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The Rise Of Skywalker — Official Review and Opinions Thread — Page 23

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DominicCobb said:

StarkillerAG said:

DominicCobb said:

In my opinion the “Mary Sue” stuff is absolute bullshit that has now seeped into the movies itself. The urge to pacify crying fans is the reason we’re now left with the fan wanking trash that is Rey Palpatine.

Though I suppose the only casualty is the integrity of Rey’s character, and who cares about that when you finally have an explanation for how “OP” she is! The saga is saved!

I don’t think you should blame it on the fans. None of the fans who hated Rey Nobody like Rey Palpatine. They see it for what it is: a misguided attempt to please everyone that resulted in the sequel trilogy having no clear direction.

They’re the cause, whether they like how it ended up or not. JJ and Terrio bought into the argument that Rey’s character progression should treat her like a video game character, not a human being.

No one has ever said that Rey should be a video game character, that’s a complete straw-man. We just want Rey to have some sort of struggle before she begins using the Force like a Jedi master. Is that too much to ask?

They ruined her arc for the sake of fans, and so every fan who complained Rey was “OP” deserved the shitty explanation they got.

They may have thought it was for the sake of fans, but no one who hated Rey Nobody liked Rey Palpatine. It’s like asking someone to make a sandwich, them making a sandwich that looks like a sloppy, slimy mess, and them blaming you for wanting a sandwich.

My preferred Skywalker Saga experience:
I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX

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StarkillerAG said:

yotsuya said:

StarkillerAG said:

yotsuya said:

Shopping Maul said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

A Mary Sue doesn’t cease to be a Mary Sue just 'cause she has ubermensch genes.

Yeah, but it helps. I guess it comes down to what one wishes to preserve most in the canon. Like I said, I hate the genetic thing and have hated it since the ridiculous Leia retcon in ROTJ. But I dislike the ‘no training required’ thing of the ST even more, because it takes away from Luke’s arc and struggles. I’d rather roll with a version of Force genetics (I find a Sith version of this at least mysterious enough to carry some weight) to justify Rey’s power levels than go with RJ’s random ‘X-Men Force powers’ thing.

Luke’s struggles are due to lack of faith and lack of concentration. Rey had heard of the Heroes of the OT. Rey knows what a Jedi can do from those stories. Then comes face to face with it in a way Luke never did (he didn’t see Vader do anything in canon until TESB during their duel and I don’t think he saw Ben do anything either). Ben gave him one lesson on the falcon and then he is able to make the shot that takes out the death star and then later is able to levitate his lightsaber before his second lesson with Yoda. Luke had doubts. Rey didn’t. Rey had belonging and abandonment issues, Luke never seemed to. He wanted to know more about his father, but he knew who he was and that was fine. Rey has plenty of struggles and failures in the films. More than Luke actually. No one powerful in the Force seems to have any problem using it once they see it used and Rey saw it used by Kylo many time. In fact, you could say that he activated the Dyad by trying to read her mind and that he basically taught her everything he knew and she just had to concentrate to draw on it. Snoke implied that he linked them, but I don’t think he realized what he was dealing with. They stayed linked after he died. So Mary Sue? Nope. She has too many flaws and failures to be one. Sure she picks up the force quickly, but that is not the only part of her character and she rarely does it right the first time.

Just because a character has flaws and failures doesn’t mean they’re not a Mary Sue. The original Mary Sue died at the end. Mary Sues usually have two qualities:

-An insane level of power and skill, without much struggle.
-The ability to make everyone they meet instantly like them.

Rey has both qualities. She flies and repairs the Falcon better than Han, despite having never flown it before. As soon as Finn meets her, he loves her more than anything in the galaxy. She uses a Jedi mind-trick successfully after seeing Kylo use it once. As soon as Kylo meets her, he wants her to become his empress. She beats Kylo in a lightsaber duel, despite having never used a weapon of that type before. As soon as Han meets her, he wants her to become his copilot. When she taps into the Force for the first time, she nearly destroys Luke’s temple. She lifts a huge pile of rocks on Crait, despite having never used the Force to lift objects before. She heals people using the Force, an ability which no Jedi has used before, and she doesn’t seem any weaker because of it. Zorri agrees to help the Resistance purely because she likes Rey. The list goes on, but you get the idea. In my opinion, Rey fits the definition of a Mary Sue almost exactly.

Then so does Luke.

People like you keep saying, “If Rey is a Mary Sue, than so is Luke!” But Luke doesn’t have any of the qualities that make Rey a Mary Sue. He struggled constantly to gain the level of power he showed in ROTJ, and the people around him didn’t like him instantly - Leia thought he was a complete idiot, Han thought he was a dumb kid who didn’t understand anything, and Yoda thought he was too hopeful and excited to become a Jedi. In order for Luke to gain the surrogate family he had in ROTJ, he needed character development - a term which the creators of the sequel trilogy don’t seem to understand.

Really? In one less he is able to deflect the remote’s shots. Without any lessons (only Ben’s ghost voice saying to use the force) he is able to target the shaft and destroy the death star. Without any lessons he can lift his light saber. And it isn’t like Rey does everything successfully the first time. She has to try several times to get James Bond Stormtrooper to do her bidding. She does fail and when you actually and honestly compare how she and Luke do things, they are very similar. She just doesn’t have his doubts that made him fail with the X-wing. She has family issues he always seemed okay with. We never get to see Anakin train so we have no idea how he did. We do see Erza in Rebels and he does about the same as Luke and Rey. And in case you missed it, Rey had a bit of a failure at the start of TROS where she wasn’t deflecting the remotes shots like she should. She has a tough third film where Luke is pretty composed the whole way through and only has issues when Vader threatens Leia. The evidence doesn’t back up Rey having it easier than Luke or being more powerful than Luke. They just have different journeys.

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 (Edited)

StarkillerAG said:

DominicCobb said:

StarkillerAG said:

DominicCobb said:

In my opinion the “Mary Sue” stuff is absolute bullshit that has now seeped into the movies itself. The urge to pacify crying fans is the reason we’re now left with the fan wanking trash that is Rey Palpatine.

Though I suppose the only casualty is the integrity of Rey’s character, and who cares about that when you finally have an explanation for how “OP” she is! The saga is saved!

I don’t think you should blame it on the fans. None of the fans who hated Rey Nobody like Rey Palpatine. They see it for what it is: a misguided attempt to please everyone that resulted in the sequel trilogy having no clear direction.

They’re the cause, whether they like how it ended up or not. JJ and Terrio bought into the argument that Rey’s character progression should treat her like a video game character, not a human being.

No one has ever said that Rey should be a video game character, that’s a complete straw-man. We just want Rey to have some sort of struggle before she begins using the Force like a Jedi master. Is that too much to ask?

I think it’s an accurate descriptor. The films already gave us a character struggling in a different way, but it wasn’t enough for some people because she reached too high a power level without spending enough time grinding for XP. It’s the same reason we have the pointless training sequence at the start of TROS.

They ruined her arc for the sake of fans, and so every fan who complained Rey was “OP” deserved the shitty explanation they got.

They may have thought it was for the sake of fans, but no one who hated Rey Nobody liked Rey Palpatine. It’s like asking someone to make a sandwich, them making a sandwich that looks like a sloppy, slimy mess, and them blaming you for wanting a sandwich.

It’s more like they made a sandwich that worked perfectly well without mayo, then the fans had it sent back because there wasn’t any mayo, then they ruined it by putting a shit ton of mayo on it.

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DominicCobb said:

StarkillerAG said:

DominicCobb said:

In my opinion the “Mary Sue” stuff is absolute bullshit that has now seeped into the movies itself. The urge to pacify crying fans is the reason we’re now left with the fan wanking trash that is Rey Palpatine.

Though I suppose the only casualty is the integrity of Rey’s character, and who cares about that when you finally have an explanation for how “OP” she is! The saga is saved!

I don’t think you should blame it on the fans. None of the fans who hated Rey Nobody like Rey Palpatine. They see it for what it is: a misguided attempt to please everyone that resulted in the sequel trilogy having no clear direction.

They’re the cause, whether they like how it ended up or not. JJ and Terrio bought into the argument that Rey’s character progression should treat her like a video game character, not a human being. They ruined her arc for the sake of fans, and so every fan who complained Rey was “OP” deserved the shitty explanation they got.

Sounds reasonable.

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It’s important to remember that Rey is part of the prophecy.

Darkness rises, and light to meet it.

This implies a nobody had to rise to counter Kylo, which is frankly ridiculous but if we are working the lenses of TLJ, Rey is both a “nobody” and a “chosen one”.

Maul- A Star Wars Story

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 (Edited)

yotsuya said:

StarkillerAG said:

yotsuya said:

StarkillerAG said:

yotsuya said:

Shopping Maul said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

A Mary Sue doesn’t cease to be a Mary Sue just 'cause she has ubermensch genes.

Yeah, but it helps. I guess it comes down to what one wishes to preserve most in the canon. Like I said, I hate the genetic thing and have hated it since the ridiculous Leia retcon in ROTJ. But I dislike the ‘no training required’ thing of the ST even more, because it takes away from Luke’s arc and struggles. I’d rather roll with a version of Force genetics (I find a Sith version of this at least mysterious enough to carry some weight) to justify Rey’s power levels than go with RJ’s random ‘X-Men Force powers’ thing.

Luke’s struggles are due to lack of faith and lack of concentration. Rey had heard of the Heroes of the OT. Rey knows what a Jedi can do from those stories. Then comes face to face with it in a way Luke never did (he didn’t see Vader do anything in canon until TESB during their duel and I don’t think he saw Ben do anything either). Ben gave him one lesson on the falcon and then he is able to make the shot that takes out the death star and then later is able to levitate his lightsaber before his second lesson with Yoda. Luke had doubts. Rey didn’t. Rey had belonging and abandonment issues, Luke never seemed to. He wanted to know more about his father, but he knew who he was and that was fine. Rey has plenty of struggles and failures in the films. More than Luke actually. No one powerful in the Force seems to have any problem using it once they see it used and Rey saw it used by Kylo many time. In fact, you could say that he activated the Dyad by trying to read her mind and that he basically taught her everything he knew and she just had to concentrate to draw on it. Snoke implied that he linked them, but I don’t think he realized what he was dealing with. They stayed linked after he died. So Mary Sue? Nope. She has too many flaws and failures to be one. Sure she picks up the force quickly, but that is not the only part of her character and she rarely does it right the first time.

Just because a character has flaws and failures doesn’t mean they’re not a Mary Sue. The original Mary Sue died at the end. Mary Sues usually have two qualities:

-An insane level of power and skill, without much struggle.
-The ability to make everyone they meet instantly like them.

Rey has both qualities. She flies and repairs the Falcon better than Han, despite having never flown it before. As soon as Finn meets her, he loves her more than anything in the galaxy. She uses a Jedi mind-trick successfully after seeing Kylo use it once. As soon as Kylo meets her, he wants her to become his empress. She beats Kylo in a lightsaber duel, despite having never used a weapon of that type before. As soon as Han meets her, he wants her to become his copilot. When she taps into the Force for the first time, she nearly destroys Luke’s temple. She lifts a huge pile of rocks on Crait, despite having never used the Force to lift objects before. She heals people using the Force, an ability which no Jedi has used before, and she doesn’t seem any weaker because of it. Zorri agrees to help the Resistance purely because she likes Rey. The list goes on, but you get the idea. In my opinion, Rey fits the definition of a Mary Sue almost exactly.

Then so does Luke.

People like you keep saying, “If Rey is a Mary Sue, than so is Luke!” But Luke doesn’t have any of the qualities that make Rey a Mary Sue. He struggled constantly to gain the level of power he showed in ROTJ, and the people around him didn’t like him instantly - Leia thought he was a complete idiot, Han thought he was a dumb kid who didn’t understand anything, and Yoda thought he was too hopeful and excited to become a Jedi. In order for Luke to gain the surrogate family he had in ROTJ, he needed character development - a term which the creators of the sequel trilogy don’t seem to understand.

Really? In one less he is able to deflect the remote’s shots.

Like Han said, “Good against remotes is easy. Good against the living, that’s something else.” Training with a remote doesn’t prepare you for fighting a living enemy.

Without any lessons (only Ben’s ghost voice saying to use the force) he is able to target the shaft and destroy the death star.

That wasn’t Luke making that shot. He closed his eyes and trusted his instincts, allowing the Force to take over. All the incredible things Rey does, she does by herself.

Without any lessons he can lift his light saber.

Lifting a lightsaber is easy. Anyone can do it, even Han. But Luke never had to use his lightsaber for complicated things until his duel with Vader, three years after he first used it. Rey, on the other hand, beats Kylo in a lightsaber duel, despite having never used a weapon of that type before. There’s a difference between lifting a lightsaber, and using it to defeat a Force user who was trained by both Luke Skywalker and Emperor Palpatine.

And it isn’t like Rey does everything successfully the first time. She has to try several times to get James Bond Stormtrooper to do her bidding.

She tries once. The second time, she succeeds. Compare that to Luke, who only knew how to use a mind trick in ROTJ, when he was already a skilled Jedi master.

She does fail and when you actually and honestly compare how she and Luke do things, they are very similar.

Which shouldn’t be taken as a compliment. Copying a much better protagonist does not make your protagonist good.

She just doesn’t have his doubts that made him fail with the X-wing.

Which also shouldn’t be taken as a compliment. Characters who have no doubts tend not to be very interesting.

She has family issues he always seemed okay with.

That’s just a plot point, it’s not a weakness. Rey doesn’t seem to be shaken by either one of her family reveals, unlike Luke who was shocked to his core by Vader’s revelation.

We never get to see Anakin train so we have no idea how he did.

He trained for ten years straight, so we can assume he did well.

And in case you missed it, Rey had a bit of a failure at the start of TROS where she wasn’t deflecting the remotes shots like she should.

What are you talking about? Rey deflected all those lasers completely accurately.

She has a tough third film where Luke is pretty composed the whole way through and only has issues when Vader threatens Leia.

Luke isn’t composed, he’s arrogant. That’s the main lesson Luke learns in ROTJ, true Jedi aren’t smug about their abilities. Compare that to Rey, who has no doubts about her abilities the entire trilogy, and she never learns a lesson from it.

The evidence doesn’t back up Rey having it easier than Luke or being more powerful than Luke. They just have different journeys.

She doesn’t have a different journey, she has a very similar journey, which is a problem in itself. But while Luke made mistakes and learned lessons on his path to becoming a Jedi, Rey started out powerful and stayed powerful, with no opportunities for mistakes or character growth.

My preferred Skywalker Saga experience:
I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX

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OutboundFlight said:

It’s important to remember that Rey is part of the prophecy.

Darkness rises, and light to meet it.

This implies a nobody had to rise to counter Kylo, which is frankly ridiculous but if we are working the lenses of TLJ, Rey is both a “nobody” and a “chosen one”.

Through this lens, she is only the “chosen one” by nature of being the one to step up and be the light the galaxy needed. Anakin is the chosen one inherently, due to his conception and the prophecy. This aspect of Rey’s character is relatively minor, I mean, this is just one line. What’s more important the larger idea of darkness facing the light, rather than the Force picking a chosen one (the supposed implication here).

Anakin being a “nobody” from “nowhere” is secondary to his characterization. I mean, Luke was from nowhere too. But with Rey it’s different, because they made her nobody-ness the central part of her characterization, in the same way being the chosen one was for Anakin, and being Anakin/Vader’s son was for Luke. It was a decidedly different story.

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OutboundFlight said:

It’s important to remember that Rey is part of the prophecy.

Darkness rises, and light to meet it.

This implies a nobody had to rise to counter Kylo, which is frankly ridiculous but if we are working the lenses of TLJ, Rey is both a “nobody” and a “chosen one”.

That wasn’t a prophecy, it was just something Snoke said. He also lied about creating the Force dyad, so we can assume he isn’t the most reliable narrator. But you are right that it’s ridiculous.

My preferred Skywalker Saga experience:
I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX

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StarkillerAG said:

She has family issues he always seemed okay with.

That’s just a plot point, it’s not a weakness. Rey doesn’t seem to be shaken by either one of her family reveals, unlike Luke who was shocked to his core by Vader’s revelation.

That’s funny. “Just a plot point.” It’s literally the primary motivator of just about everything she does. “Not a weakness”? Kylo Ren literally calls it her “greatest weakness.” They spelled it out and people still don’t get it.

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DominicCobb said:

StarkillerAG said:

She has family issues he always seemed okay with.

That’s just a plot point, it’s not a weakness. Rey doesn’t seem to be shaken by either one of her family reveals, unlike Luke who was shocked to his core by Vader’s revelation.

That’s funny. “Just a plot point.” It’s literally the primary motivator of just about everything she does.

I wasn’t denying that, I was just saying that Rey’s longing for her parents isn’t really a weakness, especially when she doesn’t seem shaken up about it at all.

“Not a weakness”? Kylo Ren literally calls it her “greatest weakness.”

Which was a really dumb line. The dialogue in these movies keeps trying to convince us that Rey is torn between the dark side and the light, but Rey never actually does any dark side stuff besides making an evil face a few times. Compare that to Luke in ROTJ, who wears Sith robes and literally Force chokes people in his first minute of screen time. I’d say that Luke’s temptation to the dark side was handled much better than Rey’s temptation.

My preferred Skywalker Saga experience:
I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX

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 (Edited)

I love ROTJ and Luke’s story in it, but his “temptation to the dark side” is one of it’s most poorly handled elements. Maybe on paper his actions at Jabba’s palace seem like he might be slipping to the dark side, but they ultimately play the sequence as completely heroic. His “temptation” is never explicitly a struggle for him until the throne room, and by then he’s been the hero for so long the idea that he might turn has strains credibility.

TROS is a much worse film, but at least they show moments where the darkness explicitly gets the better of Rey. It’s one of the few ways that film works much better than ROTJ.

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DominicCobb said:

I love ROTJ and Luke’s story in it, but his “temptation to the dark side” is one of it’s most poorly handled elements. Maybe on paper his actions at Jabba’s palace seem like he might be slipping to the dark side, but they ultimately play the sequence as completely heroic. His “temptation” is never explicitly a struggle for him until the throne room, and by then he’s been the hero for so long the idea that he might turn has strains credibility.

I disagree. I feel like Luke’s first appearance at Jabba’s palace shows very explicitly that Luke is being tempted by the dark side, and it helps set up his struggle in the throne room. The sail barge scene was a heroic moment, but Luke’s earlier actions are explicitly dark.

TROS is a much worse film, but at least they show moments where the darkness explicitly gets the better of Rey. It’s one of the few ways that film works much better than ROTJ.

When do they show those moments? Whenever Rey in TROS does something dark, it’s because she lost control. She didn’t mean to blow up that transport, and she didn’t mean to stab Kylo in the chest. When Luke in ROTJ does something dark, he does it on purpose. He force choked those guards on purpose, and he almost killed his father on purpose. You need to show that the protagonist is consciously turning to the darkness before you show them rejecting the darkness, and I feel like that’s something ROTJ does very well.

My preferred Skywalker Saga experience:
I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX

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StarkillerAG said:

DominicCobb said:

I love ROTJ and Luke’s story in it, but his “temptation to the dark side” is one of it’s most poorly handled elements. Maybe on paper his actions at Jabba’s palace seem like he might be slipping to the dark side, but they ultimately play the sequence as completely heroic. His “temptation” is never explicitly a struggle for him until the throne room, and by then he’s been the hero for so long the idea that he might turn has strains credibility.

I disagree. I feel like Luke’s first appearance at Jabba’s palace shows very explicitly that Luke is being tempted by the dark side, and it helps set up his struggle in the throne room. The sail barge scene was a heroic moment, but Luke’s earlier actions are explicitly dark.

I mean I’m happy for you that it plays that way, but to me it never did. The fact that none of this is mentioned at all, especially in Luke’s discussions with Yoda and Ben really drive home how poorly it was handled for me. It’s essentially ambiguous, which doesn’t accomplish anything.

TROS is a much worse film, but at least they show moments where the darkness explicitly gets the better of Rey. It’s one of the few ways that film works much better than ROTJ.

When do they show those moments? Whenever Rey in TROS does something dark, it’s because she lost control. She didn’t mean to blow up that transport, and she didn’t mean to stab Kylo in the chest. When Luke in ROTJ does something dark, he does it on purpose. He force choked those guards on purpose, and he almost killed his father on purpose. You need to show that the protagonist is consciously turning to the darkness before you show them rejecting the darkness, and I feel like that’s something ROTJ does very well.

I mean, first of all that’s just your interpretation that Luke is consciously turning to the darkness. For me, I see a movie where throughout the runtime Luke says he won’t kill Vader because he sees the good in him, and that he will not turn to the dark side. It’s only while facing Vader that he loses his cool and control. He’s not consciously turning to the dark, in fact he’s doing the exact opposite. The whole point of the scene is that he’s not trying to kill his father on purpose.

Rey fares better because we see multiple moments where she loses her cool and slips towards that dark power, which is a more believable path - like Luke, we already saw Rey reject the offer to join the dark side. We know that they both know consciously that the dark side is the bad side. But TROS and ROTJ are supposed to be about both protagonists slipping towards the dark despite their best intentions. In that regard, ROTJ does not fare as nearly as well.

I will give you this, Rey would have been better served if they had given her a black or near black outfit. But that hardly makes or breaks this.

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DominicCobb said:

StarkillerAG said:

DominicCobb said:

I love ROTJ and Luke’s story in it, but his “temptation to the dark side” is one of it’s most poorly handled elements. Maybe on paper his actions at Jabba’s palace seem like he might be slipping to the dark side, but they ultimately play the sequence as completely heroic. His “temptation” is never explicitly a struggle for him until the throne room, and by then he’s been the hero for so long the idea that he might turn has strains credibility.

I disagree. I feel like Luke’s first appearance at Jabba’s palace shows very explicitly that Luke is being tempted by the dark side, and it helps set up his struggle in the throne room. The sail barge scene was a heroic moment, but Luke’s earlier actions are explicitly dark.

I mean I’m happy for you that it plays that way, but to me it never did. The fact that none of this is mentioned at all, especially in Luke’s discussions with Yoda and Ben really drive home how poorly it was handled for me. It’s essentially ambiguous, which doesn’t accomplish anything.

TROS is a much worse film, but at least they show moments where the darkness explicitly gets the better of Rey. It’s one of the few ways that film works much better than ROTJ.

When do they show those moments? Whenever Rey in TROS does something dark, it’s because she lost control. She didn’t mean to blow up that transport, and she didn’t mean to stab Kylo in the chest. When Luke in ROTJ does something dark, he does it on purpose. He force choked those guards on purpose, and he almost killed his father on purpose. You need to show that the protagonist is consciously turning to the darkness before you show them rejecting the darkness, and I feel like that’s something ROTJ does very well.

I mean, first of all that’s just your interpretation that Luke is consciously turning to the darkness. For me, I see a movie where throughout the runtime Luke says he won’t kill Vader because he sees the good in him, and that he will not turn to the dark side. It’s only while facing Vader that he loses his cool and control. He’s not consciously turning to the dark, in fact he’s doing the exact opposite. The whole point of the scene is that he’s not trying to kill his father on purpose.

Rey fares better because we see multiple moments where she loses her cool and slips towards that dark power, which is a more believable path - like Luke, we already saw Rey reject the offer to join the dark side. We know that they both know consciously that the dark side is the bad side. But TROS and ROTJ are supposed to be about both protagonists slipping towards the dark despite their best intentions. In that regard, ROTJ does not fare as nearly as well.

I will give you this, Rey would have been better served if they had given her a black or near black outfit. But that hardly makes or breaks this.

I understand your point, and now that you explained it I kind of agree with it. I still prefer Luke’s arc in ROTJ, but maybe that’s just my nostalgia talking.

My preferred Skywalker Saga experience:
I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX

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StarkillerAG said:

I disagree with that article completely. Rey Palpatine wasn’t done for any storytelling reason, it was just done to please people who were pissed that Rey was a nobody in TLJ. And I really don’t like Rey taking the Skywalker name without permission, just because some ghosts smiled at her. If Jeff Bezos smiled at me, would that mean I’m a billionaire? Rey’s arc in TROS makes no sense, and it devalues TLJ’s message that anyone can be a hero. It’s one of those moments that was clearly designed to be a dig at TLJ, like “Go away, Rose!” and “A Jedi’s weapon deserves more respect.”

I hate that they used Palpatine of all things, but I feel it was to fill the void of a main villain in the saga now that Snoke is gone, and to explain why she was so powerful at everything with no real training of anything. She’s the first character in the Saga to do that and of course it requires a reason.

Me, I would just love for Luke to have trained her in TLJ. Wasted opportunity.

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StarkillerAG said:

yotsuya said:

StarkillerAG said:

yotsuya said:

StarkillerAG said:

yotsuya said:

Shopping Maul said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

A Mary Sue doesn’t cease to be a Mary Sue just 'cause she has ubermensch genes.

Yeah, but it helps. I guess it comes down to what one wishes to preserve most in the canon. Like I said, I hate the genetic thing and have hated it since the ridiculous Leia retcon in ROTJ. But I dislike the ‘no training required’ thing of the ST even more, because it takes away from Luke’s arc and struggles. I’d rather roll with a version of Force genetics (I find a Sith version of this at least mysterious enough to carry some weight) to justify Rey’s power levels than go with RJ’s random ‘X-Men Force powers’ thing.

Luke’s struggles are due to lack of faith and lack of concentration. Rey had heard of the Heroes of the OT. Rey knows what a Jedi can do from those stories. Then comes face to face with it in a way Luke never did (he didn’t see Vader do anything in canon until TESB during their duel and I don’t think he saw Ben do anything either). Ben gave him one lesson on the falcon and then he is able to make the shot that takes out the death star and then later is able to levitate his lightsaber before his second lesson with Yoda. Luke had doubts. Rey didn’t. Rey had belonging and abandonment issues, Luke never seemed to. He wanted to know more about his father, but he knew who he was and that was fine. Rey has plenty of struggles and failures in the films. More than Luke actually. No one powerful in the Force seems to have any problem using it once they see it used and Rey saw it used by Kylo many time. In fact, you could say that he activated the Dyad by trying to read her mind and that he basically taught her everything he knew and she just had to concentrate to draw on it. Snoke implied that he linked them, but I don’t think he realized what he was dealing with. They stayed linked after he died. So Mary Sue? Nope. She has too many flaws and failures to be one. Sure she picks up the force quickly, but that is not the only part of her character and she rarely does it right the first time.

Just because a character has flaws and failures doesn’t mean they’re not a Mary Sue. The original Mary Sue died at the end. Mary Sues usually have two qualities:

-An insane level of power and skill, without much struggle.
-The ability to make everyone they meet instantly like them.

Rey has both qualities. She flies and repairs the Falcon better than Han, despite having never flown it before. As soon as Finn meets her, he loves her more than anything in the galaxy. She uses a Jedi mind-trick successfully after seeing Kylo use it once. As soon as Kylo meets her, he wants her to become his empress. She beats Kylo in a lightsaber duel, despite having never used a weapon of that type before. As soon as Han meets her, he wants her to become his copilot. When she taps into the Force for the first time, she nearly destroys Luke’s temple. She lifts a huge pile of rocks on Crait, despite having never used the Force to lift objects before. She heals people using the Force, an ability which no Jedi has used before, and she doesn’t seem any weaker because of it. Zorri agrees to help the Resistance purely because she likes Rey. The list goes on, but you get the idea. In my opinion, Rey fits the definition of a Mary Sue almost exactly.

Then so does Luke.

People like you keep saying, “If Rey is a Mary Sue, than so is Luke!” But Luke doesn’t have any of the qualities that make Rey a Mary Sue. He struggled constantly to gain the level of power he showed in ROTJ, and the people around him didn’t like him instantly - Leia thought he was a complete idiot, Han thought he was a dumb kid who didn’t understand anything, and Yoda thought he was too hopeful and excited to become a Jedi. In order for Luke to gain the surrogate family he had in ROTJ, he needed character development - a term which the creators of the sequel trilogy don’t seem to understand.

Really? In one less he is able to deflect the remote’s shots.

Like Han said, “Good against remotes is easy. Good against the living, that’s something else.” Training with a remote doesn’t prepare you for fighting a living enemy.

Without any lessons (only Ben’s ghost voice saying to use the force) he is able to target the shaft and destroy the death star.

That wasn’t Luke making that shot. He closed his eyes and trusted his instincts, allowing the Force to take over. All the incredible things Rey does, she does by herself.

Without any lessons he can lift his light saber.
Lifting a lightsaber is easy. Anyone can do it, even Han. But Luke never had to use his lightsaber for complicated things until his duel with Vader, three years after he first used it. Rey, on the other hand, beats Kylo in a lightsaber duel, despite having never used a weapon of that type before. There’s a difference between lifting a lightsaber, and using it to defeat a Force user who was trained by both Luke Skywalker and Emperor Palpatine.
And it isn’t like Rey does everything successfully the first time. She has to try several times to get James Bond Stormtrooper to do her bidding.

She tries once. The second time, she succeeds. Compare that to Luke, who only knew how to use a mind trick in ROTJ, when he was already a skilled Jedi master.

She does fail and when you actually and honestly compare how she and Luke do things, they are very similar.

Which shouldn’t be taken as a compliment. Copying a much better protagonist does not make your protagonist good.

She just doesn’t have his doubts that made him fail with the X-wing.

Which also shouldn’t be taken as a compliment. Characters who have no doubts tend not to be very interesting.

She has family issues he always seemed okay with.

That’s just a plot point, it’s not a weakness. Rey doesn’t seem to be shaken by either one of her family reveals, unlike Luke who was shocked to his core by Vader’s revelation.

We never get to see Anakin train so we have no idea how he did.

He trained for ten years straight, so we can assume he did well.

And in case you missed it, Rey had a bit of a failure at the start of TROS where she wasn’t deflecting the remotes shots like she should.

What are you talking about? Rey deflected all those lasers completely accurately.

LOL… When she first encountered the remote she does (wearing a helmet with a blast shield). Then she cuts down the red strip and after that she can’t deflect a single laser. It hits her like 5 times. She finally smashes it against a tree with a stick. Watch the movie again.

She has a tough third film where Luke is pretty composed the whole way through and only has issues when Vader threatens Leia.

Luke isn’t composed, he’s arrogant. That’s the main lesson Luke learns in ROTJ, true Jedi aren’t smug about their abilities. Compare that to Rey, who has no doubts about her abilities the entire trilogy, and she never learns a lesson from it.

Have you seen TROS. This sounds like you haven’t.

The evidence doesn’t back up Rey having it easier than Luke or being more powerful than Luke. They just have different journeys.

She doesn’t have a different journey, she has a very similar journey, which is a problem in itself. But while Luke made mistakes and learned lessons on his path to becoming a Jedi, Rey started out powerful and stayed powerful, with no opportunities for mistakes or character growth.

No opportunities for mistakes? Well, please watch TROS again and then tell me that.

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Please nobody watch that thing again, what are you, crazy???!!

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Wexter said:

Please nobody watch that thing again, what are you, crazy???!!

I think it is a fantastic conclusion and I could watch it over and over.

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yotsuya said:

StarkillerAG said:

yotsuya said:

StarkillerAG said:

yotsuya said:

StarkillerAG said:

yotsuya said:

Shopping Maul said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

A Mary Sue doesn’t cease to be a Mary Sue just 'cause she has ubermensch genes.

Yeah, but it helps. I guess it comes down to what one wishes to preserve most in the canon. Like I said, I hate the genetic thing and have hated it since the ridiculous Leia retcon in ROTJ. But I dislike the ‘no training required’ thing of the ST even more, because it takes away from Luke’s arc and struggles. I’d rather roll with a version of Force genetics (I find a Sith version of this at least mysterious enough to carry some weight) to justify Rey’s power levels than go with RJ’s random ‘X-Men Force powers’ thing.

Luke’s struggles are due to lack of faith and lack of concentration. Rey had heard of the Heroes of the OT. Rey knows what a Jedi can do from those stories. Then comes face to face with it in a way Luke never did (he didn’t see Vader do anything in canon until TESB during their duel and I don’t think he saw Ben do anything either). Ben gave him one lesson on the falcon and then he is able to make the shot that takes out the death star and then later is able to levitate his lightsaber before his second lesson with Yoda. Luke had doubts. Rey didn’t. Rey had belonging and abandonment issues, Luke never seemed to. He wanted to know more about his father, but he knew who he was and that was fine. Rey has plenty of struggles and failures in the films. More than Luke actually. No one powerful in the Force seems to have any problem using it once they see it used and Rey saw it used by Kylo many time. In fact, you could say that he activated the Dyad by trying to read her mind and that he basically taught her everything he knew and she just had to concentrate to draw on it. Snoke implied that he linked them, but I don’t think he realized what he was dealing with. They stayed linked after he died. So Mary Sue? Nope. She has too many flaws and failures to be one. Sure she picks up the force quickly, but that is not the only part of her character and she rarely does it right the first time.

Just because a character has flaws and failures doesn’t mean they’re not a Mary Sue. The original Mary Sue died at the end. Mary Sues usually have two qualities:

-An insane level of power and skill, without much struggle.
-The ability to make everyone they meet instantly like them.

Rey has both qualities. She flies and repairs the Falcon better than Han, despite having never flown it before. As soon as Finn meets her, he loves her more than anything in the galaxy. She uses a Jedi mind-trick successfully after seeing Kylo use it once. As soon as Kylo meets her, he wants her to become his empress. She beats Kylo in a lightsaber duel, despite having never used a weapon of that type before. As soon as Han meets her, he wants her to become his copilot. When she taps into the Force for the first time, she nearly destroys Luke’s temple. She lifts a huge pile of rocks on Crait, despite having never used the Force to lift objects before. She heals people using the Force, an ability which no Jedi has used before, and she doesn’t seem any weaker because of it. Zorri agrees to help the Resistance purely because she likes Rey. The list goes on, but you get the idea. In my opinion, Rey fits the definition of a Mary Sue almost exactly.

Then so does Luke.

People like you keep saying, “If Rey is a Mary Sue, than so is Luke!” But Luke doesn’t have any of the qualities that make Rey a Mary Sue. He struggled constantly to gain the level of power he showed in ROTJ, and the people around him didn’t like him instantly - Leia thought he was a complete idiot, Han thought he was a dumb kid who didn’t understand anything, and Yoda thought he was too hopeful and excited to become a Jedi. In order for Luke to gain the surrogate family he had in ROTJ, he needed character development - a term which the creators of the sequel trilogy don’t seem to understand.

Really? In one less he is able to deflect the remote’s shots.

Like Han said, “Good against remotes is easy. Good against the living, that’s something else.” Training with a remote doesn’t prepare you for fighting a living enemy.

Without any lessons (only Ben’s ghost voice saying to use the force) he is able to target the shaft and destroy the death star.

That wasn’t Luke making that shot. He closed his eyes and trusted his instincts, allowing the Force to take over. All the incredible things Rey does, she does by herself.

Without any lessons he can lift his light saber.
Lifting a lightsaber is easy. Anyone can do it, even Han. But Luke never had to use his lightsaber for complicated things until his duel with Vader, three years after he first used it. Rey, on the other hand, beats Kylo in a lightsaber duel, despite having never used a weapon of that type before. There’s a difference between lifting a lightsaber, and using it to defeat a Force user who was trained by both Luke Skywalker and Emperor Palpatine.
And it isn’t like Rey does everything successfully the first time. She has to try several times to get James Bond Stormtrooper to do her bidding.

She tries once. The second time, she succeeds. Compare that to Luke, who only knew how to use a mind trick in ROTJ, when he was already a skilled Jedi master.

She does fail and when you actually and honestly compare how she and Luke do things, they are very similar.

Which shouldn’t be taken as a compliment. Copying a much better protagonist does not make your protagonist good.

She just doesn’t have his doubts that made him fail with the X-wing.

Which also shouldn’t be taken as a compliment. Characters who have no doubts tend not to be very interesting.

She has family issues he always seemed okay with.

That’s just a plot point, it’s not a weakness. Rey doesn’t seem to be shaken by either one of her family reveals, unlike Luke who was shocked to his core by Vader’s revelation.

We never get to see Anakin train so we have no idea how he did.

He trained for ten years straight, so we can assume he did well.

And in case you missed it, Rey had a bit of a failure at the start of TROS where she wasn’t deflecting the remotes shots like she should.

What are you talking about? Rey deflected all those lasers completely accurately.

LOL… When she first encountered the remote she does (wearing a helmet with a blast shield). Then she cuts down the red strip and after that she can’t deflect a single laser. It hits her like 5 times. She finally smashes it against a tree with a stick. Watch the movie again.

How about you watch the movie again? Rey deflected the lasers completely accurately until she got distracted by Kylo talking to Vader’s helmet and started chopping down trees like a maniac for no reason.

She has a tough third film where Luke is pretty composed the whole way through and only has issues when Vader threatens Leia.

Luke isn’t composed, he’s arrogant. That’s the main lesson Luke learns in ROTJ, true Jedi aren’t smug about their abilities. Compare that to Rey, who has no doubts about her abilities the entire trilogy, and she never learns a lesson from it.

Have you seen TROS. This sounds like you haven’t.

I have seen TROS. Rey has no doubts about her abilities, you said so yourself. And she never learns a lesson from it during TROS. She shows up to Palpatine’s lair, is all like “I’m gonna kill you lol”, and then kills Palpatine with double saber power. Unlike ROTJ which teaches that violence isn’t always the solution, TROS has Rey kill Palpatine with double violence, and it’s portrayed as a heroic moment.

The evidence doesn’t back up Rey having it easier than Luke or being more powerful than Luke. They just have different journeys.

She doesn’t have a different journey, she has a very similar journey, which is a problem in itself. But while Luke made mistakes and learned lessons on his path to becoming a Jedi, Rey started out powerful and stayed powerful, with no opportunities for mistakes or character growth.

No opportunities for mistakes? Well, please watch TROS again and then tell me that.

She never makes mistakes, at least not voluntarily. She’s always morally right about everything, often at the expense of everyone else.

And also, I did watch TROS again. It’s still bad.

My preferred Skywalker Saga experience:
I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX

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yotsuya said:

Shopping Maul said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

A Mary Sue doesn’t cease to be a Mary Sue just 'cause she has ubermensch genes.

Yeah, but it helps. I guess it comes down to what one wishes to preserve most in the canon. Like I said, I hate the genetic thing and have hated it since the ridiculous Leia retcon in ROTJ. But I dislike the ‘no training required’ thing of the ST even more, because it takes away from Luke’s arc and struggles. I’d rather roll with a version of Force genetics (I find a Sith version of this at least mysterious enough to carry some weight) to justify Rey’s power levels than go with RJ’s random ‘X-Men Force powers’ thing.

Luke’s struggles are due to lack of faith and lack of concentration. Rey had heard of the Heroes of the OT. Rey knows what a Jedi can do from those stories. Then comes face to face with it in a way Luke never did (he didn’t see Vader do anything in canon until TESB during their duel and I don’t think he saw Ben do anything either). Ben gave him one lesson on the falcon and then he is able to make the shot that takes out the death star and then later is able to levitate his lightsaber before his second lesson with Yoda. Luke had doubts. Rey didn’t. Rey had belonging and abandonment issues, Luke never seemed to. He wanted to know more about his father, but he knew who he was and that was fine. Rey has plenty of struggles and failures in the films. More than Luke actually. No one powerful in the Force seems to have any problem using it once they see it used and Rey saw it used by Kylo many time. In fact, you could say that he activated the Dyad by trying to read her mind and that he basically taught her everything he knew and she just had to concentrate to draw on it. Snoke implied that he linked them, but I don’t think he realized what he was dealing with. They stayed linked after he died. So Mary Sue? Nope. She has too many flaws and failures to be one. Sure she picks up the force quickly, but that is not the only part of her character and she rarely does it right the first time.

I’m not really pushing the Mary Sue barrow so much as just dealing with my own particular head-canon regarding the Force. Midichlorians and Chosen Ones (and even the 1983 ‘Leia’s the other by blood alone’ thing) sit really uneasily with me. I’m stuck in 1980 on this point - the Force is super-hard to master. Yes, Luke’s doubts and impatience impede his progress, but I don’t see this as an absolute. For example I don’t think Luke, having witnessed Yoda’s X-Wing feat, would have immediately gone “oh, I see” and then duplicated it just because he’d seen it done. I think Yoda’s lesson was more layered than that.

So when Rey stumbles into mastery so easily (from my POV anyway) it messes with my view of the Force and how I see Luke’s journey. I think a ‘school of hard knocks’ approach to the Force is fine, but Rey’s version crosses the line for me. I don’t think JJ even cared, I think he was just like “hey, let’s have her do cool stuff and we’ll explain it later”.

Rey Palpatine is a good explanation for me. While I hate ‘Force-genetics’ in general, her being the descendant/creation of the Palpatine depicted in TROS (basically an evil sorcerer) makes it fit. It kind of justifies the notion of someone being born into power rather than having to master it - plus we’re not talking about the same kind of power Luke was struggling to attain. This is (to me anyway) a whole new twisted side of the Force that hasn’t been presented yet. So it works for me at that level and also gives Rey a depth of character I felt was previously lacking - the idea of someone brimming with a kind of ‘dark magic’ that she can barely control let alone comprehend. It’s almost a ‘reverse-Luke’ in a way and I find it interesting.

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yotsuya said:

Wexter said:

Please nobody watch that thing again, what are you, crazy???!!

I think it is a fantastic conclusion and I could watch it over and over.

My third favourite after ANH and TESB! I’ve seen it four times!

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yotsuya said:

Wexter said:

Please nobody watch that thing again, what are you, crazy???!!

I think it is a fantastic conclusion and I could watch it over and over.

Yeah, I know.

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 (Edited)

I mean, I hate to defend TROS but the very first thing we see Rey doing in the movie is failing. Because of her failure, she decides to run the training course again, the implication being that she’s done this many times and so naturally knows it by heart at this point. They literally went out of their way to appease the fan complaints.

But who cares about what’s actually in the movies when you can put “Mary Sue” blinders on. Gotta twist everything to prove your narrative is right!

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DominicCobb said:

I mean, I hate to defend TROS but the very first thing we see Rey doing in the movie is failing. Because of her failure, she decides to run the training course again, the implication being that she’s done this many times and so naturally knows it by heart at this point. They literally went out of their way to appease the fan complaints.

But who cares about what’s actually in the movies when you can put “Mary Sue” blinders on. Gotta twist everything to prove your narrative is right!

Doesn’t matter, Rey still doesn’t struggle enough in the first 2 movies, where the protagonist should struggle the most. It’s like putting whipped cream on a pile of dung, and trying to convince me that it’s actually an ice cream sundae.

And also, can you please stop responding to me with this condescending bullshit? I’m trying to have an intelligent conversation and you just keep belittling me.

My preferred Skywalker Saga experience:
I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX

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StarkillerAG said:

DominicCobb said:

I mean, I hate to defend TROS but the very first thing we see Rey doing in the movie is failing. Because of her failure, she decides to run the training course again, the implication being that she’s done this many times and so naturally knows it by heart at this point. They literally went out of their way to appease the fan complaints.

But who cares about what’s actually in the movies when you can put “Mary Sue” blinders on. Gotta twist everything to prove your narrative is right!

Doesn’t matter, Rey still doesn’t struggle enough in the first 2 movies, where the protagonist should struggle the most. It’s like putting whipped cream on a pile of dung, and trying to convince me that it’s actually an ice cream sundae.

And also, can you please stop responding to me with this condescending bullshit? I’m trying to have an intelligent conversation and you just keep belittling me.

I’m not trying to be condescending, but if you’re going to post something ridiculous my response will be likewise ridiculous. I don’t know what’s intelligent about warping the content of the films and then calling this made up version “dung.”