Star Trek vs. Star Wars (and a collection of memes)

Gah, it has been a week and I still haven't posted my other thoughts about your opinion of Rey, @NIGHTBRINGER , I have been obscenely busy this week, sorry!

I might get to it tomorrow. Hopefully.

 

I disagree about the setbacks. Note that I don't write "failures" but "setbacks", the difference being that failures would be her fault, while setbacks aren't necessarily her fault. Han's death, her being captured by Kylo, and the revelation about her parents are setbacks, and I would call them significant, although I agree that they aren't displayed as impactful on her as they should be.

I kinda like that because it shows that strength isn't everything. Kylo might be stronger than any of them in a way (Luke talks of _raw_ strength, it isn't quite explained what he meant with that, but it might mean something else than we think, because the strength demonstrated by the other strong force users Luke met was way more impressive than what Kylo showed so far), but he obviously lacks training a lot.
I also think that is in line with Snoke's character as far as we have seen him. Snoke probably hasn't trained Kylo nearly as well as we thought, because even a force user with way less strength but real training (such as Obi-Wan) would defeat Kylo I think, perhaps even easily. Snoke knows how dangerous a fully trained Kylo would be. He wants to stay in control so he doesn't tell Kylo everything.
Kylo's performance in the fights we have seen in the movies shows that, I think. While you could argue that against Rey he cannot use his force powers well, since she is also very strong in the force (that's one possible explanation why force users battling each other throughout the movies don't use force powers _that_ often during fights), I don't really see the reason why Rey and Kylo performed so poorly against Snoke's guards.
I llike that scene a lot, for me it was one of the highlights of TLJ, but I mean, seriously: Yes, Rey and Kylo won the fight despite being outnumbered, but imagine Obi-Wan and Anakin fighting those guards.

Here's how a force user looks who fights non-force users:


Deflecting a blaster bolt back with his bare hands, choking and lifting a soldier to the ceiling while at the same time swinging his lightsaber deflecting blaster fire, taking weapons out of the hands of enemies, slaying trained soldiers left and right. Sure, those guys don't have melee weapons and they are scared to death, but I cannot imagine any but the most well-trained and equipped regular people (Jango Fett or the robotic guards of Grievous) to have any kind of chance against a moderately skilled force user with a lightsaber, unless they are at least at company strength.

Here we see Yoda and Obi-Wan fighting 15 or 20 Clone Troopers (elite soldiers) and during that scene we see both Yoda and Obi-Wan using the Force powers to do so.


If we compare that to Rey (who even swings her lightsaber wildy out of measure a few times, missing completely. Kylo looks quite a bit more proficient with the Lightsaber) and Kylo who seem to use the Force not at all during their fight with the eight guards that's what I meant with "a bit underwhelming". Rey and Kylo each kill four of those guards, but Rey kills three of them in one-on-one situations and one with a quick stab in the chaos of the first seconds, while Kylo fights three of them at the same time at some point. He has a bit of bad luck when his lightsaber gets stuck in the armor of opponents twice (the second time he even has to drop it do dodge a strike), but overall he displays great swordmanship there. Fighting multiple opponents is hard and the Praetorian Guards are (as we know from Kylo's view point in the TLJ novelization) the best fighters in the First Orders, and also wearing armor that helps against lightsabers. In fact the novelization tells us that Kylo is not sure if he could win against them.
So that says a lot about Kylo and Rey: They can use the force, but it seems their training doesn't allow them to do so in real stressful situations like in the middle of the fight.
Here's a compilation of all the times Kylo uses the Force in TFA, and it seems that while his strength is impressive, he needs to concentrate a lot on the Force, he uses it to quite some effect, but those are all situations in which he is confident and in control of the situation.


And by the way, Rey looks really bad against Kylo when they first meet. She shoots at him, and badly so to boot, and she is scared to death when he just deflects all her bolts, freezes her, even looks away from her giving commands while she is frozen (it seems he doesn'T have to concentrate a lot there). And then he just stuns her with the Force and carries her away. That's not exactly OP of her.
When they meet on Starkiller base he throws her against that tree like Obi-Wan would do with a combat droid. Not too impressive of her either.

I agree that her OP moments are a lot stronger in TLJ. But then she does have the old Jedi texts (no clue if she read them, probably not but probably she did, or at least was supposed to do so by the original screenplay before it was put into those tight time constraints.), a bit of training by herself and Luke (again, too shortened in the movie, which I really dislike), and most importantly a lot more confidence which probably helps if you are strong but don't know what to do with your strength.

Is she still an OP character?
Yes, I guess so. But not as wildly OP that it would bother me. A Mary Sue would.


The last point is her quick learning, and that is the one point I fully agree with. She learns REALLY fast, especially Force powers. Her mechanical skill, flying, and parts of her fighting skills are explained in the novels, her quick learning of force powers isn't.

Again, I do think that when watching TLJ and reading its novelization it is possible to see that some parts of the movie, especially the Ahch-To scenes, were originally meant to display a much longer period of time. Same goes for the Canto Bight scene, in which the characters seem to have a weird amount of time at their hands and don't seem particularly stressed about having to get back to the Resistance quickly.
And that's because the "fleet scenes" and the time constraints put on the rest of the story by them probably weren't meant to be in the movie in the first place, or at least not in that form.
I'd almost bet that in the original draft Rey was on Ahch-To for months and learned a lot about all the Force stuff. Not nearly enough, just like Luke on Dagobah she left before she should have, but she did receive a substantial amount of training. She trained by herself and with Luke. She also spent some time in hyperspace after that, and that's when she read all the Jedi books, unlike Luke who apparently didn't. Combined with what she ripped from Kylo's mind in TFA that would make a lot more sense, and that's probably my main point of critique about TLJ.
They probably felt they would add to suspense by having all of that happen within a few days, simultaneously, with the fleet being in danger, but IMO they were wrong. The fleet scenes were not only silly from a physics point of view (ok,ok, like all space scenes in Star Wars, so par for the course I guess) but they rushed the plot and thus contributed to the negative views on Rey's character development, among other things.


And one last point I'd also like to mention:
One might argue that learning a lot about the movie and filling plot holes of the movie by not actually watching the movie but reading the novels and playing computer games (Star Wars Battlefront story is canon for example, and has tie-ins to both TFA and TLJ) is not so great and the movies should stand for themselves, and I do agree with that up to some point, but we have to take into account:

That has always been true for Star Wars. We don't notice it that much because we have known the OT and prequels for many years, and most of us have probably seen the three movies of the OT together as one finished piece fitting together (unless y'all are significantly older than me), and there is loads and loads of information that is just "common knowledge" and not really in the movies, but stems from the mind-boggingly large amount of stuff the EU provides, or stuff like commentaries by George Lukas. If you only watch the OT by itself it is full of plot holes and lacking a lot of information.
Same goes for the prequels. The plot holes are even worse there, and the movies directly contradict the OT. Only the expanded universe, novelizations, computer games and all that stuff filled all the holes and put the missing pieces into place. Many things are only implied in Star Wars movies, and explained later in other sources. Star Wars has always been a cross-medial franchise, and thus I think it is not fair to use that as an argument against the newer stuff only. You are expected to read the books and play the computer games in order to have everything explained. I think they might have overdone it a bit this time, but overdoing something is the most important trait of the modern age I guess, so again that is to be expected. George Lucas is an expert in milking the franchise cow and Disney isn't any better, but that is Star Wars.

 

Poor is probably the wrong word, but what I meant was: If K&R are _that_ strong, they should have defeated them easily, because even the best armor doesn't protect you from the Force. That would have been a great moment to use Telekinesis to throw them against a wall, into the pit of death that obviously exists in any Star Wars room for some reason, to choke them, rip them apart, freeze them or something.
The reason why I mentioned the Clone Troopers is that they are also elite soldiers, in a time where fighting against force users was a realistic possibility, and as well equipped as they could be. Still Yoda and Obi-Wan can easily defeat them, using their Force Powers. Because no amount of training or equipment will protect you from being thrown around by telekinesis.

So no, I don't fully agree with your analysis of the situation there. (Even though I do like 1970s-1980s escapist stories, it is the core of Star Wars after all) Also: Why would you say OT villains are hopeless? Vader, and Palpatine certainly aren't, and Jabba is a pretty good threat as well, although of a completely different type.

The distance is, like, 10 meters or so. Han is not an asshole, he wouldn't give her that bad of a weapon.
Even the worst blasters (or 18th century pistols for that matter) should have enough accuracy for that. Rey just cannot use the weapon well (although in her defense: Her shots are on target twice, he just deflects them), probably because of lack of training and/or her being scared.

Why we agree? Don't know, it is a natural interpretation of what we all see I guess. She does seem to pick a lot of skills pretty quickly. Even if you apply modern movie standards in which heroes are often pretty quick learners.
As to why she is that strong... we don't know yet. I guess that could be one of the things we learn in Episode 9.

 

I agree with that statement very much. It really was the lamest part of TFA.

As for whether the quick learning is silly or not, I guess we really will have to wait for the end of the story to be able to tell.

About the OT guys skills:
Remember that those are movies of the 1970s. Lucas and others have said numerous times that they would have liked to make the fights more impressive, but just couldn't. They had problems with the not very stable props and quick movements could not be done due to limitations of the CGI (EDIT: Not really CGI, most of that stuff was done manually back then) techniques.
That being said: Anderson (Vader) as well as Hamill and Guiness did receive training in saber and longsword techniques. Obi-Wan vs. Vader and Luke vs. Vader is a pretty interesting fight for HEMA (historical european martial arts) fans because the techniques they use are far more realistic than the (admittedly cooler looking) baton-swinging stuff that we see in the prequels. They circle each other, doing quick stabs and cuts now and then. Overall not bad.
In TESB and ROTJ they had a lot better props and stuff so they could afford making the fights more dynamic. The idea was for the actors to act like a lightsaber was pretty heavy (much heavier than the props were), and especially Hamill does a pretty good job in looking like it was really strenous, and like he was fighting for his life. Anderson had a few problems with the clunky Vader suit, but that wasn't too bad as they used the pretty well working trope called "Menacing Stroll" (IIRC), which basically is the villain - especially a powerful one - will move slowly. He has time and knows he is better. The Terminator does it all the time, and that makes him look very menacing. His footwork still wasn't bad at all, which is not surprising as he was an expert fencer (and also trained Hamill and other famous actors including Viggo Mortensen), and he uses relatively short movements a lot of the time. Expert fencers don't swirl around.
Vader also uses the Force a lot during his fights (throwing stuff, pushing, sometimes jumping, throwing the lightsaber), which makes him look powerful. On Bespin he doesn't even stretch out his hand to use telekinesis, he just does it. He also reads Luke's mind while not even looking at him. That's pretty impressive IMO.
Luke gets a lot better at fencing between TESB and ROTJ btw, you can see it in his stance, sword movements (less wild swings) and especially in his footwork.

I admit that from today's point of view the Emperor doesn't look too powerful. They mainly used his control over Vader and the fact that he doesn't need a Lightsaber and can easily defeat Luke with Force lightning to show how powerful he really was.

 

I haven't read a lot of the new stuff either, I mainly read/heard about the more interesting bits from people who have.
I am not 100%sure but I think it is either not mentioned that they have any special powers or it is mentioned that they don't have any.
I googled around a bit and all pointers I found say that they are just well trained in martial arts.

 

Pretty much. And it would have been a pity since I think that fight is pretty well done, both visually (red guards and the red in the background, stunning visuals as many parts of the movie) and from a choreography and camera point of view (minus the little error with the disappearing dagger).

 

Bob Anderson did all the fight scenes, because Prowse was really bad at fencing.
Originally Anderson should just have taught them, but in the end he did all the fight scenes.