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Why is toxic fandom destroying everything?

He was the best star pilot in the galaxy, I understand you've become quite a pilot yourself.

You bet I could, I'm not such a bad pilot myself

I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home.

and Luke did not outfly Vader. He flew down the trench and Vader would have killed him if Han hadn't intervened.
He did enough to stay ahead of him.

We have Rey saying she's a pilot and Luke saying he's a pilot. That's it. That's the qualifications. And he's given a leadership position.
 
So the Empire allows children to have military aircraft?

A. Tatooine isn't part of the Empire.
B. wouldn't be the first trainer to have civilian version.
C. The T-16 wouldn't have blasters if the builders didn't expect the pilot to learn how to shoot.

They what?


No, no I didn't.

Its 1977 and a large portion of the audience is either a WWII veteran or the child of one. Tell me the T-Sixteen name isn't deliberately evocative of The T-Six the most prolific training aircraft of WWII.

He did enough to stay ahead of him.

We have Rey saying she's a pilot and Luke saying he's a pilot. That's it. That's the qualifications. And he's given a leadership position.

Sure "We need a pilot" "We've got one" and "I can do this, I can do this" in the same scene where she flies is totally the same as seeding Luke's flying skill throughout the entire movie. no difference there at all.

Also leadership position is a stretch. Biggs knows how good of a pilot Luke is. That's why he's and Wedge are Luke's wingmen and not the other way around.
 
I guess I missed the memo on the Rey criticism--which seems to me to be a big stretch given, as people mentioned above, how we were introduced to Luke and Anakin. Do the same people who complain about Rey also complain about the horrible way that Finn was written throughout the trilogy?
 
Man, there is a whole lot of tortured "reasoning" going on to justify Luke's flying skills as depicted in the movie. When I saw it in 1977, the audience knew and accepted a handwave when they heard it and just went with it, if they thought about it even that much. But then, we weren't twisting ourselves in knots trying to prop up his validity against another character who is no less plausible, but is merely less male.
 
Its 1977 and a large portion of the audience is either a WWII veteran or the child of one. Tell me the T-Sixteen name isn't deliberately evocative of The T-Six the most prolific training aircraft of WWII.
No freaking clue.

Wasn't born, dad wasn't a veteran.
Also leadership position is a stretch. Biggs knows how good of a pilot Luke is. That's why he's and Wedge are Luke's wingmen and not the other way around.
Red leader literally gives him the point on the attack run. That's leadership.
Man, there is a whole lot of tortured "reasoning" going on to justify Luke's flying skills as depicted in the movie. When I saw it in 1977, the audience knew and accepted a handwave when they heard it and just went with it, if they thought about it even that much. But then, we weren't twisting ourselves in knots trying to prop up his validity against another character who is no less plausible, but is merely less male.
Yes indeed. People create reasons to not like something nowadays for some reason.
 
it annoys me that the follow up to "Rey isn't a Mary Sue" isn't "here how the story sets up her character and skills", its "Nu-uh, if she is Luke is too!!" She isn't by the way, just a poorly executed character.
No, the issue is that people are talking about how "poorly executed" Rey is, but then hold Luke up as some great character that they are judging Rey against, even though they did the same kind of stuff with him that they did with her.
its one of several times the audience is reminded Luke is a skilled pilot before the skill becomes necessary in the plot, and I would be remiss to exclude it. How long before Rey is making mind bending maneuvers in the Falcon were we told she could fly? And did that statement imply anything near that level of skill?
And we're told in the movie that Rey is a pilot, the same way we're told Luke is a pilot.
Galaxy far far away or not, the audience knows that an aircraft with a T designation is used as a military training aircraft.
We knew that? I didn't know that I knew that.

Its 1977 and a large portion of the audience is either a WWII veteran or the child of one. Tell me the T-Sixteen name isn't deliberately evocative of The T-Six the most prolific training aircraft of WWII.
I couldn't tell you that because I've never heard of it before.
Sure "We need a pilot" "We've got one" and "I can do this, I can do this" in the same scene where she flies is totally the same as seeding Luke's flying skill throughout the entire movie. no difference there at all.

Also leadership position is a stretch. Biggs knows how good of a pilot Luke is. That's why he's and Wedge are Luke's wingmen and not the other way around.
We didn't see Luke fly any more than we saw Rey fly before he jumped in his X-Wing and she flew the Falcon off Jakku.
 
My problem with Rey's character is that there's no real arc beyond realizations about who she is.

Luke actually suffers setbacks and learns something over the course of the original trilogy. Luke, even with all his inherent power, is humbled at various points. Yoda shows him that his mindset limits his abilities, he gets his ass kicked by Vader and has his hand chopped off. And Luke almost gives in to the dark side when Vader taunts him about Leia.

In contrast, I can't think of a single fight that Rey outright loses in the sequel trilogy. For example, her training with Luke is more about her showing Luke that he's wrong about how he views the world, than Luke teaching her something.
 
You mean the fight where she defeats Palpatine and disintegrated him? If you think Rey lost that fight, who won?
The characterization was "outright loses." See sense 2 "on the spot", example "was killed outright" [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/outright]. If it were phrased differently, I'd have responded differently.

Additionally, how is anything that happened to Luke in the original trilogy—which is explicitly what is being compared against Rey's experiences—an "outright" loss? Luke at least survives every encounter, something Rey doesn't do.

edit - Finally, how do we know how thorough the Resistance's group-effort victory was? Palpatine got better after being disintegrated in Return of the Jedi. He "somehow" returned after that. Do we even really know that he's finally, truly, completely, sincerely dead? Are we sure that his spirit, or even just part of it, or some or all of one of the other Sith spirits in him didn't find its way into somebody, somewhere, so that the Sith can themselves rise (again)?
 
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it annoys me that the follow up to "Rey isn't a Mary Sue" isn't "here how the story sets up her character and skills", its "Nu-uh, if she is Luke is too!!" She isn't by the way, just a poorly executed character.



its one of several times the audience is reminded Luke is a skilled pilot before the skill becomes necessary in the plot, and I would be remiss to exclude it. How long before Rey is making mind bending maneuvers in the Falcon were we told she could fly? And did that statement imply anything near that level of skill?




Galaxy far far away or not, the audience knows that an aircraft with a T designation is used as a military training aircraft.

Rey was never making 'mind bending maneuvers' in the Falcon. She was literally bouncing off the walls. That scene is more of a testament to the Falcon's durability than her 'amazing' flying skills.
 
In contrast, I can't think of a single fight that Rey outright loses in the sequel trilogy. For example, her training with Luke is more about her showing Luke that he's wrong about how he views the world, than Luke teaching her something.
She loses Ben.

She loses her faith in Luke.

She loses herself sometimes.

Those loses are what her arc is about. And why she is far more engaging for me at this stage in life.
 
She loses Ben.

She loses her faith in Luke.

She loses herself sometimes.

Those loses are what her arc is about. And why she is far more engaging for me at this stage in life.

Losing Ben isn't much of a tragedy to me. I never liked that relationship in the first place.
 
It is fantasy, one either rolls with it, or they don’t. One thing that was brought on by the Star Wars franchise movies, is each one has more and bigger bangs. Rey is the central character of the Sequel Trilogy. Her bangs were always going to be bigger and more than a movie made 40 years prior.
 
It is fantasy, one either rolls with it, or they don’t. One thing that was brought on by the Star Wars franchise movies, is each one has more and bigger bangs. Rey is the central character of the Sequel Trilogy. Her bangs were always going to be bigger and more than a movie made 40 years prior.
Indeed, yes. And more than that the internal struggle of a character is always going to carry more weight regardless of audience perception. A perfect example of this is in Lord of the Rings (the book) when the Ring is tempting Sam with a garden. For some that scene feels kind of ridiculous because it is just a giant garden, after all the other power temptations for the characters. But it matters to Sam.
 
The real issue is how every other character is made to be lesser so she can shine better, which I can sort of get.

See, Finn and Poe weren't meant to be more than plot devices to get Rey involved in the plot to start with, neither of them were meant to survive TFA to begin with let alone be major characters. The Sequels were always first and foremost about Rey and Ren, no one else mattered.

And then there's how those stupid EU books made people think SW was supposed to be about the Skywalker Bloodline, mainly because of Lucas' incompetence. So when they went in and it wasn't a 1:1 adaptation of them, they were angry.
 
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