It's because if one were to write a truly flawed female character or have terrible things happen to one then one takes the risk that a bunch of virtuous people will very nicely not at all attempt to ruin them.
Ooooookay. Why is the term "Mary Sue" being thrown around like paint?
- Thread starter Parasondox
- Start date
It just looked like the scrawlings of a mad man at first glance. That's all. The only parts I was talking about are the parts in the quote I made.Parasondox said:
Why are so many people acting like "Mary Sue" exclusively applies to females? It's widely used as a gender neutral term, even in this thread people have given a substantial number of male Mary Sues.
The problem with the mind trick, as I see it, is as follows:
I'm sure there's more examples, but I think I've made my point. I'm actually not sure how you could think of her as a flawless character.
Wesley Cru-The Almighty Aardvark said:
Darn it!Asita said:
Using the force to sense your surroundings is the most basic force ability there is. It is lesson 1 of the force and Luke spends the whole movie learning it. As for pulling the lightsabermaninahat said:
Rey does the same thing except, where Luke really struggled to simply do it, Rey out forces someone who previously stopped a blaster bolt in mid-air for like 2 minutes without damaging the integrity or momentum of the bolt.
The problem with the mind trick, as I see it, is as follows:
My main problem with Rey easily gaining force powers is that it just isn't entertaining to watch. It's not interesting to me if someone can just pull the power they need out of the plot and just overcome whatever difficulties are in their way without a struggle. If someone is going to so outrageously better than the average person, I want to know that they worked really hard and made sacrifices for that power.
The force used to seem like something that you needed to work at and understand for many years before becoming proficient at. Like if you were force sensitive that just meant you had an extra sense just on the edge of perception that you weren't automatically aware of. You needed a teacher, because these are skills that Jedi have been learning about and practicing for thousands of years, and without the collective knowledge you would have to start at square one and figure every little thing out for yourself. To use advanced force powers without this teaching would be like inventing some modern day marvel with no education of the principles and skills that your invention was built on. This would be impossible since every invention is built on the experience and discoveries of those that came before.
Rey's use of the mind trick was particularly vexing to me, since the ability really should be very complicated. To mind trick you would need a good understanding of how the force relates to you and how to manipulate it in very subtle ways, you would also need to have a good understanding of how the force relates to the mind of the recipient of the trick and in what ways you need to manipulate their mind to convince them of your suggestion. The awareness of the recipient should also have a large impact on the difficulty of the ability. If they aren't really paying attention or very certain and if what you are suggesting would be something that they wouldn't think too much about doing, then it should be relatively easy to perform the mind trick.
However, Rey's mind trick was against an alert guard who was actively thinking about how he was not going to release her. She made him release her binding, open the door, leave his gun, and exit the room. These are all things that the guard would know to have severe consequences and would be extremely opposed to doing. This goes outside the realm of a "mind trick" in my opinion and is more like complete domination of mind and will. This should have been impossible for anybody who didn't have an acute understanding and control of the force and exactly how it relates to a person's mind, otherwise a person's will is completely trivial.
The force used to seem like something that you needed to work at and understand for many years before becoming proficient at. Like if you were force sensitive that just meant you had an extra sense just on the edge of perception that you weren't automatically aware of. You needed a teacher, because these are skills that Jedi have been learning about and practicing for thousands of years, and without the collective knowledge you would have to start at square one and figure every little thing out for yourself. To use advanced force powers without this teaching would be like inventing some modern day marvel with no education of the principles and skills that your invention was built on. This would be impossible since every invention is built on the experience and discoveries of those that came before.
Rey's use of the mind trick was particularly vexing to me, since the ability really should be very complicated. To mind trick you would need a good understanding of how the force relates to you and how to manipulate it in very subtle ways, you would also need to have a good understanding of how the force relates to the mind of the recipient of the trick and in what ways you need to manipulate their mind to convince them of your suggestion. The awareness of the recipient should also have a large impact on the difficulty of the ability. If they aren't really paying attention or very certain and if what you are suggesting would be something that they wouldn't think too much about doing, then it should be relatively easy to perform the mind trick.
However, Rey's mind trick was against an alert guard who was actively thinking about how he was not going to release her. She made him release her binding, open the door, leave his gun, and exit the room. These are all things that the guard would know to have severe consequences and would be extremely opposed to doing. This goes outside the realm of a "mind trick" in my opinion and is more like complete domination of mind and will. This should have been impossible for anybody who didn't have an acute understanding and control of the force and exactly how it relates to a person's mind, otherwise a person's will is completely trivial.
Katniss had faults. I never saw the movies, and haven't read the third book, but as of the first 2 Katniss had quite a few meaningful faults that got her into pretty big trouble.piscian said:
She has unreasonably good survival skills, yes, but her social skills and maturity in general were lacking. She is selfish, pig headed, rash, prone to violence, and always thinks the worst of people. This makes her very difficult for the other characters to deal with, so much so that she almost ruined everything in the second book by nearly killing off her allies. Her first act after being saved by Haymitch and the group is to try and kill herself before learning what's going on, then when she learns Peeta has been captured by the capitol, she throws a hissy fit and attacks Haymitch. It was made pretty clear that she relied on Peeta's winning personality to keep up their ruse of being in love too, and it's because of her that it ultimately didn't work, putting herself and everybody she loves in peril.
I'm sure there's more examples, but I think I've made my point. I'm actually not sure how you could think of her as a flawless character.
You're just being obtuse here for the sake of it. I'm not saying he's applying it to everyone who criticizes Rey. But I've seen thaluikain's line utilized maaaaaaany times before utilized by people who don't want discussion but to set themselves up to stonewall anyone who they don't agree with by tarring them rather than engaging in discussion. If he were to give examples, that would be fine, but his statement /isn't/ specific. It's precisely because it's not referring to anyone in particular that makes it dodgy.JimB said:
We're talking about Rey specifically in this thread, he doesn't offer anything to support his stance or any counter argument, but instead goes straight to nebulously referring to "some types" having "odd ideas about how useless a woman should be". It's a classic setup. You're right that it doesn't target anyone specific, which is what caught my attention in the first place, it's not specific, but its the implication that you might be one of those "some types" by providing the setup to muddy anyone's dislikes with the character with sexism, making them back off, because the poster dislikes their opinions on the character, sexist or not.
Mary Sue has its origins from author self insert character that is super amazing and exceptional in any way, I believe the fanfic in question was a Star Trek one.
Over time it has become a general term for a character that is so super perfect that it borders on the fanfic, now mileage might vary according to person to person but for me these are signs of a mary sue as opposed to a power fantasy:
-the gary stu/mary sue is borderline perfect and is able to master complex skills with ease because s/he is so amazingly amazing and regardless of any prior indicated personality traits and knowledge (ex: since we are talking about Star Wars, Poe is a power fantasy because he is said to be the resistances best pilot and all his feats come from that. Outside it he is nothing special and even breaks under torture, given more scenes he might well be a Gary Stu though if he starts being awesome at everything but being super awesome at the one thing he is said to be super awesome at means he avoids the Gary Stu accusations from me, for now at least)
-the gary stu/mary sue hardly ever suffers negative consequences and anything that bad that happens to them is pretty much nullified or of 0 consequence.
-the gary stu/mary is rarely or lightly made fun or proven wrong big in any significant way.
Going back to Star Wars, Finn is definitly NOT a gary stu because he is too much of a butt monkey to be one. It would be like calling Krillin from dbz a Gary Stu.
-the gary stu/mary sue breaks the logic of the setting that might have been previously established: like being super amazing at mastering the force even compared to previously established prodigies... Which brings me to Rey from Star Wars since really this topic is about her.
Yup count me in the camp that thinks of her as a Mary Sue. By the time she was captured yet ended up breaking her torturer and sending Ren running away with his tail between his legs then casually escaping (after a whupping 3 tries at one of the hardest jedi tricks around no less) and running through the enemy's fortress of doom like it's nothing, I was pretty much firmly convinced of it.
Over time it has become a general term for a character that is so super perfect that it borders on the fanfic, now mileage might vary according to person to person but for me these are signs of a mary sue as opposed to a power fantasy:
-the gary stu/mary sue is borderline perfect and is able to master complex skills with ease because s/he is so amazingly amazing and regardless of any prior indicated personality traits and knowledge (ex: since we are talking about Star Wars, Poe is a power fantasy because he is said to be the resistances best pilot and all his feats come from that. Outside it he is nothing special and even breaks under torture, given more scenes he might well be a Gary Stu though if he starts being awesome at everything but being super awesome at the one thing he is said to be super awesome at means he avoids the Gary Stu accusations from me, for now at least)
-the gary stu/mary sue hardly ever suffers negative consequences and anything that bad that happens to them is pretty much nullified or of 0 consequence.
-the gary stu/mary is rarely or lightly made fun or proven wrong big in any significant way.
Going back to Star Wars, Finn is definitly NOT a gary stu because he is too much of a butt monkey to be one. It would be like calling Krillin from dbz a Gary Stu.
-the gary stu/mary sue breaks the logic of the setting that might have been previously established: like being super amazing at mastering the force even compared to previously established prodigies... Which brings me to Rey from Star Wars since really this topic is about her.
Yup count me in the camp that thinks of her as a Mary Sue. By the time she was captured yet ended up breaking her torturer and sending Ren running away with his tail between his legs then casually escaping (after a whupping 3 tries at one of the hardest jedi tricks around no less) and running through the enemy's fortress of doom like it's nothing, I was pretty much firmly convinced of it.
They weren't expected to make the shot. Han calls it a suicide mission, one of the pilots claims the shot is "impossible", we saw another pilot screw it up, and then there is that small fact of the matter that Luke has never ever either flown the vehicle before, nor used the force to make a precision bombing run. All of this is a simple dramatic ratcheting up of the tension, followed by a chekhov's gun in the force finally becomes useful to Luke.Dazzle Novak said:
Firstly, she pilots the thing like dog shit for the first ten minutes, constantly crashing it in to stuff and only just managing to pull off some good moves towards the end of the chase and Han is established to be a way better pilot. The mechanics of pulling a light sabre or using a mind trick have never been properly explained, only that some characters can do it when they really need to do it, and that some characters are immune to mind trickery. Being able to hit (2) measly looking scavengers with a stick isn't a special, impossible talent, and she probably has to do that sort of thing all the time (she does, after all, carry a big stick everywhere).
The important point in all these movies is that the character needs to be shown as only just competent to get by - that they are underdogs placed against terrible odds, and only just make it through by the skin of their teeth. That's what creates tension. Rey was already shown as being unable to take on a hale and hearty Kylo, slap dash in her piloting skills, prone to fucking up (the doors in the monster chase/mind control attempts), down on her luck (her poverty and lack of prospects), and emotionally unstable (her response to seeing force visions). Everything she does is by the skin of her teeth, often after a struggle.
That's not even remotely what I said, please don't put words in my mouth. You can't just state "it's the current year" as some kind of magical win-all. It's not the "eat your veggies" defence, it's the "Things aren't magically okay because it's a certain year" statement. Things don't suddenly change because time goes on.undeadsuitor said:
True, it's possible she somehow copied it off of Ren when he was trying to mind-wrestle information out of her. It's an incredibly cheap overly convenient way of doing it though. I have my suspicions that the next movie(s) will reveal more about her and probably answer some questions regarding just why she's so gifted. But right now, with the information we have, I still feel we're dangerously close to the first steps of Mary Sue territory.Hoplon said:
It's like adrenaline in a stressful situation. You become a better shot, you manage to levitate an object, you have this vague sense of someone else's condition (something some twins are said to have IRL). They pull off stuff that's mainly natural reactions juiced up by the Force. If you only have one shot at hitting a target, or if you desperately need to get your weapon or get eaten by a monster, etc. When Luke is training with Yoda, he only barely levitates some boxes after who knows how much training (training montage requiredmaninahat said:
)What would've made sense was that Rey managed to unlock her restraints by using the Force. That would have been a natural reaction suddenly enhanced by her (unintended) awakened Force sensitivity. Won't speak for anyone else, but that's the part that bugs me. The very specific nature of her going "The Force can manipulate other people's minds" instead of going "Oh shit I have to get out somehow, what do I do" and suddenly her restrains bending open.
Get what I mean?
Mary Sue is first and foremost a personalization of the author in the book
It is not enough for the character to be overpowered, he must also breeze through social life, be liked by others for no particular reason and be able to solve millenia-old troubles and grievances in a blink of an eye and without breaking too much sweat. He also has no meaningful problems or even negative character traits. Think the protagonists of Twilight for instance or main character from anything penned by L. K. Hamilton. I am sure you've seen those elsewhere too.
It is not enough for the character to be overpowered, he must also breeze through social life, be liked by others for no particular reason and be able to solve millenia-old troubles and grievances in a blink of an eye and without breaking too much sweat. He also has no meaningful problems or even negative character traits. Think the protagonists of Twilight for instance or main character from anything penned by L. K. Hamilton. I am sure you've seen those elsewhere too.
MARY SUE (AND IT'S COUNTERPART MARTY STU) HAS BECOME A WORTHLESS AMBIGUATION
Doubt me? You've got a three page thread here with about a hundred definitions in it. Several people have posted the original definition and been summarily ignored. Others have posted their pet definition, either from a source they favor or simply what colloquial meaning they've chosen to assign to it. There isn't even consensus on whether it's simple acknowledgement of a character archetype or an automatic sneer term. Once you get into this kind of vagary in language any hope of clear communication is gone.
USE OF THE TERM SAYS MORE ABOUT THE USER THAN THE TARGET
By paying attention to how they use it and who they apply it to, you can get an idea of what THEY consider a "Mary Sue". That's about it. It's instructive as to that person's tastes. It tells you absolutely nothing about the character itself or how it was written.
WE CAN THANK MAX LANDIS FOR THIS RECENT STAR WARS RELATED EXPLOSION
People would have been using it anyway because it's a nebulous zero-meaning term that can be applied to almost anything at this point, but Landis used it publicly, so Argument from Authority set it. Putting aside that Landis himself is a questionable authority whose only post-Chronicle contribution to the medium was the woeful American Ultra, having someone established in film make the accusation likely strengthened a lot of confirmation biases. You'll know which ones when "I think Rey is Mary Sue" becomes "Rey is a Mary Sue, IT'S AN UNDENIABLE FACT!".
PEOPLE HAVE A REALLY POOR UNDERSTANDING OF HOW POWER WORKS IN STAR WARS
When you're getting out your measurement tape to check how long a force pull was or head canoning how many off-screen hours Luke spent doing Mind Trick reps to get into shape for Return of the Jedi, you've completely lost the plot. You're married to an argument and you're willing to pull out all the stops to see it through. The Force functions as the invisible hand of authorial fiat. Throughout the running length of the franchise, its only real limitation has been the imagination and will of the author and the needs of the plot. It's functionally "space magic". If someone wants to point out that this means The Force is therefore essentially deus ex machina or a plot contrivance, congratulations...you're absolutely 100% correct. Next year Star Wars will be 40 years old, you cracked the mystery just in time.
THE SEXISM ANGLE IS A NON STARTER BUT LET'S BE REALISTIC
And by the way, yes Furiosa absolutely DID get accusations of being a Mary Sue and/or "feminist insert" who ruined the movie/stole it from Max, and Jessica Jones was attacked on this very forum as "Extremist Feminism and Blaxploitation". Although in that latter cases, I still suspect it might have been for lulz. Cinema has a looooong history of protagonists who are unusually competent, unusually affable, unusually awesome at everything. Most particularly in fantasy/escapist films...the more pure the escapism, the more likely you're going to have an over the top protagonist. It cannot have escaped anyone's attention that the bulk of the screaming and complaining gets directed at young female protagonists. That doesn't mean everyone who criticizes the character is sexist, and we must be free to criticize characters in media without wild accusations getting thrown in our faces. That goes without saying. But don't fool yourself if you're patting your own back about all the loud voices shouting censure at some of these characters alongside you. There are some distasteful elements in the mob.
PEOPLE ARE REALLY, REALLY BAD AT WATCHING MOVIES
As in, some of the basic exposition people have requested to "clear up" character elements was already in the fucking movie. I appreciate that not everyone in a film audience is going to be a Mensa candidate, but this wasn't Primer. Some of this stuff is not hard to figure out. And it's particularly galling when folks "remember" stuff happening that never happened, or blithely gloss over stuff that did happen but does not fit their narrative. If one's media comprehension level is not at "Star Wars" one should probably consider a return to middle school.
Doubt me? You've got a three page thread here with about a hundred definitions in it. Several people have posted the original definition and been summarily ignored. Others have posted their pet definition, either from a source they favor or simply what colloquial meaning they've chosen to assign to it. There isn't even consensus on whether it's simple acknowledgement of a character archetype or an automatic sneer term. Once you get into this kind of vagary in language any hope of clear communication is gone.
USE OF THE TERM SAYS MORE ABOUT THE USER THAN THE TARGET
By paying attention to how they use it and who they apply it to, you can get an idea of what THEY consider a "Mary Sue". That's about it. It's instructive as to that person's tastes. It tells you absolutely nothing about the character itself or how it was written.
WE CAN THANK MAX LANDIS FOR THIS RECENT STAR WARS RELATED EXPLOSION
People would have been using it anyway because it's a nebulous zero-meaning term that can be applied to almost anything at this point, but Landis used it publicly, so Argument from Authority set it. Putting aside that Landis himself is a questionable authority whose only post-Chronicle contribution to the medium was the woeful American Ultra, having someone established in film make the accusation likely strengthened a lot of confirmation biases. You'll know which ones when "I think Rey is Mary Sue" becomes "Rey is a Mary Sue, IT'S AN UNDENIABLE FACT!".
PEOPLE HAVE A REALLY POOR UNDERSTANDING OF HOW POWER WORKS IN STAR WARS
When you're getting out your measurement tape to check how long a force pull was or head canoning how many off-screen hours Luke spent doing Mind Trick reps to get into shape for Return of the Jedi, you've completely lost the plot. You're married to an argument and you're willing to pull out all the stops to see it through. The Force functions as the invisible hand of authorial fiat. Throughout the running length of the franchise, its only real limitation has been the imagination and will of the author and the needs of the plot. It's functionally "space magic". If someone wants to point out that this means The Force is therefore essentially deus ex machina or a plot contrivance, congratulations...you're absolutely 100% correct. Next year Star Wars will be 40 years old, you cracked the mystery just in time.
THE SEXISM ANGLE IS A NON STARTER BUT LET'S BE REALISTIC
And by the way, yes Furiosa absolutely DID get accusations of being a Mary Sue and/or "feminist insert" who ruined the movie/stole it from Max, and Jessica Jones was attacked on this very forum as "Extremist Feminism and Blaxploitation". Although in that latter cases, I still suspect it might have been for lulz. Cinema has a looooong history of protagonists who are unusually competent, unusually affable, unusually awesome at everything. Most particularly in fantasy/escapist films...the more pure the escapism, the more likely you're going to have an over the top protagonist. It cannot have escaped anyone's attention that the bulk of the screaming and complaining gets directed at young female protagonists. That doesn't mean everyone who criticizes the character is sexist, and we must be free to criticize characters in media without wild accusations getting thrown in our faces. That goes without saying. But don't fool yourself if you're patting your own back about all the loud voices shouting censure at some of these characters alongside you. There are some distasteful elements in the mob.
PEOPLE ARE REALLY, REALLY BAD AT WATCHING MOVIES
As in, some of the basic exposition people have requested to "clear up" character elements was already in the fucking movie. I appreciate that not everyone in a film audience is going to be a Mensa candidate, but this wasn't Primer. Some of this stuff is not hard to figure out. And it's particularly galling when folks "remember" stuff happening that never happened, or blithely gloss over stuff that did happen but does not fit their narrative. If one's media comprehension level is not at "Star Wars" one should probably consider a return to middle school.
Because Mary Sues are not objective terms, they are subjective definitions. Unless a character is a particularly egregious example of the trope, there is nothing like universal agreement about what is a Mary Sue. Heck, less than a week ago, there was a thread here that discussed which was a bigger Mary Sue: Batman or Superman. I am sure there are a lot of examples of books that show neither one are, but the term has a catch-all quality to it... it is used to describe all characters that are OP, instead of being OP in one particular way (an author inserted wish fulfillment, perfect in every way and better at everything that everyone else).
The term has come as a resurgence because of Rey in Star Wars, and there are some elements that seems to validate that: she is a force user that can best the best force user the villains have, despite not even knowing about the force more than in the last couple days; she doesn't even know what a lightsaber is one day, yet she can fight better than the person responsible for wiping out the new generation of force users the night after that; she impresses Han Solo so much in the last hours with her innate flying and repairing skills that he offers to put her under his wing; while Poe and Finn both had years of training to justify their badassery in some respects, Rey didn't (except her being a decent mechanic), the skills just felt natural to her. While there are precedent for some of that in Star Wars, the character does have elements to justify being called a wish fulfillment.
The term has come as a resurgence because of Rey in Star Wars, and there are some elements that seems to validate that: she is a force user that can best the best force user the villains have, despite not even knowing about the force more than in the last couple days; she doesn't even know what a lightsaber is one day, yet she can fight better than the person responsible for wiping out the new generation of force users the night after that; she impresses Han Solo so much in the last hours with her innate flying and repairing skills that he offers to put her under his wing; while Poe and Finn both had years of training to justify their badassery in some respects, Rey didn't (except her being a decent mechanic), the skills just felt natural to her. While there are precedent for some of that in Star Wars, the character does have elements to justify being called a wish fulfillment.
Possibly. And I wasn't saying it hadn't been said at all, just that one or two more lines actually spoken by the actual character to address the issue would've improved things. She could've formed the opinion the Falcon was garbage just by looking at it (y'know, like Luke did).Beliyal said:
As for the Force stuff...I dunno. Whatever. I've never been that into the whole minutia of SW in the first place.
Like I said (which was ignored), hopefully time will tell and these points will be fleshed out.
True, regarding the "garbage" comment. But her knowing exact extra installments inside of it heavily implies that she saw them before or at least heard about it in detail. Which definitely shows some familiarity with the Falcon. Technically, yeah, I guess they could've included a line where she says "Oh yeah, I've been inside a few times." Probably editing and length reasons. I thought it was pretty clear from the whole setup though, even though I must admit they could've included this one line to be absolutely as clear as possible.THM said:
They might choose to flesh it out further, but I don't think it's necessary. The visual presentation of the character in the movie was more than enough for me, honestly. I mean, when a character spends 15 years living from scavenging, learning about technology and vehicles and surviving with that knowledge in a harsh environment, it kinda tells me all I need to know about that character's skills with that specific thing.
What's more, those skills of hers aren't even special in an environment she grew up in. We see many other scavengers doing the same stuff she does. She isn't viewed as some sort of scavenging prodigy, she gets terrible payment, waits in the line as everyone else, gets rushed to work faster and harder. This line of work isn't anything extraordinary on Jakku. I didn't find it incredible or even worth mentioning among her "amazing" skills. It's just stuff a lot of people on Jakku do for a living. Basically something expected of the population to be good at. Her only incredible skill (or at least quick learning after being exposed to it) is actually with the Force, and that's always been a bit ambiguous as to why some people are innately good with the Force (I'm trying to forget the prequels). In-setting, she's not the first person with amazing innate Force powers anyway.
That's the kind of direct and cumbersome exposition that the film would (and should) have been rightly skewered for. There shouldn't be a requirement to treat the audience like a pack of four year olds in order for them to grasp simple implications. The maxim of "show don't tell" in storytelling seems to be almost universally understood. The show was MORE than generous with establishing shots and plant/payoffs to create context for the elements people seem to have the most common issues with. Perhaps in Episode VIII they can just have all the major plot beats, characterization and background in a five minute opening crawl so no one gets confused.Beliyal said:
I saw the movie last night, and while I don't think she's a 'real' Mary Sue, she did come off as too perfect for my tastes.Beliyal said:
(Yar, spoilers ahead)
Almost everything surrounding the millennium falcon is a good example of simply poor writing or editing but not inheriently Mary Sue-ism.
I find the implication that she'd been in the falcon before pretty weak, because if it was owned by the scrapyard owner guy, why would he let some scavenger climb around in his ship? Given how it looks from a ways off, it wouldn't be hard to draw the conclusion that it's a junker, much like seeing a car that's about 50% rust and ducttape from across the street. So her being familiar with what components have been installed seems really bizarre.
Then there's the fact she could fix the falcon on the fly. She knew how to bypass the compressor, and she knew how to fix the gas leak which was very nearly going to kill them all. Knowing how to REPAIR something because you've taken things apart before seems a bit of a stretch to me. It'd be like knowing how to fix a submarine's diesel engine because you've torn apart a scrapyard oil tanker for parts.
For the flying part, in the originals, we were informed that Luke had flown ships before, and hit whomprats while flying, so he clearly had at least SOME training/practice. All we see of Rey is that she drove a hovercar for work.
This would be the equivalent of driving a sedan to and from work, and then being able to fly a helicopter. And given how good new players are at flying helicopters in BATTLEFIELD, let alone real life, I'm going to have to say nay to that.
We get an acknolwedgement from Poe that he's a very experienced pilot with his "I can fly anything" comment, and he shortly thereafter proves it to be the case. Heck, we see it again later when he's flying an x-wing and he manages to mow down 6 or 7 tie fighters in a row. There's a reinforcement being made that his skill is legit, and he's eased into as we see Poe. This wasn't afforded for Rey at all, which is why it's so odd that she seems to have almost no problems flying a much larger and off centered ship.
Sure, she scrapes the sand and a wall or two, but clearly that was paint scraping at worst. And she was able to handily out manuever trained military pilots in fighters with a giant, hulking freighter with no suggested or apparent training? Gunna have to go with no on that one.
Then there's the force parts. This is where she starts getting more mary sue-ish to me and she definitely lost me as a character with the mind trick part. I could sorta see her resisting having her brain played with, because that seems like the sort of thing that would be more of a willpower issue than an issue of skill and nuance, but then she obviously reads Ren's mind with the comment about not living up to Vader, so THAT's kinda weird. And then, with no training, she mind tricks an alert, aggressive guard who is actively thinking "Know what? I'm going to TIGHTEN those restraints, because you're annoying me".
No force training, she didn't even really seem to know the force was a THING until the lightsaber incindent and then talk afterwards, but suddenly she can flawlessly brainwash people? Sure, she "fails" to brainwash him the first 2 or 3 times, but it's at no consequence at all.
Then she can force pull the lightsaber right past Ren - the same Ren who could flawlessly suspend an active blasterbolt mid-air? The same Ren who could physically lock the bodies of people in place, force them to go to sleep, or torture them with the force?
But nah, the girl that has had no training, didn't even know the force was actually a real thing until a few days prior is able to completely outclass Ren. Sure, he was physically and emotionally compromised, but they don't SELL that. Other than pounding his wound and getting a few nicks, he doesn't strike as particularly afflicted, and seems really calm during his fights otherwise.
If they had spent more time actually selling Rey's ability to fly, more time selling Rey's attunement to the force and how she is able to use it so well, and more time selling Ren being compromised during the saber fight, I think a lot of the complaints wouldn't have been made by me or a lot of people.
But they don't sell it, and she comes across as bizarrely fortunate and nearly perfect - which brushes real close to the Mary Sue type. You're just expected to accept "Oh no, she's totally had practice with stuff guys", which not only violates 'show, don't tell', but doesn't even TELL us. It just forces one to assume that she has a reason to be good at this stuff, which is just bad writing.
Even if, as some others were suggesting, it will be explained better later in a different movie, that doesn't negate the fact that it's bad writing.
I don't. The very last thing she did before using mind tricks was suffer Kylo's attempt to mind trick her. The implication is that she figured it out from experiencing it first hand. In fact, every time Rey uses the force, it is immediatly after Kylo has tried doing the same specific trick (the mind trick, the light saber pull, using the force to enhance your fencing). She seems naturally talented and very intuitive, but she isn't figuring these things out entirely out of the blue. Instead of just finding she can do certain things, she's sensed someone else doing it and is copying. In some respects, you could argue Luke is more gifted, in that he only needs the suggestion to work this stuff out, rather than have to experience someone else doing it.Karathos said:It's like adrenaline in a stressful situation. You become a better shot, you manage to levitate an object, you have this vague sense of someone else's condition (something some twins are said to have IRL). They pull off stuff that's mainly natural reactions juiced up by the Force. If you only have one shot at hitting a target, or if you desperately need to get your weapon or get eaten by a monster, etc. When Luke is training with Yoda, he only barely levitates some boxes after who knows how much training (training montage requiredmaninahat said:
What would've made sense was that Rey managed to unlock her restraints by using the Force. That would have been a natural reaction suddenly enhanced by her (unintended) awakened Force sensitivity. Won't speak for anyone else, but that's the part that bugs me. The very specific nature of her going "The Force can manipulate other people's minds" instead of going "Oh shit I have to get out somehow, what do I do" and suddenly her restrains bending open.
Get what I mean?