Neverhoodian said:
To be fair, this was one of the Empire's major pitfalls in the classic trilogy. After all, Palpatine boasted that "an entire legion of my best troops" was lying in wait on Endor, only to have them be defeated by a tribe of rock-chucking teddy bears. Despite that, they still look like total badasses compared to the comically inept Battle Droids of the Trade Federation. Even the Expanded Universe generally followed this pattern; Kyle Katarn single-handedly slaughters entire armies of Stormtroopers in the Jedi Knight series and the player character cuts through plenty of Sith troops in KOTOR, even before they become a Jedi.
Bad guy mooks are meant to be cannon fodder in Star Wars. You just gotta roll with it.
Yeah, I understand that... but it's just, it irks me. Whenever I see a TIE fighter or a Stormtrooper, I no longer have the foreboding sense of "oh goodness, the Empire's here, shit's gonna hit the fan". I'm more along the lines of "Oh the Empire's here, I wonder how these idiots are going to get massacred this time".
These guys have decayed from supposed elite to clowns with expensive toys. As for comparing them to the droids, I don't know - the droids were really bad, but Stormtroopers don't really have anything to show for being any better. So there was a singular trooper who managed to duel a confused and panicking Fynn? Hooo-rah. The MagnaGuards did better - they could hold their own against mediocre jedi even. And they could be mass-manufactured, too.
I guess my biggest gripe is that I just don't see any justification for keeping the armed forces of First Order around. Against anything that can fight back, they are barely more than a speedbump.
Neverhoodian said:
As for Rey's abilities, yeah, I am inclined to agree. However, it's not that big of a stretch when one compares protagonists of the other films. After all, the Skywalker family (which Rey may be a member of) boasts such prodigies as an inexperienced farm hand who destroyed the Death Star without his targeting computer using a ship he had never flown before and a nine-year old boy who participated in races that were supposedly impossible for human reflexes and derailed an entire invasion fleet. Also, Kylo Ren isn't a Sith (no "Darth" moniker) and was physically (and probably emotionally) wrecked by the time he clashed sabers with Rey.
When you put it into that context, it does look different. I guess I had nostalgia going in full force... and haa, Kylo isn't a Sith yet indeed! Wait a mminute, does this this was the first SW movie with no Sith on display?! (Discounting holograms of course.)
One minor nitpick, though: bleeding or not, Kylo wasn't showing any signs of being seriously wounded. He managed to catch up to two people who had a headstart, and he never showed pain during the duel either. He didn't even grimace. He kept hitting his side for sure, but I never had the feeling he was in any serious pain. One could argue his pain treshold was just that high, but then why did he start screaming bloody murder when Flynn stabbed him in the shoulder? I mean, lightsabers hurt but bowcasters don't?
DoPo said:
I don't think Rey was a slave girl. At any rate, her proficiency with the Millenium Falcon was nothing that extraordinary - she does say she has pilot experience, only she never flew off the planet. The chase was on the planet. Moreover, she is very familiar with the ship and with good reason - it belonged to that humanoid Jabba guy who was her...well, I don't think "master" but certainly in that ballpark, which meant that she has worked on the ship, if not even flown the ship. Furthermore, since she had been looking up to Han Solo, and that looked like Han Solo's ship, she might have had a further interest in it. Little did she know, it was the genuine thing.
This is all stuff that has justufication in her background - she can fly, she can fly the Millenium Falcon - that's not actually that strange.
But furthermore, her outmaneuvering the TIE fighters is not really that strange, either - it was means of showing she was Force Sensitive. Also a big thing in the movie.
You are complaining about something that's had quite a lot of justification in the movie.
If she was so force sensitive at that point already, then why did she have such a difficult take-off? I mean, the movie clearly shows her struggling at the helm... and then she takes an immediate upgrade to being a better pilot than trained professionals.
I could understand her besting the fighters if she was really that proficient with the Falcon, but then I don't understand why she demolished the camp. Unless it was revenge (though going by her reaction, that didn't seem to be the case).
DoPo said:
Umm, very simple answer - train the people so they don't go over to the Dark Side. You may have had a point if being a Jedi was about casting space spells. It's not. You don't have a point.
So the Jedi Order was a indoctrination camp, basically? And they weren't doing a very good job at it... Dooku and Anakin were both highly regarded Jedis before they turned.
This logic also make me wonder what HoloGollum meant by "finishing the training" of Kylo. The guy was self-admittedly a lot weaker than Rey; if force abilities can't be augmented by training, then he has no hope of beating her.