Mind Reading and Troubling Implications

Interestingly, the "Don't be afraid: I feel it too" line doesn't seem to be in the novel.

 

aha! that's what i was forgetting. yes: it's in the movie, but not in the novel. but i think the point of it is, again, to say a number of things about Ren, his motives within the scene, and the experience of the connection they share in that mind probe.

i kinda lost the thread of where this was going because i was really responding to the point about why Kylo Ren didn't go back or keep trying to get the map after Rey reversed the probe. if i recall correctly, this was precipitated by your point that: "if Kylo didn't suspect her to be a Force user, then he wouldn't have considered using any kind of protective measures to keep her out."

and i guess we can maybe agree that the two-way mind-share likely needs to be mutual for it to work (or to work painlessly)?

in ROTJ, Luke may have been trying to shield his thoughts from Vader, but he didn't necessarily have cause to believe Vader could literally read his mind ~ so he might not have been guarding himself as he could have.

at least that's how it strikes me.

the difference with Rey/Ren is that he's entering her head specifically to trawl around in her laundry for information she doesn't want to divulge. she's fully aware of what he wants so she's trying to resist whatever that feels like. it just so happens she is not only successful at pushing him out, but getting into his hamper in the process. this doesn't present a problem to me because i don't think she's rooting around in there picking up special Jedi skills from among Ren's dirty socks. which goes back to my original roller skate analogy:

he pushed her. she pushed back and she realized she could roll with it.

Rey demonstrates throughout the film that she's extremely resourceful. to me this is about the equivalent of figuring out how to handle the Falcon once she'd bashed it into everything in their escape from Jakku. it ain't pretty, but it gets the job done.

i realize, too, that this doesn't adequately account for all the nuances of the things she does (planting the suggestion in the guard, calling the lightsaber). but as i said earlier in the thread, i haven't really thought all that through and it's not bothering me for the time being. i was merely agreeing that the experience of the probe was unpleasant for both of them on a physical level, for whatever reasons.

 

A number of good points. @Tygger pointed out this about the new canon:

Luke had apparently been training this particular skill of screen all by himself according to the new canon. It seems the story group felt the need to explain Luke's saber pull in the ice cave in one of the novels because it wasn't portrayed on screen. But perhaps @Tygger can explain us how Luke came up with idea to move the noodle in the first place. Did he just do it, or had he gained the information from somewhere else?

 

Sorry, man, I can't really remember what was the impulse to try that.. He met a niece of a Rodian Jedi who was killed in order 66 and she told him some tidbits about the Jedi Order and Anakin Skywalker.. And she even gave him uncle's lightsaber to study the mechanism .

And there's also an junior novel Weapon of a Jedi, exploring similar time before ESB, where Luke finds an old Jedi temple on planet Devaron, where he trains the connection to the living Force, guided by late Ben's voice.

The timeline is a bit clouded around these two books, because in both of them it looks like he's using telekinesis for the first time..

 

Hmmm, so also out of nothing, just like Rey. Well as Yoda said: "Size does not matter". Making a noodle move with your mind could be just as difficult as force pulling a lightsabre. Nevertheless, I should really catch up with the new canon.

 

Thank you for your understanding, Just Passing Through.

As I have found time and again, both as a writer and a reader, certain things in stories can posses personal significance to different people, and things authors might not have considered essential, or intentional even, can become elevated and crucial in a reader's mind based on that reader's personal knowledge and experiences.

I feel very fortunate forums such as these exist so people have opportunities to discuss these kinds of things and to share their perspectives.

I believe it helps all of us to witness, try to understand, allow for, tolerate, and respect that there are other perspectives.

And I certainly appreciate yours. Thanks again.

JediMasterRobert

 

That last thing, yes! Kylo is so impatient. He tries to force open the door only to find out it's on high voltage when it is too late.

 

Another area this mind-reading causes a potential question for is in the Original Trilogy, when Princess Leia was on the Death Star and resisted revealing the location of the Rebel base.

Did Vader not have this mind-reading skill perfected at that time (i.e. not until Return of the Jedi)? I wonder about this, because in the opening scene of A New Hope he interrogates a Rebel physically but with no real indication of Force-enabled probing.

If Vader did have the ability, and if he entered Leia's mind, he would have almost certainly sensed her connection with the Force (not necessarily her possible relationship with him, because she was not raised or identified in her lifetime as a Skywalker).

And if he did, then I wonder if he would have tried to conceal her identity from the Emperor (only later in ROTJ to invoke her to tempt Luke to the Dark Side).

Just something I've wondered about in light of this.

JediMasterRobert

 

Because Lucas had not yet though of mind probes when he wrote A New Hope. No that's unfair of me.

The truth is that we don't really see how Vader interrogates Leia. We never see it on screen. Just as in the interrogation scene with Poe Dameron, there is an interrogation droid, but it is unclear how vader used it, or if he even used it. If he did use the force to mind probe Leia's mind, then I don't think it is entirely strange that the information in her mind did not reveal her true identity. Leia has a different perception of who her true parents are. She does not know she is a Skywalker. She has no active memories of her true parents. Hence, Vader cannot aquire this particular information. What I also gathered from Kylo's mind probe is that it really depends on what you are trying to find. Kylo was distracted by some other information he could find in Rey's mind, which mainly concerned information about her identity and feelings. Vader was looking for a rebel base and the deathstar plans, not Leia true identity and childhood memories. He might have sensed some connection to the force, but obviously nothing for him to worry about. Besides, Vader only found out that Leia was his daughter when Luke revealed those thoughts to him in the Emperor's throne room "so, you have a twin sister. Your feelings for her have now betrayed her too".

As for the Rebel. Perhaps Vader realized that the Rebel really didn't know anything about the deathstar plans. At least nothing of acute urgency or value. Again we don't see if Vader, besides asking, is also reading the Rebel's mind. And if he would have thought that he could still find something interesting in the Rebel's mind, he would not have discarded him in the first place.

 

Like some others have already stated on this thread, the force is open to interpretation.

On this topic, I feel like each force user has or should have unique abilities. How boring would it have been to watch Kylo force choke Poe? Kylo's new powers are refreshing to watch on screen. His mind reading ability makes perfect sense within the lore of the force and SW in general. It is unique. This opens the door for more force abilities to be discovered and implemented in future SW stories.

 

This is probably closer to the truth, even as the semi-mind-probing/manipulation-related "Jedi mind trick" was performed by Obi-Wan Kenobi in A New Hope on the Storm Troopers and later Vader could remotely sense Obi-Wan's presence in the Death Star prior to their final duel.

Interesting to see those seeds of thought were there, though.

JediMasterRobert

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 31, 2016, Original Post Date: Jan 31, 2016 ---

I agree, and have shared similar thoughts elsewhere in this forum regarding the interpretive potential of all of this.

That's part of what makes Star Wars so enjoyable and interesting: we each can bring our own insights, experiences, and creative thinking, along with other perspectives into the mix and discover new things about the saga or ourselves.

JediMasterRobert

 

Agreed

 

The Force and what it can do/what characters can do with it has been expanding pretty constantly since, well ESB. And it hasn't always been consistent. So yeah, I'd also chalk up Vader not doing it in ANH to, Lucas hadn't thought it up yet.

In-universe, perhaps it's an ability tat Kylo learned from Snoke specifically, which could also explain it.

 

Well, he is more forgiving than the Emperor.

 

Really good thread. Wanted to go back to some of the assumptions from the beginning and share what I remember as my first impressions from my first viewing.

TBH, I immediately thought of Vader when Kylo read Poe's mind. There's evidence of mind reading in the saga, but perhaps only by Dark Side practitioners. Darth Vader effectively reads Luke's thoughts to learn about Leia in VI. Palpatine might have been able to do this too, given how adept he was at being a politician: he certainly can anticipate that Anakin wants to strike him down in Ep. III. Plenty of Jedi have demonstrated "feeling" another person's or group of person's intents - which could be construed as reading the collective minds of others.

Your concerns are founded regardless. I admit I'm being patient to see how they explain all of this (there are two more movies), but here's some ways to look at this:

• Kylo might be learning long lost dark side capabilities by virtue of aligning with Snoke. (things Palpatine / Vader never learned)
• Rey might have been trained to use the Force at one point, and had her memories suppressed. Kylo's probing unlocked/awakened them.
• Rey might be genuinely more adept at learning the force (like Anakin and podracing / seeing the future) and Luke was slower (though he does bring down the death star with an impossible shot). Rey gets exposed to Kylo, and can clearly observe him doing two things: using the force to immobilize and move objects/people around, and mind tricks/reading. She learns these fast by virtue of meeting Kylo and having those demonstrated on her.

I think we get to call Rey a Mary Sue if none of this adds up after XI. Then it's no different than some random superhero movie, and we're just told to accept that the superhero is awesome. We have gotten a lot more from Star Wars than that, so I remain optimistic.

 

Luke also wasn't put in the same kinds of situations as Rey or Anakin was at first. For example, he didn't really NEED to use the Jedi Mind Trick until ROTJ, and he and Vader never have a face to face confrontation in ANH. Nor is he captured/being actively interrogated with a mind probe. So we don't know if, should he have been put in similar types of situations, if he could have done it instinctually as well. He does use the Force instinctually in ANH at least three times, but in different ways with different context.

I'm curious to see where they're going with it, especially with Luke now back in the picture.

 

In context of the films Luke had three years of training between ANH and ESB. When he pulled the lightsaber to him on hoth he did not have a more skilled, molecular level telekinetic force user pulling the same object he was trying to pull. Also in ANH Luke was blocking tiny little lazer zaps from an automated remote. Han said it best when he told him predicting what an automated remote is going to do is completely different than predicting what your real opponent is going to do. Now Obi Wans little exercise did help Luke trust in his instincts which helped guesstimate when it was right to launch those proton torpedos but that was still small potatoes in terms of Jedi abilities.