I love how folks claim that Luke got all kinds of training.
Obi-Wan describes the Force to him and then says “let go your conscious self” and then he’s blocking blasts from the training drone while blindfolded. This is also the extent of his light saber training that we see before he faces Vader. Yes, he loses, but he puts up a good fight. He impresses Vader and even gets a good shot in.
Yes, Luke trains with Yoda for a few days. He’s immediately able to start floating rocks and make crazy leaps and so forth. Is this really all that extensive? I don’t know, really....it’s hard to say how much time passes. Really not a lot, though....somewhere between a couple of days and a couple of weeks. However long Han and the others are stuck in the asteroid field and then on Bespin.
And one of the lessons Yoda teaches Luke, which he fails to grasp for some time, is that there is no difference between lifting a rock and lifting an x-wing. Which seems to be the only comment in the original films that compares one use of the Force with another in terms of effort.
Luke then presumably goes on to train some more in between Empire and Return. Again, hard to say how long. Hard to imagine that they’d hold off on rescuing Han very long, but we have no indication on how long it’s been. And when he shows up, he doesn’t seem all that much more capable with the Force. But Yoda does say that his training is complete.
So....based on Yoda’s statements, it seems like complete Jedi training is somewhere between a couple weeks and maybe a couple of months?
So then let’s look at Rey. She’s dropped off to survive on her own in a hostile environment when she’s about 5 years old. She spends the next 12 or so years crawling among the wreckage of all kinds of ships and other vehicles, scavenging for working components. We get enough of a glimpse of this life to know that it’s dangerous in all manner of ways.....she needs physical prowess to climb and maneuver through the wreckage, she needs to understand how the components function, and she also needs to contend with rivals and other opponents. And she had only herself to rely on during that time.
And do we not have hints that both Luke and Anakin have used the Force in their youth? In Anakin’s case, it’s explicitly stated. His instincts at racing and his knack for engineering are related to the Force. In Luke’s case, there are only hints that he’s done so....describing the shot he made in Beggar’s Canyon compared to the vent on the Death Star, when trained rebel pilots imply it’s an incredibly difficult shot.
So I’d say we have enough information to assume that Rey has been using the Force subconsciously to help survive for about 12 years, in an environment that is basically a giant obstacle course populated by hostile beings. So even if we’re generous about Luke’s training and say it was 6 months, Rey had about 24 times as much training. Yes, she lacked a teacher, but I would expect most folks would accept that she’d have some level of raw ability or affinity with the Force.
Do we really need things to be so explicitly stated?
Let alone more real world reasons for the increase in Force abilities due to improved special effects and how other action movies have characters doing all kinds of crazy things....watching Alec Guiness do a light saber spin doesn’t really compare to Thanos throwing a moon at the Avengers.
