Shadow1980 said:
The point I was trying to make was that neither Luke nor young Anakin nor Rey are Mary Sue characters. They all have their own strengths and weaknesses that are perfectly explicable in-story. Luke blew up the Death Star by using the Force to help make the kill shot despite no real training, but he's also a farm boy who lived a relatively coddled life and wasn't physically formidable in the beginning, and whether as a young or old man he always had a defeatist, pessimistic attitude. Rey is a powerful but flawed character. Her individual strengths are clear from the film and fleshed out even more in ancillary material. It's well established that she does have experience as a pilot and is familiar first-hand with the Falcon, plus in supplemental material it's established that she also has a flight training program, so the idea of her being able to fly the Falcon (after nearly crashing it during take-off) is no less implausible than Luke being good at piloting a military fighter craft in actual combat after using what amounts to a small civilian craft (imagine going from a single-engine Cessna or and old WW2 piston plane to a modern fighter jet), even getting a confirmed kill against a trained TIE fighter pilot. Also, Rey has lived almost her whole life as a junker (more experience with machines!) on a harsh world where she almost certainly routinely encountered thugs and so had to learn to defend herself, so being proficient in hand-to-hand combat is not only unusual but is arguably expected given her circumstances. Her weaknesses are clear as well. She's hot-headed, impulsive, stubborn, naive, a bit ignorant, and can be a horrible judge of character at times (Luke was right: turning Kylo to the light did not go the way she thought it would), not to mention she almost gave herself over to the Dark Side during Luke's lessons. There are plenty of powerful characters in fiction that are nevertheless flawed individuals and therefore not Mary Sues. Rey is one of them. There's nothing uniquely or unusually "perfect" about her compared to other SW protags that makes her a Mary Sue. |
"The point I was trying to make was that neither Luke nor young Anakin nor Rey are Mary Sue characters. They all have their own strengths and weaknesses that are perfectly explicable in-story.
Luke blew up the Death Star by using the Force to help make the kill shot despite no real training, but he's also a farm boy who lived a relatively coddled life and wasn't physically formidable in the beginning, and whether as a young or old man he always had a defeatist, pessimistic attitude. Rey is a powerful but flawed character. Her individual strengths are clear from the film and fleshed out even more in ancillary material. It's well established that she does have experience as a pilot and is familiar first-hand with the Falcon, plus in supplemental material it's established that she also has a flight training program, so the idea of her being able to fly the Falcon (after nearly crashing it during take-off) is no less implausible than Luke being good at piloting a military fighter craft in actual combat after using what amounts to a small civilian craft (imagine going from a single-engine Cessna or and old WW2 piston plane to a modern fighter jet), even getting a confirmed kill against a trained TIE fighter pilot. Also, Rey has lived almost her whole life as a junker (more experience with machines!) on a harsh world where she almost certainly routinely encountered thugs and so had to learn to defend herself, so being proficient in hand-to-hand combat is not only unusual but is arguably expected given her circumstances. Her weaknesses are clear as well. She's hot-headed, impulsive, stubborn, naive, a bit ignorant, and can be a horrible judge of character at times (Luke was right: turning Kylo to the light did not go the way she thought it would), not to mention she almost gave herself over to the Dark Side during Luke's lessons."
>I'm sure you can explain away Rey being so capable but that doesn't solve the problem I have with her: the world she is in does not seem like any sort of challenge to her because she's so capable. Always coming out on top on her own is what creates the problem. Her reading Kylo's mind and essentially rescuing herself from captivity presents a missed opportunity wherein her allies could have assisted her escape thus not only strengthening her friendship with those characters but also increasing the threat level of said world.
I have a hard time believing someone would be so talented in so many areas: combat, speaks droid and wookie, piloting, mechanical expertise, using the force, aiming a gun, lightsaber handling and fighting. Let's dial that back so she's a little more believable. To add to that are the privileges she enjoys: being trusted with a critical mission to find Luke by the resistance automatically, Solo wanting to hire her, and Leia embracing her instead of Chewie despite the fact that the two had never met before. Over freaking Chewie! A legacy character who was a long time friend of Solo and Leia.
Don't wanna call her a Mary Sue? Fine. I'll settle for calling her an awful character.
Luke on the other hand had near non-existent combat abilities, Leia and Han didn't take him too seriously, and he'd likely be hurt/dead without help from others.
Let me leave with a clip from a show wherein the main character is a 'chosen one' of sorts but that doesn't stop the world from feeling like a threat. Avatar The Last Airbender: Aang (bald kid) is the Avatar which certainly grants him privileges but this does not stop the other characters from helping/hurting him and shining in their own way: Katara (girl summoning water) fights alongside him and she along with Uncle Iroh (older man) save his ass against the likes of Azula (girl summoning fire) and Zuko (scar face), Iroh doing so at his own expense. Azula and Zuko in the meantime present to him a serious challenge and do not back down from attacking when he is at his most vulnerable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-m-a9eZZac
This is how you do a chosen one. This is how you do a villain, Azula attacking rather than waiting for the hero to power up. Beautifully done!
Last edited by KLAMarine - on 27 October 2019
