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She did use her staff as a weapon when she was mugged on Jakku though, didn't she?

The Romulan Republic wrote:She did use her staff as a weapon when she was mugged on Jakku though, didn't she?

Yeah, and she seems fairly adept with it. That said, perhaps it seems less 'violent' to her as a.) she's accustomed to it and b.) it's a relatively bloodless weapon, at least in theory. *shrugs* If it's worth anything she seems to have a more violent aversion to the lightsaber than the blaster, which could perhaps be explained away by blasters being a more common and typical weapon in the galaxy. She's probably seen quite a few on Jakku, if not held any (note Han having to push her hand down). So there's some desensitization there. Lightsabers, on the other hand, are very emphatically a Jedi weapon (never mind the Sith, by this point they're only legend, Vader and Palpatine aside). That would have provoked a much stronger response if, for example, the last time she saw one, it was killing her parents...

Well, a staff, while potentially lethal, is considerably less lethal than a lightsaber (where merely touching any part of the blade is apt to cause a crippling injury) or a blaster (stun settings aside). Its basically the difference between picking up a stick to threaten someone, and drawing a gun on them. So that can work, yeah.

Its also entirely possible she has repressed lightsaber-associated trauma due to something in her past (if the theory is that she's Luke's daughter, she could very easily have witnessed Kylo Ren's slaughter of Luke's students as a child). However, I would note that to my recollection, she freaked out only after having the vision and then suddenly being told by Maz that she had Force powers, not merely from seeing the sabre. And an unexpected vision of a massacre followed by a major revelation about ones' identity could mess anyone up a bit.

The Romulan Republic wrote:Well, a staff, while potentially lethal, is considerably less lethal than a lightsaber (where merely touching any part of the blade is apt to cause a crippling injury) or a blaster (stun settings aside). Its basically the difference between picking up a stick to threaten someone, and drawing a gun on them. So that can work, yeah.

Its also entirely possible she has repressed lightsaber-associated trauma due to something in her past (if the theory is that she's Luke's daughter, she could very easily have witnessed Kylo Ren's slaughter of Luke's students as a child). However, I would note that to my recollection, she freaked out only after having the vision and then suddenly being told by Maz that she had Force powers, not merely from seeing the sabre. And an unexpected vision of a massacre followed by a major revelation about ones' identity could mess anyone up a bit.

Sure, yeah. Frankly though until more nu-EU material comes out, and the next few movies, I don't find much point in deep speculation about characters' psyches. We can speculate all we like on Anakin Skywalker or even Luke because their stories are (more or less) complete, we've got some material we can dig into and examine, but right now for TFA onward... we have one movie, a novelization, some background material and a few kiddie books for EU material.

Like... ok, PlayerHater wants to whine about a lot of stuff... but what about the stuff that's actually really random and weird, like Maz Kanata? You know? And we aren't going to find out squat about that until more comes out. So.

Is the book "survival tips for jakku" in bookshops Canon? Because its written by "rey" and specifically states she learnt wookie from traders on jakku before she met Chewie.

Simon_Jester wrote:Rey doesn't shoot through as many stormtroopers as Luke did, as far as I can remember- so the fact that she has less experience with blasters doesn't strike me as problematic.

There is exactly one stormtrooper in ANH that can be directly linked to Luke (just before they blast out of the DS hanger after Kenobi's death, one stormtrooper is shot when Luke is the only one not already inside the Millennium Falcon). He does this after missing a half dozen odd shots prior (though he does get the door control). All the other stormtroopers are killed by Han (he is the only one present, firing, or the shot and kill are in the same frame) or when multiple people are firing at the same time (Luke and or Han and or Leia and or Chewbacca) and the deaths are in cuts so we can't be sure. Every storm trooper death in the detention cell when they storm it, however, is a clear Han shoots cut to stormtrooper being shot. Luke is not shown to land a shot.

The only other people Luke kills is in the detention block where they ambushed dudes who trusted them and were sitting at their desks. He kills the detention block officer at close range before he even draws and then another naval trooper who barely got his blaster around. There is another naval trooper he shoots who actually is shooting back but he gets hit by multiple bolts from different directions near simultaneously so who knows. I would expect any one of us pasty face nerds to be able to ambush a police department cubicle farm in similar fashion if I gave you a .38 five minutes before.

In both these scenes, the detention block and DS hanger, the shooting is frantic and wild and more shots are off the mark than not. This is as opposed to Rey who in her first combat blaster use gets multiple storm troopers who are fully aware and on a combat footing in one shot. I don't remember her missing a single shot in that scene but I may be wrong.

And of course we know, at least regarding the storm troopers (I doubt the detention block guys were in on it), that they were throwing the fight. This is not the case with Rey.

I think I recall she misses her first shot. Then she dead on kills every stormtrooper that enters her field of vision instantly. I wouldn't have brought it up if it didn't bug me. It just seemed like every time it came to do something in the movie she was an instant expert.

seanrobertson wrote:FWIW, all, I just checked the Wookiepedia, and it turns out that Rey did deal with a pair of the hairy kind whilst she lived on Jakku. I cannot speak to the source of this information, but it is supposedly part of the current canon .

Erm - I already posted the quote from the source on the previous page. Did literally no one notice (given the discussion somehow continued?)

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 5#p3958324

Vympel wrote:

seanrobertson wrote:FWIW, all, I just checked the Wookiepedia, and it turns out that Rey did deal with a pair of the hairy kind whilst she lived on Jakku. I cannot speak to the source of this information, but it is supposedly part of the current canon .

Erm - I already posted the quote from the source on the previous page. Did literally no one notice (given the discussion somehow continued?)

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 5#p3958324

I was distracted by the purty pictures

On a tangential note, I went to Books-A-Million with my fiance last weekend to have coffee. While she placed our order at Joe Muggs, I browsed the Ep. VII Visual Dictionary. I noticed that the Resurgent-class Star Destroyers, whatwith their "3,000 turbolasers," have enough firepower to "reduce the surface of a world to molten slag."

... I think that's mostly faithful to what the VD said. It was the morning after my birthday that I read that; I may or may not have been, well, slightly hung-over

Given that you can't perform such a devastating operation without a reasonable time-frame -- the planet would cool faster than you could heat it otherwise -- coupled with the Starkiller's insane energy density/capacitance banks (containing the entire mass/energy of typical star would "only" permit a few Death Star-level shots, hence the base's need to move and drain other stars for fuel), we're back to the pre-Disney "canon" of Star Destroyers wielding big guns that output on the order of many billions of terawatts.

So much for the people who cheered when the prequel ICS books and the stats therein were apparently excised from canon.

seanrobertson wrote:On a tangential note, I went to Books-A-Million with my fiance last weekend to have coffee. While she placed our order at Joe Muggs, I browsed the Ep. VII Visual Dictionary. I noticed that the Resurgent-class Star Destroyers, whatwith their "3,000 turbolasers," have enough firepower to "reduce the surface of a world to molten slag."

... I think that's mostly faithful to what the VD said. It was the morning after my birthday that I read that; I may or may not have been, well, slightly hung-over

Given that you can't perform such a devastating operation without a reasonable time-frame -- the planet would cool faster than you could heat it otherwise -- coupled with the Starkiller's insane energy density/capacitance banks (containing the entire mass/energy of typical star would "only" permit a few Death Star-level shots, hence the base's need to move and drain other stars for fuel), we're back to the pre-Disney "canon" of Star Destroyers wielding big guns that output on the order of many billions of terawatts.

So much for the people who cheered when the prequel ICS books and the stats therein were apparently excised from canon.

Yeah, echoes of the old EU will be with us forever I think.

Come to think of it, Guardians of the Galaxy did a better job explaining the Galatic situation than TFA. We knew who the good guys are, we know there is a peace treaty, and we know the enemy is rough faction.

Star Wars have an opening crawl to explain stuff to the audience and we are still somewhat confused by the end of the movie.

The most of Rey's fight doesn't bother me. Kylo Ren took a bowcaster bolt to the abdomen, a saber slash to his sword arm.

What really bothered me on a second watch through was Poe's skill in battle over Maz's castle/bar. In the space of seconds he shoots down over 10 TIE's, and kills numerous stormtroopers in precision hits. He is shown as better than Anakin in RotS

Ekiqa wrote:The most of Rey's fight doesn't bother me. Kylo Ren took a bowcaster bolt to the abdomen, a saber slash to his sword arm.

What really bothered me on a second watch through was Poe's skill in battle over Maz's castle/bar. In the space of seconds he shoots down over 10 TIE's, and kills numerous stormtroopers in precision hits. He is shown as better than Anakin in RotS

Anakin/Vader kills off a squadron in a very short time frame in SW Rebels, too.

NecronLord wrote:

Ekiqa wrote:The most of Rey's fight doesn't bother me. Kylo Ren took a bowcaster bolt to the abdomen, a saber slash to his sword arm.

What really bothered me on a second watch through was Poe's skill in battle over Maz's castle/bar. In the space of seconds he shoots down over 10 TIE's, and kills numerous stormtroopers in precision hits. He is shown as better than Anakin in RotS

Anakin/Vader kills off a squadron in a very short time frame in SW Rebels, too.

But then Rebels/Clone Wars don't feel "real" in the same sense as the movies. Because of the compressed nature of the story, things like that in the series are not the same as having it occur in a movie.

But the point is also that Anakin should be a better pilot than Poe.

Adam Reynolds wrote:But the point is also that Anakin should be a better pilot than Poe.

Why?

The guy that said that is Liar McLiarson from Liartown, who was lying in that actual sentence. Anakin could be seventieth best starfighter pilot in the Jedi Order for all it matters to the story.

So many of you are willing to hand wave Rey being an instant aerobatic pilot ace with the MC just because she has latent force powers (indeed, her piloting is better than anything we see Poe do. In fact, her firing of the stuck turret rivals all Poes shots too). So how could a force trained and presumably long experienced pilot Anakin not be better than Rey/Poe? Your rationalizations are run away with themselves...

Patroklos wrote:So many of you are willing to hand wave Rey being an instant aerobatic pilot ace with the MC just because she has latent force powers (indeed, her piloting is better than anything we see Poe do. In fact, her firing of the stuck turret rivals all Poes shots too).

Noting I'm firmly in the Anakin/Vader is a better pilot camp - it really doesn't. For one, she didn't fire the stuck turret, Finn did. All she did was set him up. Two, for Poe to score those string of kills in rapdi succession required repeated split second reaction times and repeated, more difficult, deflection shooting. That's a lot harder, by definition, than hitting a single target flying a predictable pursuit course.

Futher, she didn't really engage in any 'ace aerobatics' when flying the Millennium Falcon. Her maneuvers are limited to moving in tight spaces and two aggressive turns. She smashes into a building and drags the Falcon along the ground on takeoff. She drags it on the ground again during the pursuit, before they reach the Star Destryoer graveyard. She scrapes the Falcon against a Star Destroyer moments later. She's not perfect at it by any means.

NecronLord wrote:

Adam Reynolds wrote:But the point is also that Anakin should be a better pilot than Poe.

Why?

The guy that said that is Liar McLiarson from Liartown, who was lying in that actual sentence. Anakin could be seventieth best starfighter pilot in the Jedi Order for all it matters to the story.

This is what I hate most about ROTJ. It made everything that Obi-Wan said in ANH unreliable, right down to things that he didn't even have a reason to lie about.

I don't know, I never had a problem with the 'from a certain point of view' explanation. And it makes sense that Obi-Wan wouldn't have wanted to tell Luke everything about his dad from the get-go.

Elheru Aran wrote:I don't know, I never had a problem with the 'from a certain point of view' explanation. And it makes sense that Obi-Wan wouldn't have wanted to tell Luke everything about his dad from the get-go.

But it also gives fans to disregard everything else he said when it convenient to do so, since he's Liar McLiarson from Liartown.

I've said it many times already, but I feel they never should have merged Vader with Anakin. That way Ben's entire story could have been completely true, except he was unaware that Vader was Luke's biological father.

So you'd explain Luke's ancestry with, what, Vader sleeping with Anakin's wife? How would that work?

Simon_Jester wrote:So you'd explain Luke's ancestry with, what, Vader sleeping with Anakin's wife?

Yes. It would be one of the ways I'd show Darth abusing the Force when he uses the Jedi mind trick to coerce her into satiating his lust. She wouldn't willingly be unfaithful to her husband.

Simon_Jester wrote:How would that work?

The old-fashioned way.

Yeah... the main problem is that Obi-wan in ANH describes Vader and Anakin as separate persons studying under him, then in ROTJ admits that they're the same. If you want to maintain the idea that Vader is a separate person... things get difficult there, and it gets harder to keep up the whole Skywalker lineage thing. If Vader is a separate person from Anakin, why make a big deal of Anakin in the first place? That basically negates the prequels completely (in their current condition); you'd have a completely different story going on.

One possible rationalization that I realize requires rewriting ROTS and possibly AOTC:

Anakin becomes a Sith earlier in the film, but continues posing as a Jedi, and does stuff as Darth Vader on the side. This gives his identity more build-up. When they begin the Jedi Purge, Palpatine doctors a holo-vid to show Vader killing Anakin that Obi-wan sees later on. And thanks to the outfit (maybe just a Sith mask and helmet to hide his identity), Obi-wan doesn't know the two are the same person when they fight on Mustafar, though you do lose quite a bit of dramatic tension there except perhaps for a last-minute reveal to allow for Obi-wan knowing in ROTJ.

But frankly, Obi-wan lying about Anakin/Vader and the whole 'from a certain point of view' thing works just fine. Obi-wan isn't in the OT for enough time to really do much more than give Luke the lightsaber, whisper sweet endearments in his ear, and go 'sorry I fibbed about your dad, I guess you're fucked, oh and you kissed your sister lol, good luck explaining all that to her'. It lines up with how they did the prequels well enough (for however well done the prequels were, anyway).

Elheru Aran wrote:Yeah... the main problem is that Obi-wan in ANH describes Vader and Anakin as separate persons studying under him, then in ROTJ admits that they're the same. If you want to maintain the idea that Vader is a separate person... things get difficult there, and it gets harder to keep up the whole Skywalker lineage thing. If Vader is a separate person from Anakin, why make a big deal of Anakin in the first place?

In my scenario, Anakin is still a powerful Jedi and Obi-Wan's best friend, not his apprentice. After the last war, he got married and retired to the simple life of a moisture farmer on Tatooine with his wife.

Elheru Aran wrote:That basically negates the prequels completely (in their current condition); you'd have a completely different story going on.

I have absolutely no problem with that.