[SPOILERS]Episode VII: The Force Awakens [SPOILERS]

[PolishRifle]

How much did Luke really spend training on Dagobah?  3 days, a week?  He leaves Hoth the same time as everyone else and goes to Dagobah, the Falcon runs away, lands in a slug for a few hours, runs away again, and flies to Bespin.  It seems like they are on Cloud City for a day or two when Vader takes Han, then another day or two of torture and Luke is there fighting Vader.

[Mark D]

How much did Luke really spend training on Dagobah?  3 days, a week?  He leaves Hoth the same time as everyone else and goes to Dagobah, the Falcon runs away, lands in a slug for a few hours, runs away again, and flies to Bespin.  It seems like they are on Cloud City for a day or two when Vader takes Han, then another day or two of torture and Luke is there fighting Vader.

 

Well, he was first trained by Obi Wan Kenobi, then there were the scenes with him doing the one-handed hand-stand, attempting (and failing) to lift the X-wing, jumping thru the trees with Yoda on his back, then going into the place where he "met" Darth Vader.  Then watching Yoda successfully extricate the X-wing.  

 

Still more training that Rey had.

[Oramac]

Still more training that Rey had.

 

True, but not by much.  Luke had, at most, about 30 days of formal training.  And that's being really generous.  Plenty of people have broken down the timeframes on it.  Google will get you tons of results.  There's a pretty good one here.  

 

But the way you're looking at it, 10 minutes of training is more than Rey had, so there's really no point drawing any kind of comparison. 

[Waldo]

I really liked it.  I liked that its a mix of a remake and a sequel.

 

A few random thoughts after reading this whole thread:

 

- Rey learning the force fast is kinda fixing what IMHO was the greatest plot weakness of the original trilogy.  The Hoth to Bespin timeline problem, that Luke isn't with Yoda but a couple days.  I'm not sure what canon people are referring to when they say he was trained by Obi-Wan, I read nothing that indicated he was trained by ghost Obi-Wan.  Luke picked up the force fast.  Anakin's ability to build things and fly things was off the charts by any measure, and he was a little kid.  Luke gained the ability to block the practice thing almost immediately, as well as using the force to defeat Death Star 1.

 

- Speaking of the Death Star, or reprise of the planet destroying thing.  The Empire's hold on power has always been militarily.  The Empire has always been a play on the Nazi's, what would have happened if the Nazi's got the bomb.  The Empire was a military coup.  Extrapolate a nuclear weapon (which can destroy a city) into the galaxy, what would be the most feared weapon possible, that which would insure the stability of the coup forever?  The ability to destroy a planet or a sun (which would destroy a planet by proxy).  The caveat though is they can't use a bomb that destroys a planet from the inside out, Star Trek did that.  They can't shoot a missile at a star, Star Trek did that.  Bombs and missles aren't Star Wars style.  The very nature of the empire (and thus first order) is that they are always and will always be trying to build a planet destroying vessel that can show up and intimidate, to keep their hold on power.

 

- I see little chance that Luke is Rey's father.  If so it would be really lame and totally ruin his character.  Part of his hero's journey is to become the sage, the monk, and teach others.  Being consumed by religion, living an entirely spiritual life, doesn't leave much room for gettin down.  The only even minor hint that Luke has any sexual desire whatsoever is his exchange with Han in the falcon cockpit right after escaping the death star.  Maybe a little after Leia kisses him, but obviously Luke hadn't been pursuing that.  But as he becomes a Jedi, it appears that part of him is driven off.  There is nothing in any of the movies that suggest that jedi or sith have any interest in babymaking.  Sure there is some of it in old canon books, incl Luke being married to Mara, but they always had more of a best friends (and enemies) relationship, a la the Doctor and River.  Luke just seems above being attracted to people that way.

 

- I get the sense that Jedi are more or less like the users of magic in Harry Potter, except that the balance tilts toward most being muggle born (if not all).  If Jedi did procreate among themselves, love was not part of it.  But muggle borns are common.  ("if he was born in the republic we would have identified him early" - Qui Gon) I suspect that Finn will be one of these types of Jedi.  Rey possibly too, although the thing where Han has some knowledge throws me.  I can't see mind wiping a person with force ability working long term, so I doubt that was done to Rey.

 

- My theory with Rey is that Luke realized that in the old teachings, the younglings didn't know their parents, and he saw this as one of the big problems with teaching Ben, and tried to avoid it.  Rey was his youngling, a young orphan he came across that had force ability that was going to be his apprentice.  But then he agreed to try to train Ben as a favor to Leia though he already had an apprentice.  If he had an academy with other trainees, they all had the same issue and he made sure not to overtrain.  Rey was the true Jedi he was going to teach.  But then it got all messed up, and he had to ditch Rey.  But I think BB8 was intended to find Rey (a la Artoo's mission), and it was the reason he/it wouldn't leave.

 

- Was Phasma not on the planet destroying thing when it blew up?  How could Phasma come back, they didn't show her flying away on a tie fighter.  Piett is the only Empire solder to be in multiple movies, Phasma seems too minor (on film at least) to have a multi-movie role.

 

- Poe is the reprise of Wedge.  I doubt he's a force user.  He's more important due to the Rogue Squadron tie in, to connect the spinoff set the in the past to new canon.

[Raincloak]

 

- I see little chance that Luke is Rey's father.  If so it would be really lame and totally ruin his character.  Part of his hero's journey is to become the sage, the monk, and teach others.  Being consumed by religion, living an entirely spiritual life, doesn't leave much room for gettin down.  The only even minor hint that Luke has any sexual desire whatsoever is his exchange with Han in the falcon cockpit right after escaping the death star.  Maybe a little after Leia kisses him, but obviously Luke hadn't been pursuing that.  But as he becomes a Jedi, it appears that part of him is driven off.  There is nothing in any of the movies that suggest that jedi or sith have any interest in babymaking.  Sure there is some of it in old canon books, incl Luke being married to Mara, but they always had more of a best friends (and enemies) relationship, a la the Doctor and River.  Luke just seems above being attracted to people that way.

 

- I get the sense that Jedi are more or less like the users of magic in Harry Potter, except that the balance tilts toward most being muggle born (if not all).  If Jedi did procreate among themselves, love was not part of it.  But muggle borns are common.  ("if he was born in the republic we would have identified him early" - Qui Gon) I suspect that Finn will be one of these types of Jedi.  Rey possibly too, although the thing where Han has some knowledge throws me.  I can't see mind wiping a person with force ability working long term, so I doubt that was done to Rey.

 

I dunno if this is still a thing since Disney, but previously, Jedi (and Sith) were not the galaxy's only Force users.  Celibacy might be a Jedi thing but that doesn't mean there aren't Force users who are perfectly down with, as you said, "getting down."  ^^

 

You're right about Luke currently being more or less an asexual monk character, though.  I visited a couple exhibits of Star Wars artifacts and costumes, and one display of Luke's clothes from "ESB" and "RotJ" commented that he was dressed in black partly so he would look like a plainclothes priest.  (Presumably they meant the Catholic variety...)  It's pretty clear in the first film (and some early books and deleted scenes) that he had a crush on the beautiful princess, but since they wound up pairing Leia with Han, Luke's character then evolved toward the hermit archetype.

 

Luke being gay would rock extremely, but I'm not sure Disney is that bold.

[Gainsdalf the Whey]

Like got married in the books to Mara Jade.

Also, the orange alien smuggler lady was a force leader. She implies it or staring out says it in the movie and there are deleted scenes showing her using the force.

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[Oramac]

- Speaking of the Death Star, or reprise of the planet destroying thing.  The Empire's hold on power has always been militarily.  The Empire has always been a play on the Nazi's, what would have happened if the Nazi's got the bomb.  The Empire was a military coup.  Extrapolate a nuclear weapon (which can destroy a city) into the galaxy, what would be the most feared weapon possible, that which would insure the stability of the coup forever?  The ability to destroy a planet or a sun (which would destroy a planet by proxy).  The caveat though is they can't use a bomb that destroys a planet from the inside out, Star Trek did that.  They can't shoot a missile at a star, Star Trek did that.  Bombs and missles aren't Star Wars style.  The very nature of the empire (and thus first order) is that they are always and will always be trying to build a planet destroying vessel that can show up and intimidate, to keep their hold on power.

 

I agree.  That being said, there's plenty of [non-canon] examples of Empire superweapons that aren't a Deathier Star in the EU.  Just off the top of my head, there's the Suncrusher, World Devastators, and the Galaxy Gun (which is kinda the same thing as Starkiller Base).  

[Waldo]

Like got married in the books to Mara Jade.

 

Right, but they always seemed to have a weird relationship, again more like The Doctor and River (seemingly a non-sexual relationship, they are above that sort of thing, The Doctor doesn't think with his wiener, neither does Luke).  Han OTOH, he had the full court press on to get in Leia's pants. Luke and Mara had a kid, obviously they they had some sexy time, but there was never really any sexual tension there.

 

The same is true of the Sith, who seemingly don't use their ultimate power to make the greatest orgy ever, unlike noted power hungry people in human history (Nero, Xerces, Atilla, etc...)

Granted it became EU canon and that never changed, but Luke and Mara's marriage predated Attack of the Clones, when Anakin explained the Jedi's stance on love and marriage to Padme. His romance with her was against the rules. If you ditch the old EU (as Disney did) and consider the films only as canon, then its hard to believe that Luke would get romantically involved with anyone.

[Barmacral]

 

 If you ditch the old EU (as Disney did) and consider the films only as canon, then its hard to believe that Luke would get romantically involved with anyone.

 

This is assuming that Luke would know the old rules though, and it is never brought up in the original trilogy at any point so unless it came up off screen there is no reason that Luke would even be aware of those rules, and no doubt Obi Wan and Yoda had more important things to teach him like how to fight with the force.

[Kes]

This is assuming that Luke would know the old rules though, and it is never brought up in the original trilogy at any point so unless it came up off screen there is no reason that Luke would even be aware of those rules, and no doubt Obi Wan and Yoda had more important things to teach him like how to fight with the force.

 

Unless Ghost Obi Wan and Ghost Yoda were getting involved in his personal life.  Showing up at the most inopportune moments...hovering there....

[Oramac]

Unless Ghost Obi Wan and Ghost Yoda were getting involved in his personal life.  Showing up at the most inopportune moments...hovering there....

 

I can't see Yoda doing that.  Obi-Wan on the other hand.......

[Bullroarer Took]

I can't see Yoda doing that.  Obi-Wan on the other hand.......

Am I the only one picturing the Herbert Obi-Wan?