Rey was able to do a mind trick without even seeing it done or being trained regarding it, but she did experience Kylo reading her thoughts, so she isn’t entirely unfamiliar with the idea of manipulating with someone’s mind.
This is the thing that bugs me, and it’s because of the execution - we don’t see her thought process at all. I came to this conclusion as well, but I shouldn’t have to mentally edit the film for them.
It seemed pretty obvious to me.
Rey was able to do a mind trick without even seeing it done or being trained regarding it, but she did experience Kylo reading her thoughts, so she isn’t entirely unfamiliar with the idea of manipulating with someone’s mind.
This is the thing that bugs me, and it’s because of the execution - we don’t see her thought process at all. I came to this conclusion as well, but I shouldn’t have to mentally edit the film for them.
It seemed pretty obvious to me.
I’m gonna second Mocata and say that I thought the mind trick scene seemed very “out of universe”. Like a “remember this??”.
The in-story reasoning was non-existent.
You kind of hear the trooper’s helmet comm is that supposed to be it? Plus they played it for laughs in a weird wink at the audience kind of way which is just bad. Yeah Jedi Mind trick, thanks I get it, OK stop it now.
Rey was able to do a mind trick without even seeing it done or being trained regarding it, but she did experience Kylo reading her thoughts, so she isn’t entirely unfamiliar with the idea of manipulating with someone’s mind.
This is the thing that bugs me, and it’s because of the execution - we don’t see her thought process at all. I came to this conclusion as well, but I shouldn’t have to mentally edit the film for them.
This exactly. Most of these Mary Sue accusations are happening not because of misogyny or because people don’t like her character but because there’s one too many conveniences and assumptions made on the part of the writers/director, and the mind trick is the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Each one of these attributes alone is forgivable, but for us to buy the mind trick we must assume that she’s learned everything about this mind trick from Kylo despite the fact that he doesn’t actually mind trick anyone in the film, or that she knew enough about the ways of the Jedi to use the exact same sentence structure as Ben and Luke in the original trilogy. I find both of those assumptions to be a bridge too far, and it jolts me out of the movie. I’m currently working on a way to fix this in my fanedit, btw.
Honestly R2 magically coming alive is the biggest face palm in the movie to me. I don’t get it and I don’t like whole the map thing.
The reasoning I use is that BB-8’s suggestion that the map was in R2’s backup data caused R2 to begin searching the data, and he finishes the search at the end of the film. TFA-Restructured 2.0 will have this change 😃
You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
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JJ has said R2 wakes up when B-B8 tells him he has part of the map.
Yeah this complaint is stupid. BB is right there, chirping, as r2 wakes up. Sounds reasonable
I would put this in my sig if I weren’t so lazy.
Rey was able to do a mind trick without even seeing it done or being trained regarding it, but she did experience Kylo reading her thoughts, so she isn’t entirely unfamiliar with the idea of manipulating with someone’s mind.
This is the thing that bugs me, and it’s because of the execution - we don’t see her thought process at all. I came to this conclusion as well, but I shouldn’t have to mentally edit the film for them.
This exactly. Most of these Mary Sue accusations are happening not because of misogyny or because people don’t like her character but because there’s one too many conveniences and assumptions made on the part of the writers/director, and the mind trick is the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.
You are missing the point. It’s not the conveniences and assumptions that make it misogyny, it’s the term itself. And I’ve covered why the term is problematic many, many times before, so I’m not going to do it again…but it boils down to the fact that it is applied to women 99.2% of the time, while men get a free pass in the same situation.
Rey knows all about Han Solo and the Rebellion, but doesn’t know about “Jedi Mind Tricks”? I believe the in-universe is that everyone has seen or heard the equivalent of the OT. Sure, they may be rumors or just fantasy, but its “true, all of it”. Wouldn’t you try to use the mind trick if you found out that Star Wars was real? I still wave my hand whenever I pass through an automatic door.
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You are missing the point. …it boils down to the fact that it is applied to women 99.2% of the time
Yeah, because the fact that the character is a precocious girl is part of what makes it such a transparently pandering trope.
while men get a free pass in the same situation.
I sure hope you mean “male characters,” since I don’t think any “men” have any superpowers, let alone overpowered omnipotence on Squirrelface’s level. And in any event, no they don’t. Movies with invincible male leads who are never in dramatic peril (such as most Steven Segal movies, where he never once gets hit) are as shitty and uninteresting as any Mary Sue vehicle.
You’re just mad Darth Maul was a bad guy.
We all need heroes we can relate to.
Yeah this complaint is stupid. BB is right there, chirping, as r2 wakes up. Sounds reasonable
That’s not what I mean. So let’s ignore the embarrassing scene where R2 is revealed like a 1:1 collector’s item for us to get all nostalgic at. He comes online as he’s like “oh hey I’m alive, you didn’t take this map already?” before calling 3PO a gold plated fuckwit or whatever they bleeped since he was the one saying how unlikely it was that R2 had the damn thing. Ignoring this, why did he wake up at that exact moment just in time for the battle victory? What if it took like another year or more? Or never? It’s all backwards, as if they realised that if BB8 had the whole map the movie wouldn’t need a diversion into the Death Star, and so they made up the missing fragment and sleepy R2 stuff.
You’re just mad Darth Maul was a bad guy.
We all need heroes we can relate to.
Oh my god I died laughing at this.
You’re just mad Darth Maul was a bad guy.
We all need heroes we can relate to.
What?
From what I saw, my idol D-Maul (that’s what I call 'im, ‘D-Maul’ or sometimes ‘D-Mizzle’) was trying to kill that obnoxious little kid.
What else do you have to do to be a good guy???
Rey was able to do a mind trick without even seeing it done or being trained regarding it, but she did experience Kylo reading her thoughts, so she isn’t entirely unfamiliar with the idea of manipulating with someone’s mind.
This is the thing that bugs me, and it’s because of the execution - we don’t see her thought process at all. I came to this conclusion as well, but I shouldn’t have to mentally edit the film for them.
This exactly. Most of these Mary Sue accusations are happening not because of misogyny or because people don’t like her character but because there’s one too many conveniences and assumptions made on the part of the writers/director, and the mind trick is the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.
You are missing the point. It’s not the conveniences and assumptions that make it misogyny, it’s the term itself. And I’ve covered why the term is problematic many, many times before, so I’m not going to do it again…but it boils down to the fact that it is applied to women 99.2% of the time, while men get a free pass in the same situation.
I assume you mean that it is applied to female characters instead of male characters.
TV Tropes goes into some detail as to why the term has lost its meaning, but the gist of it is that it was originally intended to describe perfect female avatars of authors writing fanfiction, since at that time many online fanfictions were written by women. The term could also be used for perfect male author avatars (Gary Stu), but this term never saw wide usage since there already existed a term for this character: Action Hero (James Bond, John Matrix) or the (Frink Trigger Warning) anime equivalent (Light Yagami, Kirito). The fact of the matter is that female and male authors tend to have different interests with regards to their wish fulfillment fantasies, so Mary Sue and Gary Stu tend to be easily distinguishable from each other and people don’t generally need a new term when they have one that is sufficient for their purposes.
Additionally, the term was invented for a character on a Star Trek parody fanfic, so the term was inherently unserious, a way of bundling a lot of wish fulfillment impulses together under a single name. Since the original work was a parody, it was written with this intent and was appreciated as such. That is why the James Bond franchise has been so popular, and why Twilight has succeeded - sometimes, wish fulfillment is preferable to believable characters.
However, there has been no Mary Sue or Gary Stu character in the Star Wars films. Even the most powerful character is written believably in the context of the magical universe in which they live. We are given reasons for why Anakin is so powerful, why Yoda can life an X-wing, and why Palpatine is able to rule the galaxy (sort of). We are given no similar reason for why Rey is strong with the Force. We are not told that she was conceived by the Force, like Anakin, nor are we told that she comes from a family of Force users, like Luke. Similarly, every character in the Star Wars films has had to spend years honing their skills in order to even levitate small objects, something which Rey is able to do by the end of the film. It is not because she is female that these skills are a problem, it is because her ability has no precedent nor explanation in the Star Wars universe. Hopefully TLJ addresses this, but it would still be a retcon to this film.
But is Rey a Mary Sue? Like I’ve discussed exhaustively elsewhere, she is not. But she does have elements of wish fulfillment (male or female), such as with the mind trick and lightsaber levitation, among others. This is why I can’t agree with those people who give her a free pass because she’s the first female protagonist in the Star Wars films. Take this comment on the BMD article:
“If Rey is a Mary Sue, what she represents is way fucking more important than that label. The women and girls who get to see Rey on the movie screen and want to be the hero of their own story, that matters more than any amount of nitpicks on the internet.” -Ed
This is the problem, that the only reason people are okay with her being so badly explained as part of the Star Wars universe is because she is wish fulfillment for women and girls. I agree that such representation was necessary, but that doesn’t forgive the problem of making her the female equivalent of the Action Hero. She could easily have been established as Luke’s daughter or Chosen by the Force and these problems would have evaporated on the spot.
You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)
Yeah this complaint is stupid. BB is right there, chirping, as r2 wakes up. Sounds reasonable
That’s not what I mean. So let’s ignore the embarrassing scene where R2 is revealed like a 1:1 collector’s item for us to get all nostalgic at. He comes online as he’s like “oh hey I’m alive, you didn’t take this map already?” before calling 3PO a gold plated fuckwit or whatever they bleeped since he was the one saying how unlikely it was that R2 had the damn thing. Ignoring this, why did he wake up at that exact moment just in time for the battle victory? What if it took like another year or more? Or never? It’s all backwards, as if they realised that if BB8 had the whole map the movie wouldn’t need a diversion into the Death Star, and so they made up the missing fragment and sleepy R2 stuff.
As Star Wars is fiction, it’s all made up. 😉
And we’re talking about the droid who helped win the war against the Empire. Of course he’s a collector’s item. Can you imagine what he would fetch on the intergalactic version of Ebay?
Where were you in '77?
You are missing the point. …it boils down to the fact that it is applied to women 99.2% of the time
Yeah, because the fact that the character is a precocious girl is part of what makes it such a transparently pandering trope.
while men get a free pass in the same situation.
I sure hope you mean “male characters,” since I don’t think any “men” have any superpowers, let alone overpowered omnipotence on Squirrelface’s level. And in any event, no they don’t. Movies with invincible male leads who are never in dramatic peril (such as most Steven Segal movies, where he never once gets hit) are as shitty and uninteresting as any Mary Sue vehicle.
Hey now - Out of Justice is freaking awesome 😃
TV Tropes goes into some detail as to why the term has lost its meaning, but the gist of it is that it was originally intended to describe perfect female avatars of authors writing fanfiction, since at that time many online fanfictions were written by women. The term could also be used for perfect male author avatars (Gary Stu), but this term never saw wide usage since there already existed a term for this character: Action Hero (James Bond, John Matrix)
LOL! This is a ridiculous attempt at equivalence. And that’s the last I’m saying on this subject.
TV Tropes goes into some detail as to why the term has lost its meaning, but the gist of it is that it was originally intended to describe perfect female avatars of authors writing fanfiction, since at that time many online fanfictions were written by women. The term could also be used for perfect male author avatars (Gary Stu), but this term never saw wide usage since there already existed a term for this character: Action Hero (James Bond, John Matrix)
LOL! This is a ridiculous attempt at equivalence. And that’s the last I’m saying on this subject.
Thank god! Now we can all talk about Mary Sue shitwriting in peace!
The thing that’s most annoying about the “Rey phenomenon” (aka “Operation Squirrelface”) is that she’s not fulfilling any actual wishes of girls or women. She’s specifically designed to engineer and instill new wishes into a henceforth non-existent female fanbase.
And the committee responsible for her inception is so clumsy and obvious that they lacked any ideas of how to create this Herowoman for a New Millenium without making her an omnipotently overpowered Mary Sue avatar. It’s facile, lazy, dramatically bereft, and leaves nothing of emotional impact to take away from the movie.
And she’s not as cute as Leia '77.
I think we had female SW fans before TFA…
Where were you in '77?
The thing that’s most annoying about the “Rey phenomenon” (aka “Operation Squirrelface”) is that she’s not fulfilling any actual wishes of girls or women. She’s specifically designed to engineer and instill new wishes into a henceforth non-existent female fanbase.
And the committee responsible for her inception is so clumsy and obvious that they lacked any ideas of how to create this Herowoman for a New Millenium without making her an omnipotently overpowered Mary Sue avatar. It’s facile, lazy, dramatically bereft, and leaves nothing of emotional impact to take away from the movie.
Does laughing my ass off at a post count as saying something about it?
TV Tropes goes into some detail as to why the term has lost its meaning, but the gist of it is that it was originally intended to describe perfect female avatars of authors writing fanfiction, since at that time many online fanfictions were written by women. The term could also be used for perfect male author avatars (Gary Stu), but this term never saw wide usage since there already existed a term for this character: Action Hero (James Bond, John Matrix)
LOL! This is a ridiculous attempt at equivalence. And that’s the last I’m saying on this subject.
Thank god! Now we can all talk about Mary Sue shitwriting in peace!
The thing that’s most annoying about the “Rey phenomenon” (aka “Operation Squirrelface”) is that she’s not fulfilling any actual wishes of girls or women. She’s specifically designed to engineer and instill new wishes into a henceforth non-existent female fanbase.
And the committee responsible for her inception is so clumsy and obvious that they lacked any ideas of how to create this Herowoman for a New Millenium without making her an omnipotently overpowered Mary Sue avatar. It’s facile, lazy, dramatically bereft, and leaves nothing of emotional impact to take away from the movie.And she’s not as cute as Leia '77.
What?
Sexist and racist attitudes still exist, they just hide behind pseudo PC terms that are used negatively. The fact that some can’t deal with other races and genders being treated equally is something they will have to deal with on their own as the world becomes a more progressive place. Some day their comments will sound as backwards as the hate speech made during the civil rights movement.
Darth Id said:
The thing that’s most annoying about the “Rey phenomenon” (aka “Operation Squirrelface”)
I like this guy.
The thing that’s most annoying about the “Rey phenomenon” (aka “Operation Squirrelface”)
I like this guy.
I’m not surprised.
The thing that’s most annoying about the “Rey phenomenon” (aka “Operation Squirrelface”)
I like this guy.
I’m not surprised.
LOL