GandALF wrote:ChiggyvonRichthofen wrote:
The revelation that her parents are "nobodies" has no repercussions and she handles it unbelievably well.
it's
not a revelation that whole point. She's known whole time, she spends the first half of TFA talking about how she has to get back to Jakku to wait for her family, Maz has to remind that she knows that they're not coming back. She's been trying to live out a fantasy where she's the super special daughter of someone like Han or Luke. Kylo Ren then exploits her fear of the truth to manipulate her. That is not handling it "unbelievably well".
She may have always known the truth, but the moment she was actually confronted with it she moves on without hesitation or depression. How does she do that after holding on to a fantasy for years?
Ordo wrote:
You don't get points for being lucky. Her actions would've gotten her and Luke killed if Kylo hadn't picked that moment to betray Snoke, and her desire for answers about her parents, led her to trust Kylo Ren despite ALL evidence to the contrary. Also, ALL the characters seemed to have sorted out their flaws by films end.
You do get points for being lucky though. Isn't the whole point of the film learning from, building on, and moving past your mistakes? How do you do that if you escape any consequences for your actions?
To use an analogy- let's say a person fires a gun in a random direction while blindfolded, without any awareness of what was going on around him. If that person shoots another person, he's going to have to deal with the consequences of his incredibly stupid decision. If there's no one around and the bullet doesn't hit anyone- yeah, it's still an incredibly stupid decision, but it's kind of hard to care about it when there's no actual damage done. We can debate just how naive or flawed Rey might not be, but she's the only one to get away without any damage done, which makes it hard to take her arc seriously in light of all the havoc caused by the other characters. It isn't compelling.
That's also why I bring up her flaws being sorted out by the end. Normally that would be fine, except that it means that we may never get any moral conflict for the character. She's on track to have almost no room for that kind of growth in IX.
During ROTJ, despite Luke repeating over and over again that he will not fight Vader he is twice goaded into a near killing rage by the words of two Sith Lords. This time it happens because of what he sees in Ben...but to Luke's credit he never actually takes a swing at Ben, and manages to calm himself down rather quickly.
Given the ambiguity in the presentation, I don't have a huge problem with that scene or see it as necessarily out of sync with OT Luke (although I understand the POV of those who do). What I think is completely contrary to the Luke we knew is what came after that.
To be fair to the film, Finn is only really shown standing up for himself and Rey, and it's not firmly established that he's embraced the cause of the Rebellion in TFA
Finn's story line in TLJ had some execution problems getting that point across, but it is there.
Fair enough. It's the easiest thread to criticize in terms of execution, and I don't think it's an arc that Finn really
needed, since you could easily be excused in thinking (as I did) that Finn had already dealt with that. But I can't say that it's out of character.
Not really fair, we didn't get a good grasp of Poe's personality in TFA since he was originally slated to die and only survived once RJ figured out what to do with him in TLJ.
You're right, he was a pretty blank slate in TFA. I'm not saying (or shouldn't say) that it's out of character, more that RJ didn't pull any punches with the character and his failings, which highlights all the more the ease of Rey's journey.
The owls are not what they seem.
