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 kronk wrote:

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

They should have refrained from being OTT with her abilities and be keen to show that she is training and qualify why she is able to do certain things.

I get that thought. I totally do. She pulled some incredible stunts in a vehicle she most likely had never flown or even ridden in before.

But it was fething cool.

Yes but surely its more rewarding to build up to those moments and rationalize them within the story? You shouldn't have level 1 characters doing level 20 stuff. I mean Po Dameron is supposed to be the ace pilot yet his flying later on isn't really more impressive than what Rey pulls off in that scene. Theres no room for growth or development. Theres no sense of something having been earned. It doesn't feel like a couple of fish out of water kids outfoxing the Third Rate First Order. It looked like Han pulling off some insane maneuvers that no living human could possibly achieve. You can't have your characters be both superhuman for the sake of spectacle and be green "ordinary people".

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


Immediately prior, she confirms she's a pilot.

She also shows an intimate knowledge of the Falcon's inner workings.

Yes but HOW

Who says she's a Level 1 pilot though??


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


Immediately prior, she confirms she's a pilot.

She also shows an intimate knowledge of the Falcon's inner workings.

Yes but HOW

Oh stop being deliberately obtuse.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Who says she's a Level 1 pilot though??


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


Immediately prior, she confirms she's a pilot.

She also shows an intimate knowledge of the Falcon's inner workings.

Yes but HOW

Oh stop being deliberately obtuse.

Deliberately obtuse? Because the actions of a character make no sense with her background, to the point that before the current movie people inferred a loss of memory? Are you for real?

But here goes, for the hard of understanding.

Young Rey is clearly sold to Unkar Plutt.

Unkar Plutt is the owner of the Falcon at the time of TFA.

Rey was therefore the cabin boy equivalent for the Falcon hence she knows all about it, and mechanics.

Duh.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
How do you figure she's never flown it before?

Immediately prior, she confirms she's a pilot.

She also shows an intimate knowledge of the Falcon's inner workings.

Does that not suggest a serious knowledge of it's capabilities?? Ones learned in her youth?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kronk wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


So please, explain to me this confusion that she'd never flown anything before ever except her bike thing?

I'm confused about her opportunities. Granted, in the Star Wars universe, space cessna's are just lying about. However, she was a dirt poor junker on a dirt poor planet. I doubt she was enrolled in a pilot vocational training in high school.

Do we need to know how, or just accept that at that point she was an experienced pilot? Because she was.

Being a pilot means you can maybe fly an unfamiliar space ship off the ground, avoid being shot at and fire off the hyperdrive. Not cartwheel through the desert, loop through the interior of a Star Destroyer whilst being shot at and come out on top. That's ridiculous unless you establish that Rey is a superlative pilot and in the film after she does it she expresses surprise and amazement that she did it stating shes never flown anything like the Falcon. I understand this is a "subtle" hint that shes Force Sensitive but its always this issue over the degree. Should Rey really be a better pilot than Po Dameron because she is an untrained force sensitive? I would maintain no. Again, the writers went with "rule of cool" and basically did not care how ridiculous it would be. Rather than have something like Han leaving Tatooine they went for cartwheeling inside wrecked Super Star Destroyers.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
But here goes, for the hard of understanding.

Young Rey is clearly sold to Unkar Plutt.

Unkar Plutt is the owner of the Falcon at the time of TFA.

Rey was therefore the cabin boy equivalent for the Falcon hence she knows all about it, and mechanics.

Duh.

And he let her fly around during the weekend I guess.
I find your dismissing attitude kinda ironic.
Look, you see what Kronk wrote? "I see that but I don't care, is cool". Fine with that. I am not the suspension of disbelief police.
But you cannot call people that point out weird stuff in a character or plot obtuse. You are the one willingly ignoring the gaping holes here.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
But here goes, for the hard of understanding.

Young Rey is clearly sold to Unkar Plutt.

Unkar Plutt is the owner of the Falcon at the time of TFA.

Rey was therefore the cabin boy equivalent for the Falcon hence she knows all about it, and mechanics.

Duh.

Theres a big difference between reading the manual and being an ace pilot...

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
But here goes, for the hard of understanding.

Young Rey is clearly sold to Unkar Plutt.

Unkar Plutt is the owner of the Falcon at the time of TFA.

Rey was therefore the cabin boy equivalent for the Falcon hence she knows all about it, and mechanics.

Duh.

1. You are making an extrapolation/assumption/leap of logic.

2. Stick your "duh" where the twin stars of Tatooine don't shine.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
But here goes, for the hard of understanding.

Young Rey is clearly sold to Unkar Plutt.

Unkar Plutt is the owner of the Falcon at the time of TFA.

Rey was therefore the cabin boy equivalent for the Falcon hence she knows all about it, and mechanics.

Duh.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense to me. And in terms of development, I'd say the story of Rey learning what it means to be a Jedi (or not) is more compelling than Rey learning how to fly a ship or swing a saber. Poe having to face the responsibility of leading a rebellion is likewise a much more interesting arc than 'man who is good at flying things gets better at flying things.'

No one ever asked how Han became such a good pilot, or how Obi-wan became one of the great Jedi swordsmen, or Leia became a rebel leader. We don't need to see every aspect of a character's story from birth to death, and I'm perfectly happy to accept that if a film shows Character X doing Cool Thing Y, there's a logical reason why they are able to do that thing.

 Paradigm wrote:
Poe having to face the responsibility of leading a rebellion is likewise a much more interesting arc than 'man who is good at flying things gets better at flying things.'

and I'm perfectly happy to accept that if a film shows Character X doing Cool Thing Y, there's a logical reason why they are able to do that thing.

I actually agree with both of these thoughts. I liked to see the (albeit limited) character growth of Poe into what will most likely be a/the Resistance's key general in Episode IX.

I'm fine with "Rey tapped into the force and could fly the Falcon through a wrecked ship because it fething looked cool!"

Just don't tell me slave girl got to take the Aluminum Falcon out for a spin on the weekends. Pull the other one. It's got bells on it!

Let's compare Luke and Reys flying abilities...

Luke makes several boasts about flying. When Han asks him who would fly the ship, he claims to be a pretty good pilot. He mentions bulls-eyeing womp rats in his airspeeder. Leading up to the battle of Yavin, we have several statements that he is a pilot, even if it's implied that he may not be as good as he thinks. He is then paired up with an extremely experienced Astromech droid, who is presumably able to help walk him through stuff like the ships controls. During the battle, he shoots a TIE fighter off of his wingman, and has to have another pilot shoot one off his tail, taking minor damage in the process. Eventually, almost all other fighters are shot down and he leads the attack on the trench. His wingmen are shot down, and Vader is about to shoot him down. Then, he is saved by Han's dramatic re-entry getting the fighters off of his tail. During the trench run, he managed to avoid the fatal shot, but took damage and lost R2. Vader takes a moment to note that Luke is strong with the force. Luke then uses the force to pull off an impossible shot, with Obi-Wan tutoring him. He then lands his fighter, but let's assume that its landing sequence is similar to his airspeeder.

So, Luke proves to be a reasonably impressive pilot, but is sill reliant on friends and wingmen to survive. His displays of the force are noted, and only manage to allow one impossible shot, and delay the inevitable against Vader. The most Bantha poodoo thing about this is the fact that, as the new guy, he was allowed to lead the trench run.

In contrast, Rey gets one line "I'm a pilot" about 30 seconds before jumping in the Falcon. She also refers to it as "Garbage", implying that she may never have actually flown it before. She then proceeds to pull off some of the best piloting in the entire series, out-flying Lando by taking the Falcon through a Super Star Destroyer without a scratch. She then shoots down a TIE Fighter with a broken gun. This is also before we (or she) are given any indications that she is force-sensitive.

So whereas Luke has several hints dropped to justify him being above-average, Rey goes straight from zero to "OMG CHECK OUT OUR SPECIAL EFFECTS BUDGET", without any real concern for stuff like "Character Arcs" or "Logic".


Also, as for the SJW thing... judging by the fact that a lot of reviews I've read cited "Diversity" or "Strong Female Characters", linking SJW's to this movie's generally positive critical reception might not just be the usual "crazy guy on the internet" reaction. I rather suspect that no-one wanting to badmouth Carrie Fischer's last movie may also play a role,

I'm not sure that Rey flying the Falcon makes her a 'better' pilot than Poe. Poe effortlessly decimates a TIE squadron in the space of seconds and zips into Starkiller Base to blow it up in what looked like a very confined chamber to steer an X-Wing in, and that's without getting into his stunt at the beginning of The Last Jedi. Rey took the Millennium Falcon, a ship that we can assume to be pretty maneuverable given all the tight confines it's flown in before (and not just with Han at the controls!), through a series of narrow spaces that she was extremely familiar with in order to force her pursuers to crash (something we've seen happen to countless TIE pilots before, it's their second-leading cause of death behind the Falcon's lasers). She's a good pilot, something which I always put down to her experience with her speeder and maybe Space Cessnas (hey, we already know that directly translates to spacecraft skills!) along with her being particularly strong with the Force, but I honestly didn't see her doing anything that would knock Poe off his position as Best Resistance Pilot.

Oh, right, the actual thread topic!

I liked the movie. Quite a bit.

It's up there at the top with Empire Strikes Back and Rogue One, as far as I'm concerned.

 Paradigm wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
But here goes, for the hard of understanding.

Young Rey is clearly sold to Unkar Plutt.

Unkar Plutt is the owner of the Falcon at the time of TFA.

Rey was therefore the cabin boy equivalent for the Falcon hence she knows all about it, and mechanics.

Duh.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense to me. And in terms of development, I'd say the story of Rey learning what it means to be a Jedi (or not) is more compelling than Rey learning how to fly a ship or swing a saber. Poe having to face the responsibility of leading a rebellion is likewise a much more interesting arc than 'man who is good at flying things gets better at flying things.'

No one ever asked how Han became such a good pilot, or how Obi-wan became one of the great Jedi swordsmen, or Leia became a rebel leader. We don't need to see every aspect of a character's story from birth to death, and I'm perfectly happy to accept that if a film shows Character X doing Cool Thing Y, there's a logical reason why they are able to do that thing.

Because Poe, Obi Wan, Han start off in that position. Those aspects of their character are static so people have no objection to them as we know their arc will not center on that.

People very rightly recognize that Rey is training to be a Jedi, has never held a lightsaber before, does not use the force and as such quite naturally expect her to have to learn these things. If they want her to be like your Jedi Knight TOR MMO character who already knows the basics but has some life lesson to learn then she should just start off as a Jedi in training. But when Disney simply handwaves her skill with a lightsaber and use of force powers it is extremely jarring. Again this is the rule of cool. They wanted a big lightsaber battle in TFA and in the LJ so they push Rey into that role instead of having her train or do other stuff like Luke did until he fought Vader and lost. Plus, the original trilogy made much greater use of timeskips since several years or months pass between the films. Whereas so far the sequel trilogy looks to take place over a few days. It means we as the audience are prevented from imagining that Rey has been practicing in her spare time.

Does she learn to be a Jedi in the LJ? All she does is berate Luke for sitting on the island, get told the force is everywhere, then it all becomes about her trying to redeem Mr Emo. So she has a good 30 seconds of training from Luke. Again, Disney seems to just have a disdain for the notion that Rey had to actually do any work to achieve what she has.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
But here goes, for the hard of understanding.

Young Rey is clearly sold to Unkar Plutt.

Unkar Plutt is the owner of the Falcon at the time of TFA.

Rey was therefore the cabin boy equivalent for the Falcon hence she knows all about it, and mechanics.

Duh.

Her understanding of the mechanics can easily be explained away by her having been used by Plutt during his modification of the ship after he obtained it. However knowing how to fly it? No, I highly doubt he'd show his property how to fly his property. Plus, the implication of her being a Cabin Boy would go to imply she was with him when he took the ship places for what ever he needed to take it places for. Just bombing around Jakku to met junk dealers? Maybe but thats kinda a poor use of the Falcon. He clearly never took her off world ("...never knew there was this much green in the Galaxy"), because Im pretty sure she said she'd never left, and because of her self delusions about her family coming back (turning down Han's Job offer) I doubt she'd of even wanted to leave for Plutt's milk runs.

Wow. I poked my head in here to take a look after seeing the movie this weekend and after reading just one page, Nope.

Have fun being bitter about something good.

 Spinner wrote:
I'm not sure that Rey flying the Falcon makes her a 'better' pilot than Poe. Poe effortlessly decimates a TIE squadron in the space of seconds and zips into Starkiller Base to blow it up in what looked like a very confined chamber to steer an X-Wing in, and that's without getting into his stunt at the beginning of The Last Jedi. Rey took the Millennium Falcon, a ship that we can assume to be pretty maneuverable given all the tight confines it's flown in before (and not just with Han at the controls!), through a series of narrow spaces that she was extremely familiar with in order to force her pursuers to crash (something we've seen happen to countless TIE pilots before, it's their second-leading cause of death behind the Falcon's lasers), and she still accidentally knocks bits off of her ship. She's a good pilot, something which I always put down to her experience with her speeder and maybe Space Cessnas (hey, we already know that directly translates to spacecraft skills!) along with her being particularly strong with the Force, but I honestly didn't see her doing anything that would knock Poe off his position as Best Resistance Pilot.

Oh, right, the actual thread topic!

I liked the movie. Quite a bit.

It's up there at the top with Empire Strikes Back and Rogue One, as far as I'm concerned.

Poe is in an upgraded X Wing. Rey is in a 50 year old ship. She is using a Lancaster to evade an F-16. Also the guns on the Falcon were broke. You give Rey the same X Wing she'd be better given how she flew.

When Po flies around Starkiller base what he does is no more extreme or impressive than Rey flying through the inside of a wrecked Super Star Destroyer.

Rey's in the Falcon. It's the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy. Everyone calls it garbage, but given the stuff you can pull off in it, I wouldn't be surprised if that big glowing blue strip is a giant khyber crystal connecting the ship itself to the Force. You know the Falcon is going to get into some kind of tight-confines chase and have to turn sideways at some point, and it's going to make that turn on a dime.

Poe put some turbo boosters on his X-Wing.

Again, they're both skilled pilots, but one of them is in the inexplicably best ship in the galaxy, and the other one is in an X-Wing, a serviceable dogfighter that we've seen go down in flames a dozen times before. I'm not saying that what Rey did was mundane, far from it, but I certainly don't think it makes her a better pilot than the guy slapping TIEs out of the air like it's an afterthought.

lonestarr777 wrote:
Wow. I poked my head in here to take a look after seeing the movie this weekend and after reading just one page, Nope.

Have fun being bitter about something good.

Hahah, right? I came out of that movie feeling like I was eight years old again and wanting to be a Jedi when I grew up, came home, checked the Internet...sighed...

lonestarr777 wrote:
Wow. I poked my head in here to take a look after seeing the movie this weekend and after reading just one page, Nope.

Have fun being bitter about something good.

You're enjoying it wrong, heathen!

Begone!

 Vaktathi wrote:
A bigger question on the fuel stuff and chase...

When did fuel consumption become such an issue for ships in the Star Wars universe? If large ships have things akin to nuclear reactors or things even more advanced, why is fuel a concern? Modern nuclear reactors can go years or decades without refueling, fuel never seemed to be an issue for large vessels in previous films. That whole thing felt really hamfisted. The part with the First Order fighters having to be recalled for being out of range was also odd, why can't they operate beyond a few dozen kilometers from their home base ships? They're literally in quite short visual range of their home vessels before being recalled. Likewise, when the small rebel ship group is being chased, seemingly nothing but the gargantuan ship is firing, and only with its mega guns or whatever...everything else looks like it'd be within conventional modern cannon range...in space...why didn't they ever open fire?

You're making the mistake of applying common sense and logic to these films.

There is also the question of why nobody is building empty ships and getting them to go kamikaze more often, after the vice-admiral's sacrifice that took out the dreadnought...

The use of fire ships in naval warfare history is well documented.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


There is also the question of why nobody is building empty ships and getting them to go kamikaze more often, after the vice-admiral's sacrifice that took out the dreadnought...

The use of fire ships in naval warfare history is well documented.

Or why didn't the First Order just empty one of their own smaller Faster-Than-Light capable ships and fire it at the remaining ship.

They had to leave all their supplies on-planet while evacuating, didn't they? I assumed that included all the spare fuel they'd normally be able to use.

As for the Holdo My Beer maneuver, maybe a smaller ship wouldn't have anything near that kind of effect, and kamikaze-ing large ships is just prohibitively expensive and simple enough to outmaneuver if you realize what they're about to do? This isn't the first time that rebel commanders have slammed their ships into other ships as a desperate last move, it was good to see them upholding the tradition.

 kronk wrote:

Or why didn't the First Order just empty one of their own smaller Faster-Than-Light capable ships and fire it at the remaining ship.

No reason to. The Resistance fleet was trapped and horrifically outgunned. Why bother wasting one of your own ships when you can just cruise along and shoot at them?

Do they even have vessels with hyperdrives smaller than a Star Destroyer? Pretty sure TIEs aren't FTL-capable...maybe the shuttles?

 Peregrine wrote:
To get good at fighting with a sword (or any weapon) you need to practice with it...

This is false.
I am living proof.
In college I took Fencing/Saber Fighting. With no experience I defeated my entire class and my Olympian (as in, winning medalist against other world champions) instructor with little to no effort. My professor begged me to join the school team because he thought I could be a champion. But I'm lazy and didn't feel like showing up to the arena at 7am on the extreme far side of campus.
If a slow, 350lb party animal can take on a trained master then a farm boy with mystical powers can take on a samurai sorcerer.

 kronk wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


There is also the question of why nobody is building empty ships and getting them to go kamikaze more often, after the vice-admiral's sacrifice that took out the dreadnought...

The use of fire ships in naval warfare history is well documented.

Or why didn't the First Order just empty one of their own smaller Faster-Than-Light capable ships and fire it at the remaining ship.

Or that as well. Kronk, you're always one step ahead.

There's also the question of story arcs. Spoilers

We knew at the end of Empire that Solo would have to be rescued in ROTJ and of course, Palpatine would emerge in all his glory.

After Episode II, we knew that Anakin would turn and Yoda would escape etc etc

But what's the story arc for IX? The resistance are on the run, but that's nothing new.

Ben has to be stopped, but again, we knew that from the first minute of TFA. The First order's defeat is an anti-climax compared to the end of The Empire.

I honestly don't see how this story ends on an entertaining note. I'm feeling no heat from it.

 Spinner wrote:


Hahah, right? I came out of that movie feeling like I was eight years old again and wanting to be a Jedi when I grew up, came home, checked the Internet...sighed...

But that's my issue. It does not look like something well crafted, in story, dialogue and characters, like the stuff of when I was 10 y.o.
Visuals are another matter and I generally always appreciate the arts and crafts of the creative people.
Also the movie has a couple of scenes with a superb, really superb use of color.

Reread what I wrote above, the biggest issue beyond illogical parts is the pandering to the TV-series crowd instead of building a linear, archetypal story.

Starwars isn't sci fi. It's future fantasy (despite being set a long time ago).

You cannot nit pic their technology because their tech doesn't work on any real world level. Because it's not science. It's fantasy. Light sabers work because they are essentially magic items.

X wings can lift strait into the air and do all kind of crazy maneuvers and turns in space despite their only thrust being 4 engines that point strait back.

How the feth would a tie fighter turn? In atmosphere?

Again, it's fantasy. Not Sci Fi. Don't try to figure out fuel consumption or what would happen with their ships.

 Lance845 wrote:
Starwars isn't sci fi. It's future fantasy (despite being set a long time ago).

You cannot nit pic their technology because their tech doesn't work on any real world level. Because it's not science. It's fantasy. Light sabers work because they are essentially magic items.

X wings can lift strait into the air and do all kind of crazy maneuvers and turns in space despite their only thrust being 4 engines that point strait back.

How the feth would a tie fighter turn? In atmosphere?

Again, it's fantasy. Not Sci Fi. Don't try to figure out fuel consumption or what would happen with their ships.

So, in Lord of the Rings, it would be perfectly acceptable that Hobbits suddenly start to shoot lightning from their pee pee. It's fantasy, right?
Even fantastic universes should have coherence in world-building. Is essential for immersion.
What you said is perfectly valid to answer to any critique that asks "realistic" space battles instead of dogfighting. That would be boring.
But once the rules are established the author has to stick to those or the immersion is broken.

 Lance845 wrote:
Starwars isn't sci fi. It's future fantasy (despite being set a long time ago).

You cannot nit pic their technology because their tech doesn't work on any real world level. Because it's not science. It's fantasy. Light sabers work because they are essentially magic items.

X wings can lift strait into the air and do all kind of crazy maneuvers and turns in space despite their only thrust being 4 engines that point strait back.

How the feth would a tie fighter turn? In atmosphere?

Again, it's fantasy. Not Sci Fi. Don't try to figure out fuel consumption or what would happen with their ships.

But if you follow the logic that anything can happen, and technology or magic can explain everything, then anybody can come along, click their fingers and turn everybody into Banthas or something.

There is no internal logic or consistency in most of these films. These films have chosen to follow the laws of Newtonian/Quantum physics or whatever. They should stick to those 'guidelines.'

It's perfectly acceptable for people to question fuel consumption, especially when it has never been an issue before. It smacks of a convenient plot device solver thing.

 DeffDred wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
To get good at fighting with a sword (or any weapon) you need to practice with it...

This is false.
I am living proof.
In college I took Fencing/Saber Fighting. With no experience I defeated my entire class and my Olympian (as in, winning medalist against other world champions) instructor with little to no effort. My professor begged me to join the school team because he thought I could be a champion. But I'm lazy and didn't feel like showing up to the arena at 7am on the extreme far side of campus.
If a slow, 350lb party animal can take on a trained master then a farm boy with mystical powers can take on a samurai sorcerer.

This has to be a joke.

Well, that's because it is a convenient plot device; so is the droid's escape pod not being blown up on its way down to Tatooine. So is Hoth having a cannon capable of temporarily crippling a Star Destroyer with one hit. So is the Empire deciding to locate the Death Star's shield generator on an easily-infiltratable forest moon.

I'd say that the lack of fuel had a much better in-movie explanation than all of those. They didn't have time to load spare fuel, they out-and-out said they were leaving behind supplies. The Dreadnought blew it all up.

Reread what I wrote above, the biggest issue beyond illogical parts is the pandering to the TV-series crowd instead of building a linear, archetypal story.

What wasn't linear about the story? They had four or five solid main-character-style arcs that began, developed, and resolved during the film.