While I understand the gripe ppl have with Rey learning how to use her powers quickly, I think it was a lose lose situation. Either you breeze past the abilities we've already seen so you can later expand on the force or you slow down the learning process making her journey identical to Luke's which would feel repetitive. The problem with TROS is that it glosses over the new abilities, like force healing, as well & the dyad never gets explored either so we're just left feeling unsatisfied.
It’s really not about seeing her learn to use specific powers, it’s about seeing her struggle and fail and need to grow. We don’t see that. She never fails, she’s never wrong, and she never has to earn anything (relationships, story beats, abilities, macguffins, etc., nothing). That is the problem, not lack of training montages. When reward comes without effort, it doesn’t mean anything.
Glossing over her first forays into the Force isn’t inherently an issue in itself, the idea that she downloaded some imprint of Ben’s training over the Force bond could be made to work, but nothing replaces that struggle in the plot. She is inexplicably handed everything at every turn. Luke’s arc in ANH wasn’t about training to be a Jedi or Force powers, it was about learning to have faith in himself and his ability to make a difference. To participate in the world instead of daydreaming on the sidelines. The five seconds Obi-wan spends literally teaching him weren’t what made his arc work where Rey’s doesn’t. No one thinks he’s all that and a bag of crisps out of the gate (except Threepio, I guess). He has to earn his relationships and his victories, and the latter mostly come from the former so it feels that much more organic. That much more engaging.
Structurally, on a macro level, the shape of Rey’s basic arc should be the same progression as Luke’s. It’s a coming-of-age story about becoming an ethical adult and an actualised hero- if she’s going to be the protagonist, she should be having that same journey to adulthood with added thematic affirmations and further resolution. Luke’s training wasn’t about him levelling up his rock-lifting skills or acquiring ForceBlockTM, what they’re actually doing is trivial, the point is the spiritual and metaphorical content of those scenes. Lifting the X-wing is again a matter of faith and will, not skill, and Luke’s failure to do it is indicative of his character flaws and the growth he still needs to undergo. He’s impatient, unfocussed, afraid, and prone to fall back on pragmatism.
The novelty of Yoda’s ‘new abilities’ doesn’t matter at all. It could have consisted of something completely different without affecting the story, they’re basically the same power as what Luke was already doing- manipulating objects. The thing that mattered was what Yoda’s lessons represented in the emotional arc.
ESB is parade of Luke being wrong, failing at stuff, and needing to be rescued. He is challenged and tested at every turn, all his mistakes reveal something about his core conflicts and the holes in his worldview. Everything he thought he understood is turned upside down and he has to deal with having been completely wrong about his most fundamental assumptions. He’s admirable and well-intentioned, but he’s just not grown up yet and there are serious consequences to his childishness. His choices have impact.
Rey is entirely insulated from consequences and, given tros, is never depicted as needing to make any choices or to change or grow at all. She was born perfect and worthy and everyone loves her, no effort necessary. All the (reasonable) complaints come to this- she has no arc.
Like, powers by themselves- who cares? They’re not consistent, there’s no real rules, we don’t and will never understand what Jedi training is really meant to entail on a mundane level: there’s no system. There isn’t meant to be. The reason the healing and alleged dyad stuff feels so empty and anticlimatic in tros is because it is empty. It’s just bullshit unearned powers as the plot demands, there’s no coherent emotional content and no tie into the character arcs. Lifting the X-wing was profound and majestic in ESB but a ridiculous moist fart in tros. It’s not the ‘powers’ or how well-explored they are which gives these scenes meaning or impact, the powers are a narrative device expressing the characters’ states of being and beliefs about their world.
The Force is always a metaphor, never a magic system or a superpower, and the problem with tros (and to a lesser extent, but still obviously percolating beneath the surface, TFA) is that they don’t fucking understand that. They made it into a video game.
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