I think a much better ending would have been if Rey was losing the fight and the only thing that saved her was the ground separating the two of them.
It would make the Kylo Ren appear to be a more credible threat,
It would make Rey less of a Mary Sue character.
It would mean she could get some training from Luke in the next film, harking back to Empire.
I think that was one of the few wrong steps they took with this film.
100 percent disagree. Rey had a moment of force clarity, and otherwise would have died. She was saved by the force from a Kylo Ren who was already
severely injured, and had just beaten Finn. Both Kylo Ren and Rey end the movie in desperate need. Ren of surgery, and Rey of training. Because without training, a second encounter with Ren would end the other way.
And the fact that they are both gone to train is perfect. This set of films isn't as singularly about the good guy force user main character, and that's a great thing. They made exactly the right choice.
The parts about the New Republic unofficially supporting the Resistance (which clearly establishes them as separate things) is explicitly stated in the film. That speech also clearly establishes that the First Order and New Republic are two separate "states".
IIRC, the scroll also sets some of it up pretty succinctly and clearly.
Given that most of that lore was set in the EU, which they're largely ignoring, yeah....
Much of working with a science fiction show is finding ways *around* the science errors and inconsistencies. It is not plausible that a person part of a galactic empire doesn't know what a parsec is, any more than it is not plausible that we don't know what a time zone is. So, fleecing the newbs really isn't an good explanation.
The better explanation is that the Kessel Run is a pretty twisty thing, and that Han's ship managed a more straight course. Being "fast" in hyperspace may be part outright speed, and part ability to steer closer to things that other ships have to avoid. Like the fastest cars in racing aren't only faster because of their engine, but because of their very precise handling.
Exactly. The Kessel Run is a hyperspace route, possibly through a fairly frequently shifting starscape, and so making the run in a much straighter line is the hyperspace equivalent of hugging turns so well that it literally requires both expert driving and knowledge of the track/car/how these things work, and a very, very well made car, with the kind of suspension that only comes custom.
In that context, what starts as a gaff, actually ends up making sense. Any galactic citizen with a halfway decent knowledge of ships and hyperspace and who has heard of the Kessel Run (which Han seems to assume they have) will know that if he isn't lying, he and the Falcon are impressive, and a good choice for getting somewhere fast while avoiding the Empire.
Heck, I wouldn't be surprised in nav factors lead to parsecs being a normal measure of hyperspace efficiency. Crappy navcoms end up taking the long way round, because they can't account for the ever changing starscape of the galaxy well enough to go between rather than around two neighboring systems, thus taking multiple parsecs longer (in the space sense of long, rather than the time sense).
a navcom is taking star charts and known routes, and then using a lot of math to figure out where everything is
now, based on where it was x amount of time ago and how fast things are moving, and then planning a safe route that doesn't collide you with a star. I'd say that shaving off
distance is functionally the same thing as shaving off time.
As someone who has worked as a delivery driver for an auto supply chain, this makes perfect sense to me. Driving faster isn't always on the table, but you can shave time off the run by shaving distance off the route.
Anyway, someone refered to Rey as having "brushed off" Keylo Ren's mind search thing.
What.
She...the scene spends multiple minutes showing her struggle against it, fail at first, then they strain against eachother, and she manages to scratch the surface of his thoughts, at which point he got angry and left to gain control of himself again.
Sorry, but that isn't "brushing off".
Does he? His battles include two with Vader, one on Jabba's skiff, and deflecting a few stormtrooper shots on Endor. Am I missing any lightsaber battles?
By my count he loses just one battle he uses it in - the one against Vader in Empire. And that guy's the Biggest Bad around, and he still knocks him down twice, and gets a couple of glancing blows in.
Nah, Luke's pretty darn good.
Seriously. In Empire, he has
barely trained at all with the saber, and Vader is a literally war hero turned war...villain? whatever. who then has gone on to dedicate his whole existence to being the biggest baddest BBEG in town. And Luke still makes him work for it.
Rey barely survives a fight with a guy who wouldn't survive his wounds much longer without medical attention.
Rey is awesome as a character, but a mary sue? Nah.
