Johnny Novgorod said:
Addendum. This isn't that hard.
Any brand new character who is inserted in an established fictional canon written in such a way that the character is immediately better than everyone at everything and is recognized for it is a Mary Sue, who gets the blessing of the older characters to take their place as the focus of the attention. Rey is textbook.
I think you're missing my point ... Aragorn was Mary Sue right from the start. He is literally everything and more that you think is problematic in Rey (barring things like being a mechanic, because apples and oranges ... Aragorn makes up for it by knowing Elvish medicine, history, poetry, etc). Also, yes. She's a fucking protag. And I have serious qualms about your level of general discernment given you compared Rey to
Aragorn and Gandalf. Aragorn is to humans what Heracles was to your average Greek (slight embellishment, but not too far off).
Addressing your underlying point, as I told Asita I think Rey isn't that interesting as a character and I'd rather see a down and dirty fighter as representative of the largely barbaric conditions she was raised.
I offered ideas how I would of handled it, and frankly I think lightsabers are fucking shit. But that's not the same as being a Mary Sue... because frankly if I can read LotR happily enough, and nothing in the Star Wars galaxy there seems to have consistent baseline of skill with a laser deathstick wielding, I don't really see it as a problem.
She's had extensive hand-to-hand training. More over she's probably had more real combat experience than Kylo who I would imagine had a sheltered upbringing and sheltered education, and didn't face the same tests that Rey would have. She built a landspeeder from a wreck, she intimately surrounded herself in the bellies of machines, and she made a living scavenging starship parts.
Unless people want to argue that fighting for your life with a quarterstaff doesn't have some formal application to fighting for your life with a bladed weapon.
They taught me bladed weapons and body combat in the army. Pretty sure I could port them to some conception of a laser deathstick. After all, none of the laser deathstick fighting seems all that improbable in the original trilogy. As in you could see someone wielding a cavalry sabre or arming sword in a similar fashion. And frankly I thought the laser deathstick fighting in the prequel trilogy just looks awful and weird.
Frankly I don't see why they went with glowy laser straight edges to begin with. Why not an actual sword? Dress it up a bit. Give it some sci-fi accoutrements, but actual swords could have had some visible character beyond something that you look like you can make in a hardware store.
Kylo and Rey's duel at the end of VII seems pretty fucking awesome to me. It looks like they were actually using weapons.
I would have prefered to watch that duel than any of the garbage in the prequel trilogy which looks like half of them are swinging around their blades hoping to cause an
epileptic fit as opposed to actually being
warriors with laser deathsticks.
Remember this....
And if this is something people honestly want to watch and inflict on others who have done nothing deserving of such stupid choreography and bullshit, confusing cinematography... well, I'm sure there's a punishment somewhere in the City of Dis worthy of your eternity.
Look at this cinematography and choreography...
Cleanly shot, desperate, savage and in the end, cruel. You actually get the feeling she's fighting for her life and she uses Kylo's arrogance against him, in the end showing a glimmer of potent anger and
using it... It's a rugged, aggressive, almost petty engagement of one character driven to the brink of her psychological defences and uses that growing sense of malice to inflict pain on a surprised opponent.
Is there anything structural you find problematic with that?
Because if I want fight scenes to look like ballet recitals, I'll go to the fucking ballet. It's quite obvious Kylo could have finished her off with his feint and then off-balancing her over the cliff side. If anything, it's Kylo's sense of mercy and arrogance that leads to his downfall ... and Rey tapping into that darkest anger, that pettiness, and that malice that he abandons himself in that moment of hopeful restraint from killing her.
That ... seems pretty inline with Star Wars. It's an homage to Luke beating his dad down in a fit of rage that Vader could not emulate in that moment, to his own detriment.
And you know what? It made for a fucking good way to close up a duel and you don't fix what ain't broke.
Now, any other complaints? Honestly feels like I've touched upon most things at this point.
With reference materials, might I add...
Consider if you will my side of the argument coming from this as having a knowledge of Star Wars that would be consideredfairly generalized to the primary reference materials and some board and videogames ... I'm far more willing to watch more duels like that than I am anyh dancing, twirling, flourishing fucking nonsense in the prequel trilogy.
Assuming I'm goiung to watch the latest installment for the same reasons 95% of people that will watch it, maybe you might have a problem with your argument given someone like me
doesn't feel the same way for reasons of the primary source materials themselves.