On the Mary Sue-ism of Rey (Split off by (several) requests)

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On the Mary Sue-ism of Rey (Split off by (several) requests)

Post by phlapjackage »

FrankTrollman wrote:Some people complained that Rey was a Mary Sue, which is not valid because she was not
Could you expand on this a little bit? She seemed to me to fit that description very well, if not 100% perfectly. Way too good at almost everything she did (HTH, lightsabering, piloting, droiding, even force-ing). Maybe I'm misremembering the movie...
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Post by erik »

People who are strong in the force seem to be way too good at everything they do, so it makes it a bit fuzzier unless you want to say that all Jedi are Mary Sues.

There's more particular definitions which require the Mary Sue to be perfect/never fails, have everything be about them, and maybe even act as author self-insertion. Rey doesn't fit any of those.
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Post by MGuy »

She's considered a Mary Sue despite having access to the setting's magic because it's said repeatedly that you have to train with old people to learn to use it. Rey repeatedly bests people trained in their occupations including other people trained in the settings 's magic after discovering it for a few hours and then a few days without any time chamber shenanigans. She's also good at everything else in the setting that's important short of hacking (as far as we know because she's never had to do it). Piloting (a ship she's unfamiliar with in an intense situation with no practice), repairing, melee fighting without magic stick and with magic stick, mind invading, shooting people (missing only one even though it is said that this was her first time).

People point to Anakin and Luke as being similar but both were not that good at everything at the start. Luke had literally any training and was really only an experienced pilot that had force uncle talking to him. Anakin had the regular training and started out as an experienced pilot and inexplicably lucky young boy. There's a bunch of stuff dealing with the way the plot treats her choices but whatever. It would be a lot easier to dismiss if they spent time developing her but there was no time between TFA and TLJ so fuck it I guess.

I don't think it really ruins the movies but a very vocal amount of people think it's a big enough deal to spend hours talking about it or defending it.
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Post by erik »

MGuy, almost none of your assertions merit more than a "citation needed" rebuttal. I have no idea what you are talking about and need examples to understand.

Rey's expertise as a mechanic and melee weapon combatant are established early on. She says she can pilot things and shoot people, so fuck if we know what she has experience with. The only Force user Rey bests in the Force is a guy who is very emotionally conflicted and has fresh chest trauma from a bolt caster at the time. And Kylo Ren while impressive, is not a master. He's a trainee.

I have no idea what you are going on about Rey besting people in their professions. You mean piloting a famously awesome ship in a place where she has home advantage on the terrain versus unnamed pilots in tissue-paper fighters? You mean shooting storm troopers? Really?

The only implausible thing is how quickly she picks up some force tricks. And given that it's magic, I have no idea what all the rules are but I do know that old mentor required isn't one of them. There are plenty of force sensitive characters who did not have to train with old people to use powers. So not that implausible by setting standards.

And to end with a little speculation, In Ep7-8, Force users seem to be having bigger powers (improved force blaster-choker, astral projection), but the title of #7 was The Force Awakens. I'm presuming that means something. Maybe peeps are more easily developing super powers force powers. And for all we know Rey had some force training as a very wee kid too.
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Post by Surgo »

The only thing about TLJ that particularly bothered me was the relativistic kill vehicle. The worst part about that was it would have been so easy to avoid it being a problem. Just have one of the characters shout to turn on the interdiction fields or something, would have immediately caulked away any such issue. But...they didn't do that. So that just ripped a huge hole in the entire setting. Which is really painful for an otherwise good movie and impactful scene.
MGuy wrote:She's also good at everything else in the setting that's important short of hacking (as far as we know because she's never had to do it). Piloting (a ship she's unfamiliar with in an intense situation with no practice), repairing, melee fighting without magic stick and with magic stick, mind invading, shooting people (missing only one even though it is said that this was her first time).
She wasn't actually good at piloting (only character on screen to actually fail at it and crash into something!), shooting (only good guy to actually miss in the entire movie!), and was quite naive (only person to actually believe Finn). The naivety even extends to the next movie.
Frank wrote:but the related truth is that TFA really does feel like Star Wars fanfiction rather than as an actual expansion and continuation to the setting.
Hah, this is pretty much word for word what my wife said upon exiting the theater. She hated it for...pretty much that reason.
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Post by MGuy »

She crashed after successfully getting through a dog fight and I don't think missing one shot and then one shorting everyone else makes you not good at shooting (insert stormtrooper meme of choice). She is naive but that doesn't make her not a Mary Sue. Piloting a ship she had not flown before to get away from people who are likely better trained at flying in a tense situation is a pretty awesome feat even if she couldn't perfectly stick the landing. That I could forgive. Her being just good at melee fighting with a stick? That's fine. I could mind caulk a reason why that is. Her seemingly being able to intuit a fantastic repair job is fine. She's a salvager so why not? Her beating Kylo Rem while he's penetrating her mind? That's a stretch. Her being able to perform a mind trick after fumbling once is really a stretch. Her missing only once with a blaster after making it known she doesn't know what she's doing? A stretch. Not completely getting hosed by Ren in a duel? I've seen it argued that he didn't want to beat her and he was injured so I'll bite. That's before getting into TLJ and the few shenanigans there. If it were just a few of these things I'd be fine. Luke never piloted an X Wing and was able to make his way through that battle barely scratched. Anakin got through the battle of Naboo based on some extreme fucking luck. I'm willing to accept a lot of shit going on in a character's first outing but not all of that, all in the same movie.
And even with all of that I don't think she's even a real problem in TFA. When I first saw the movie I was more upset about Finn being a fucking joke in most of the movie. He just seems like a character who could have been a rank and file soldier who turned for personal reasons. Not just some bumbling ex janitor.
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Post by Chamomile »

Even if you do get Mon Mothma and Admiral Ackbar confused, neither of them appear in ANH, so there's no excuse for thinking that Mon Mothma's line applies to the original Death Star.
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Post by Shrapnel »

Did Mon Motha die in TLJ? I know they killed off Ackbar (and Luke), but did they off anyone else? I honestly don't remember.
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Post by Kaelik »

MGuy wrote:She's considered a Mary Sue despite having access to the setting's magic because it's said repeatedly that you have to train with old people to learn to use it.
Luke spent like 2 days with an old guy at most during which time he never successfully did jack shit and couldn't even block training bolts, and then was good enough to blow up the death star, and obviously learned new things after that without more old training, like how to pull a lightsaber to him and block lasers.
MGuy wrote:Rey repeatedly bests people trained in their occupations including other people trained in the settings 's magic after discovering it for a few hours and then a few days without any time chamber shenanigans.
She never bests anyone else in their professions nor does she beat someone else in magic. She beats a guy shot in the chest who just stabbed his own father in a lightsaber fight that is 2v1 and he's literally limping around.
MGuy wrote:She's also good at everything else in the setting that's important short of hacking (as far as we know because she's never had to do it). Piloting (a ship she's unfamiliar with in an intense situation with no practice), repairing, melee fighting without magic stick and with magic stick, mind invading, shooting people (missing only one even though it is said that this was her first time).
1) She has training in melee fighting with a staff, moving from hitting people with staff to hitting crippled dude with lightsaber probably isn't the most meaningful crazy jump in skill.
2) Her being good at repair is 90000000 times more earned than Luke's piloting. She's a scavenger who goes around taking mechanical parts out of mechanical devices to earn her food and has probably been doing that for a decade. Luke is a farmer who just happened to, in his spare time, become friends with someone who owned a spaceship and then fly that spaceship in his spare time when he wasn't farming. And then transfer that spaceship knowledge to completely different spaceships instantly in seconds. Any serious complaint about how Rey repairs things is basically garbage.
3) Shooting people is not a super complex activity, and LUKE never shot a goddam blaster before A New Hope when he was good at it too, almost like shooting a fucking full auto laser blaster at some fucking stormtroopers isn't an impressive testament to your abilities.
4) She's familiar with the ship. I don't know why so many people missed this. It's owned by her owner, she's good at repairing, and she knows everything about the LEGENDS of the ship, she's probably been on it hundreds of times working on it, and she's probably obsessively studied it. She didn't pick it because it was the closest ship, she picked it because she knows it. That was literally a point argued in all the "Rey's parents are actually solos or skywalkers or something" fan theories.
5) She doesn't do a good job of piloting it. She crashes it, and barely beats a couple of backwater tie fighter pilots, even though we know the Millennium Falcon can, when piloted by good pilots, beat legions of the best tie fighter pilots in the galaxy while not crashing into anything and also dealing with an entire fucking capital ship battle at the same time.
MGuy wrote:People point to Anakin and Luke as being similar but both were not that good at everything at the start. Luke had literally any training and was really only an experienced pilot that had force uncle talking to him. Anakin had the regular training and started out as an experienced pilot and inexplicably lucky young boy.
Anakin isn't an experienced pilot, he's a kid who BECAUSE HE WAS CHOSEN BY PROPHECY is magically capable of piloting a ground vehicle that no human can pilot. Then, he magically with no training or even anyone telling him what a single control does, at 8, turns "I have driven a really fast land speeder" into "I am the best fucking starfighter pilot in this entire battle, also I'm good at shooting things even though it's literally my first time firing lasers ever."

Luke is a FARMER who's entire fucking reason for knowing how to pilot an X wing is that when it comes time to fly X wings he says "I'm a good pilot, no trust me, no one has ever seen me fly a spaceship, I've explicitly never left Tatooine before, but trust me I'm a really good pilot. Don't worry about the fact that my parents didn't own a spaceship so there's literally no reason for me to know how to fly one in space that I've never been in ever, I'm a good pilot."

Rey is a BAD pilot who is flying a spaceship she actually motherfucking knows really well.

And by the way, she's "pilotted" a groundspeeder before, so she has 100% of the experience of Anakin already, and arguably as much as Luke "I've flown an in atmosphere airship more than 0 times, so I'm a good space pilot" Skywalker.

TL;DR: You are wrong about the experience that Anakin has, wrong about the experience Luke has, and wrong about the experience Rey has. You have backported your assumptions of why Luke is justified into his history in a way that is false, and you've been a billions times more charitable to his and Anakin's experience than you have to Rey who has plenty of similar grounds to be experienced.
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Post by virgil »

The last person IRL who argued for Rey's Mary Sue leaned mostly on her use of a Mind Trick and getting information out of a mind probe directed at her.
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Post by Prak »

Yeah, most arguments that Rey is a Mary Sue seem to basically be-
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When... yeah it is. It's a fucking quasi-sapient magical energy that has a vested interest in helping the protagonists.
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Post by K »

I think the reason that Ren feels like a Mary Sue is that she's depicted as some kind of inexperienced youth and then she personally solves a number of the film's conflicts or moves the plot forward with only her own abilities, several which involve magic powers.

In a New Hope, Luke is also an inexperienced youth who literally gets a few seconds of magic powers, personally solving exactly one problem. Mostly, he tags along while other characters do awesome stuff. He's actually a whiny bitch for much of the film.

People would have thought that Luke was a Mary Sue if he had been presented as an inexperienved youth who is a skilled pilot, and skilled mechanic, and skilled martial artist, and skilled magic power user. Instead, he got to be just a skilled pilot, full stop. He never even fights the villain.

It's not until Empire that he gets a new outfit and he starts being good at a lot of things. Even then, the villain beats him pretty handily (amputation puns!).

I mean, why even train Rey? Is there anything she needs to get better at?
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Post by Pariah Dog »

Pretty sure Luke was a decent pilot and shot at the start of ANH. The quote about Bullseyeing Whomp Rats in his T-16
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Post by Kaelik »

Pariah Dog wrote:Pretty sure Luke was a decent pilot and shot at the start of ANH. The quote about Bullseyeing Whomp Rats in his T-16
He doesn't actually bring that up until the end, and also that's just him being a good pilot of an in atmosphere craft that he flew in his spare time. I mean it does mean he's a good pilot, but his claim for being a good space fighter pilot and space navigator is premised on never having been in space. So it's a bit... really stupid.
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Post by erik »

K wrote:I think the reason that Rey feels like a Mary Sue is that she's depicted as some kind of inexperienced youth and then she personally solves a number of the film's conflicts or moves the plot forward with only her own abilities, several which involve magic powers.
She is depicted more like a salty experienced youth. Been living on her own, providing for herself and saving others, able to fight off multiple adults from an ambush.

She moves plenty of plot points forward,
Rescuing BB-8.
Co-stealing the Millenium Falcon and escaping with Finn + BB-8.
Escaping the gangsters and rathtars.
Getting Solo to join the rebels
Getting Luke's Light Saber.
Developing force schticks and fending off Kylo Ren.
Leaving to find Luke.

But Finn moves forward at least as many plot points,
Rescues Poe and gains mission of getting BB-8 to rebels.
Finds BB-8.
Co-stealing the Millenium Falcon and escaping with Rey + BB-8.
Convincing BB-8 to give directions to meet up with the Rebels.
Getting Solo to join the rebels
Getting Luke's Light Saber.
Giving deathstarkillerbase weakness to the Rebels and helping form a plan to destroy it.
Guiding Solo/Chewie to demolish the base and rescuing Rey.

I'd call them equal weight protagonists in TFA.
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Post by Pariah Dog »

Short of the Death Star space battle at the end most of the flying and navigation is done by Han and Chewie in A New Hope. Luke only does some flying during the Battle of Yavin and he was not completely inexperienced at flying a craft, given the rebels situation they were probably desperate enough to put anyone that could fly into a fighter, not just Luke but his friend Biggs from Tatooine as well.. Also he had R2 to assist with co-piloting since that is something Astromech droids do. With the trench run being similar to his flights through Beggar's Canyon back home, minus his murderous father on his tail until he gets chased off by a much better pilot than Luke (Han). So it is more believable than Rey managing to get the Falcon off world in The Force Awakens.

Edit: And a large part of me wants to make a Roger Wilco joke about Finn there since they were both space janitors.
Last edited by Pariah Dog on Sat Jun 02, 2018 1:53 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by K »

erik wrote:
K wrote:I think the reason that Rey feels like a Mary Sue is that she's depicted as some kind of inexperienced youth and then she personally solves a number of the film's conflicts or moves the plot forward with only her own abilities, several which involve magic powers.
She is depicted more like a salty experienced youth. Been living on her own, providing for herself and saving others, able to fight off multiple adults from an ambush.

She moves plenty of plot points forward,
Rescuing BB-8.
Co-stealing the Millenium Falcon and escaping with Finn + BB-8.
Escaping the gangsters and rathtars.
Getting Solo to join the rebels
Getting Luke's Light Saber.
Developing force schticks and fending off Kylo Ren.
Leaving to find Luke.

But Finn moves forward at least as many plot points,
Rescues Poe and gains mission of getting BB-8 to rebels.
Finds BB-8.
Co-stealing the Millenium Falcon and escaping with Rey + BB-8.
Convincing BB-8 to give directions to meet up with the Rebels.
Getting Solo to join the rebels
Getting Luke's Light Saber.
Giving deathstarkillerbase weakness to the Rebels and helping form a plan to destroy it.
Guiding Solo/Chewie to demolish the base and rescuing Rey.

I'd call them equal weight protagonists in TFA.
A bunch of those things are completely her accomplishments. She finds Luke's lightsaber by having a Force vision while Finn is in the other room. She steals the Millennium Falcon and pilots while Finn does comedy in the turret. She convinces Solo while Finn does background comedy.

She also escapes confinement with no help. Solo/Chewie/Finn simply provide her a ride off-planet after she has escaped by using Force power to resist interrogation and then again to mind-push Daniel Craig. Considering her skill at stealing ships, she probably didn't need them at all since she was having no trouble sneaking out.

Finn is actually the Luke character here, except his one skill is skilled fighting because he used to be a Stormtrooper. Mostly, he stands next to the heroes while they do cool things that he can remark on. The fight with Kylo is one example. His space janitor powers are literally a callback to various fan-made Star Wars comedies, like the Star Wars parody Space Janitors, so I class that as a fanservice joke and not a real plot point.
Last edited by K on Sat Jun 02, 2018 2:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by K »

Also, I don't think Rey is ever going to get stuffed into a warm corpse because she can't even fight ice-apes.

Luke sucked. His pants probably still smell like light-saber-cooked Taun-taun innards.
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Post by Kaelik »

Biggs either isn't Lukes friend from Tatoonie who is there, if you just watch the movie, or is, but was lukes friend before the movie started, but also left to train in the imperial academy before luke even found the droids, and also went on to defect to the rebels.

In either case, Biggs being there is not a testament to throwing Luke in there.

That said, they probably have enough fighters to throw extra competent pilots at it, it's not that weird that they gave him a fighter. It is however still true that his actual experience is "literally never flying a spacecraft or being in space" and yet still being a great fighter pilot, and also claiming (though absolutely no evidence is presented that he is) being capable of navigating hyperspace.

I'm fine with Luke just being wrong, but I'm also fine with him actually being able to pilot well in a the first space ship he's ever flown and/or to navigate hyperspace, but I'm also fine with Rey being able to badly pilot a ship she is familiar with.
Last edited by Kaelik on Sat Jun 02, 2018 2:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by erik »

K wrote:A bunch of those things are completely her accomplishments.


Disagree.
K wrote:She finds Luke's lightsaber by having a Force vision while Finn is in the other room.
Then she gives it up and he picks it up and uses it in battle. Finn is the one who brings it to the fight with Kylo Ren. No Finn, no lightsaber to bring forward.
K wrote:She steals the Millennium Falcon and pilots while Finn does comedy in the turret.
Finn uses a very hard to control weapon to destroy the Tie Fighters. No Finn, no escape.
K wrote:She convinces Solo while Finn does background comedy.
Finn reminds Solo of his younger self. Solo finds reasons to want to help both of them. Maybe either of them alone could have convinced Solo, but they were most effective together.
K wrote:Considering her skill at stealing ships, she probably didn't need them at all since she was having no trouble sneaking out.
Debatable. We'll never know because Finn and company came and saved her.


[edit: Anyway, can we all agree that TLJ is the Highlander 2 of Star Wars? We can only hope the next movie totally ignores it and we all pretend it never happened.

I would give mad respect to JJ Abrams if Ep 9 starts with a text crawl saying "None of the events in The Last Jedi actually happened. None."

Turnabout is fair play.
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Post by MGuy »

So I give a list of all the things Rey can do and the general push back is that she should just be able to do all this stuff when comparable characters in prior movies in their first outing can do maybe one thing. It's not that the fact that Rey can do a thing, nor is it about whether or not the movie gives a proper set up for the expectation. Just having a skill or two doesn't mean she's a Mary Sue it's the combination. I mean despite the fact that when I list these things I straight up say, yea I can accept a person doing one or two things with flimsy explanations and even specifically talk about the things people inevitably bring up and acknowledge they are indeed bullshit people bring it up anyway, but a single point of bullshit that doesn't stretch throughout the film compared to the highly competent at everything protagonist in this iteration. Yes she's going to be considered a Mary Sue just off of that without getting into how the plot and characters treat her. I mean when your defense against 'Luke at least he had any training at all from a master jedi' is but he did it for 2 days and blew up the Death Star (when in that movie He specifically said he could hit the kind of target they were seeking already, he had a force ghost pushing him to use the force so he had literally any understanding how, and it is the only truly important thing he did in his entire first movie) I'd just let it pass. No Star Wars protagonist is all that good and Grey's super competence at everything she tries is overt and cleverly the intention of the writers.

The only real question to me is whether it matters a lot and I don't think it does. Maybe it's because I'm not the target demographic of these characters but I've never been a fan of main movie main protagonists in Star Wars do I don't see Rey being a Mary Sue in this iteration of the series as a big deal and it's a flaw that really could have been fixed by changing up some of the scenes, which characters interact with who and when, or stretching out the time line a bit.
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Post by Dean »

It is inarguable that Rey is a Mary Sue because she straight up is. The only argument can be how much that impacts one's enjoyment of that film. Rey is absolutely a Mary Sue. Her opening scene establishes that she is a junk scavenger who is bordering on starvation and she then beats the shit out of like 4 people attacking her simultaneously with karate. She then flies a ship better than we've seen Han fly anything in the series despite never having canonically flown a spacecraft before this moment. She later uses jedi mind tricks and telekinesis despite having thought the jedi were fictional until the day before. Minor telekinesis seems to be a very broad force user ability so that's more defensible but why she would even conceive of trying to mentally dominate someone with powers she doesn't know exist is pretty wild.

Rey is absolutely a Mary Sue and if Luke were portrayed the same then New Hope would have felt very different. Luke gets his ass kicked instantly by sand raiders instead of beating all their asses at once. Luke freaks out in excitement when he shoots a single Tie Fighter and has to be told to chill out and keep fighting, he doesn't fly the Falcon and kill the squadron himself his first time on a ship. Luke sort of uses the force a little bit with Obi Wan telling him what to do as the climax of the movie, he isn't using force lightning once he learns that Old Ben exists because he guesses maybe that's something someone could do. Rey is a mary sue because she displays master level abilities in every area with no prior explanation as to why she can do those things but that's because J.J.Abrams is a mediocre director and Marcia Lucas is a masterful one. So the story from the latter one has gradual introductions of phenomenon and abilities and JJ opens up the movie with a new force power in the very first scene which never comes up again (despite that person being shot at again) because JJ likes for cinematic events to happen and his entire directing philosophy is about focusing on making exciting scenes and caring less about the narrative.

Basically it's really inarguable that Rey is absolutely a mary sue, and she was always going to be one because JJ Abrams directing a movie means a new incredible ability is going to be introduced every scene or two and most of the movie is on her so most of the incredible powers and discoveries will be hers cause that's how that dude thinks a story is told.
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Post by K »

erik wrote:
K wrote:She finds Luke's lightsaber by having a Force vision while Finn is in the other room.
Then she gives it up and he picks it up and uses it in battle. Finn is the one who brings it to the fight with Kylo Ren. No Finn, no lightsaber to bring forward.
So Finn's contribution is as .... a pocket?

Sure, I'll agree that Finn is about as useful as a performance fleece, or maybe a windbreaker. Not a belt, because those are essential.
erik wrote:
K wrote:She steals the Millennium Falcon and pilots while Finn does comedy in the turret.
Finn uses a very hard to control weapon to destroy the Tie Fighters. No Finn, no escape
We have three movies that show that complete noobs can use the turret weapon very easily.
erik wrote:
K wrote:She convinces Solo while Finn does background comedy.
Finn reminds Solo of his younger self. Solo finds reasons to want to help both of them. Maybe either of them alone could have convinced Solo, but they were most effective together.
Or not?

I don't see Finn doing anything other annoying Solo. Rey is the pilot and the mechanic and the one with the connection to the Falcon, and so shares the most traits with Han.
erik wrote:
K wrote:Considering her skill at stealing ships, she probably didn't need them at all since she was having no trouble sneaking out.
Debatable. We'll never know because Finn and company came and saved her.
How did they save her? She was out of her cell and making her way out of the facility unopposed. What did they do at all other than blowing her stealthy escape?

Honestly, it almost like toxic masculinity makes it hard for people to see that she's wildly competent.
Last edited by K on Sat Jun 02, 2018 7:23 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Chamomile
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Post by Chamomile »

K wrote:
Honestly, it almost like toxic masculinity makes it hard for people to see that she's wildly competent.
Did you really expect this to fly? Everyone here - including the people claiming to be arguing in Rey's defense in good faith - knows what the actual ulterior motive is, and it's basically the opposite of this. The alt-right dislikes Rey because they hate women, and therefore any argument against Rey takes on pro-fascist undertones in the minds of many readers regardless of whether that has anything at all to do with the content of the argument. That's dumb, because "Rey is a Mary Sue because JJ Abrams doesn't believe in long term planning" has almost nothing in common with "Rey is a Mary Sue because the feminist propaganda machine is trying to brainwash America into believing that women can be competent," but it's still true that the ultimate motivation here is pretty obvious and has nothing to do with sexism.

Although in fairness I guess it's fair play to make a strained, obviously false accusation of sexism one way when the same is frequently leveled in reverse.
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Post by Username17 »

Dean wrote:Basically it's really inarguable that Rey is absolutely a mary sue, and she was always going to be one because JJ Abrams directing a movie means a new incredible ability is going to be introduced every scene or two and most of the movie is on her so most of the incredible powers and discoveries will be hers cause that's how that dude thinks a story is told.
Except that's not what words mean. Rey is badly characterized and her progression is poorly realized, but that doesn't actually make her a Sue. She explicitly and repeatedly does not do anything better or specialer than established characters. She doesn't fly ships better than Han, she doesn't mind trick better than Obi-Wan, she doesn't fight better than Anakin. She just doesn't do any of those "surpassing the boundaries of the world" thing that Sues do. She also doesn't have a striking visual appearance or multiple inexplicably besotted love interests. She is less of a Mary Sue than Bella Swan.

The core issue is that bad, fanfiction-like storytelling does not in itself mean that all the bad fanfiction boxes are automatically ticked. Just because the presented Hero's Journey is disjointed doesn't mean we automatically get Moral Dissonance or Genre Shift or Bad Sex or any of the other bad fanfiction tropes. Rey is a middling competent Star Wars protagonist and the storytelling is extremely telegraphic. But she isn't a Mary Sue because she isn't the bestest at anything. She has exactly 3 out of 5 stars on every skill set exhibited by protagonists of previous Star Wars movies and stories. She is scientifically created in a lab to do things Star Wars protagonists do, but that's a different kind of bad storytelling from the Mary Sue critique.

Mary Sues by definition have special powers that make them stand out. Rey does not have any of those.

-Username17
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