how so many people keep misconstruing this. Rey has NEVER flown the Falcon before or anything like the Falcon, ever. And then she proceeds to outfly two military pilots on her first try in ways that would make Han Solo blush.
Anakin PRACTICED at piloting the podracer long before he learned about the Force. Luke PRACTICED at flying a single-pilot fighter aircraft before flying the similar X-Wing. Their backgrounds established this. Rey's impoverished background does not support her abilities.
If a movie is hopelessly dependent on an external source like a novel to explain basic critical stuff, the movie is weak and cannot stand on its own.
With the narrative mess that is called [i]The Force Awakens[/i], I disagree. I also disagree because 3 movies has ALWAYS been expected of Star Wars by now, and there was no way they were gonna not make 3 movies. But if you know absolutely that you're absolutely gonna make a trilogy, you have to PLAN it out, not just wing it.
The difference is Star Wars was not as HUGE back then as it is TODAY. And the very first Star Wars was written as if there wouldn't be a sequel, becuz it wasn't guaranteed. It was safely self-contained. And the organic process led to a Death Star 2.0 and Leia kissing her own brother somehow knowing all along he was her brother. Lucas was lucky these things weren't that bad. TODAY, they could've had all the time and support they needed to plan out a reliable story for a trilogy, but as I suspected since Dec 2015, they had no plan.
Family: Luke has been made to abandon his family and friends to their enemies for unfathomable reasons that TFA decided to let a future sequel tell us about.
Religion: The Jedi have been purged again offscreen and reduced to Luke who is now the new Obi-wan and Yoda. Lame rehash. Wheres GrandMaster Luke of the New Jedi Order?
Politics: JJ Abrams is shit at politics and fucked up the politics of Star Wars beyond understanding. Everything is reset to the beginning of the OT. Good guys are poor underdogs. Bad guys are omnipresent. Nothing has changed at all.
I do trust Rian Johnson BUT he has to deal with the shit that Abrams left him to deal with.
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