It's never that black and white, Ogroid. It's seldom a case of "Roar, I hate vaginas, and thus will condemn all female characters ever for having one", and more likely a case of "My hackles are already up because the character is female, so I'm far more cognizant of flaws/faults than I would be for a NORMAL (I.E. White Male) character." We already had one individual in this thread accusing the thread of "pandering to minorities", and listing "women" as one of them.Ogoid said:I only mentioned my being a GooberGator because it means I hang out in places where these people are supposed to congregate (hell, I am one of these people if you ask most of our purveyors of Truth at the noble institution of the Fourth Estate), and every criticism of the character of Rey I've come across in any of them has been at least considerably more substantial than "because vagina"; and to dismiss it as such shows, in my opinion, not only a complete lack of anything even remotely resembling a willingness to engage in a discussion in good faith, but in fact, a readiness to condemn someone as so reprehensible a human being as to hate half the world's population... over what? Some arguably shoddy writing in a Hollywoood blockbuster?
Yes, Poe is a good pilot. "Poe is an amazing pilot" the film tells us, and he goes on to do amazing stunts for the rest of the film. You do understand what "Mary Sue" means, as a descriptor right? It's character as authorial wish fulfillment. I *believe* it was originally coined as a condemnation of self-authored RPG characters who were always the children of Gods or the best at everything because there was a hyper focus on what would be "cool" rather than what makes for a good narrative device. It's already a slightly cumbersome device to apply to a Star Wars film, where "It's in the film because it was cool" is literally how the entire IP sprung into existence in the first place. Death Star, AT-AT, Lightsabres, none of it makes a lick of pragmatic sense. It's all Rule of Cool. Is Poe a Mary Sue? Absolutely he is. "This guy is the BEST PILOT EVER PEW PEW" is his entire characterization. Rian Johnson tries to texture him a bit by also making him a hot head, but it's kind of like "character texturing 101". It's the sort of thing Stephanie Meyer would do.Ogoid said:As for this "Poe" character... isn't he a Han Solo type of character? Han was a good pilot too; nobody minded because he was presented to the audience that way from the get-go. Besides, they're support cast, not protagonists.
Luke is a simple bumpkin from the ass end of Nowheresville, Backwatershire. A simple farm boy who in the course of a single film turns the Empire on its ear and performs astounding acts of mystical heroism. Campbell's Monomyth is literally diluted into a single 2 hour film. Lucas never planned a trilogy from the get go. Luke's Hero's Journey is over by the end of the film. Vader is defeated, the Death Star is destroyed, Luke gets a giant ass medal hung around his neck and a kiss from a Princess. It's simple, Archetypal storytelling. This is not HBO's "The Wire". Rey gets a very similar arc in TFA, in large part because TFA is slavishly recreated from the DNA of A New Hope, due to Disney's desire to reboot the IP by evoking the Original Trilogy to wash away the prequel stank. Suddenly, a portion of the fanbase is feverishly incensed at the presence of this UNBEARABLE MARY SUE.Ogoid said:It's absolutely fine to write badass characters. You just have to be consistent. If you go out of your way to write your hero as some simple bumpkin from the ass-end of Nowheresville, Backwatershire - particularly if you're going for an archetypical, Campbell-esque Hero's Journey - you can't have them instantly succeed at everything they do, or what you end up with is an unsatisfying story.
She was. And her writing was terrible. And people did hate the fact she was a 2nd female protagonist.Ogoid said:Besides, wasn't the protagonist of Rogue One a woman, too? I mean, if that's the point of contention, why aren't these supposed woman-haters putting all that effort into finding flaws in her writing?
https://www.google.ca/search?q=star+wars+sjws&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj7gNn5-KrYAhUBR2MKHaMPA50Q_AUICygC&biw=1440&bih=777
You don't have to look far, dude.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McJfTpAGXK0
It's not. Rogue One was AWFUL. And it got plenty of hate, from many of the same sources. It doesn't get nearly as much attention as TFA did because it wasn't the first film in a new trilogy, or the first Star Wars film to be released since the miserable prequels.Ogoid said:Could it be that it is simply better? Could that be, perhaps, a more resonable motive to assume of them in the first place, instead of outright moral condemnation?