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Best Explanation Of Mary Sue Issue — Page 6

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screams in the void said:

that’s the thing though ,she starts TLJ in a place of doubt , " I need someone to show me my place in all this ." In the end ,she has cast that doubt aside .She literally has no time to doubt or question her abilities in the moment where she lifts the rocks or people will die . I am not sure what you meant by it happens off screen . If you are referring to her thoughts , I suppose that could be the case but I don’t see how that is relevant . other than comparing it to Luke expressing doubt about lifting the x-wing . And having her use two hands would be to weaken her character in my opinion .

The moment is at the climax of the film, and should be the climax of her arc. Everything has come to a head here. She’s starts the film with doubt, yes, about her “place in all this.” But her mission throughout the film is to find the person who will save the Resistance. First she looks to Luke, then Ben. Ultimately the truth is that that person is her (which is also the answer to her place in it all). That realization should’ve happened in that spot, with her coming into the scene doubting herself and the fate of the Resistance after her failure with both Luke and Kylo and having no choice but to assume the mantle herself, which she isn’t prepared for. Instead the realization has either happened off screen or simply has yet to happen at all. I suppose Rey coming to terms with that understanding of her role will likely be part of her story in IX.

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screams in the void said:

that’s the thing though ,she starts TLJ in a place of doubt , " I need someone to show me my place in all this ." In the end ,she has cast that doubt aside .She literally has no time to doubt or question her abilities in the moment where she lifts the rocks or people will die . I am not sure what you meant by it happens off screen . If you are referring to her thoughts , I suppose that could be the case but I don’t see how that is relevant . other than comparing it to Luke expressing doubt about lifting the x-wing . And having her use two hands would be to weaken her character in my opinion .

I like this way of thinking, but to me the element that ruins it somewhat is time. The ST takes place over such a short time span, that there really isn’t much opportunity for reflection. Take the end of TESB and the start of ROTJ. Both Luke and Vader have changed, and to me this works, because they have been through an ordeal, especially Luke, and have had time to reflect on it, and to grow. Growth takes time, and effort, whether it is growth of powers, and control, or growth in personality. I think the time issue plagues the ST on multiple levels. For example the FO’s development from threat in the outer rim to oppressive force feels rushed. The story needs time to breath. Without the element of time the Star Wars universe feels small, and its characters are only as much as the sum of the elements presented onscreen.

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I think their hands were really tied when they decided to end TFA on a cliffhanger, basically having to start off where it was left off with little to no time passing.

Apparently they kept struggling with the script, because as soon as Luke showed up he took the spotlight from the new characters. So Kiri Hart actually had the idea of having Luke be the McGuffin of the story, and then finding him would be the ending of the first film.

Though the characters don’t seem to change that much between the end of 7 and the beginning of 8, so to me I don’t feel any dissonance in that regard.

I do think it would’ve been interesting to see a large First Order fleet assembled over Starkiller before jumping in different directions to invade the major systems in the galaxy. In TFA, we’re left to assume they have a fleet offscreen, which we end up seeing in TLJ. In TFA we only see a few Star Destroyers at most hovering over Starkiller.

I mean, they have had 30 years to assemble a fleet and plan their invasion down to a T, but it would’ve been nice to get a glimpse of that in TFA.

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DrDre said:

yotsuya said:

One of my issues is commenting that a strong female character must be strong physically. That has nothing to do with. Ripley in the Alien films is not a strong female character because she psychically beats the aliens, but because she does what has to be done to survive. Leia is similarly strong even though she is not tasked with the same level of physical demands as Ripley. She stands up to Vader and Tarkin. When Luke comes into her cell, she is not excited to see Luke, but excited to hear about Ben Kenobi. Then when Luke and Han don’t seem to have a plan, she makes one. She is passive during the Death Star battle because she is not a fighter pilot. But in the rest of the Trilogy, and the ST, she is obviously in charge and confident. She is not a damsel in distress even when she is a prisoner. Rey is the same way. After the force has awakened in her, she sees what Kylo does and while she can’t escape him she does escape a Stormtrooper (thanks Daniel Craig) which isn’t hard, but it takes her a couple of tries to get it. But Rey is not overly strong, she is competent and skilled and ready to be a Jedi. She does not outshine any of the other characters but comes to the story their equal. When you look at many of the male written strong female characters, they tend to be physically strong and more badass. That type of character gets old. How many people like that do you meet in real life? It is so easy to do wrong. Ripley is done right.

But to further compare Rey to other characters, let’s compare her to Wonder Woman. Rey obviously lack the extreme super powers, but has the force. Wonder Woman really has no physical adversaries in the 2017 film until she encounters Aries and she herself is the instrument of his death. She literally is outshines everyone and as the title character we expect that. Rey is the young Jedi of the ST. As such she can be expected to save the day in IX. She will initiate the solution the finalizes the Star Wars saga. So at her introduction is it any surprise that she is very powerful to start with and only grows more powerful, growing to the point where she is the equal of her adversary, Kylo. Rey actually has more setbacks than Wonder Woman and is far less powerful and less able to provide the solutions to all the problems. Plus she had the baggage of the abandonment and need for a parental figure.

I think one of the biggest mistakes is to not recognize that Rey, Finn, Poe, and Kylo are the main characters of the ST. Rey takes Luke’s role from the OT. Rey is supposed to grow into the Jedi Knight who wins the day. They are taking her through all the stages of the heroes’ journey over the 3 film trilogy rather than over a single film. Kylo is her unwitting teacher and Luke, the one she wants to teach her, refuses to do much beyond the basics and some politics.

So Rey is not an overly physical strong character but is capable and is the main character and therefor supposed to outshine the others. She has setback after setback in what she wants to do as the story (which you can read as the force) pushes her to her destiny. She is exactly the type of strong character we need and definitely not a Mary Sue.

The problem is, that her setbacks don’t really have any consequences for her. She fails to convert Kylo and beat Snoke in a direct confrontation, which might be considered a failure, if not for the fact that she only just learned about the Force a few days ago. Would you consider a novice who steps into the ring or the first time, facing a boxing champion, and gets out of the ring without a scratch a failure? The fact is, she does play an important part in getting Ben Solo to turn on his master, even if it doesn’t end up the way she expected, she easily resists Kylo’s temptation, she fights Kylo to a stand still for the lightsaber after beating Snoke’s elite guards in a team effort, she escapes from the lion’s den without a scratch, and ends up saving the remains of the Resistance from certain doom only to join them in a weird sort of celebration aboard the Millenium Falcon. So, there’s failure from a certain point of view, but from many others she is unrealistically successful (or lucky) given her lack of experience, and naive nature, and she achieves many of these successes with powers that she just almost instantly recieved from on high, and thus hasn’t really earned.

And in the first film, Luke gets in an X-wing and blows up the Death Star. Isn’t that unrealistically successful? He’d never sat in an X-wing before. Before that he used a hook to swing across a casm, stood shooting Stormtroopers and didn’t get hit by a single one while hitting several of them and the controls to close the door on Vader and reinforcing Stromtroopers. Let’s be fair. Star Wars is built with the main characters being exceptional heroes not novices in need of training. When we meet Rey in TFA, it is established that she can fight (with a staff and we don’t know what else). By way of example we have Finn use the lightsaber (The first non-jedi we have ever seen use one in combat) and while he does great against stormtroopers, he doesn’t fair as well against Kylo. Rey doesn’t either until she Kylo basically tells her she needs to use the force and she does and then her skills are a match for his in his weakened state. In TLJ we have a bunch of guards in red who look badass, who attack both Kylo and Ren after Snoke is killed. She fights them off (they are more skilled than the thugs on Jakku, but now so is she thanks to the Force). So this whole argument that Rey is treated different and is in some way an oddball in a Mary Sue way is nonsense. Other than she is lacking the doubt the plagued Luke in the first two OT film, they are cut from the same cloth and both far more successful than any non-hero has a right to be.

One big difference between the two of them can be found in comparing them to other types of heroes. Luke is more like Perseus. Great power but he doesn’t know it at first. Rey is more like Spiderman. Suddenly having the force awaken in her and have all these powers at hand and not knowing what to do with them. I can’t think of a Greek hero like that, but she is very similar to Arthur (pulls the sword from the stone and is suddenly king with all the powers that come with the title). Neither Luke nor Rey have any problem tapping into the force to do things. Luke blocks blaster bolts after a few minutes and is able to use the force to aim better than the targeting computer with no instruction other than “use the force”. He picks up his saber with no instruction and only fails with his X-wing because he perceives it is too big before Yoda shows him it isn’t. With Rey, Kylo does everything first and she picks it up from him. The scene of Rey with the Stromtrooper runs about the same length as Luke trying to pick up his saber in the Wampa cave. The difference is that Kylo tried to do that to Rey and Luke has never seen that before. Luke is not the hero of the ST, Rey is. So Rey following in the typical heroes’ journey of mythology is in keeping with what Lucas started. Correction, in keeping with what you find in myths.

Why you are insisting that learning the force must be difficult is beyond me. That isn’t what we see with Luke. Why should we with Rey? For both characters, there are plenty of obstacles and successes and focusing on Luke’s obstacles while focusing on Rey’s successes is most definitely apples and oranges. Compare their successes (their goals and what they actually achieve) and their failures and both follow the same pattern - some wins, some losses, but generally more wins.

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DrDre said:

Voss Caltrez said:

DrDre said:

So, there’s failure from a certain point of view, but from many others she is unrealistically successful (or lucky) given her lack of experience, and naive nature, and she achieves many of these successes with powers that she just almost instantly recieved from on high, and thus hasn’t really earned.

I agree with this.
But I don’t think it would play well if we saw Rey getting beat up like other action heroes tend to be.
Had Rey been rescued by Poe Dameron in a Hoth-like situation, people would accuse the filmmakers of resorting to the damsel-in-destress trope.
If Snoke had been hurling giant pieces of machinery at Rey’s back and head, she gets beaten and bruised with a black eye (ala Luke at the end of ESB) AND she loses the fight, it looks like a display of violence against women, and accusations of misogyny are made.

I don’t think she needed to be rescued, but I also think she might have a little bit more trouble escaping, maybe get a few scratches, and seem a little less jubilant in the battle of Crait. As it is the revelations and her failure don’t really seem to affect her much. Given what happened to her, and the Resistance you would expect a bit more somber and reflective tone, rather than smiles and congratulations.

And in A New Hope, Luke’s very old friend Biggs is blown up and other than a moment of sadness that he quickly shrugs off to get the job done, there is nothing. Of 30 ships only 3 came back and everyone is laughing and jubilant. Why? because even when there is a cause to be sad, we can be happy becomes something overrides the sadness. And in TLJ, after the survivor’s are rescued, Rey is somber when she talks to Leia.

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DominicCobb said:

Shopping Maul said:

I love what you’re saying Rogue (not that I necessarily grasp all of it of course, but I like the vibe of it!) but I would add that attaining the ‘effortlessness’ implied in the Taoist way would (ironically) require effort. Think of it in terms of being a musician. It would take hours of blisters and finger-cramps and listening and learning for a guitarist to be in that zone. No-one’s going to pick up a guitar and nail it first time just because they had their baser thoughts in check. That’s the beautiful thing about the Karate Kid - he had to wash cars and stand like an Ostrich and go through all kinds of stuff to get to that place. Kershner famously said he wanted “something powerful going on in Luke’s soul” and within the (arguably) limited framework of a SW film he achieved that. The SE feels more like bullet points - ‘we need lightsaber fights, we need a Dark Lord, we need a cantina’ etc etc. Any depth to Rey’s experience seems (to me) to being created by the fans themselves rather than by anything JJ and/or Rian are doing.

Well, to use your Karate Kid example I think the idea in the ST is that Rey has essentially spent her whole life waxing cars (whereas Luke is mostly just any old kid, wasting time with his friends between chores at home).

Yes, but the ‘waxing cars’ does not a Jedi make. It would only be an asset in the pursuit of Jedi mastery.

I think the “I don’t believe it” moment in TESB is taken way too literally. If it were a simple matter of belief, then Chewie could observe Luke in an act of levitation and emulate it on command. For me Yoda’s claim is meant to be taken in the context of the training/skill-set itself, not just a general “hey, if you believe it you can do it”.

To give a possibly clumsy example, Arnold Schwarzenegger talks about ‘self-belief’ and ‘positive affirmations’ all the time when discussing his bodybuilding career. That guy is the poster boy for conquering fear and rising above negativity (within and without) to advance his very successful career. But this is only an element in the process, not the whole story. Some fat jackass with the deluded ‘belief’ in his/her own abilities isn’t just going to become Mr Olympia because they’re convinced they will. No, there’s training and diet and discipline and technique and self-sacrifice and all that stuff with ‘belief’ as one of many components in the overall scheme.

That’s how I view Jedi training - or at least that’s the impression I got from the OT generally speaking. I know the Force is just space-magic and can do whatever the writer wants, but without a sense of being earned and/or some consequence I think the Force becomes boring and unrealistic. Even the girls in ‘Charmed’ suffer major consequences for misuse of magic or ethical naivety with regard to its use. Dr Strange has had entire comic-book arcs detailing the dangers of certain magical actions coming at a tremendous cost. And the good Dr is known to point out that anyone can use magic - they just need the will and discipline to do so. I just prefer this to giving the Force (or magic) its own agency to randomly give certain folks vast powers for no good reason.

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DominicCobb said:

One of the issues with the Mary Sue argument is that many who subscribe to it now look anywhere they can find and contort everything Rey does as evidence to back it up the theory. It hurts the argument to do such acrobatics (just as it hurts the argument to use the term in the first place, as that strikes up a whole different debate).

It’s one thing to say that Rey learns the force too quickly, respective of previous canon portrayals, or that the stakes for her emotional journey are too low going forward. But to nitpick and turn everything Rey does into proof that she is better than someone else is disregarding the actual filmmaking decisions and how things actually play out on screen (not to mention in some cases these arguments involve ignoring, forgetting, or fabricating things that happen in certain scenes).

My point being, I’m sorry I get flippant some times but it can be very frustrating when I want to have a discussion and it feels like when we can’t even agree on the reality of the film we’ve all seen (probably multiple times). It makes it very hard to debate!

I agree. I watch the film and read the script and what some people get out of it seems to not come from either of those sources.

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Why you are insisting that learning the force must be difficult is beyond me. That isn’t what we see with Luke. Why should we with Rey? For both characters, there are plenty of obstacles and successes and focusing on Luke’s obstacles while focusing on Rey’s successes is most definitely apples and oranges. Compare their successes (their goals and what they actually achieve) and their failures and both follow the same pattern - some wins, some losses, but generally more wins.

Because Lucas has made this very clear in his statements about how the Force works, which I’m not going to repeat. You have to study, to master it. It’s as simple as that. The entire premise of TESB is, that the Force doesn’t come easy for Luke, and he fails on numerous occasions, and where he succeeds, he rarely succeeds on a first try, and with great effort. Luke leaves Yoda with the clear message, that while he knows the Force, he cannot control it, and facing Vader in this condition is a danger to him physically, and spiritually. He subsequently gets his *** handed to him in his confrontation with Vader, and he ends up hanging on for his life battered hoping that his friends will save him. You don’t have to look hard to see, that Rey’s character gets a very different treatment in the ST. The OT and PT make it very clear, that learning the Force, and becoming a Jedi is very difficult, and just using it half cocked has terrible consequences. For Rey it comes easy, and without consequence. She’s unscathed and in a jolly mood by the end of TLJ, ends up saving the remaining rebels, and is never seriously tempted to use the dark side. That simply doesn’t rhyme with the themes Lucas established in my view. The fact is, that even TLJ acknowledges that Rey is different with the whole darkness rises and light to meet it explanation. She just recieved her powers from the Force free of charge to counter the rising darkness. It’s just very poorly developed, and a rather flimsy concept for throwing Lucas’ themes by the wayside.

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DominicCobb said:

Shopping Maul said:

I love what you’re saying Rogue (not that I necessarily grasp all of it of course, but I like the vibe of it!) but I would add that attaining the ‘effortlessness’ implied in the Taoist way would (ironically) require effort. Think of it in terms of being a musician. It would take hours of blisters and finger-cramps and listening and learning for a guitarist to be in that zone. No-one’s going to pick up a guitar and nail it first time just because they had their baser thoughts in check. That’s the beautiful thing about the Karate Kid - he had to wash cars and stand like an Ostrich and go through all kinds of stuff to get to that place. Kershner famously said he wanted “something powerful going on in Luke’s soul” and within the (arguably) limited framework of a SW film he achieved that. The SE feels more like bullet points - ‘we need lightsaber fights, we need a Dark Lord, we need a cantina’ etc etc. Any depth to Rey’s experience seems (to me) to being created by the fans themselves rather than by anything JJ and/or Rian are doing.

Well, to use your Karate Kid example I think the idea in the ST is that Rey has essentially spent her whole life waxing cars (whereas Luke is mostly just any old kid, wasting time with his friends between chores at home).

I believe I have said much the same thing before.

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DrDre said:

Why you are insisting that learning the force must be difficult is beyond me. That isn’t what we see with Luke. Why should we with Rey? For both characters, there are plenty of obstacles and successes and focusing on Luke’s obstacles while focusing on Rey’s successes is most definitely apples and oranges. Compare their successes (their goals and what they actually achieve) and their failures and both follow the same pattern - some wins, some losses, but generally more wins.

Because Lucas has made this very clear in his statements about how the Force works, which I’m not going to repeat. You have to study, to master it. It’s as simple as that. The entire premise of TESB is, that the Force doesn’t come easy for Luke, and he fails on numerous occasions, and where he succeeds, he rarely succeeds on a first try. Luke leaves Yoda with the clear message, that while he knows the Force, he cannot control it, and facing Vader in this condition is a danger to him physically, and spiritually. He subsequently gets his *** handed to him in his confrontation with Vader, and he ends up hanging on for his life battered hoping that his friends will save him. You don’t have to look hard to see, that Rey’s character gets a very different treatment in the ST. The OT and PT make it very clear, that learning the Force, and becoming a Jedi is very difficult, and just using it half cocked has terrible consequences.

I don’t think it is that different compared to the Force. Luke has always dreamed of the future. His mind was never on where he was or what he was doing. In Rey we have the opposite. Her mind was nearly always on where she was and what she was doing. She had to in order to survive. Everything about the two characters is opposite in terms of training for the Force. Rey has very much had the Miagi type training in life that prepared her to be a Jedi. She has the focus. She also heard the stories so when she sees Kylo do these things, she believes and knows they can be done. So Rey has none of Luke’s doubt - the thing that made him learning the force more difficult. Yet even so, he had no problem learning to deflect a blaster bolt (a full Jedi learns how to aim that as we saw in the PT), he is able to aim the proton torpedoes to destroy the Death Star. Out of desperation he picks up his lightsaber the first time he tries (it takes him a moment to focus and get it right). His training with Yoda was good enough that he can hold his own against Vader. Nothing about how he learned his force skills is hard except his belief and focus. What we do see is that practice, control, and great skill in using these powers takes practice. But learning them and using them comes easy.

What RogueLeader was talking about with being ‘in the zone’ takes years of practice, but once you learn how to do that with one thing you can apply it to something else. We do that with typing, driving, and a lot of things that we just don’t think about. It is learning to apply that to something new that is challenging and difficult. Lucas is right that becoming a Jedi takes a long time, but he has never said the skills needed are hard to learn. We see Rey pick them up from Kylo and then she seeks out Luke to help her channel these new powers. When that fails, she takes the books, hoping they have the answer. She knows she is not ready and needs training. We see her seek that out. The force awakened in her and she wants help understanding what happened and learning how to use it. There is a lot to being a Jedi besides just lifting rocks.

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yotsuya said:

DominicCobb said:

Shopping Maul said:

I love what you’re saying Rogue (not that I necessarily grasp all of it of course, but I like the vibe of it!) but I would add that attaining the ‘effortlessness’ implied in the Taoist way would (ironically) require effort. Think of it in terms of being a musician. It would take hours of blisters and finger-cramps and listening and learning for a guitarist to be in that zone. No-one’s going to pick up a guitar and nail it first time just because they had their baser thoughts in check. That’s the beautiful thing about the Karate Kid - he had to wash cars and stand like an Ostrich and go through all kinds of stuff to get to that place. Kershner famously said he wanted “something powerful going on in Luke’s soul” and within the (arguably) limited framework of a SW film he achieved that. The SE feels more like bullet points - ‘we need lightsaber fights, we need a Dark Lord, we need a cantina’ etc etc. Any depth to Rey’s experience seems (to me) to being created by the fans themselves rather than by anything JJ and/or Rian are doing.

Well, to use your Karate Kid example I think the idea in the ST is that Rey has essentially spent her whole life waxing cars (whereas Luke is mostly just any old kid, wasting time with his friends between chores at home).

I believe I have said much the same thing before.

As have I. We’re arguing in circles. The way the force works in the films is not narrowly defined so the interpretation that the ST takes is not a canon-betraying one, regardless of whatever Lucas may or may not have said outside of the movies (I was reading the Rinzler ESB book and at one point he suggested stating outright that Luke is a level 2 and he needs training to face the Emperor who’s a level 9 or something - that’s dumb as fuck and should be ignored as it’s not in the movie). The new films should be able to forge their own path.

Whether you like it or not is a different matter. But the approach is justified.

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 (Edited)

yotsuya said:

DrDre said:

Why you are insisting that learning the force must be difficult is beyond me. That isn’t what we see with Luke. Why should we with Rey? For both characters, there are plenty of obstacles and successes and focusing on Luke’s obstacles while focusing on Rey’s successes is most definitely apples and oranges. Compare their successes (their goals and what they actually achieve) and their failures and both follow the same pattern - some wins, some losses, but generally more wins.

Because Lucas has made this very clear in his statements about how the Force works, which I’m not going to repeat. You have to study, to master it. It’s as simple as that. The entire premise of TESB is, that the Force doesn’t come easy for Luke, and he fails on numerous occasions, and where he succeeds, he rarely succeeds on a first try. Luke leaves Yoda with the clear message, that while he knows the Force, he cannot control it, and facing Vader in this condition is a danger to him physically, and spiritually. He subsequently gets his *** handed to him in his confrontation with Vader, and he ends up hanging on for his life battered hoping that his friends will save him. You don’t have to look hard to see, that Rey’s character gets a very different treatment in the ST. The OT and PT make it very clear, that learning the Force, and becoming a Jedi is very difficult, and just using it half cocked has terrible consequences.

I don’t think it is that different compared to the Force. Luke has always dreamed of the future. His mind was never on where he was or what he was doing. In Rey we have the opposite. Her mind was nearly always on where she was and what she was doing. She had to in order to survive. Everything about the two characters is opposite in terms of training for the Force. Rey has very much had the Miagi type training in life that prepared her to be a Jedi. She has the focus. She also heard the stories so when she sees Kylo do these things, she believes and knows they can be done. So Rey has none of Luke’s doubt - the thing that made him learning the force more difficult. Yet even so, he had no problem learning to deflect a blaster bolt (a full Jedi learns how to aim that as we saw in the PT), he is able to aim the proton torpedoes to destroy the Death Star. Out of desperation he picks up his lightsaber the first time he tries (it takes him a moment to focus and get it right). His training with Yoda was good enough that he can hold his own against Vader. Nothing about how he learned his force skills is hard except his belief and focus. What we do see is that practice, control, and great skill in using these powers takes practice. But learning them and using them comes easy.

What RogueLeader was talking about with being ‘in the zone’ takes years of practice, but once you learn how to do that with one thing you can apply it to something else. We do that with typing, driving, and a lot of things that we just don’t think about. It is learning to apply that to something new that is challenging and difficult. Lucas is right that becoming a Jedi takes a long time, but he has never said the skills needed are hard to learn. We see Rey pick them up from Kylo and then she seeks out Luke to help her channel these new powers. When that fails, she takes the books, hoping they have the answer. She knows she is not ready and needs training. We see her seek that out. The force awakened in her and she wants help understanding what happened and learning how to use it. There is a lot to being a Jedi besides just lifting rocks.

There’s a lot more to becoming a Jedi, and her development doesn’t reflect that either. Remember Obi-Wan’s line:

“This is a dangerous time for you, when you will be tempted by the Dark Side of the Force.”

This was after Luke recieved training. The entire saga up till the ST revolved around the idea of temptation, and control. Here again it comes easy for Rey, who is never tempted. So, as I stated, she gets her powers for free instantly without the temptation, that every Jedi had to face before her.

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One aspect of this ST that I think fits very well is that anyone can use the force. That is to say, few have the ability, but those few can come from anywhere. This returns us to the world we entered in TPM. The Jedi travel around the galaxy, keeping peace and justice and finding new talent. They take that talent to the Jedi Temple for training where, if the young person succeeds, they become basically a monk. The eschew attachment. The Jedi we met in the PT are really kind of twisted. The order is ancient and it seems that rather than deal with the dangers of the Dark Side, they just avoid anything that can lead to that danger. Sex leads to love which leads to jealousy etc. So these great and powerful Jedi have no line. No offspring. The potential dies. As we saw in the OT. The force can run strong in a family. But when there is no family there can be no line. This is where the ST gets the idea that anyone can use the force because this was the setup in TPM.

I see the PT Jedi as flawed (and Lucas seems to have as well with several references in the PT to issues and the total failure of the Jedi to detect Palatine or see that they were pushing Anakin down the dark path). The PT Jedi need to not return. The message of balance in the ST is important. The only hints at what the Jedi should look like lie in the old EU (the only place we see a different type of Jedi in the New Republic era and the Knights of the Old Republic era). Jedi can marry, have children, etc. The relationships are more organic and the Dark Side is less feared (just as dangerous, but with training avoidable). We are treated to a violation of Yoda’s teachings in ROTJ when Luke faces Vader. Vader makes Luke angry. Does it lead him to the Dark Side? Almost, but not quite. Luke rejects the dark side.

Rey comes from nobody just as all the PT Jedi did. There were no great lines of Jedi because the Jedi didn’t have children to make lines. The PT Jedi were all one off. So this idea that anyone can be a Jedi comes from Lucas. That is the setup for the Old Republic. This idea that Rey must belong to a family is in direct contradiction to the world as Lucas created it.

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 (Edited)

DominicCobb said:

yotsuya said:

DominicCobb said:

Shopping Maul said:

I love what you’re saying Rogue (not that I necessarily grasp all of it of course, but I like the vibe of it!) but I would add that attaining the ‘effortlessness’ implied in the Taoist way would (ironically) require effort. Think of it in terms of being a musician. It would take hours of blisters and finger-cramps and listening and learning for a guitarist to be in that zone. No-one’s going to pick up a guitar and nail it first time just because they had their baser thoughts in check. That’s the beautiful thing about the Karate Kid - he had to wash cars and stand like an Ostrich and go through all kinds of stuff to get to that place. Kershner famously said he wanted “something powerful going on in Luke’s soul” and within the (arguably) limited framework of a SW film he achieved that. The SE feels more like bullet points - ‘we need lightsaber fights, we need a Dark Lord, we need a cantina’ etc etc. Any depth to Rey’s experience seems (to me) to being created by the fans themselves rather than by anything JJ and/or Rian are doing.

Well, to use your Karate Kid example I think the idea in the ST is that Rey has essentially spent her whole life waxing cars (whereas Luke is mostly just any old kid, wasting time with his friends between chores at home).

I believe I have said much the same thing before.

As have I. We’re arguing in circles. The way the force works in the films is not narrowly defined so the interpretation that the ST takes is not a canon-betraying one, regardless of whatever Lucas may or may not have said outside of the movies (I was reading the Rinzler ESB book and at one point he suggested stating outright that Luke is a level 2 and he needs training to face the Emperor who’s a level 9 or something - that’s dumb as fuck and should be ignored as it’s not in the movie). The new films should be able to forge their own path.

Whether you like it or not is a different matter. But the approach is justified.

I disagree. I think Lucas’ words are clearly reflected in the six films he created both in the way he displayed the process of becoming a Jedi, and in the way things were shown to spin out of control once you stray from that path. So, in my view the ST is inconsistent, and offers only a flimsy explanation as to why that is, especially since neither Luke or Yoda acknowledge her special status in the story, or offer insight into what this might imply in the larger scheme of things. It’s just a plot device to justify the appearance of an instant-Jedi.

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I think Rey clearly thought about joining Kylo Ren at the end of TLJ. She was rather emotional during that whole conversation, and hesitated to refuse him after Kylo told her that she meant something to him.

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DrDre said:

yotsuya said:

DrDre said:

Why you are insisting that learning the force must be difficult is beyond me. That isn’t what we see with Luke. Why should we with Rey? For both characters, there are plenty of obstacles and successes and focusing on Luke’s obstacles while focusing on Rey’s successes is most definitely apples and oranges. Compare their successes (their goals and what they actually achieve) and their failures and both follow the same pattern - some wins, some losses, but generally more wins.

Because Lucas has made this very clear in his statements about how the Force works, which I’m not going to repeat. You have to study, to master it. It’s as simple as that. The entire premise of TESB is, that the Force doesn’t come easy for Luke, and he fails on numerous occasions, and where he succeeds, he rarely succeeds on a first try. Luke leaves Yoda with the clear message, that while he knows the Force, he cannot control it, and facing Vader in this condition is a danger to him physically, and spiritually. He subsequently gets his *** handed to him in his confrontation with Vader, and he ends up hanging on for his life battered hoping that his friends will save him. You don’t have to look hard to see, that Rey’s character gets a very different treatment in the ST. The OT and PT make it very clear, that learning the Force, and becoming a Jedi is very difficult, and just using it half cocked has terrible consequences.

I don’t think it is that different compared to the Force. Luke has always dreamed of the future. His mind was never on where he was or what he was doing. In Rey we have the opposite. Her mind was nearly always on where she was and what she was doing. She had to in order to survive. Everything about the two characters is opposite in terms of training for the Force. Rey has very much had the Miagi type training in life that prepared her to be a Jedi. She has the focus. She also heard the stories so when she sees Kylo do these things, she believes and knows they can be done. So Rey has none of Luke’s doubt - the thing that made him learning the force more difficult. Yet even so, he had no problem learning to deflect a blaster bolt (a full Jedi learns how to aim that as we saw in the PT), he is able to aim the proton torpedoes to destroy the Death Star. Out of desperation he picks up his lightsaber the first time he tries (it takes him a moment to focus and get it right). His training with Yoda was good enough that he can hold his own against Vader. Nothing about how he learned his force skills is hard except his belief and focus. What we do see is that practice, control, and great skill in using these powers takes practice. But learning them and using them comes easy.

What RogueLeader was talking about with being ‘in the zone’ takes years of practice, but once you learn how to do that with one thing you can apply it to something else. We do that with typing, driving, and a lot of things that we just don’t think about. It is learning to apply that to something new that is challenging and difficult. Lucas is right that becoming a Jedi takes a long time, but he has never said the skills needed are hard to learn. We see Rey pick them up from Kylo and then she seeks out Luke to help her channel these new powers. When that fails, she takes the books, hoping they have the answer. She knows she is not ready and needs training. We see her seek that out. The force awakened in her and she wants help understanding what happened and learning how to use it. There is a lot to being a Jedi besides just lifting rocks.

There’s a lot more to becoming a Jedi, and her development doesn’t reflect that either. Remember Obi-Wan’s line:

“This is a dangerous time for you, when you will be tempted by the Dark Side of the Force.”

This was after Luke recieved training. The entire saga up till the ST revolved around the idea of temptation, and control. Here again it comes easy for Rey, who is never tempted. So, as I stated, she gets her powers for free instantly without the temptation, that every Jedi had to face before her.

What is it that lead one to fall to the dark side? It is anger, selfishness, hatred. Rey has not been tempted by those yet. She has control and discipline. We see her old life is nothing but discipline. Watto gave Anakin pretty free rein. Luke was always goofing off and dreaming. If the goal of this trilogy is the restoration of the natural order to the force, then the story needs someone who is harder to tempt and who comes to the table with the skills needed to be a Jedi. If balance means accepting the light and dark side of the force, then we need someone not biased by the old Jedi ways. Someone who can bring the force into balance. How we are going to see that done in IX eludes me, but the hints have been laid out for the arc to this trilogy. The saga will take an imbalanced force, make it worse, then heal it back to the natural state. We are near that healing so Rey can’t be some of the things you think she needs to be if we are to get to that point. I see Rey being closer to some of the characters from thousands of years ago than to any in the PT or OT. It is time to start things over again and reset and Rey needs to be the vehicle to do that.

This image is key.

It seems to show a Jedi that is master of both the light and the dark. Rey is being set up to be just that. Where Kylo fits in I don’t know.

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DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

yotsuya said:

DominicCobb said:

Shopping Maul said:

I love what you’re saying Rogue (not that I necessarily grasp all of it of course, but I like the vibe of it!) but I would add that attaining the ‘effortlessness’ implied in the Taoist way would (ironically) require effort. Think of it in terms of being a musician. It would take hours of blisters and finger-cramps and listening and learning for a guitarist to be in that zone. No-one’s going to pick up a guitar and nail it first time just because they had their baser thoughts in check. That’s the beautiful thing about the Karate Kid - he had to wash cars and stand like an Ostrich and go through all kinds of stuff to get to that place. Kershner famously said he wanted “something powerful going on in Luke’s soul” and within the (arguably) limited framework of a SW film he achieved that. The SE feels more like bullet points - ‘we need lightsaber fights, we need a Dark Lord, we need a cantina’ etc etc. Any depth to Rey’s experience seems (to me) to being created by the fans themselves rather than by anything JJ and/or Rian are doing.

Well, to use your Karate Kid example I think the idea in the ST is that Rey has essentially spent her whole life waxing cars (whereas Luke is mostly just any old kid, wasting time with his friends between chores at home).

I believe I have said much the same thing before.

As have I. We’re arguing in circles. The way the force works in the films is not narrowly defined so the interpretation that the ST takes is not a canon-betraying one, regardless of whatever Lucas may or may not have said outside of the movies (I was reading the Rinzler ESB book and at one point he suggested stating outright that Luke is a level 2 and he needs training to face the Emperor who’s a level 9 or something - that’s dumb as fuck and should be ignored as it’s not in the movie). The new films should be able to forge their own path.

Whether you like it or not is a different matter. But the approach is justified.

I disagree. I think Lucas’ words are clearly reflected in the six films he created both in the way he displayed the process of becoming a Jedi, and in the way things are shown to spin out of control once you stray from that path. So, in my view the ST is inconsistent, and offers only a flimsy explanation as to why that is.

Going back to the PT, the force is out of balance. The Jedi are diminished. Palpatine has started his plan. Anakin comes into the picture. Because they refuse to properly train him and because Palpatine becomes his non-Jedi mentor, Anakin’s fate is sealed. Yoda saw his future as clouded where Qui-gon was certain. Politics and tradition stopped them from training him properly. But I fear that the properly he needed did not exist due to how traditional the Jedi had become and how scared of the dark side they were. They weren’t seeking balance, only the light. So Palpatine spends years whispering in Anakin’s ear and when the time comes, Anakin follows Palpatine, not the Jedi. In the process, we get the twins - Luke and Leia. Luke grows up with his step-Uncle and Aunt and spends more time playing than working. Things catch up, he meets Obi-wan, Han, Leia, eventually Yoda. And again Luke is too old (older than Anakin), but Yoda breaks with tradition out of necessity and trains him. Luke goes on to face Vader twice and is not turned and passes the test. In the process he is the catalyst to get Anakin to turn back and destroy Palpatine at last. So the path of the PT was already broken by the path the OT took in the training of Luke vs. Anakin. Yoda broke with tradition, didn’t have much time, imparted the most important lessons, and it worked.

Coming back to Rey, if the old ways are broken (which is what I glean from the PT and OT), then it is time to find a new way. Luke uses that in how he teaches lessons to Rey (I think he was trying to discourage her but at the same time give her the tools to cope).

So I don’t see things spinning out of control if you stray off the path. I see that the old Jedi path was the issue (how many PT Jedi turned to the dark side?) and straying from the path and re-finding the pat they are supposed to be on is where this trilogy is headed.

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This idea of balance has eaten up a lot of time in Clone Wars and Rebels. Since Filoni was working closely with Lucas, I believe what we have been seeing represent development to the ST and a final balance to the force… back to where it all started.

So Rey is who she needs to be, has had plenty of setbacks and definitely not an easy time, regardless of how quick she has picked up the force skills, so she is not a Mary Sue. She is the main character of the ST. She drew a lightsaber from a box after helping Finn and BB-8 and her life has changed.

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 (Edited)

yotsuya said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

yotsuya said:

DominicCobb said:

Shopping Maul said:

I love what you’re saying Rogue (not that I necessarily grasp all of it of course, but I like the vibe of it!) but I would add that attaining the ‘effortlessness’ implied in the Taoist way would (ironically) require effort. Think of it in terms of being a musician. It would take hours of blisters and finger-cramps and listening and learning for a guitarist to be in that zone. No-one’s going to pick up a guitar and nail it first time just because they had their baser thoughts in check. That’s the beautiful thing about the Karate Kid - he had to wash cars and stand like an Ostrich and go through all kinds of stuff to get to that place. Kershner famously said he wanted “something powerful going on in Luke’s soul” and within the (arguably) limited framework of a SW film he achieved that. The SE feels more like bullet points - ‘we need lightsaber fights, we need a Dark Lord, we need a cantina’ etc etc. Any depth to Rey’s experience seems (to me) to being created by the fans themselves rather than by anything JJ and/or Rian are doing.

Well, to use your Karate Kid example I think the idea in the ST is that Rey has essentially spent her whole life waxing cars (whereas Luke is mostly just any old kid, wasting time with his friends between chores at home).

I believe I have said much the same thing before.

As have I. We’re arguing in circles. The way the force works in the films is not narrowly defined so the interpretation that the ST takes is not a canon-betraying one, regardless of whatever Lucas may or may not have said outside of the movies (I was reading the Rinzler ESB book and at one point he suggested stating outright that Luke is a level 2 and he needs training to face the Emperor who’s a level 9 or something - that’s dumb as fuck and should be ignored as it’s not in the movie). The new films should be able to forge their own path.

Whether you like it or not is a different matter. But the approach is justified.

I disagree. I think Lucas’ words are clearly reflected in the six films he created both in the way he displayed the process of becoming a Jedi, and in the way things are shown to spin out of control once you stray from that path. So, in my view the ST is inconsistent, and offers only a flimsy explanation as to why that is.

Going back to the PT, the force is out of balance. The Jedi are diminished. Palpatine has started his plan. Anakin comes into the picture. Because they refuse to properly train him and because Palpatine becomes his non-Jedi mentor, Anakin’s fate is sealed. Yoda saw his future as clouded where Qui-gon was certain. Politics and tradition stopped them from training him properly. But I fear that the properly he needed did not exist due to how traditional the Jedi had become and how scared of the dark side they were. They weren’t seeking balance, only the light. So Palpatine spends years whispering in Anakin’s ear and when the time comes, Anakin follows Palpatine, not the Jedi. In the process, we get the twins - Luke and Leia. Luke grows up with his step-Uncle and Aunt and spends more time playing than working. Things catch up, he meets Obi-wan, Han, Leia, eventually Yoda. And again Luke is too old (older than Anakin), but Yoda breaks with tradition out of necessity and trains him. Luke goes on to face Vader twice and is not turned and passes the test. In the process he is the catalyst to get Anakin to turn back and destroy Palpatine at last. So the path of the PT was already broken by the path the OT took in the training of Luke vs. Anakin. Yoda broke with tradition, didn’t have much time, imparted the most important lessons, and it worked.

Coming back to Rey, if the old ways are broken (which is what I glean from the PT and OT), then it is time to find a new way. Luke uses that in how he teaches lessons to Rey (I think he was trying to discourage her but at the same time give her the tools to cope).

So I don’t see things spinning out of control if you stray off the path. I see that the old Jedi path was the issue (how many PT Jedi turned to the dark side?) and straying from the path and re-finding the pat they are supposed to be on is where this trilogy is headed.

Then why call Rey a Jedi, if Jedi-hood is the issue? TLJ works very hard to backtrack on any new direction it hinted at in its final act. This line of thought also ignores the fact that the Jedi guarded the peace for over a 1,000 generations. That’s just too good of a track record to ignore, or to state that their way is flawed based on how a small representation of them behaved in the PT era. The PT era Jedi may have strayed too far from the right path, seems a reasonable point of view, but that’s not what TLJ is saying, and only through the words of a very cynical Luke, I might add, who then later reverses his position by saying he will not be the last Jedi.

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RogueLeader said:

maybe they could’ve shown Rey take a little more effort to do certain things. But luckily that’s what things like fan edits are for!

Definitely prefer fanedits over theatricals.

This is another reason why I think it is good to trim the Rather scene and cut Rey saving Finn from one of them.

DigModiFicaTions edit does it best when handling the Rathtar scene by keeping it short as soon as Han punches the gangster goon he cuts then to Han trying to open door to hanger by using Chewies bowcaster thus removing most of the CGI antics.

I personally kinda wish Rey would’ve stretched out both of her hands when lifting up all of those rocks at the end of TLJ, which I know is a little trivial but it does show a little extra effort. I think a skilled editor could actually do this. Minor, but something I’d like to see.

Sounds good

This is another reason why I would keep the Caretakers. One trait of a Mary Sue is that everyone loves her, and the Caretakers clearly aren’t too fond of Rey. Haha.

Thats one reason but ultimately keeping the caretakers in lets us have in my opinion the most important deleted scene which is Lukes third lession and how the Jedis dogmatic views have become dated.

It best explains this mystical energy field recognised by an old religious group known as the Jedi and a power crazed cult called the Sith as the force. Luke while on his own recognises what he was told to be called the force is neither the Jedis nor the Siths and the slave kid at the end using his untrained talent to pick up his broom reminds us that the galaxy far, far away is a big place with alot of stories to tell outside of the Jedi/Sith.

When it comes to editing I try to approach things in a “less is more” kind of way. Like, what would be the smallest changes that would have the biggest impact on your perception of your character, in your opinion?

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“We Are What They Grow Beyond” - Yoda


My Prefered Saga Viewing Preference:
Ep. III - Revenge of the Sith Special Edition (StankPac Edit) * Rogue One - A Star Wars Story (Hal 9000 Edit)
Ep. IV - A New Hope D+77 (OohTeeDee Edit) * Ep. V - Empire Strikes Back D+80 (OohTeeDee Edit)
Ep. VI - Return of The Jedi OTD83 (OohTeeDee Edit) * Ep. VII - The Force Awakens Restructured (Hal 9000 Edit)
Ep. VIII - The Last Jedi Legendary (Hal 9000 Edit) * Ep. IX - The Rise of Skywalker Ascendant (Hal 9000 Edit)

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DrDre said:

yotsuya said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

yotsuya said:

DominicCobb said:

Shopping Maul said:

I love what you’re saying Rogue (not that I necessarily grasp all of it of course, but I like the vibe of it!) but I would add that attaining the ‘effortlessness’ implied in the Taoist way would (ironically) require effort. Think of it in terms of being a musician. It would take hours of blisters and finger-cramps and listening and learning for a guitarist to be in that zone. No-one’s going to pick up a guitar and nail it first time just because they had their baser thoughts in check. That’s the beautiful thing about the Karate Kid - he had to wash cars and stand like an Ostrich and go through all kinds of stuff to get to that place. Kershner famously said he wanted “something powerful going on in Luke’s soul” and within the (arguably) limited framework of a SW film he achieved that. The SE feels more like bullet points - ‘we need lightsaber fights, we need a Dark Lord, we need a cantina’ etc etc. Any depth to Rey’s experience seems (to me) to being created by the fans themselves rather than by anything JJ and/or Rian are doing.

Well, to use your Karate Kid example I think the idea in the ST is that Rey has essentially spent her whole life waxing cars (whereas Luke is mostly just any old kid, wasting time with his friends between chores at home).

I believe I have said much the same thing before.

As have I. We’re arguing in circles. The way the force works in the films is not narrowly defined so the interpretation that the ST takes is not a canon-betraying one, regardless of whatever Lucas may or may not have said outside of the movies (I was reading the Rinzler ESB book and at one point he suggested stating outright that Luke is a level 2 and he needs training to face the Emperor who’s a level 9 or something - that’s dumb as fuck and should be ignored as it’s not in the movie). The new films should be able to forge their own path.

Whether you like it or not is a different matter. But the approach is justified.

I disagree. I think Lucas’ words are clearly reflected in the six films he created both in the way he displayed the process of becoming a Jedi, and in the way things are shown to spin out of control once you stray from that path. So, in my view the ST is inconsistent, and offers only a flimsy explanation as to why that is.

Going back to the PT, the force is out of balance. The Jedi are diminished. Palpatine has started his plan. Anakin comes into the picture. Because they refuse to properly train him and because Palpatine becomes his non-Jedi mentor, Anakin’s fate is sealed. Yoda saw his future as clouded where Qui-gon was certain. Politics and tradition stopped them from training him properly. But I fear that the properly he needed did not exist due to how traditional the Jedi had become and how scared of the dark side they were. They weren’t seeking balance, only the light. So Palpatine spends years whispering in Anakin’s ear and when the time comes, Anakin follows Palpatine, not the Jedi. In the process, we get the twins - Luke and Leia. Luke grows up with his step-Uncle and Aunt and spends more time playing than working. Things catch up, he meets Obi-wan, Han, Leia, eventually Yoda. And again Luke is too old (older than Anakin), but Yoda breaks with tradition out of necessity and trains him. Luke goes on to face Vader twice and is not turned and passes the test. In the process he is the catalyst to get Anakin to turn back and destroy Palpatine at last. So the path of the PT was already broken by the path the OT took in the training of Luke vs. Anakin. Yoda broke with tradition, didn’t have much time, imparted the most important lessons, and it worked.

Coming back to Rey, if the old ways are broken (which is what I glean from the PT and OT), then it is time to find a new way. Luke uses that in how he teaches lessons to Rey (I think he was trying to discourage her but at the same time give her the tools to cope).

So I don’t see things spinning out of control if you stray off the path. I see that the old Jedi path was the issue (how many PT Jedi turned to the dark side?) and straying from the path and re-finding the pat they are supposed to be on is where this trilogy is headed.

Then why call Rey a Jedi, if Jedi-hood is the issue? TLJ works very hard to backtrack on any new direction it hinted at in its final act. This line of thought also ignores the fact that the Jedi guarded the peace for over a 1,000 generations. That’s just too good of a track record to ignore, or to state that their way is flawed. The PT era Jedi may have strayed too far from the right path, but that’s not what TLJ is saying through the words of cynical Luke, who then later reverses his position by saying he will not be the last Jedi.

I have seen you quite often focus on what Luke said when first meet him. The real message in TLJ is what Yoda says to Luke that leads Luke to project himself to Crait. But Luke is correct, the PT Jedi had it wrong. If the sacred texts are from the start of that 1000 generations, they they may have wisdom that cynical Luke missed that Rey can use (plus I am quite certain Luke will be finishing his training of Rey in IX). The goal from TPM seems to be a story of bringing balance to the force. The PT Jedi practice a flawed version of what the original Jedi practiced so the goal is to go back to the original - before the Sith - and restore the natural order to the Force.

You really need to ignore characters like cynical Luke and Kylo Ren when trying to pin a message on TLJ. Those characters are in dark places are do not reveal the message the move gets across which is that in the darkest hour you can find hope. At least Yoda finally knocked some sense into Luke… again.

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yotsuya said:

DrDre said:

Voss Caltrez said:

DrDre said:

So, there’s failure from a certain point of view, but from many others she is unrealistically successful (or lucky) given her lack of experience, and naive nature, and she achieves many of these successes with powers that she just almost instantly recieved from on high, and thus hasn’t really earned.

I agree with this.
But I don’t think it would play well if we saw Rey getting beat up like other action heroes tend to be.
Had Rey been rescued by Poe Dameron in a Hoth-like situation, people would accuse the filmmakers of resorting to the damsel-in-destress trope.
If Snoke had been hurling giant pieces of machinery at Rey’s back and head, she gets beaten and bruised with a black eye (ala Luke at the end of ESB) AND she loses the fight, it looks like a display of violence against women, and accusations of misogyny are made.

I don’t think she needed to be rescued, but I also think she might have a little bit more trouble escaping, maybe get a few scratches, and seem a little less jubilant in the battle of Crait. As it is the revelations and her failure don’t really seem to affect her much. Given what happened to her, and the Resistance you would expect a bit more somber and reflective tone, rather than smiles and congratulations.

And in A New Hope, Luke’s very old friend Biggs is blown up and other than a moment of sadness that he quickly shrugs off to get the job done, there is nothing. Of 30 ships only 3 came back and everyone is laughing and jubilant. Why? because even when there is a cause to be sad, we can be happy becomes something overrides the sadness. And in TLJ, after the survivor’s are rescued, Rey is somber when she talks to Leia.

Very good point yotsuya, I dont think I have an issue with TLJs ending particularly as you said when comparing to ANH only issue is like most said no time for them to stop and reflect.

“We Are What They Grow Beyond” - Yoda


My Prefered Saga Viewing Preference:
Ep. III - Revenge of the Sith Special Edition (StankPac Edit) * Rogue One - A Star Wars Story (Hal 9000 Edit)
Ep. IV - A New Hope D+77 (OohTeeDee Edit) * Ep. V - Empire Strikes Back D+80 (OohTeeDee Edit)
Ep. VI - Return of The Jedi OTD83 (OohTeeDee Edit) * Ep. VII - The Force Awakens Restructured (Hal 9000 Edit)
Ep. VIII - The Last Jedi Legendary (Hal 9000 Edit) * Ep. IX - The Rise of Skywalker Ascendant (Hal 9000 Edit)

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In my opinion a lot of what drives (the non-bot/Ruski type stuff) this is just your basic incel toxic internet stuff.
How do I deal with it?
I don’t give it the time of day.
I don’t go to any of these sites or watch the YouTube videos because a lot of this is driven by people with an agenda and they latch onto anything and the videos are more about them then the content of the media that they are on a rant about.
I’m a geezer, was 11 when I saw the first one in '77.
I have an eight year old gamer kid and my wife and I have to police his YT activity for the same reason. He goes out looking for a solution on something that he’s stuck on and winds up with a twenty five minute long video that is essentially some basement dweller playing a game talking nonstop about how awesome he is.
An unexpected consequence of the internet is the ability to observe free range toxic people in their natural habitat.
They want validation via likes, clicks, watchings, comments.
Don’t give it to them.
You like a movie, you like it. Don’t go around justifying and making excuses for the things that you like, love and are inspired by.

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IsanRido said:

I don’t like the ST myself, but the Mary Sue argument is very silly and indicative of one’s attitude towards women. “We don’t hate women, we hate poorly written characters” doesn’t apply when a person defends the prequel trilogy over these films.

The Mary Sue argument is not indicative of a personal attitude against women. That is ridiculous. A person can think that Rey is a Mary Sue without thinking that all other strong female characters are Mary Sues.

For example, in Wonder Woman, Diana is a goddess and a trained Amazonian warrior. Although Diana kicks ass, she is relatable because the screenwriters endow her with a flaw: Naïveté. A fish out of water, she is unacquainted with human customs and believes the death of Aries will end all war forever. Her weakness leads to growth and makes her interesting. Although Zeus sculpted her from clay, Diana seems far more human than Rey, who seems more like a cardboard cutout than an actual person, flaws and all.

Compare Luke’s first meeting with Han Solo to Rey’s. Han immediately casts doubt on Luke’s piloting abilities. “Who’s going to fly it, kid! You?” On the run, Han says, “Traveling through hyperspace isn’t like dusting crops, boy!” Unable to decipher the controls, Luke asks, “What’s that flashing?” In contrast, Rey immediately one-ups Han. When Rey fixes the Falcon, Han is awestruck. Then he offers her a job. See the difference?