Luke Skywalker vs. Rey (read OP)

Random encounter in a barren desert.

Luke from the start of Empire Strikes Back (before meeting Yoda) vs. Rey at the end of The Force Awakens.

Lightsabers and force only.

I just want to see who everyone would think would win this.

Based on his appearances in canon comics and training with Obi Wan, Luke wins comfortably right now

Luke. 3 years passed from ANH to ESB. He fought many battles and honed his skills considerably. He wins easily.

I'm thinking that Luke wins in a short battle, but if Rey is able to hold on for long enough then he will become flustered and lose.

Is this Rey Mysterio...?

Probably luke. Hes more trained at this point.

Luke at the start of Empire could barely manage a Force pull with no resistance except snow. Rey mastered this at the end of TFA with another Jedi/Sith/Ren (whatever the new hotness is in the Abramsverse) pulling against her. Then on top of that something, something, melee weapon and she takes this pretty easily. Luke also doesn't have the power of the scriptwriter and the director and the producer easing his path with plot armor. He's toast.

Based on her appearances Rey is already 100x more potentially powerful than Luke, within one week of training she should be able to overcome his advantage in experiences.

Also this.

I'd also like to add this was completed after the course of three days of her journey with Harrison Ford, during which she retrieved no training.

If by plot armor, you mean that Kylo Ren was under orders to take Rey in alive, was hit in the gut by the same bowcaster that we spent the movie watching blow up stormtroopers, and was also emotionally compromised by killing his father?

It's also worth noting that start of Empire Luke took down an ATAT walker on foot. To even get to the walker without being blown up needs at least some skill, strategy and instinct through the force.

Sure but as things stand now, Empire Luke is still above Rey.

I was just talking about current Luke, by now Rey has beaten a high powered darksider while at beginning of Episode V Luke had almost no Jedi training and was realistically lacking in corresponding ability.

Lmfao Rey 100 times more powerful than luke? Gtfo.

Luke easily.

So much Rey hate, lol

Yeah...also the fact you know, he had just gotten smashed by a freaking Wampa.

Anyway Luke, he's gotten experience as far as lightsaber goes due to his gladiatorial training and whatever else he's done before ESB. Fighting with the Rebellion would make for much better training, than just being on a scavenger world.

Rey.

Not sure where you're getting that Kylo Ren is all that when he's grievously injured, emotionally compromised and hasn't finished his training yet. I'm pretty sure that end of ESB Luke would beat Kylo even without his injuries, especially considering he managed to strike Darth Vader's shoulder before getting his hand cut off.

Could go either way tbh.

Actually, by Plot Armor I mean that she's an expert pilot, speaks at least four languages (two of which are wookie and droid, and no humanoid has ever been shown to understand droid), an expert mechanic, a crack shot, morally pure and righteous, lethal hand to hand combatant, Han makes her his co-pilot after knowing her for five minutes, she finds the MaGuffin when no one else can, the Resistance trusts her with their most important mission (finding Luke) after knowing her for a day, Leia bypasses Chewie to hug her after Han dies, oh and she also picks up the nuances of the Force in about 10 minutes of screen time. You know, Plot Armor.

No other human can understand droid you say? Poe understood BB-8 pretty well, and Luke seemed to understand R2 fine in The Empire Strikes Back on Dagobah. Crack shot? You mean how she missed at least half of her shots, compared to the not force sensitive Han Solo shooting a stormtrooper's head without even looking, or Finn nailing almost every shot even though most stormtroopers are terrible shots? She even forgot to take the safety off at first. Han Solo didn't have much of a choice with a co-pilot when Chewie got injured, and he was clearly annoyed by Rey jumping into the seat at first. Rey didn't find BB-8 - BB-8 was found by an alien not far from Rey's ATAT home and she heard him/her panic (the creators haven't really given BB-8 a gender as far as I know).

That 10 minutes of screen time is around half a day in-universe, after those same force powers are used on her first. As a survivor she would need to adapt to things fast, and that can logically extend to learning the force when she's forced to. Since we don't know her full backstory yet, it's too early to assume she's not re-learning them from her time as a child at the Jedi Temple, whether she realizes it or not. Additionally, there are strong hints that she has some sort of connection to Luke Skywalker, whether by blood or not. As for Leia bypassing Chewie, well ... that could be one of the movie's weak points with writing. All three of them should have been part of that hug. That said, Rey and Leia are both force sensitive at that point, and they probably sense that they're both saddened by Han's death and they need someone to hug for comfort, even if it's someone they've never knowingly met before. You also see Chewie mourning in private - maybe that's how he'd prefer to mourn. I personally know a lot of people who prefer to mourn in private.

The expert mechanic and combat skills are a product of growing up on a rough planet. It's either you gain those skills or you die, and they're both things that force sensitive people tend to be good at anyway. The piloting is explained both in a line in the movie ("I've flown ships before, just not off planet"), and in the book Before the Awakening, where it's explained that she has a working flight simulator in her ATAT home (other data discs she found taught her detailed ship schematics and droid speak). It's also mentioned in Rey's Survival Guide that she's met wookies before; wookie customers at Unkar Plutt's business. Both of those books are cannon by the way. Amusing enough, she learned about the legend of Han Solo from these wookies, but they thought that Chewie was the captain and Han Solo was the first mate.

I'm not saying you have to like Rey as a character, but all of her skills can be explained and she's not without weaknesses or making mistakes. I would argue that she's ultimately no more impressive than Luke Skywalker in A New Hope if you go by the start of each movie. He's the better pilot (death star battle), the better shot, and clearly has better social skills due to not being an intentional loner, even if he lived a bit of a sheltered life. Episode 1 Anakin Skywalker on the other hand ...

Anyway, I'm still not sure who would win this, but I'm starting to lean toward Luke.

Rey has immensely more prominent plot armor than Luke. Luke has been bailed, aided, helped, saved however you wanna call it, more so than his "plot armor" feats. Luke was just thrashed by a wampa, something twice his size and immensely powerful. Not to mention he was dragged to god knows where, in below freezing to a cave, where he was presumably hung up brutally by the wampa. Also, there we're two. Who knows if they tried to eat him first, fought over his "corpse", or threw him around to make sure he was dead. Read some of his more prominent and current comic book feats, which shows him honing his Jedi skills in battles and clashes with The Empire. Rey meanwhile, can somehow survive alone with no threat of rape, banditry, or thirst for a good decade, manage to fly the Millennium Falcon, repair it, have an extremely detailed force vision, and have saber skills to tango with Ren. Not to mention she used a mind-trick, a very detailed one on a stormtrooper, evaded thousands of other troopers and Ren, and also climbed well enough to evade them as well. She has so much plot armor, it made me cringe. Either way, Luke wins.

This is a guy who can stop time, who killed all of Lukes apprentices without Luke being able to stop him and got the son of the chosen one to go off and grow a depression beard.

Kylo Ren is portrayed as a formidable darksider with unseen force powers and weaponry, I don't think the writers meant us to take his defeat lightly.

You have just outlined the very reasons why Rey should win. When a character has this much plot armor you are forced to stop regarding it as PIS and have to take it as an integral part of her character, therefore due to being portrayed as FAR more powerful than Luke and indeed having more potential than just about any character in the EU let alone the cannon setting she should be able to take Luke from beginning of Empire quite easily.

Reading comprehension...sigh. Luke at the beginning of Empire has had much more experience, again, and would have no problem beating Rey, since most of his feats in the current comics outclass Rey by a mile. Again, being redundant, since we're including all feats. And getting to Rey. No sane person would regard what she does as a feat. Its all PIS. That is an absolute. We don't take bad writing and Macguffins into good arguments, because they get dismantled easier than a mistreated car. There is no scenario where Rey could win, especially somebody with erratic, untrained force abilities that even she is afraid of. Again, she was lucky enough to "beat" a severely emotionally and physically crippled Ren, how is she going to beat somebody who has actually fought more than she has. Not to mention Luke has exceedingly better force potential as time went on, considering he was the son of a prophetic force user. Luke doesn't stomp, but he wins with moderate trouble.

Stop time? What? Stopping a laser blast and immobilizing people is not the same as stopping time. If anything it's a creative use of TK through the force, and the novel explains that when he tried to use the immobilization on Rey after she started using the force, he couldn't, so he force pushed her instead. If it doesn't work on Rey, then it wouldn't work on the more force experienced Luke of EST either - especially when you could argue he somehow used TK to guide the proton torpedoes in A New Hope. How else did the unguided missiles turn into the exhaust port so easily?

And again, he was emotionally compromised by killing his father to the point where he couldn't sense the bowcaster laser coming at his gut. He has a lot of offensive power with the force, sure, but he lacks control, was badly injured in that fight and was under orders to take Rey in alive. On the other hand, Rey is fighting for her life as far as she knows, and that tends to give people focus. Even then, she's being pushed back for most of the fight and only beats him after she lets the force take control, much like how Luke let the force take control when he blew up the Death Star.

An uninjured Kylo Ren with more training in the next movie will be a much more formidable opponent.

Oh and also, if the flashback scene is of the Jedi massacre, then Kylo most certainly wasn't alone.

When every action a character does is PIS it becomes less PIS and an integral part of their character.

Like Superman, Superman is a ridiculously powerful character, hate him or don't, a lot of people do but he's still the most powerful Superhero out there.

Rey is from what's been seen the most powerful force user out there.

The girl learned force persuasion, a highly advanced force trick, in a matter of minutes just by observing someone else attempt it.

That is an unprecedented move, and everything else we've seen ab out Kylo is meant to portray him as a powerful force user, he is the son of Leia, daughter of the chosen one after all.

It is also well established that Luke Skywalker only used force powers to improve his already expert level piloting skills while aided by Ben Kenobi, a common force user feat not an unprecedented one.

I don't know why you are trying to lowball such a powerful Knight of Ren.

The way I see it there's no in between here, he's either a weak punk, which would be inconsistent with the movies plot.

Or he is indeed a dangerous force adept and that a runaway Storm Trooper from sanitation and a scavver from Jakku defeated her can all be chalked up to destiny.

I'm going with destiny.

Luke.

luke never engaged in a lightsaber fight before he met yoda iirc

@masterkungfu: He has against the Gamemaster in the canon comics.

@wolfrazer: I thought these were movie versions only

@masterkungfu: /Shrug the OP don"t say movie only.

Rey.

@healed1337: No other human can understand droid you say? Poe understood BB-8 pretty well, and Luke seemed to understand R2 fine in The Empire Strikes Back on Dagobah.

I don't remember Poe understanding anything BB8 said. I saw it over a month ago so I could be wrong but I don't think so. And Luke didn't understand R2 at any point in the OT. Any communication between the two took place through C3PO or the display computer in Luke's X-Wing.

Crack shot? You mean how she missed at least half of her shots, compared to the not force sensitive Han Solo shooting a stormtrooper's head without even looking, or Finn nailing almost every shot even though most stormtroopers are terrible shots?

You should watch it again. This part I do remember because of its sheer ridiculousness. She missed her first shot and then from 50 meters away tagged three Stormtroopers in a row running at right-angles from her position.

Han Solo didn't have much of a choice with a co-pilot when Chewie got injured, and he was clearly annoyed by Rey jumping into the seat at first.

Han then offers her a job an hour after wanting to boot her out onto some habitable planet. Han famously doesn't trust or need anybody except Chewie, but our Rey just naturally brings out his softer side I guess. One of the reasons people have accused her of being a Mary Sue, established figures in the Star Wars universe act completely out of character around her.

Rey didn't find BB-8 - BB-8 was found by an alien not far from Rey's ATAT home and she heard him/her panic (the creators haven't really given BB-8 a gender as far as I know).

When I said she found the MacGuffin I meant Luke. IMO he was the real MacGuffin. The map was just the means to get there.

That 10 minutes of screen time is around half a day in-universe, after those same force powers are used on her first. As a survivor she would need to adapt to things fast, and that can logically extend to learning the force when she's forced to. Since we don't know her full backstory yet, it's too early to assume she's not re-learning them from her time as a child at the Jedi Temple, whether she realizes it or not. Additionally, there are strong hints that she has some sort of connection to Luke Skywalker, whether by blood or not.

In the grand schema there's not much difference between ten minutes and half a day when we're talking about learning a skill that took others years to master. Even if she had training as a child, she hasn't exercised that muscle in a decade or more. It should be atrophied, not emergent. I could maybe be sold on the fact that she blocked Ren's mind probes, but to turn it back on him and probe his? Sorry, nah.

As for Leia bypassing Chewie, well ... that could be one of the movie's weak points with writing.

On that we agree.

The expert mechanic and combat skills are a product of growing up on a rough planet. It's either you gain those skills or you die, and they're both things that force sensitive people tend to be good at anyway.

When my car breaks down, I don't take it to a junkyard owner, I take it to a mechanic. Just because you know how to strip a part, doesn't mean you know how to put it in or how it's used or what it's for. Combat skills I'll give you. In fact I could buy any two or three skills she has, just not eight. It's unrealistic and with each successive skill she's automatically levels up on it takes you further out of the movie because you're thinking, "Rey's at it again."

The piloting is explained both in a line in the movie ("I've flown ships before, just not off planet"), and in the book Before the Awakening, where it's explained that she has a working flight simulator in her ATAT home (other data discs she found taught her detailed ship schematics and droid speak).

When the Air Force trains pilots they use simulators sure. But they don't transition pilots directly from those simulators to a $50million F22. I don't care how much simulation she's done, she outflies two First Order Tie pilots in a ship that she believes is a piece of junk that hasn't been flown in decades. Another eye rolling moment.

I would argue that she's ultimately no more impressive than Luke Skywalker in A New Hope if you go by the start of each movie. He's the better pilot (death star battle), the better shot, and clearly has better social skills due to not being an intentional loner, even if he lived a bit of a sheltered life.

I don't agree that he's a better pilot. The trench run was cake compared to the stuff Rey pulled in the wreckage of that Star Destroyer. A better shot I'll give you. But she's a better fighter, speaks who knows how many languages, clearly outclasses him in mechanical knowledge, and as far as the social skills thing, Luke was a whiny, b**chy brat whom no one liked except Ben and the droids. Everyone loves Rey. Han, Chewie, Finn, Leia, Maz, BB8, they all become instantly smitten with her. She's the most cardboard character we've ever gotten. And yes, I'm including the Prequels.

I think Rey is the next chosen one.. She will surpass Luke. Really it's kind of dumb, but the next generation needs a star......

First off, sorry about the weird formatting. I'm not sure how to do this right and it's late enough that I don't have time to figure it out.

@i_am_lamont_cranston said:

@healed1337: No other human can understand droid you say? Poe understood BB-8 pretty well, and Luke seemed to understand R2 fine in The Empire Strikes Back on Dagobah.

I don't remember Poe understanding anything BB8 said. I saw it over a month ago so I could be wrong but I don't think so. And Luke didn't understand R2 at any point in the OT. Any communication between the two took place through C3PO or the display computer in Luke's X-Wing.

Poe understanding BB-8 happened in the very first scene of the movie, when he barged into the tent after seeing heat signatures from the approaching First Order ships, and after he beeped a lot, Poe turned to the other guy and said "We have company". There are other examples where you see him understanding BB-8 just fine. Luke did interact with R2D2 on the surface of Dagobah outside of the X-Wing, but that might have been a bad example (again, it was late at night and I kind of rushed my response). But there is Darth Maul in Episode 1. His probe droid beeped a few times, and just from that, he knew exactly where to find the royal Naboo ship to attack them. Also Obi-Wan and Anakin both seem to understand R2 in Revenge of the Sith's opening. For example, R2 beeps into his radio a few times, and Obi-Wan then says "No, we need to go up." Obi clearly understands R2 in A New Hope when he beeps after he scares the sand people away from the unconscious Luke, and Obi says "Don't worry, he'll be alright."

I've watched The Force Awakens 5 times and I've read the novelization, and the last time I watched, I specifically counted. We only see Rey shoot 2 stormtroopers out of four shots at first, and they were standing relatively still. The third stormtrooper she shoots is immediately after we cut to see Kylo Ren arriving on the battlefield so we4 don't know how many shots she fired before that, so neither of us can use that as evidence. Later, she fires more than 10 shots at Kylo Ren in short range, and he only needs to block like 4 or 5 of them (it goes by so fast it's hard to count exactly). Several shots clearly hit the rocks surrounding him while he casually walks forward.

You do remember that Han also offered a job to Luke before the Death Star battle, right? "Why don't you come with us? You're pretty good in a fight. We could use you." Considering that, how is it out of character for him to offer her a job when she knows more about the Falcon's recent history and what kind of wrongheaded modifications have been placed on it? Also notice there's also a look of familiarity when she tells him her name.

The problem with that argument is that Unkar Plutt is the junk dealer, not Rey. Here's a real life example of the kind of ingenuity someone can come up with when it's for their survival. http://www.wired.com/2009/10/kamwamba-windmill/ In case you don't want to read the link, this is a guy who grew up in Africa. His town had nothing, so he built a wind turbine mostly out of bicycle parts. After people discovered this, they gave him a scholarship and he ended up earning an engineering degree. Kind of an inspirational story, but let's get back on topic.

Rey is a mechanic, just like Luke is in A New Hope. Even if the movie doesn't focus on it, the hints are there, and it's further expanded on in the new canon comics when 10-year-old Luke repairs a heavily damaged skyhopper after he rode through Beggars Canyon for the first time. And here's the thing about people who are intentional loners that those with busy social lives don't understand. Being alone all the time without something like the internet to distract you gives you plenty of opportunity to get very good at a number of things. Throw in being force sensitive and it's a lot easier to believe.

And again, in Before the Awakening, Rey finds a ship that's mostly intact and still has power. After a couple other scavengers find out, she reluctantly agrees to let them help. The three of them fully restore the ship so that it's fully capable of space travel, and that's the first time she flies a real ship. Of course the others take it into space before she can sell it to Unkar Plutt. That's a good chunk of where she gets her mechanical skills, by working with other scavengers. Also, it's mentioned that she built her speeder using various parts from downed ships she's scavenged from. I would sooner trust someone like that then a random junk dealer for mechanical work.

Even with her mechanical skills, she still makes mistakes with them, like pulling the wrong fuses and releasing the Rathtars when she wanted to lock the gangsters in the corridors. That mistake almost got Finn killed.

Last but not least, this pales in comparison to Episode 1 Anakin, who at 9, built what's supposedly the fastest podracer in history on his own with spare parts from junkyards, when a lot of the other racers would have teams of long-time experts and the resources to get the newest and best parts available. That alone doesn't prove that Rey isn't a Mary Sue, but it's strong evidence that Anakin is even more of one.

Out-flying two First Order tie fighters in the junk yard she's spent her entire life scavenging from using a ship that can tank tie fighter blasts is nothing in comparison to the Death Star battle. Luke fought against a bunch of tie fighters, including Darth Vader himself, in a snub figher that's blown up almost as easily as the ties themselves. Not to mention that Rey didn't have to worry about shooting anything - that was Finn's job. Also, nothing Rey does in the falcon remotely compares to the Asteroid Field scene, any of Poe's flying, Lando Calrissian in the Battle of Endor or any of Anakin's piloting antics throughout the prequels. Keep in mind Rey spent the first few minutes of that chase smashing into buildings and grinding the falcon into the ground as she figures out how to balance it properly, plus Finn needs to remind her to turn on the shields.

Han is quite annoyed by Rey at first - remember that annoyed look when she bypassed the compressor, or shouting "12" when she talks about his Kessel run? That's at least one who is not instantly smitten with her. You even acknowledged earlier that he threatened to drop Rey and Finn off before he learned that they had the map to Luke Skywalker, so why are you even bringing this argument up? He warms up to her over the course of the movie. Unkar Plutt clearly doesn't care about her that much either - he only cares about the parts his scavengers brings him, and doesn't hesitate for a second to sick his thugs after her when she refuses to sell the droid.

As for the cardboard cutout - that's just wrong and desperate. Rey starts the movie off as a loner, intentionally distancing herself from others while hoping for her family to return. She’s self-reliant and finds it annoying when people try to help her. She cares for others, but it takes her a moment to let BB-8 follow her to town. She takes great pride with her mechanical skills – I love her smile after she bypasses the compressor. She’s a reluctant hero who wants nothing to do with Luke’s lightsaber after the vision she receives and is clearly distressed by it.

Throughout the movie she learns to accept help from others, let people in as friends and eventually, to let the force guide her actions. That last particular development is an arc that will most likely continue through Episode 8. So there you go, she has personality traits and a character arc Now tell me from memory what Qui Gon’s personality traits in Episode 1 are … and Queen Amidala while you’re at it. Not their role in the movie, not what they do, but their personality traits and the emotions that they show. How about Ric Olie. Do you even remember who that is without looking him up? He has an important role in the movie and a number of lines.

Furthermore, her social skills are somewhat lacking, which makes total sense for a loner with abandonment issues. After all, she’s the only one who doesn’t figure out that Finn isn’t a part of the resistance, even though he makes it quite obvious that he’s lying.

I'm not trying to lowball Kylo Ren at all. I even said somewhere in this thread that he has impressive offensive abilities in the force. But when you're emotionally compromised and injured by what's pretty much a rocket launcher shot to the gut, you're not going to be anywhere nearly as powerful or as dangerous as usual. He shouldn't even be able to stand after the bowcaster wound, let alone fight, yet he still managed to badly injure Finn (who according to Before the Awakening, is among the top 1% in all categories for stormtroopers in training). Kylo Ren at his full strength would still have easily beaten Rey.

@healed1337: The guys always emotionally compromised, he slashes computer terminals whenever he doesn't get what he wants.

True, he is emotionally unstable, but he's even more compromised after he kills his father. You can see it in his eyes, but the novelization expands further when it explains that he hoped it would strengthen his resolve, but it weakened it instead. After all, he was focused enough in the beginning to stop a laser blast, yet Chewbacca managed to shoot him in the gut after he killed his father.

You see, what we have here is a trilogy where both the hero and the villain will be learning as the trilogy goes along. That right there is something new to the Star Wars saga and I personally can't wait to see where it goes from here.

Too bad the star is as interesting as watching paint dry.