Leia Poppins debate

i don't remember saying him being a bad pilot, i was saying none of us actually know if he's a good one or a bad one. how do we know that he has really earned the red leader position and not just gotten it because of the better ones have died during the rebellion?
even if he is a great pilot, it doesn't mean that luke is worse.
on the second point, true, he could have been. Generally speaking if anyone says stuff like that it's seen as cocky and/or overconfident but he could still just be truthful. some athletes sound extremely cocky when infact they are just saying factual things. So in other words luke might just be that good.

point being, we don't actually know who is how good at what. hell red leader could have that position simply because of his leadership skills and not because he's a good pilot and even if he is amazing at flying those x-wings, it doesn't necessarily translate to shooting with them.

ps red leader not knowing if luke can handle an x-wing has 0 to do with anything, it's just someone's opinion who might never have even seen luke before. Biggs's opinion however should be considered since he clearly knows and has seen luke piloting something, be it a speeder or a spaceship or whatever

 

Okay, but why would Luke be a better pilot than him?

Even if the T-16 experience perfectly translated to flying an X-Wing, there's no substitute for combat experience and this was essentially Luke's baptism by fire (he had shot down some TIEs in the Falcon's turret a few hours earlier, but that wasn't really flying).

I mean, obviously this is fiction and maybe it's silly for adults like us to even discuss it in this context, because no matter what we can always assume a level of reasonable doubt that best supports our individual claims.

"How could Luke have combat experience" is just as easy to ask as "How do we know the T-16 isn't exactly similar to an X-Wing," as "How do we know the T-16 isn't very different from an X-Wing". Frankly, we'll just talk circles around each other.

And that's with technology. With the Force, we're dealing with a mystical power. Something that is beyond comprehension and yes, even logic itself. The prequel-era Jedi were clearly wrong in trying to define the Force and put it into a box. And by saying what the Force is incapable of in regards to Leia demonstrates an equal, if not great, amount of arrogance. The line in TFA "That's not how the Force works" I think doesn't refer to a dogmatic view of the Force itself and how it can be applied, but rather addresses the idea that the Force is some entity that serves anyone who tries to harness. It's a mystical thing, and cannot be so easily defined.

 

The closest thing I could compare Luke vs Red Leader is using sports analogies.

On a sports team, the leader (captain) is usually either A) the best player B) a natural leader C) a veteran (calm under pressure) or D) Someone who's expected to be the best. Both B and C don't necessarily mean they can produce on the field (court, rink ect...). Even in the case of Red Leader being A or D, even the best miss sometimes (Look up Jordan, Gretzky, Lebron, Manning, or just about any sports icon ever, they don't always make the shot, and that's the best of the very best, not just the best player on a team). Red Leader is the leader of a team, not considered the best pilot of his generation (as far as I know). How often to we see a young upstart rookie come into a league and usurp or overshadow the best player on a mediocre team? It happens often enough.

We also see young players join a team and play amazing for their first few games and fizzle out and become very mediocre, mostly due to the adrenaline at getting their first shot at the bigs. I would assume in this case, most sports comparisons apply. Sport are after all often "peaceful" versions of waging war and use similar styles of strategy to defeat their opponent.

So no one is saying Read Leader wasn't good, but he may have just plain old missed, which happens. He did seem pretty far removed from his prime after all. Missing one shot doesn't make him a bad pilot, in hockey scoring on 20% of your shots is considered pretty awesome. In basketball 50% or better is considered a good, top line player. I'm just guessing, but I would think hitting the exhaust port in ANH was probably somewhere in between there, possibly lower, but nothing outside the reach of luck (good or bad) to make a good shooter miss or hit on any given shot.

 

Sure, and I appreciate the analogy, but I think that's just yet another example of how these vague facts can be bent either way.

Luke could be a better pilot than Rogue Leader.

Rogue Leader could have simply missed.

I dunno, I just see it as a trap of circular logic.

 

To me, the point is Luke didn't have to be a better pilot than Red Leader, he just needed to make a better shot once. I could go take a free throw vs Michael Jordan and hit it, and have him miss, that doesn't make me better than Jordan (I can't help but laugh at this whole debate, as though this was real and not written into the plot from the start lol).

The fact is, Red Leader could have been the best pilot of his generation, he could have been good, he could have been average, or his skill could have been more to do with leadership, strategy or respect (long service, sacrifice, nepotism, ect...) than ability, but in any case, the odds were probably against him making that shot (as were Luke's or anybody's). They made this run as a last ditch effort to save their collective lives, there were no guarantees and the likelihood was they were all going to die. It just happened that Luke hit it and Red Leader just missed (off the post, spin off the rim).

 

I'm not saying it's "wrong" because I didn't like it, I said if fans had the choice they would have had her use the force in another way. You can't tell me this would have been the first and only thing you'd have Liea do with the force in this movie? Come on man, something cooler right? I'm sure we all would have enjoyed something a little less absurd, or maybe you would have went with a flying Princess, who knows. It's not like Disney is making the films for the fans or anything

 

I tend to view that last part of ANH has the climax to a sports movie. You have the captain and you have the rookie, game is going into overtime and the captains just misses on a glorious chance, he then tells the rookie he's their last chance, and the coach (Obi-Wan) gives him that last vote of confidence he needs, and the rookie saves the day.

As for Luke being cocky, confidence and cockiness often come hand in hand. I don't know what Luke's percentage was shooting womp rats in beggars canyon, but it seemed to me he did it often enough that he knew it wasn't impossible. That's what I always gathered anyways. He was being optimistic and I think was realizing that some of these pilots may not be the crème of the crop (at this point in their careers). The fact Biggs was able to talk Red Leader into letting Luke into a ship further helped me to that conclusion. Add Porkins and yeah, these pilots weren't the best of the best, they would probably have been considered average (at best) at that point in time as a unit, with some weak links. Whoever Luke bumped out was worse than Porkins, think about that lol.

 

I mean, you still apparently think she was "flying", so I think we're at a fundamental disagreement. (In space, gravity is different than it is on earth- it's a fascinating concept some fans apparently need to acquaint themselves with).

And again, what Darth Garth finds to be "cooler" might be something totally different from other fans. Maybe you wanted to see Leia use a subtle Force Persuasion, or to briefly force push a stormtrooper. No matter what she did, some fans would like it and some wouldn't (as is the case with almost everything in this film, and pretty much any film really).

So yeah, speak for yourself, but you can't speak for the fans. Because me (and others that you're seemingly ignoring in this very thread) did like that moment. Sorry if it didn't resonate with you like it did with us.

 

Alright, No need to be patronizing. I know how space works, but the overall effect was and is to have Leia appear to be flying, it's how it was shot implying intention from the filmmaker; and that's what I saw. And you're right, something subtle would have been nice IMO. As for the ignoring fans who liked the sequence in the thread, this was not my intention, "Speak for the fans" Did I write that? Sorry. That was the wrong choice of words I think. I don't speak for anyone.

 

I think Leia is just pulling the ship towards her with her hand, but since she is smaller than the ship, she gets pulled to it instead. She is not flying like Superman, it wouldn't make any sense.

 

She's moving through space. By thinking of it as "flying", you're putting a huge emphasis on something that isn't even a factor here. If I saw a Jedi fly, even a powerful one like Windu, yeah, even I would think it was kind of stupid. In this case, it's just a force pull in zero g.

The very framing of thinking of it as "flying" is immediately (and frankly, unfairly) off putting, and I'm sorry that's ruined the scene for you.

Fair enough.

I guess it's just the "if fans had the choice they would have had her use the force in another way" thing that bothers me.

I mean, sure, I'd probably have been happy with a pretty wide variety of Leia scenes with the Force in this film, including the one we got. But anyway, no worries!

 

We find out what happen to Red 5 in Rogue One. Red 5 died during the battle of Scariff and we can assume Luke took his spot not too far after. I guess you can say that's a miniature Easter egg in that movie just like one of the main plot points of TLJ was in it also.

 

Isn't Luke Red 5?

 

He could just be talented that way. most people are talented in some areas and can excel with very limited practice (at least to a certain degree). also this debate, in my opinion, should be centered around shooting, not piloting since that is the main issue. Luke's flying didn't really have anything to do with destroying the death star, it was more about him shooting the photon torpedos at the exact right moment.
anyways, you are correct, we have too little information to actually make any conclusions, we can just speculate.

About the force, when i talk star wars, i generally go by the "oldschool" definition of the force while ST has somewhat changed it's definition so it just makes it harder to speculate logically.
In the earlier movies, jedis needed training in order to use the force in a meaningful way, some obviously were more talented than others (luke,anakin, most likely others) could somewhat use the force for their own purposes while others (at least, most likely) neeed more training. In any case, i don't remembe

 

Yes he is. I meant Red 5. I made the edit in the original post.

 

It looks dumb but not any dumber than the AT-ST comically slipping on logs in ROTJ. It's just another thing in the movies that I accept looks dumb. At least Leia using the force had relevance to her character and the plot.

 

All this talk about Red Leader, I wouldn't mind seeing a spin off movie about him. I'd prefer spin offs from pretty close to blank slates like him. It's certainly not necessary, but it would open up an avenue to exploring the GFFA without having many strings attached other then having him end on Yavin before the DS strike.

--- Double Post Merged, Apr 17, 2018, Original Post Date: Apr 17, 2018 ---

I guess I'll have to re-watch R1, I must have missed that part.

 

I wouldn't mind seeing a Rogue Squadron spin off movie. Even if it's Top Gun in space.

 

I initially expected Rogue One to be an origin movie for Rogue Squadron (you know, because of... words).

I still really like what we got, but that itch still hasn't been scratched yet.