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.
Wrong. She doesn’t kill him. He is trying to kill her and she blocks it. Using both sabers she is able to push back and when she gets close enough the feedback from his own lightning destroys him. The entire point was that she didn’t kill him with violence. She didn’t actually kill him at all. He did it to himself. If she had tried to kill him, he would have possessed her and Evil Rey would be born. It really pays to pay attention to what is going on.
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.
She makes plenty of mistakes. They are there in each of the movies. She does not perform perfectly any more than Luke did. That is the role of the hero. They have to succeed more often than they fail. Rey fails big when she unleashed the force lightning. She is lucky she was trying to stop the wrong ship.