Thanks for the write of Fishbreath. I might catch this movie again sometime.
The problem is inconsistency. Finn is also a trained solider and yet he is first beaten by some random stormtrooper in a duel and still survives in a direct duel for more than a second against Ren (and I know people bring up his injury but it really shouldn’t matter and the fact that people have to bring it up all the time kinda shows it didn’t work too well, not to mention that heroes are injured all the time in similar situations and it doesn’t hamper their skills).
You can of course argue that Ren wasn’t (fully) trained but that’s really reaching for arguments. What we know is that he was trained by Luke and after all was powerful enough to destroy Luke’s Jedi and become the leader of the Knight’s of Ren as well as the “apprentice” of the new super bad guy.
You can’t have him be the guy that does those things and have him stop laser beams as well as people in mid air (a power that clearly goes beyond what every other has been able to do in the movies) and then say he is just using brute force.
Also it should be mentioned again that Snoke only says it’s time to complete his training and doesn’t suggest at all that he had little training.
The whole problem is the fight itself / wanting a big light sabre duel in the movie. It’s the same reason why Darth Maul existed in the PT at all, you needed someone for the duel because a SW movie needs to have that.
But there is also a reason why in ANH it wasn’t Luke and not because you couldn’t have a scene in which he at least tries to fight Darth Vader, it would still have been possible to let Obi-Wan step in and let everything play out the same way. The reason is good story telling and not wasting the few good bullets you have when the character isn’t yet ready for this confrontation (and with not ready I’m not talking about skill). Having a duel between Luke and Vader in ANH would have lessened the impact and the whole built up of it in ESB.
TFA has now already blown its load which can still work out but I do question why they did it and especially the how. I mean the fight between Ren and Finn/Rey had emotionally at least going on more than the prequel fights (and it had some physicality to it) but it is still not even close to reaching the same impact as the fights between Luke and Vader in ESB and ROTJ.
I mean let’s be honest, the reaction to this duel was mostly that people were glad they weren’t those prequel jumping around affairs and that it had characters we are at least interested in/like. So the duel got a lot of things right but not everything and I think that is what people unconsciously are aware off and why they discuss the “power levels” of Rey and Ren.
They do it because something was missing and that’s because there simply wasn’t enough material yet for a full confrontation between Rey and Ren. Sure, you can have them fight and then argue why X should be able to do Y or why A shouldn’t be able to do B but the more important question should be why the characters were thrown into this duel.
In Rey’s case you can argue it’s an(another?) awakening, that she realizes how to use the force (like Luke when he shots the Deathstar) but then this brings me back to the inconsistencies. She already had similar moments, she did “win” the interrogation, was able to do the mind trick and force pulled the light sabre so those scenes lesser the effect of her moment in that duel because it’s not like she does something we or the character wasn’t already aware of.
It’s just not that big of a moment, it’s more like she made just another step in using her already established powers.
Another “problem” in the duel is the dynamic of the fight. Ren gets injured (before and within the fight) to establish that he isn’t at his best and can be beaten but I’m not sure if that was a good choice.
Do you know which person is usually injured, beaten or struggling with its physical condition in general? It’s the hero or at least the person were are supposed to emphasize with. This doesn’t mean a villain can’t be for example injured but it’s generally used to show that the villain is powerful, that he simply doesn’t care about this injury, that it makes him even stronger or that our hero is still losing despite doing damage to his opponent but it isn’t used this way in regards to Ren (it’s quite the opposite, we see how he has to fight the pain => punches himself).
Now don’t get me wrong, I think Ren’s portrayal isn’t by accident, that he gets the hero treatment (in regards to Bruce Willis’ amounts of being fucked up) because his character isn’t even supposed to be “the” villain and that’s why he does struggle (and even gets outright beaten).
It is also no surprise the other hero/Finn fails against Ren, I mean that’s what you expect, a heroic effort that ultimately fails because at this time in the story the villain will (has to) prevail.
This brings us back to Rey and what the reversal of those expectations are trying to tell us. In regards to story telling it doesn’t matter whether or not Ren was injured, just had a bad day, didn’t do enough bad guy training and so on (same is of course true for Rey), what matters is that the “villain” was beaten by our hero in the first of three acts.
So you gotta ask why they did this. Like I said there is the meta aspect of having a light sabre duel in a SW movie and just Finn wouldn’t have been enough (let’s be honest, Rey is the main character of TFA) but that doesn’t answer why the fight played out the way it did.
Rey doesn’t even get so much as a scratch in this fight (unlike Finn) and even does that “calmly walk around your opponent” when she has Ren down on the ground (which reminded me of Darth Maul and other villains though I admit that it might be reading a bit too much into it just like I noticed how Rey’s lightsabre stabbing looked a lot like the “technique” the Emperor used in ROTS).
Her fighting style also becomes very aggressive once she has her moment just like Luke after Vader taunts him about Leia and that was certainly supposed to show the power of the dark side, it makes him beat Vader, cut his hand off and is the signal for the emperor that Luke is ready for the dark side, that he gave into his anger so it’s a duel with Vader that he won by stepping over into the dark side and he realizes that once he sees Vader on the ground with his cut off limb. His “victory” only comes by refusing to fight, he doesn’t even attempt to attack the Emperor, he accepts whatever fate awaits him (just like Obi-Wan didn’t really fight Vader in ANH).
So now in TFA it’s the villain on the ground with Rey only having to finish him (or not) but then the (convenient) chasm happens and I’m not sure it works. It obviously keeps open the question what Rey would have done but it kinda shows that the characters weren’t really developed enough to answer that question so they HAD to delay it.
In ESB Luke CHOSE suicide rather than joining Vader and in ROTJ he CHOSE not to kill his Father. Those are very important character moments because they are huge decissions. Rey however doesn’t get to decide anything, she gets into a fight with Ren (she doesn’t chose to fight him, it’s pretty much forced on her unlike Luke who knew that he was going to confront Vader in ESB and ROTJ, this was after all a HUGE plot point), beats him and then doesn’t get the chance to follow up on it because the script intervenes.
So overall the duel works a lot better for Ren than it does for Rey in my opinion because the fight doesn’t change who Rey is or answers any questions (we know as much after the fight as we did before, Rey wasn’t “transformed” in any way, she just goes on with her journey) but it could have a huge impact for Ren (the parallels to Luke in ESB and Anakin in AOTC are there).
Btw note that Ren says to Rey he can teach her the “ways of the force”, he doesn’t ask her to join the dark side, I think that is very interesting.
2345
Disagree. Silver Stormtrooper is a huge hit with kids. Don’t believe me? Go to your local Disney Store. Captain Phasma was designed by the toy department.
I was going to make a joke about stopping buy there to pick up more Rice Krispie treats shaped like Mickey Mouse.
Now I really want a Rice Krispie treat.
Nice summary of my thoughts Leinad.
Especially the fact that Luke only beat Vader by tapping into the Dark side with the influence of Papaltine. The emperor had withdrawn support of Vader and shifted his support to Luke. Luke’s victory was deciding not to fight anymore. I do think I a similar way Rey tapped into the Dark side which is one of the interesting things in the movie.
Btw, don’t understand some criticism of Rey as mechanic on Falcon. A running joke in the original trilogy is that Han was a terrible mechanic and everyone else helped. Especially Chewie. But especially in ESB, there were moments that showed he didn’t really understand the ship as well as say the droids.
I get the hint and tried to make it more readable. ;)
Sorry, I write my replies here usually on my phone when I’m on the train and while struggling enough with the language it’s even harder to keep an eye on proper formatting when writing long replies. :D
Well there are certainly a lot of hints that they’ll have a certain spin on the dark side/force and the whole light/dark dichotomy. The villains avoid to identify themselves as “Sith” or even just dark side users. Snoke never acts like the Emperor, doesn’t talk about anger, joining the dark side and so on and Ren only talks about completing what Vader started (bringen balance to the force?) and wants to train Rey in the force (no mention of the dark side).
The whole relationship between Snoke and Ren is also very different to the usual stuff we get from obvious villains. Ren actually confesses his inner struggles to Snoke and Snoke never threatens Ren or tries to impose some sort of evilness on him.
I mean Snoke will certainly end up being THE big bad guy but with a very different motivation and a different relationship to the dark side/the force than previous villains. My speculation is that they try to explore a certain grey area which goes beyond dark/light side and might go with the force as a whole (the clone wars animated series already did go in this direction and showed that the force consists of all aspects of life, positive as well as negative ones, it is how Qui-Gon, Yoda and so on learned to become force ghosts)
If that’s true it would fit the characters very well. Luke already walked between light and dark side in the OT, Anakin/Vader were part of both and now you have a character like Ren.
It could even explain why Ren turned on Luke/the Jedi, Snoke’s whole angle could be that he found the “true” path to the force and that the Jedi, the Sith and so on all got it wrong, that you have to beyond those teachings.
Was there any line in the movie that cements this theory as fact? I’m not challenging anyone - I get the impression that Ren is still a novice too - but is there something in the movie that Snopes or Tarkin Jr. says that leads us to this conclusion, or is it just that he seems so unsure of himself?
I have a hell of a time taking off my jacket when I’m in a car, let alone strapped into an ejection seat.
Not specifically. You get Snoke saying he needs to “complete” Ren’s training near the end of the movie and we think he must’ve gotten some training from Luke before he left to join the First Order. Beyond that, it’s all speculation as far as the movie shows.
I’m not sure if there’s more revealed in the books or comics.
An interesting perspective indeed, I’d love to see Leinad’s angle explored in the next 2 sequels. A lot of the quibbles with TFA will vanish if it becomes clear that it was setting the stage for more complex storytelling.
Well there we go - that puts Ren in the “padawan” category then.
But more experienced. Luke has been gone for a few years so By logic of earlier Jedi lore he trained several years under Luke. Then Luke ran and hid so bad some training under The big Snook. I would say he has probably had 15 years of training minimum. Could see 20 years of training if Luke started them as young as prequel Jedi training commenced.
Part of the deal with Snoke may have been that he was hired with a job title above padawan.
(No, I’m not letting go of my theory that this trilogy is an allegory for office politics.)
I hope they pull an Emperor ESB -> RTJ and completely change the Snoke design.
His first appearance was where I started watching the movie instead of enjoying it.
It’s weird because the art book designs of him are good and I like the whole rotted by the dark side thing.
A minor point in a thread replete with “TFA IS THE WORST EVER!”, but they do make a point of showing Poe taking off his jacket when he climbs into the TIE.
Well, my comments were just observation and opinion. Youre welcome to have a differing opinion but everything I mentioned whether its considered good plotting or bad, well fleshed out or not, is valid. Your opinions may be as well. I guess time will tell. One important point though, I believe that in the book, when Rey has her “moment”, it specifically acknowledges her allowing the light side of the force to flow through her and what you are seeing as anger may just be determination and focus. Now maybe thats not how they choose to portray it in the movie but there you have it. Ill be honest, I watch these movies more for the fantasy thrill ride and dont expect every little thing to follow reality based logic, so some of the “issues” people are pointing out just dont bother me, just like they didnt bother me in the original trilogy, where a lot of the same types of things happened. Star Wars isnt military fiction or hard sci fi and I dont expect it to be. There will be leaps of faith where logic is concerned and suspension of belief throughout the movies.
Your final comment does bring up an interesting point though. Perhaps Ren holds no allegiance to either side of the force and sees it as a tool or weapon without any complication of morality.
Jesus. If we’re going to write pages of tedious analysis, let’s at least not block-quote them. My thumb about fell off.
I would assume it’s the former, and that it’s going to lead to some serious reservations on Luke’s part. He’s already seen his nephew (not to mention his father) succumb to the dark side, and now this new girl is showing all the same weaknesses. He’s also no doubt sensed what has happened to Han.
You know what might be cool? What if they go away from this whole dark side/light side bs in the next movies? Anakin was supposed to bring balance to the force right? So there has to be both. Maybe Luke’s big discovery on that island is they all should have been aiming for the grey side this whole time.