Skip to main content

star wars - How could the trained, physically stronger person lose this lightsaber fight?



How could



Kylo Ren



lose the fight against



Rey?




I find the outcome totally illogical even though the Force may be strong in the woman. Furthermore, I would expect a man to be physically stronger than a woman. It is like having a very intelligent but uneducated person beating a math Phd in a math exam.



Answer



It's not like a novice beating a master. It's more like a talented novice with experience in a related discipline managing to hold out against an overconfident, injured, emotionally unstable student, capitalising on their mistakes, then reacting quickly when their misjudged endgame fails:



  1. For most of the fight, Rey was on the defensive. The fight reached a point where Kylo could have killed her, but instead chose to try to convert her to the dark side - he'd pretty much won, but made a mistake she reacted quickly to.

  2. Kylo was injured. He had an absolutely massive Chewie-crossbow wound on his side - and despite what certain films like to lead viewers to believe, injuries impact fighting ability. Really, it's amazing he could fight at all. Also, he was tired and lightly wounded from fighting Finn (related question with a similar answer: Why did Finn and Kylo's fight not end sooner?)

  3. Rey's tough and experienced in fighting with unfamiliar weapons. Rey may be untrained with this particular weapon, but she's spent her whole life as a scavenger, defending herself using whatever she can get her hands on. It was established early on that she's got very good reactions, is fast, agile, good at improvising, and good at defending herself.

  4. Kylo was a promising student, not a master. It was explicitly stated by Snoke that he hasn't completed his training. Still, he had much more training than Rey - which is why he had the upper hand for most of the fight, despite his other temporary disadvantages.

  5. Lightsaber fighting is more about focus, speed, and reactions than physical strength, so sex isn't really a factor. Kylo's focus and reactions were well below usual due to a) the fact it was already well established that his biggest flaw was his inability to control or focus his rage and b) that he was even more emotionally unstable than usual, given recent events.

  6. Kylo was an unfocused emotional mess, hacking wildly. All those points where Rey temporarily gained an upper hand were by capitalising on Kylo making wild, poorly judged, exploitable mistakes - which makes perfect sense given all the above.




The only thing unanswered here is how both Rey and Finn managed to never accidentally cut themselves, not even once, across three lightsaber fights with no training... I'm not sure there is a good answer to that one, unfortunately.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Did the gatekeeper and the keymaster get intimate in Ghostbusters?

According to TVTropes ( usual warning, don't follow the link or you'll waste half your life in a twisty maze of content ): In Ghostbusters, it's strongly implied that Dana Barret, while possessed by Zuul the Gatekeeper, had sex with Louis Tully, who was possessed by Vinz Clortho the Keymaster (key, gate, get it?), in order to free Big Bad Gozer. In fact, a deleted scene from the movie has Venkman explicitly asking Dana if she and Louis "did it". I turned the quote into a spoiler since it contains really poor-taste joke, but the gist of it is that it's implied that as part of freeing Gozer , the two characters possessed by the Keymaster and the Gatekeeper had sex. Is there any canon confirmation or denial of this theory (canon meaning something from creators' interviews, DVD commentary, script, delete scenes etc...)? Answer The Richard Mueller novelisation and both versions of the script strongly suggest that they didn't have sex (or at the very l...
1 comment
Read more

Why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize Missy right away?

So after it was established that Missy is actually both the Master, and the "woman in the shop" who gave Clara the TARDIS number... ...why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize her right away? I remember the Tenth Doctor in The Sound of Drums stating that Timelords had a way of recognizing other Timelords no matter if they had regenerated. And Clara should have recognized her as well... I'm hoping for a better explanation than "Moffat screwed up", and that I actually missed something after two watchthroughs of the episode. Answer There seems to be a lot of in-canon uncertainty as to the extent to which Time Lords can recognise one another which far pre-dates Moffat's tenure. From the Time Lords page on Wikipedia : Whether or not Time Lords can recognise each other across regenerations is not made entirely clear: In The War Games, the War Chief recognises the Second Doctor despite his regeneration and it is implied that the Doctor knows him when they fir...
Post a Comment
Read more

story identification - Animation: floating island, flying pests

At least 20 years ago I watched a short animated film which stuck in my mind. The whole thing was wordless, possibly European, and I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine it... It featured a flying island which was inhabited by some creatures who (in my memory) reminded me of the Moomins. The island was frequently bothered by large winged animals who swooped around, although I don't think they did any actual damage. At the end one of the moomin creatures suddenly gets a weird feeling, feels forced to climb to the top of the island and then plunges down a shaft right through the centre - only to emerge at the bottom as one of the flyers. Answer Skywhales from 1983. The story begins with a man warning the tribe of approaching skywhales. The drummers then warn everybody of the hunt as everyone get prepared to set "sail". Except one man is found in his home sleeping as the noise wake him up. He then gets ready and is about to take his weapon as he hesitates then decides ...
Post a Comment
Read more

warhammer40k - What evidence supposedly supports Tau as related to the Necrontyr?

I've heard of rumours saying that the Tau from Warhammer 40K are in fact the Necrontyr. Is there anything that supports this statement, in WH40K canon? I just found this, on 1d4 chan 1 : Helping Necrons? Or are they Necrontyr descendants? An often overlooked issue is that Tau have no warp signatures, just like Necrons, hate Warpspawns and Warp in general, just like Necrons, have the exact same skull shape,stature and short lives, and the overwhelming need for Technology and beam weapons, JUST LIKE NECRONS. GW may have planned a race that simply prepares a pacified, multiracial galaxy for Necrons to feast upon, supported by Ethereals that have a C'tan phase blade. Then there is a reference of "dark seed in east" by the Deceiver, so the tricky C'tan might give Tzeentch the finger in the JUST AS PLANNED competition. Or maybe GW just has so little creativity that they simply made a new civ conforming to an Old One's standards without knowing it. Is this the connec...
Post a Comment
Read more