This is what I don’t understand. All of this information is stated outright or heavily implied in the film.
I may be alone, but I saw it this way.
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She was not using the Force in the first stage of the fight, at least not much.
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When he says, “Force”, she repeats, “The Force” and closes her eyes. When she opens her eyes back up, two things have happened.
a. She is fully using the Force to aid her in her fight.
b. She has accessed prior training she had before her memory wipe. The memory wipe thing is what I assumed had occurred…though I am not 100% sure the movie states this.
Finn, apparently, just manages to hang on because Kylo Ren is toying with him. Ren injured instead of killed him…because the script says so.
Saw it yesterday and just finished reading the thread.
A couple of fan theories I have after the movie: One, learning the force looks a lot like this graph. You start with only mild, passive powers, but once your force sensitivity is awakened, you learn a lot of powers very fast, and then most of your training is refining those powers as you go from 90% trained to 100% trained. Similar to how a good athlete could win the Heismann and go to the National Championship Game as a freshman, but might take 5 years in the NFL before they get to the playoffs. Kylo Ren even has a line about “Catch her quickly, now that the force has awakened in her she will get more dangerous very soon”.
The other is that the Force, while not sentient per se, does have a will of it’s own. That is, “May the Force be with you” is not just a saying between Force users but a hope that the will of the Force will aid your actions and your cause. Ren is able to successfully duel a powerful, trained dark side user not only because Kylo Ren was injured or off his game from killing his dad, but because the Force is aiding her. It’s just that most of the time the Force doesn’t have an effect because it doesn’t care who wins the space-tennis match. But two powerful users dueling for the fate of galaxy? One of them will have the force on their side.
My wife and I did think that the plot was a bit of a retread (“Look, another planet killing space station with that one weak point”), but overall I enjoyed the movie quite a bit. I do wonder if Finn will turn out to be mildly force sensitive, and that is what helped him overcome his stormtrooper conditioning.
Ok, last fan thought. Force users have access to a wide array of powers, but they have an affinity for different ones. That’s why Kylo Ren is able to stop a blaster bolt in mid-air but his force choke is more of a force-pull-into-my-grip, while Darth Vader can merely deflect a bolt but can choke someone on another ship effortlessly.
Lancelot was a great knight who erred once. What’s the lesson? Strive to be just like him, except for the ‘err once’ part? Or ‘err, err, always be erring’ instead?
(Imagine, like, the opposite of Vader: Anakin Skywalker nails the beautiful [del]princess[/del] queen, and defeats the evil Count Dooku, and becomes the youngest-ever member of the Jedi Council, and promptly reports the Dark Lord Of The Sith to them, and arrives just as Mace Windu prepares to execute the criminal. And now imagine Anakin just stands there, with a Harrison Ford grin – “You’re all clear, Mace! Pop his top, and let’s go home!” – and the day is saved, and Skywalker is a hero! Except, no; at the key moment, he made the wrong choice; WAH-WAAH. Do you follow his example except for that one decision, or do you base your life on repeating his one mistake?)
Ah, yes, thanks. I remember that.
Star Wars : The Force Awakens - Does this mean the Force is sentient and can influence a couple of sensitive kids who never picked up a light saber before?
“You mean it controls your actions?”
“Partially. But it also obeys your commands.”
“They continually speak to us, telling us the will of The Force; when you learn to quiet your mind, you’ll hear them speaking to you.”
I enjoyed the swordfights a bunch! Where the first movies had the combatants just knocking blades and the second bunch portrayed swordfighting to be more like some weird form of dance, what I saw in The Force Awakens was people trying to actually hit each other with weapons. Not well in Finn’s case, mind you, but with serious intent. Loved it. I’m a fencer, I could see how Ren could have ended his fight with Finn before it started. But these guys weren’t fencing, they were fighting. Awesome.
As far as theories about Rey’s facility with the Force goes, none are needed. She’s no more savvy than Luke was before he went to Dagobah. And she already knows how to fight with a stick so being able to adapt to an injured opponent with a temper didn’t seem out of place to me. AND her ability to pilot the Millennium Falcon is no different than Luke being able to fly an X-Wing three days after suddenly no longer being a moisture farmer’s nephew.
You know I can ban you, right?
Look, I likes me some 80’s music, but Blue Monday kept running through my head all movie.
I agree. As someone said upthread, being strong in the Force (and, let’s face it, being the lead character of the movie) means you get to be hyper-competent at the necessary skills really fast. Luke was aiming proton torpedoes better than a computer, and force-grabbing his lightsaber out of a snowbank, after just one measly lesson against a remote controlled drone. Not to mention swinging across a chasm, and fighting off hordes of stormtroopers, and blowing attacking TIE fighters out of the sky, and all sorts of other hero-type actions.
It’s funny how nobody ever uses the term “Mary Sue” until it’s a girl doing cool heroic stuff.
I really hope it doesn’t turn out that Rey’s parents are Skywalkers, Solos, or Organas. It would be too obvious, and we already have the Kylo Ren connection. I enjoyed the movie but if they do that in Episode VIII it would confirm that they are simply retreading the original saga.
From IO9, don’t call her a Mary Sue:
http://io9.gizmodo.com/please-stop-spreading-this-nonsense-that-rey-from-star-1749134275
There’s a male version (“Gary Stu”) although it’s admittedly a lot less used. The concept has its roots in fanfic and perhaps there was a lot more female-authored fanfic going on in the circles that coined the term.
Yep. Wesley Crusher from ST: TNG is probably the most famous Gary Stu.
It wasn’t just Rey who picked up all this martial arts expertise immediately. Finn was able to fight Kyle Ron to a draw with a lightsaber, even though he hadn’t even seen one before. He could fire a ship’s gun like an expert marksman even though he’d never used one of them before, either. He’s no ordinary stormtrooper, his conscience attack notwithstanding - he has an overload of midichlorians himself.
I say Finn is actually Mace Windu’s son.
And doesn’t look a day over fifty?
Really? If it turns out that Rey is Luke Skywalker’s daughter, that will be the confirmation that they’re retreading the original saga, and not the thousand other similarities to the original 1977 film? (Vital plans hidden in a droid left on a desert planet, planet-killing spherical weapon that has a vulnerability that can be overcome by a rag-tag team of pilots, etc.)
The thing is, the only time anybody says “Gary Stu” is in discussions just like this one, which are about the concept of the Mary Sue. People don’t tend to use it in actual discussion about characters, because we don’t need a special term for “a male character who is good at everything he does, never loses, always has things go his way, and is beloved by everyone apart from obvious villains.” We already have a term for characters like that. We call them “the hero.”
James Bond, Batman, Sherlock Holmes, The Doctor, pick your favorite. They’re all ridiculously, unrealistically good at their various jobs, the biggest badass in town, the smartest guy in the room, better than everyone else at dozens of different skills, with an encyclopedic knowledge of hundreds of esoteric subjects. And no one ever calls them Mary Sues, or even Gary Stus. They’re just the hero, so of course their competence goes without saying.
The term “Mary Sue” comes from a story called “A Trekkie’s Tale,” by Paula Smith, written in 1974. Go ahead, read it. It’s very short.
What’s interesting about it is that it’s (deliberately) bad, but it’s bad in a lot of ways. In addition to the unrealistically competent main character, it’s also got stilted dialogue, no real organization, plot developments that appear out of nowhere, and our familiar heroes behaving wildly out of character. It’s a satire of bad fanfic writing in general. It says something not very pleasant about fandom, I think, that the one thing that was seized on was “Female character who’s good at stuff=Bad.”