Luke was never the type to make claims that weren't true. We have no reason to not believe he was that good of a pilot.
Hell, every Skywalker we know not named Leia is an ace pilot. Anakin was a top tier pilot. Luke was a top tier pilot. Now Rey.
Luke was a quick study with the training spheres. With Obiwan's Force Ghost helped him reach a calm state of mind, it's not at all ridiculous for him to make the shot.
And it was just that one shot. Which he claimed he could do based on similar experiences on Tatooine.
All this here is saying "He says he's good, so I buy it". This is a shot that is supposed to be nigh impossible to make by trained military pilots, and you're saying you buy the narrative just because Luke says it's the equivelent of shooting some road kill under non-battle conditions.
Luke had 4 years of learning and experience by the end of the OT. Rey didn't. They are not comparable, no matter how hard you try to force that comparison.
I'm not trying to make the comparison, you are. Hell, why would I compare Rey to Luke at the end of the OT in general? A fairer comparison would be to make it to Luke at the end of ANH.
What I'm trying to get across here is that you don't actually have any narrative evidence of Luke's expertise beyond offscreen generalities and the frankly shocking jumps he makes off screen.
Ren had Luke. He now has Snoke. He is the leader of the Knights of Ren which Snoke seems to hold in high regard. He has been training and using the Force for years. He has been fighting with a lightsaber for years.
How is so difficult for you to grasp that Rey beating him in the Force and combat just doesn't compute?
Ren did what with Luke? Who the hell is Snoke and why should we believe he's an expert force use, and what was the extent of his training? What reason do we have to believe Snoke's regard for the knights of Ren means, specifically? Training how? Fight with whom and how?
I have no difficulty grasping it because I understand that star wars pulls bullshit out of it's ass as it's inherent nature. There are star wars books that don't do that, but it's not how the movies work. You can argue it doesn't compute, I won't disagree with you. I'm just not bothered by it, because under the same level of scrutiny, the OT falls apart just as easily.
I mean, listen to your own argument above. Luke is able to make the nigh impossible shot in a large scale military battle because he targeted road kill when he was bored on saturdays in his backwater village? If someone told me the real world equivelent of that, I wouldn't really buy it, not because I think the person saying it is being dishonest, but because there is about a galaxy of difference between doing that and a battle situation. You may as well say playing call of duty is authentic gunbattle experience. And your other argument about the 4 year gap just means your making a whole lot of presumptions about what happened that allow for the logical bridging for his current abilities. Like, what the hell do you think happened in that time that made Luke a better Force user, specifically? You can't answer that because the films don't tell us. So what your doing here is just making the leaps of logic you need to to make the film make sense in your eyes. Which is perfectly fine, we can work with the film to make the story work, it's cool. But you can do that just as easily for your TFA questions. You just have to will yourself to do it. It's certainly possible.
The films have gone out of their way to emphasise that using the Force takes time, patience and training.
The only person we know that was naturally and subconsciously good at it was Anakin, and he couldn't control it. He wasn't even aware of it. And he was Force Jesus.
Rey is not Anakin.
Again, how do you know this? One of the biggest plot points is that we literally don't know her past, because she doesn't know it. If Anakin was Force Jesus, she might be Vampire Slayer Force Jesus Super Star. Literally the only thing established with Rey in connection to the force is that she is STRONG in it. Crazy strong. So therefore she pulls off crazy shit, atleast according to you.
And again, I cannot take the argument that the force takes time, patience and training while saying Luke didn't pull shit out of his ass in ANH and ESB with a straight face. I mean, yeah, Vader was controlling the fight, but at the same time, he was also gushing about how amazing Luke was and how impressive his feats were. Luke was making huge leaps and jumping around all over the place as he was fighting. Vader was impressed, and Luke couldn't have had more than a couple hours worth of training at best.
