PS - i missed the superman jab. To me, superman is one of the most boring heroes because of how over powered he is. However, again, you're conveniently ignoring his back story and weakness that explains it. He's an alien from krypton that gains power from the sun and when in presence of fragments of his home planet his power is drained and leaves him weak.

We never got anything close to this for Rey. The defenders argued we need to wait for the last film because they might explain it. Well, there it came and here we're left. No explanation other than she's a Palpatine. Which, blood was never good enough before.

I dislike the term "Mary Sue" as it's an often abused term and oversimplification of what's really being expressed by these fans - which is that they feel said character is extremely pandering to a female audience by having the super-powered character who are flawless, completely righteous, and can seemingly do anything or has few, if any struggles. I'd say there IS a male equivalent of this to a degree with protagonists like James Bond or many superhero characters (though even many of them seem to have more struggles than Rey, at least in more modern films).

With Rey, I think people are responding more to the fact that she's more like a cardboard cutout superhero character (and I'm not keen on cheesy superhero characters fyi, male OR female) rather than a flawed, struggling hero who fights and climbs their way to the top. She's just sort of already almost perfect at everything from the getgo. She even apparently knows more about how to fly Han's own Millenium Falcon than he does!

I just think it's much easier for viewers to identify with an underdog, a character with struggles, of which Rey seems to be lacking on both fronts. Of course it's great to be motivated and/or entertained by a super-powered hero but if they come off as shallow or unrelatable then really what's the point? This is why I feel a protagonist like Katniss from Hunger Games is far more interesting. She has real struggles, real motivations, real weaknesses, real things that make her tick - and yet she does ultimately overcome and grow both physically and mentally. I see little real depth or growth with Rey (well really MOST of the characters of the SW sequels for that matter).

This form of pandering, ironically I see THAT as a sort of soft form of misogyny as artists seem to think they can't create a female character with weakness or flaws anymore. Like they feel women NEED to have these overpowered characters in order to feel strong or something, but I disagree with that. I think women want dynamic, realistic protagonists they can relate to just like men do. I believe even the fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson mentioned something about this common misconception and how it's actually patronizing in a roundabout way. 

Joseph Campbell's "The Hero's Journey" also largely revolves around this concept of ironically having the more marred, underdog hero being more relatable and ultimately more impactful - which, funny enough, is a big part of George Lucas' original influence with Star Wars. 

And yes, on the other hand, you DO still have the weak, damsel in distress types who are seemingly powerless (though this is becoming far less frequent). With female characters it oddly seems to be one extreme vs the other - whereas dynamic female characters who are strong (or the potential to become strong and overcome) and yet are flawed and have trials and tribulations are few and far inbetween. Female characters should be treated the exact same as male characters but strangely many artists/storytellers seem to want to place them on one extreme end of the spectrum of the other. And oftentimes (in BOTH cases) the depth and relatability of these female characters tends gets lost as a result.

Female audiences are going to hard a tough time relating to the poor helpless girl who's just there do be the end "goal" for the male character to rescue, though on the flipside they're also going to tend to struggle identifying with the perfect superwoman who does no wrong.

I take a stab at this just for fun.  After the academy was destroyed by Kylo he came to a realization that the history of the silth and jedi have been for millenniums this same story of back and forth destruction.  The force continuously trying to keep balance between the dark side and the light side.  He search out Exegol as to further learn the history of both the silth and light side.  Eventually the force gives him a vision of the past and how before there was jedi and silth there was the Je'daii Order (https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Je%27daii_Order) and the only way to truly return balance to the force is to go back to the ancient teachings.

He goes to that planet to try to find balance between the light and dark within him self which explains why he cut him self off from the world and that where Rey finds him.  Then going forward it could be about rey also finding that balance and helping others and in the end both the Jedi order and the silth order become a thing of history as balance is finally returned and rey start a new order based on the ancient Je'faii Order.

I had a revelation as to the key difference for me when it comes to RoS (and to an extent TFA) vs TLJ -

RoS was stupid and fun
TLJ was stupid, and also NOT fun

It's the same differential I make between RotS vs TPM and AotC
RotS = stupid and fun
TPM/AotC = stupid and also NOT fun

ESB and ANH were rare and somewhat lightning in a bottle, as they managed to be both smart AND fun.

TPM and AOTC were both fairly entertaing flicks, except for the middle arc of AOTC which brings some really contrived plot points and poor dialogue.

But TLJ and ROS bombard you with one midichlorian/clone army/ dying of sadness-tier plot point about every five minutes, instead of once or twice per movie.

Edit - I might also be slightly biased in favor of TPM and AOTC since the dubbing in my country was exceedingly well done, and made characters with cringy voices like Jar Jar and the Federation aliens bearable and even interesting at times. So YMMV.

My main problem with new star wars films is the main bad guy is a pussy.

Oh and just about everything else. Don't give a damn about any of the characters.  Frankly they can all die and empire rules the universe.

The best of the new trilogy is TLJ by far.

So I finally watched chapter 7 of The Mandalorian yesterday (a great series by the way, absolutely terrific) and then

On the subject of "Mary Sue", I'm black and I also dislike the film trope of the "magical mystical negro".

I find actually find it insulting, pandering, and bad writing. I think viewers just prefer a character with depth but writers often don't know how to write characters that have different life experiences/backgrounds than themselves so they just write them to be beyond perfect. I cringe wherever I see it.

That's how I saw Rey in the first two films and really a lot of comic characters these days. They want to create a strong role model but end up with "Despite being black, he's the smartest and most capable!" or "I bet you didn't expect a woman to be the most powerful, did ya!"

Being treated BETTER than everyone else is sometimes worse than being treated the same as everyone else...if that makes sense.

It does make sense yes because the BETTER part about it is just pretence and actually it is just being treated differently than normal.