• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Poll Is Rey a Mary Sue?

Is Rey a Mary Sue

  • Yes, she absolutely is-make arguments below

    Votes: 24 25.3%
  • No, she is not-make arguments below

    Votes: 34 35.8%
  • Mary Sue is a meaningless term

    Votes: 27 28.4%
  • Don't know, don't care

    Votes: 12 12.6%
  • Doesn't impact me one way or the other

    Votes: 11 11.6%

  • Total voters
    95
She's figuring out things in seconds things that are supposed to take Jedi years to learn.
Like what? What skills is she demonstrating that we have been told takes "years?" Luke was able to utilize acting on instincts, pulling a lightsaber to himself, and precise targeting after just learning about the Force hours ago.

Anakin can "see things before they happen," and pilot a podracer, something no human can do.

What is Rey doing that takes "years?"
She's also fawned over by Finn, Han, Chewbacca and every droid.
Han sees potential, and Chewbacca liked Luke too. And every droid is hyperbole since R2 and 3PO have had zero interaction with Rey, beyond the brief trailer moment which we have zero context for.
 
But, she did intuit over the course of a few seconds how to use the Force to plant a suggestion in somebody's mind.
Because Kylo, who is himself a powerful Force user but inexperienced and undisciplined, inadvertently taught her how to do it with his own Force probe of her mind. As he was searching her mind and she was trying to block him, it showed her how to employ some of the mind tricks that would help her escape.
 
A little?

I mean, most people who call her a Mary Sue mean it as "She is a woman who is competent and I don't like that", so definitely not in that way.

But, she did intuit over the course of a few seconds how to use the Force to plant a suggestion in somebody's mind. She's figuring out things in seconds things that are supposed to take Jedi years to learn. She's also fawned over by Finn, Han, Chewbacca and every droid. So in that sense, she is a little bit of a Mary Sue in the way Wesley is.
The latter is what I mean when I call her a Mary Sue.
 
Because Kylo, who is himself a powerful Force user but inexperienced and undisciplined, inadvertently taught her how to do it with his own Force probe of her mind. As he was searching her mind and she was trying to block him, it showed her how to employ some of the mind tricks that would help her escape.
not shown in the film..
 
Does someone need to come out and explicitly say it? We can watch her expression and infer her probing back. She even figures reads information from it.

At this point in time, I feel like ever ability Rey ever demonstrates must be explicitly explained on a screen in a way that isn't demanded of male characters.
according to the novelization, she downloaded all of Ren's training during that scene. Sorry bro.. that's VERY important.. to the story and bad filmmaking means we have no idea that it happened.
 
according to the novelization, she downloaded all of Ren's training during that scene. Sorry bro.. that's VERY important.. to the story and bad filmmaking means we have no idea that it happened.
I infered it without reading the novel. It wasn't that hard to piece together, any more than I could figure out what Luke was doing in ESB with his lightsaber even though no one showed him.
 
according to the novelization, she downloaded all of Ren's training during that scene. Sorry bro.. that's VERY important.. to the story and bad filmmaking means we have no idea that it happened.
That's also backed up by Rey's lightsaber practice with the rocks on the island being the same pattern of slashes and attacks Ren used fighting Luke at the end of TLJ. Of course, in TFA, she handled the saber in the same way she used her staff, much like Finn swung it around like a First Order zappy-club.

Frankly, if you care enough to whine about it, you care enough to watch the movie closely enough to figure it out (or go to forums or YouTube and have other people tell you what you didn't pick up). I doubt Star Wars became a sensation in 1977 because everyone left the theater thinking, "Yes, I've gotten everything I could possibly get out of this movie, any further viewings would be redundant."
 
Frankly, if you care enough to whine about it, you care enough to watch the movie closely enough to figure it out (or go to forums or YouTube and have other people tell you what you didn't pick up). I doubt Star Wars became a sensation in 1977 because everyone left the theater thinking, "Yes, I've gotten everything I could possibly get out of this movie, any further viewings would be redundant."
Star Wars is definitely the movie I do this with, watching it again and again. I loved TFA and TLJ for that reason. Same with ANH and ROTJ (except for when the Ewok dies because...).
 
the idea that some things can go unspoken is part of filmmaking. But something so important, like Rey downloading her training in tha scene.. is a much bigger thing and something we didn't know the Force could do. And the look on her face is not enough to convey something that important.

I mean I have no trust in these filmmakers.. no logical rules (even in fantasy you have to have rules and limitations).. this is the same filmmaker that made it so Khan could BEAM from a small craft on earth to Kronos..

JJ is a trailer director that pads shit out to an hour and a half. He is a "pat myself on the back" director who doesn't care at all about verisimilitude,
 
It was for me. :shrug:
yeah.. maybe .. I'm not convinced.

But throughout the films JJ makes, there is always that connective tissue between one important element and another element.. eventually it all just leads to set-pieces, but it just feels like there is so much that isn't explained and that others (or the audience) are basically writing the film for him
 
...Seriously?

There are three years between ANH and TESB.

But in ANH, every indication is that the powers the Force grants you are exclusively mental, stuff that's plausibly grounded in reality (at least by 1930s pulp standards where "hypnosis" has extremely broad applications); insight, special knowledge, the power of suggestion (there's no bruising or motion on the skin to suggest Vader is physically choking the officer and not just preventing him from acting to breathe). I still remember when I first heard Luke calling his Lightsaber to him in the ESB radio play, my reaction was the seven-year-old equivalent of "Bullshit."

It was a bit of a stretch for me that the Force had gone from something a fairly credulous person could believe was real, spooky powers-of-the-mind stuff to being outright magic powers. And it was another jump after that in RotJ when it could let someone shoot lightning. Compared to those leaps, I'd say interpreting that Rey must've read Kylo Ren's mind in the scene where she's explicitly shown reading Kylo Ren's mind, while he is explicitly attempting to read her mind in the exact same way he'd already done to Poe at the begging of the film isn't much of a fanwank.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top