Is Rey from Star Wars a Mary Sue?

[KLAMarine]

Shadow1980 said:

KLAMarine said:

Any competent business endeavor not only seeks to profit but also maximize profit made but as I'm sure you know, TLJ has been subject to considerable backlash. Surely this could have hurt potential repeat viewings and must cause some worry for Disney as they plan to make sequels, spin-offs, and sell merchandise? If a large amount of people hate the film, that's a threat to Disney's related and future efforts.

The thing about internet backlash is that a vocal minority can be very vocal and very very hyperbolic in their rhetoric, but still be a tiny portion of a fanbase.

'can' being the key word here.

Shadow1980 said:

It's impossible to objectively measure. We honestly don't know how much TLJ would have made had it not rustled some jimmies. Nor do we know what Disney was expecting out of it. So far, they haven't commented. But at the end of the day, whatever goals TLJ haters have set are entirely arbitrary. Some people on this forum are now acting like the second-month gross is somehow more important than the first month or the total lifetime gross, even though second-month grosses are always a very small portion of a movie's lifetime gross. Others have suggested that TLJ needed to be well north of $700M domestic, if not over $800M, even though such numbers are extraordinarily rare. But thinking that it had to be closer to TFA than to, say, Rogue One is to me rather unrealistic.

TFA clearly over-performed when compared to every other major film this century. After just two weeks in the box office, it had already grossed a whopping $652M ($669M adjusted to 2017 ticket prices), eclipsing the lifetime grosses of many other successful films in recent years, including every Harry Potter film, every Middle Earth film, every Spider-Man movie, every Pixar film, every Batman movie except TDK, and every MCU film except for The Avengers (though it had passed The Avengers by its 17th day), among others. A week later it had risen to $770M ($801M adjusted), making it the third most successful movie of the past 30 years after Titanic and The Phantom Menace. Put simply, TFA was pulling numbers in its first month far beyond what any other film in history did in their first month. While it had proportionally weaker legs than the other non-Star Wars films on this chart (more on this in a bit), thanks to its obscenely strong first-month gross by time it left theaters it had become the fifth most successful movie of the "Blockbuster Age" of cinema (only A New Hope, E.T., Titanic, and Jaws sold more tickets during their original runs), and the most successful by far of the 21st century to date. It also did overseas numbers that were well in excess of what was normal for Star Wars in the past.

These are clearly anomalously high box office returns, and thus a goal no other film should be expected to replicate or even come close to. Only 13 films in the past 50 years made an adjusted gross of over $700M in their original run, and of those only six grossed over $800M adjusted. TLJ will likely end somewhere between $620-630M domestic. That puts it at #8 among all movies released this century. Could it have done more? Perhaps, but I doubt it would be by much. Given that TFA and RO made, respectively, 88% and 90.6% of their lifetime gross in their first four weeks (making both noticeably more front-loaded than other big 21st-century blockbusters), we could extrapolate that TLJ "should" have grossed between $640-660M. So, it will likely underperform slightly due to somewhat weaker legs, but we're talking making 3% to 6% less than it "should" have. Now, some people might want to extrapolate from the first week or even opening weekend, but I think some people would want to do that just to make TLJ's performance seem worse than it is, because first-week(end) grosses as a percent of lifetime grosses can vary wildly even within a single franchise, and they can pick an opening weekend that's a small chunk of the film's lifetime gross to make their point. There are any number of ways one can use facts in a misleading way to downplay a film's success.

Point being, using TFA as some bar for TLJ to reach or at least get close to is unrealistic. And saying that TLJ was somehow a box office disappointment is reaching.

No doubt TLJ was a box office success but backlash against a company's product and their efforts is never something any company wants to see.

Shadow1980 said:

I invite you to read the response I had for superchunk: in brief, I'm sure you can explain all of Rey's abilities but this doesn't change the fact that she has these abilities that essentially help her navigate the dangers about her with little trouble. The potential suspense in the film suffers as a result.

You bring up Kylo losing to Rey and I can't help but pity the huge potential lost in that portion of TFA.

Kylo should have won to help reinforce his power and level of danger. Even with the blood loss and emotional instability, he was still able to seriously hurt Rey who I remind you only recently discovered the force.

Instead, even when he was healthy, Rey was able to overcome and turn Kylo's mind probe against him... Lame. No tension, just about any time Kylo shows up, Rey makes him look he's in easy mode.

Saying that particular scene could have been written better, or that a particular outcome to a conflict could have been better from a narrative standpoint, or just not liking a particular outcome, is a lot different from claiming that a character is a literal flawless Mary Sue. I've watched TFA quite a few times already, and TLJ twice, but it never once occurred to me that Rey was a flawless character. She always seemed pretty flawed to me.

I don't recall saying she was flawless. I'm just saying she's overpowered and to the point that she breaks rules and becomes a lame character.