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Post #896846

Author
John Doom
Parent topic
TFA: Why I don't think Rey is a Merry Sue
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/896846/action/topic#896846
Date created
14-Jan-2016, 2:01 PM

oojason said:

I disagree with a lot of that JD - for one she hasn’t acquired more skills than Luke has (has she?)

She has, indeed:
-she has extensive mechanics knowledge (thankfully, it’s at least hinted that it may be because of her work as a scavenger;
-she’s a good enough pilot that she can outdo two (or three?) Tie-Fighters; Specifically, she knows how to pilot the Falcon AND also knows how to fix specific Falcon’s issues;
-she’s a skilled fighter in both close-quarter and range combat;
-in the end, she knows how to use the Force to push, pull, trick.

and she is clearly not a skilled Jedi or even ‘just’ a Jedi (that may come in the later films?), her first knowledge of the Force is when Han tells her and Finn about it on the Falcon, no?

Well not as a “status”, but in the end she does both know how to use Force and the handle a lightsaber fight, almost like a “fully trained” Jedi.

She is too perfect? Adapting to her environment in which she has grown up… she has clearly struggled to irk out a living as a scavenger and had to learn to fend for herself - but is quite tidy with the staff and bit and kicked her way through a fight (none of which not really Jedi skills). She also knows how to fix things - probably from her life as a scavenger - and has past experience of flying ships - though not leaving the planet atmosphere).

I’m not saying she shouldn’t know this much because Luke didn’t, just that some of her skills are unexplained, so it feels like she always knows exactly what is needed when is needed. If she can do almost anything, I wonder how they’ll ever be able to put her in a dangerous situation 😄

She then nearly crashes the Falcon, later plans to return to Jakku to await a return of family she deep down knows aren’t coming back, runs from Maz’s castle away from where she has the Force Visions after touching Luke’s old sabre - which is her first real introduction to the Force.

The first time she displays abilities with the Force is when she is being interrogated by Ren - she resists his mind probe and is actually able to probe him back from seemingly learns some abilities or skills from this event to help make she escape via the help of a weak minded stormtrooper. This is being a Mary Sue? It may well be a clue for what is to come in her development, or establishing her character as having the ability to use the Force… or a sign of Ren’s over-confidence, arrogance, or even untrained skills - maybe both?

There’s no enstablishment. Had they at least questioned her sudden knowledge of the Force (like they actually did with Luke’s lightsaber’s finding), it would’ve been fine, though.

The next time she displays abilities with the Force is where she ‘let’s the Force in’ towards the end of her fight with Ren - a fight she was clearly losing to an injured, yet experienced sabre wielder - though hasn’t finished his own training.

Ren keeps hurting himself: if anything, his wound almost seem to make him more powerful. In any case, trained or untrained, wounded or not, Rey suddenly has the upper hand.

And that seemed to me to be the Force guiding her - rather than her having Jedi powers or having more skills than Luke, or being ‘too perfect’… no?

It didn’t seem to me that way :\

DrCrowTStarwarsreborn said:

joefavs said:

Couldn’t it be that -GASP- the character is supposed to be more powerful than Luke? Everyone’s treating this like they failed to portray a character on roughly ANH-era Luke’s level believably, but since when is that the cap on Force aptitude in this universe? Maybe Rey just does better than Luke because she is better than Luke.

Yeah not to mention Luke had never flown an X Wing before

Luke was entablished as “an already great pilot” since his meeting with Obi-wan.

he had all of one day of training in the ways of the force and yet Darth Vader who in that movie takes out most of the other rebel pilots and according to that movie killed all the Jedi senses that the force is strong with Luke and Vader has a lot of trouble getting a beat on Luke. So clearly the force works that way.

Being strong in the Force doesn’t mean one can handle it, just that he can “potentially” use it. After his brief training on the Falcon, he’s only able to make the “perfect shot”, something he said before was possible anyway, and still he was under Obi-wan’s guidance while making that shot.
Rey, on the other hand, is more like Luke in ROTJ, a fully trained Jedi, with absolutely zero training.

Also there is the name of the movie, maybe it isn’t just a name like Attack of the clones, maybe it means something, you know like film titles are supposed to. Maybe the name The Force Awakens means that the force is coming back from a long sleep and it is going to be a more active part in this trilogy then it ever has been up to this point. Maybe it has something to do with whatever “The First Jedi Temple” that Luke has been looking for is.

A title could mean anything, especially in this case. The movie should tell you about the plot, not the title. Nobody in the movie refer to the “awakening” as a person. It could very well be that something in the Force has changed or that it’s the dawn of a new Era, and so on…

It seems to me a lot of people are judging this film and the characters when we only have one third of the story.

Every movie is supposed to technically stand on its own, making sure nothing seems like a plot hole.

If you judge Star Wars on it’s own there are a lot of plot holes and unanswered questions in that movie too, after all if all the questions and issues had been dealt with in that movie then the other two movies would have just been retreads.

Star Wars on its own has no characters’ plot holes that I remember, unlike Rey’s skills in TFA. It stands on its own. We know just everything we need to know about them to understand the plot.

Also there is no such thing as a movie without a single plot hole, even Citizen Kane has at least one plot hole in it, and that is my favorite movie.

Perfection is hard if impossible to obtain, of course! 😄
What does it have to do with Rey being considered a “Mary Sue”?

Oh and because I know someone is going to bring up these two points I will just answer them right now. First Rey knows about the Falcon and it’s upgrades because she was the one who installed them, the guy who had the Falcon was the same guy who she was selling stuff to in exchange for food. She says she has been on the ship before so it is logical to assume that she was the one doing the grunt work of installing the upgrades for that guy.

This sattles the issue with the hyperdrive, but what about how she recognized and handled the problem with the leaking gas?

Second when it comes to her defeating Ren if you know anything about the way swords work or the history of warfare then it makes perfect sense. One of the reasons the upper classes in ancient times were the only ones who used swords was that they cost a lot of money and if you want to be any good with them you have to practice every day and you have to do that just to keep your skills sharp and the only people who had the time to do that were the upper classes who didn’t have to worry about spending 99% of their time growing their own food so they wouldn’t starve. Now Ren is so full of himself I don’t see him as being the type who would keep practicing after he had killed everyone who used Lightsabers in the galaxy, we don’t see him use his saber in real combat before that point in the movie. Now him being full of himself also means that he isn’t going to see Finn or Rey as a threat and he wants to turn Rey so he really isn’t trying to kill her. Now add to that the fact that it must have been at least a decade since he was last in a fight and he has not really been practicing and you have the perfect conditions for him to be surprised for a few seconds and get one of his arms chopped off. That is all that happens, Rey strikes back in rage for less then thirty seconds and he loses a limb and can’t fight. Honestly for someone who I can’t see practicing every day and was described as not having completed his training, it really wasn’t that surprising an outcome

If Ren’s defeat was just because of his arrogance, how comes Rey isn’t able to defeat him from the beginning?

As I said since Rey seems to be tapping into what the OT described as the Dark Side of the force in order to win, it doesn’t make her perfect, if anything it makes her more flawed then Luke ever was and it explains why Luke doesn’t want to take the Saber from her in the end, he can sense that she has given into the dark side of the force already.

Well, she didn’t look in rage, to me.