Regarding Rey's rock moving skills...

Case in point:
My girlfriend had never watched any of the films (thanks to someone showing her half an hour of TPM once which obviously lead to her thinking all of us are mental).
She loved the OT after first seeing it right before TFA came out (to this day she is blissfully unprequeled) and was absolutely baffled that the fandom seemed to think Rey had to have some special lineage to explain her power.
The PT really poisoned the wells as far as the force goes and in that regard the midichlorians are a far lesser affront than the pointless chosen one none-plot.

 

No, it doesn't make sense, and it doesn't matter how much you want it to make sense - it still won't.

Look, you can be a strong believer in something you don't understand, but that doesn't mean you know how to use it - because in all normal sense, you shouldn't.

For example, I could say that I'm a strong believer in human space travel to Mars - but I don't understand it because I've not immersed myself in how that sort of space travel works. Just because I'm a strong believer in that doesn't mean I know how to construct a spacecraft that can transport humans to Mars. And before you say "It's a space fantasy and you aren't supposed to base it off sense and logic", that's just plain dumb. Of course you explain everything with "she has the Force, and the Force just makes you awesome!" but then you're misunderstanding what Luke and Yoda says in both ESB and TLJ (even though the eventual execution in TLJ is vastly different for Rey).

Rey's whole "training" consists of 1 short lesson which is mostly played for laughs - when is Rey talking about "the Force makes you move stuff" she is not talking to Luke, she is talking directly to the audience so that we can laugh. There is zero emotional impact on this.

 

One of Anakin’s complaints in AOTC is that ObiWan is holding him back. So yes it took years of training, because the Jedi deliberately had their padawan take baby steps regardless of their capacity. And what was their training exactly? To learn to lift rocks and do jedi mind tricks, or to learn to behave like a Jedi, to learn rules, dogma and laws?

Luke was able to pull his lightsaber without training. He struggled because he didn’t believe, yet he still did it. He was able to fight vader without lightsaber training except for five minutes against a remote in the falcon. In fact when he his training in the falcon, he wields his lightsaber like a pro when he his blind. Look at his moves, that’s not how a real beginner would move.

 

He had been trained by Obi-Wan in the previous movie, and yes he struggled very much with reaching it. How much did Rey struggle? It basically flies into her hand every time.

Vader was toying with Luke in ESB. It was a trap to get Luke fall into the carbonite chamber. You should rewatch ESB. And besides, Luke does eventually lose to Vader at the end of the fight once Vader stops toying with him. He gets his arm cut off. What happened to Rey in her first fight with Kylo? Oh yes, she won. Easily, too.

But Obi-Wan was there and instructed him. And he doesn't dodge every shot, he misses a lot. Who instructed Rey? Herself? The Force?

 

No need to rewatch ESB, I know Vader’s plan. Still, look at how Luke wields his lightsaber. The point is not that he fights Vader, the point is that he wields his saber like a pro.

And what was the training that he receives in the OT? Open your mind, concentrate, let go, be calm, at peace, trust your feeling, follow your instinct, etc. It was never about detailed instructions on how to lift rocks or read minds, it was always about opening your mind, concentrating and letting the force guide you.

In a new hope, during the falcon training sequence, he doesn’t miss because he is a beginner, he misses because he his not using the force. Once he is blinded, he has to listen to the force and succeed perfectly, that was the whole point of the helmet thing.

Rey fighting skill is explained in TFA. You should rewatch it. And having been a martial artist for many years, switching from a staff to a sword is not that hard. Once you know how to control your own body, the weapon only becomes an extension of it.

 

The fact that someone voted my deep explanation and comparison to space travel to Mars as "unoriginal" proves that many people on this board are completely incapable of accepting criticism.

Anyway.

And in the next moment, he loses his lightsaber. I don't think it's that hard to hold a saber and make it look cool, even for a beginner. Even I could do that. And yet again you forget that Vader was toying with him, and it's not like their fighting is super advanced. It's more about rage than coordination, because Luke thinks that he is fighting the man who killed his father.

I think that training under Yoda in ESB is good and very helpful. I never said otherwise. And yeah, of course he uses the Force when he fires the final blow, I never said otherwise. You don't understand what I was saying.

The point is that Rey is able to do all her things without training or explanation. And I wasn't talking about her fighting being illogical, I never said that her being able to fight with a lightsaber doesn't make sense. I specifically talked about her using the Force. Read my post again.

 

I don’t understand how when it comes to TFA’s fight between Kylo and Rey, people seem to forget or ignore that Kylo was injured by a weapon that JJ spent the entire movie making a point to show how powerful the weapon is over and over again. Also, Kylo was not trying to kill her. He was holding back in sense because of this. Rey on the other hand was using her anger from Kylo killing Han and possibly Finn and wanted him dead. They were fighting with two completely different intentions.

As far as why she is so powerful, I think as adults we tend to overthink things. Some people have natural abilities. Rey is a natural in the Force. She was chosen by the Force to rise up against the growing power of the dark side in Kylo. Do we really need a million explanations of why or how. As far as argument of “but we have never seen this before” or “ Luke and Anakin were not like this” my response as this. If they never develop new ways of doing things for theses stories, SW is going to get stale fast.

 

I don't like naturals, it makes me think of Superman - which is the most boring popular character in comic books. Even Anakin who was probably conceived by the Force itself wasn't a complete natural.

But people seem to love super heroes these days, and every movie studio wants to turn their films into super hero movies - so why not.

 

I understand what you are saying perfectly, I just disagree with you.

The training we see in the OT is not about doing things with the force is what I am saying. It’s about listening to a sixth sense. Forget what your eyes tells you, forget what your ears tells you, open your mind. Do we ever see a Jedi master instructing his padawan on the mechanism of force lifting a rock? Nope. When Yoda asks Luke to lift the X-wing, does he instructs him on how to do it? Nope. He just tells him to do it. "Do or do not, there is no try".

In a way, you want the force to have a logical scientific explanation. But let’s not blind ourselves, the force is movie magic. Your character needs to fool stormtroopers? The force! They need to keep on living after dying? The force! Make an impossible shot? The Force! Reach an object out of range? The Force! Know what is going on at the other side of the galaxy? The force! Jump really high? The Force! Jump in an endless pit and survive? The Force! Shoot lightning from your fingers? The Force! Run as fast as the Flash? The Force! Block lasers with a sword? The Force! Need I go on?

If I have a bit of advice for you, it would be "let go!". Just enjoy the ride and stop worrying about logic. You’ll be happier in the Star Wars universe.

 

That's not how the Force works.

Why should I (and many others) let go when the Force made perfect sense in all previous 6 films? It's only up until recently that the fan base have started to become divisive among this. And it's not something like midichlorians, which, even though many disliked the idea of measuring the Force, still made sense in terms of the other films.

It's all magic of course, but you still have to have it make sense in a fantasy setting.

 

A virgin birth has to make sense?

 

To me, and many others, it still make sense.

In the words of Obi Wan: “Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.”

 

There's one big problem I have with her ability to use telekinesis. Yoda said" size matters not" but apparently it does. Why do we know this? Well Rey's ability to use telekinesis overshadows every former display of this ability with ease. There must be some boundaries otherwise other forcusers would have been able to perform telekinesis at least to the same degree. The Canon knows many eyperienced, well trained, highly motivated an talented forceusers both from the dark and the light side. The same limits which apply to them should apply to Rey since she is just a nobody. Also keep in ind how quickly Rey masters the force. Compare Luke hovering stones in ESB with Rey hovering a complete landslide of rocks in TLJ. Unless we get an explaination why she is the best at telkinsis out all the characters we see in the comics, the animated series and the movies she is OP.

TL;DR: the degree to which a force ability X can be used has limits. We can estimate these limits when looking at how force ability X was has previosuly been depicted in Canon. If Rey overcomes the limits that apparently applied to all the other forceusers in Canon before here then we need an answer why she can bend the rulez.

 

Do you believe in people with natural abilities in real life? They do occur. If you do believe in them, then why can’t you accept them in a made up fictional universe.

 

Because what Obi-Wan told Luke was a white lie. By using Obi-Wan's quote, you mean that in Episode IX someone like Obi-Wan will come along and explain that "Rey's Force powers was an illusion, it all depends on your point of view".

 

I agree, there are naturals. However, I've never seen an amateur boxer defeat the heavyweigth world champion after 2 weeks of training. Being a natural is okay, but Luke was probably a natural too and look what he was able to do in ESB compared to Rey in TLJ.

 

That is simply not true. If you, for example, believe that Beethoven was a natural in the sense that he was able to play the piano without any training whatsoever, you have been deeply misled. Beethoven had a natural gift, but he would never been able to play the piano unless his father showed him. There's a difference between having a gift and actually learning how to use this gift.

 

"point of view"
"unlearn what you have learned."
"only different in your mind."

Did Luke need an explanation why Rey had the same power? Luke just recognized it and how dangerous it was, and went right on with his day. Luke didn't even question it, implying that he believed it was possible.

"equal in the light will rise. Skywalker, I assumed" (after Kylo had been shown to block a blaster bolt in mid-air and invade others minds)
"We are what they grow beyond."

 

As an artist who was considered "talented" by my family and at the university I have to say that talent is about 10% of what makes a good artist compared to 20% knowledge and 70% exercise. No matter how talented you are unless you study anatomy and do a ton of anatomy drawings and sculpts you won't be a able to do a convincing characterdesign. Rey would have to be 98,5% talent, 1% training and 0,5% knowledge to explain her fast progression. It is ridiculous and does only serve as a deus ex machina.

 

Still doesn't explain why she is just as powerful as Kylo without any training, while Kylo had training from BOTH Luke and Snoke.

I understand that some fans are still using the argument "There is still a chance for this to be explained in Episode IX", but I seriously don't think they'll bother explaining it. Because thanks to people who defend Rey for this reason, they won't feel the need to explain it because the big mass will eat it all up anyway.