Regarding Rey's rock moving skills...

You appear to be addressing someone that isn't me.
Rian's decision to subvert the prequels and the EU are part of the premise of what I said.

 

Well we have more examples than just one. Mother Talzin was Maul's mother and she is a forceuser like Maul. This is Canon and shows that dark forceuser inherit their powers too. .We also see that multiple generations all inherit the force without a single generation not having the force. scientifically speaking passing on the force to the children worked 100% of the time so why should we assume anything different.

 

I think this subject (Rey's ability to use the Force) will have to be one everyone agrees to disagree on until something comes up in the movies to add more information to the discussion. Until then the arguments are either "believe, it's just a SW movie, just go with it, it's funner" or "this doesn't follow canon, this needs to be explained further"... it's very similar to belief in a religion.

If you have faith, you need not ask questions (unless the questions are one day answered in a way they don't like), if you lack faith, no answer (other than those who are creating these films, and for some, even those won't do) will do.

 

Rey is - and will ultimately be the result of Luke's teachings. That's the important lesson. Be like Luke, not be of Luke. The idea that the Skywalker bloodline makes you special is as pointed out by Luke a product of hubrism. The true wisdom, your true legacy, is what you pass on.

“Heeded my words not, did you? Pass on what you have learned. Strength, mastery. But weakness, folly, failure also. Yes, failure most of all. The greatest teacher, failure is. Luke, we are what they grow beyond. That is the true burden of all masters.”

In Lucas's early drafts, the sequels would always be about the question what constitutes Luke Skywalker's legacy. One is Kylo, that of bloodline and the product of Luke's hubris. The other is Rey, the product of teaching, the result of Luke's wisdom and humanity.

Parentage is important. But not in the way that people who believed she would be a Skywalker, me included, would normally understand or imagined.

"You already know the truth. Whomever you're waiting for on Jakku, they're never coming back. But, there's someone who still could. "[Luke]" The belonging you seek is not behing you, it is ahead"

Rey sees her parents in everyone. Han, Leia, Luke. They are her spiritual parents, she learns from them. By learning from them she becomes like them. She becomes their 'child' accordingly.

Its poetic. It is much more intelligent than having her just be a Skywalker by blood. She's a Skywalker by action.

 

I agree with what you are saying but it is a rather subtle message compared to "No, I am you father". It is a different narrative compared to what we are used to and I can fully understand why some fans did not expect such a drastic changes and that a part of them is not particularly fond of them either.

 

There was mystery about who her parents were, but there was nothing implying that she was related to anyone in particular. The reason her parents were kept secret was to allow Rey to grow as a character and a reason to keep her from her hero’s journey. In TFA she was under to constant disillusionment that her parents were going to come back. It is the reason she wants to keep going back to Jakku. She doesn’t want to miss out on the chance they come back. She longs for family and belonging. It is not until Maz confronts her and makes her see the truth that her parents are not coming back. That she needs to look forward. She discovers along the way and by the end of TLJ she discovers that her “new” family is Finn, Leia and the members of the Reistance. However, at the beginning of TLJ she is still holding out that her parents weren’t the losers who caused her to repress her memories of her family and that there was a good reason they left her. In the end she finally accepts the truth.

In the end what I’m getting out was that the mystery of her parents were important to Rey but it was not important to us. The fans created it into being a bigger importance.

 

Oh I can understand it also. But then the problem is not with the narrative but with what people project on a story. They projected a lot on The Force Awakens. Me included. Projecting your hopes and own interpretation on a narrative piece, like The Force Awakens, is allowed, but don't expect writers to abide by all your wishes. That would be fanservice. Like that Vader scene in Rogue One. Fans screamed and begged for a scene like that. The writers complied. It is an awesome scene. Albeit also narratively redundant. That's why that scene in particular was blasted by critics. It became emblematic for what the rewrites of that movie had produced. An endless stream of redundant fan sevice. Whether that's all true or not is a different matter. It does show how writers have to perform a balancing act between what is narratively purposeful and what is not.

Making Rey Luke's daughter would be fan service to me. I'd love that. Would it be as satisfying and beatifully poetic as what we got now. Definitely not. What Johnson went for is infinitely superior to my own head canon.

--- Double Post Merged, Dec 30, 2017, Original Post Date: Dec 30, 2017 ---

I do think it is important for the fans. They pitty her. It's the worst thing she could hear at that moment. Like all of us, Rey hopes her parents are something special. We all see our parents in one way or the other as special. And if we fall out with them, consider them not special, we only do so because we hoped they would be.

You wrote a beatiful and intelligent post by the way.

 

I guess I think differently about this than you. At work I usually try to capture the essence of an IP and try to make it fit into an established world as well as possible. I don't mind a little fanservice every now and then and I am not aware of cirtics bashing the Vader scene. I was under the impression that most viewers regarded this scene as one of the highlights of R1. Personally I don't care about the parents of Rey but her character is way too one dimensional for my taste. Kylo is the reason why I look forward to IX. As for TLJ I think it changed things too quickly. A hybrid between TLJ and TFA would have done the trick imo.

 

I want to agree instinctively but we are also looking at a bridge leading into the unknown.
IX will validate or negate the solidity of its construction.

 

Star Wars and its protagonists are always about psychological conflict. Rey waits for her parents. Rey projects her parents on others. Rey want her parents to be of significance. Rey needs to outgrow her parents. If you don't care about Rey's parents, you will ultimately not care about Rey. It is an exercise in empathy. If you keep in mind Rey's psychological needs when it comes to parenthood, her character becomes more interesting. Like Rey, the audience wants Rey's parents to be someone. You pitty her when she learns, admits, that they are no one. It's her biggest fear which at that particular moment with Kylo has become -a- truth for her. THe conflict informs her actions and interactions with others throughout the two movies.

I hope you can appreciate why I think her character is more than just one-dimensional for me.

 

I can understand why you like her but I don't care about her parents because they are not important to me. Most heroes grow up as orphans, the Jedi in general are "orphans" since they are taken away from their parents when they start their Jedi training. Rey's conflict of not knowing about her parents is far less interesting than Jyn Erso's who had to witness her mother's death and her father's participation in creating a weapon of mass destruction. Rey is far to succesful and there's not enough struggle to make her interesting. Her character is basically perfect and I prefer hero's that start out as whiny b*tches (like Luke) who grow on me over time. Rey's evolution form good to even better is boring.

 

Ok well we agree. She is delusional. Her new family she has known over the past few afternoons. She runs off to Kylo a few days after watching him murder his father. This makes her needy and clingy. She is ready to run off with whoever gives her any attention. So this should preclude her from being a Jedi because she is selfish.

I don't care who her parents are. It never was important to me.

What teachings?

 

I think it is more than clear that this trilogy chosed a different approach to the mythology of the Force.
The prequels, which were heavily influenced by the New Age movement, rather tried to rationalise how the Force works and how one becomes a jedi.
All you have to do is train from a young age with mini-lightsabers and you'll eventually reach Force level 9000, thus you're guaranteed to become a space ninja (if you have midichlorians to communicate between you and the Force ofc.). The duels were also like that. Cold, over-creographed routines between robots who reached different Force-levels or stay on different heights...

The ST rather returned to the OT's path and made the Force more magic- like. It choses some people and boosts one's abilities depending on one's choices and emotions. Using the Force and the fights became rather a question of character, psychological conflict, decisions and emotions and not space kung fu.
I personally prefer this approach.

I mean Luke lost his first encounter with Vader because he wasn't ready emotionally. Yoda and Luke never even trained with lightsaber. In fact in ESB when Luke met his own darkness in the cave scene Yoda exactly told him he wasn't going to need any weapon...
Wars not make one great.
Same with Kylo. They said it out loud that he lost not mainly because of his injuries, but beacuase killing Han Solo didn't make him stronger like he believed, but more obscure than ever. He struggled during his fight against Rey and that is why he lost, especially when Rey started to believe in the Force, allowing it to help her.
Luke also didn't win in RotJ because he did 100 pushups, 100 sit-ups, 100 squats and ran 10 km a day... He won because he was ready emotionally and it was Vader that was struggling.

Teachings about the nature of the jedi, a very valuable lesson about faliure and presumably she learned very much from what Luke did on Crait.
Lessons that strenghten the character and make one better prepared emotionally.
Things Obi-wan and Yoda should've taught to Anakin, instead of preparing him to fight in wars with a lightsaber...

 

Lesson 1 and 2 explicitely told in the movie, I'm not going to repeat these. These are about the true nature of the force and the fight between good and evil: they're of an epistemological and ontological nature.
Lesson 3 implicitely: fighting and brashness is not always the best option. Sometimes you need to run from a fight and throw away the sabre
Lesson 4 (Ben cannot be turned, Luke was right. Rey's confrontation with Kylo ended in failure. Its an extension of the first lesson: brashness and direct confrontations are not always the wisest choice)
Lesson 5 (Who is Luke? Everyone is human. Know your humanity. Know what Luke has become, what the function was of sacrifice and how it will effect what you will become. In extension the answer to the question "what makes a hero?"

--- Double Post Merged, Dec 30, 2017, Original Post Date: Dec 30, 2017 ---

If you don't care about the issue of Rey's parents you naturally don't empathize with her, hence you don't like her. I do wish to empathize with Rey's psychological conflict concerning here parents. Hence I do like her. But this is something personal. I can't force you to empathize.

--- Double Post Merged, Dec 30, 2017 ---

Exactly, well said!

 

If Luke can stand toe to toe with Vader for a good while after barely any training, no combat training whatsoever and an obstinate, unreceptive mind to overcome I don't see how it's such a stretch that Rey, with years of self taught weapon training and a much tougher upbringing couldn't beat a much weaker wounded and distracted dark Jedi. I don't get the Mary sue argument at all. Then in The Last Jedi she doesn't do anything particularly special. She's already overcome a great deal of adversity before we meet her in TFA, we don't need to see her go through hardship to earn anything because a good portion of the last film was dedicated to setting her character up in a certain way.

Maybe I'm biased. I live in literally nowhere. As close as you can get to a real life Jakku, minus the sand. Living in the same kind of indebted servitude (Well, as close as you can get in a first world country, I'm not that badly off) where you're too overworked and underpaid to change your circumstance, you just work all day for a meagre portion, so I love Rey's character and backstory. I totally buy her in built resilience and mental fortitude, I don't share the same traits but I totally relate to her character and love that her strength comes from herself and her own experiences, not just off of a name or bloodline.

 

I'm hoping that there's more training she got than what we saw in the film. But I have to trust what the film shows us, which makes it a little crazy how Rey is so powerful.

--- Double Post Merged, Dec 30, 2017, Original Post Date: Dec 30, 2017 ---

Vader was toying with Luke and could have chopped him down any time he wanted. We saw this once Luke landed a blow on his arm, Vader responded by easily disabling Luke.

 

It is presumed she learned something from this. The movie was over.
The entire Jedi order was tricked into not behaving like Jedi anymore instead to be warriors. There was 3 movies where this played out. Obi Wan, Yoda, the whole lot of them....
The Jedi order was destroyed because they were more concerned in serving there own interest that they were blind to what was going on in front of them. Not because they thought they owned the force.

Again presumed. She runs off to Kylo, gets slapped around by Snoke, goes space ninja on trained assassin's. Has to save Kylo from space assassin's. Gets her feelings hurt because Kylo is really a psychopath, was prepared to fight him again, they struggle over the lightsaber. Lightsaber breaks in half. She wakes up first and leaves. Next we she she easily moves said giant pile of rocks.

Movie over.

The issue of who her parents are should have no basis on why I like her or not. I am indifferent to her because she has 0 progression as a character from the beginning to the end of the movie.

 

I'll try moving some rocks! That's a good trick!

But in all seriousness, Ani did many impossible feats at a young age, so Rey moving some rocks shouldn't be an issue, IMO.

 

Rey is a bad ass Jedi. The end.