Star Wars: The Force Awakens ***CONTAINS SPOILERS***

The Rule of Two is mentioned in Episode I and an episode of The Clone Wars, but, yeah, the Sith seem to have trouble sticking to that. And then there's these exceptions like inquisitors and Knights of Ren.

The rule of two is definitely part of the recent canon. Apart from the obvious reference in episode one, there was the nod to Darth Bane (the founder of the rule of two) in the finale of the Clone Wars. And Ventress was never a Sith, just a dark-side apprentice who had to be 'disposed of' when she became more than that. No idea where that leaves Kylo Ren and the others though, but at this stage there appears to be two dark-siders...

Kylo is strong in the force, but any of the old school Jedi/Sith/Ventress/Inquisitor would hand him his butt in a lightsaber battle.

I really had a problem with that last battle as two people who have a whopping 10 minutes combined experience could go toe to toe with Kylo and get at least a draw or win out of that deal.

I agree about the fight with Finn, he should not have lasted 10 seconds. My thought on the fight with Rey is a little different. When Ren mentioned the force and Rey closed her eyes, what do you think she was doing? My thought was she was reading his mind to train herself how to fight with a light saber.

I could be completely wrong on that but wanted to see what other people thought.

That's an interesting theory

Her natural force abilities are amazing. Without training she can do some high level force actions.

1. She is in tune with electronics, much more so than Anakin ever was. To be able to diagnose the Milenium Falcon without much effort shows that. Also the timing of the blast door to sever the arms off that monster to save Finn was no accident.

2. She is in tune with nature. The flower growing in her wasteland is a great example. She barely has enough food/water for her to survive, but yet there is a flowering plant in the dark?

3. Jedi Mind Trick after what 3 failures?

4. Keeping Kylo Ren out of her mind compared to what he was able to do to Poe.

5. Vision with the lightsaber. How much of that did she experience? How much is foretelling the future? How much of that was she able to grasp from just an imprint in the force?

6. Lightsaber battle - in the now defunct OC, it did require force sensitivity to wield a lightsaber. So either Finn is force sensitive or that is completely gone from the lore. Either Ren was able to pull information from Kylo OR the Bespin Lightsaber is a high level artifact that bestowed the knowledge from Anakin/Luke onto the user. Consider how prized Jedi/Sith artifacts are in the Cannon novels (and this movie) I think there may be some truth to the latter.

Luke is supposed to be this be all/end all Jedi, but he at least failed in his training while with Ben and Yoda and lost in his first battle with Vader. I am sure there is something planned for her to explain this all, but right now she's a max level character playing level one of easy mode.

Wow, I'm happy to have changed the discussion to something way more interesting than just "like/dislike" the movie!

I agree with the whole rule of 2 thing. When Palpatine noticed that Ventress was getting a bit too strong, he asks for her to be taken care of, which makes it the rule of 2 in that case. But everybody is right that Kylo is a knight of Ren, whatever that is. JJ Abrams also mentionnend in an interview the Kylo is not a sith. That still leaves my question about Snoke. Where does he come from? Will we learn that Palpatine is still alive and trained him? Could he actually be Palpatine? Remember that we only saw him as an hologram, he could be anything/anyone, and any size for that matter!

As far as the combats... well Kylo is not done with training, far from it. He might not be that good at sword fight yet.

Finn is a stormtrooper. So he basically got an army training from birth. I do hope he knows how to fight even though they are very weak in the old movies...

Rey... they made a point to show us how good she was with that stick and how others feared her, the guy with BB-8 in is net. Its not far fetched that she got some martial art training of some sort and can handle herself quite well with a sword. Add to that the fact that the force is really strong with her and you got a very good fighter... So lets get the expansion out there to get the max level up a bit and some new levels/bosses!

Finn would have had training with the stun baton thingy. perhaps Ren was toying with him? Ren also got shot in the gut by Chewbacca, that has to give your enemy a decided advantage