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[Urist McScoopbeard]

Okay then, how about this.  Obviously for an untrained farmboy Luke did well at everything he tried to do.  Mostly justified in universe by the force or luck, since the odds were always heavily stacked against the good guys.  So what weakness did Luke have that weren't a good or endearing quality?  And what would you entire list of OT Luke's weakness be?  My list as I gave on the last page is only two long.  Caring about his friends too much isn't really a weakness and aside from his hand its never done anything bad for him.  Its mostly a thing that Yoda and Palpatine call a weakness.  Being inexperienced is arguably also not a weakness so much as a thing anyone in his situation would have.  His practice to be a pilot makes him a lot less inexperienced than the average farmboy could be, and he picks up new information quickly.  So I wouldn't say that his weakness is inexperience so much as his strength is quick learning.

Pisses off the guy at the Cantina.

Jumps into the garbage chute.

Loses to Vader, gets hand chopped off.

Not very gifted with (hand-held) blasters.

Gets surprised by Wampa.

Can't survive in the cold without Han's help.

Get's shot down on Hoth despite being a good pilot.

Captured by Jabba after killing the Rancor.

A lot of shit goes wrong for Luke...

EDIT: I don't really think Rey is a Mary Sue either, just the lack of strong external forces makes her seem extra dumb sometimes--which can be frustrating when it miraculously works out for her. At least with Luke, we he HAS to nail the Hail Mary or the Death Star/Vader/Emperor scores the game winning touchdown.

[smjjames]

Okay then, how about this.  Obviously for an untrained farmboy Luke did well at everything he tried to do.  Mostly justified in universe by the force or luck, since the odds were always heavily stacked against the good guys.  So what weakness did Luke have that weren't a good or endearing quality?  And what would you entire list of OT Luke's weakness be?  My list as I gave on the last page is only two long.  Caring about his friends too much isn't really a weakness and aside from his hand its never done anything bad for him.  Its mostly a thing that Yoda and Palpatine call a weakness.  Being inexperienced is arguably also not a weakness so much as a thing anyone in his situation would have.  His practice to be a pilot makes him a lot less inexperienced than the average farmboy could be, and he picks up new information quickly.  So I wouldn't say that his weakness is inexperience so much as his strength is quick learning.

Pisses off the guy at the Cantina.

naivete

Jumps into the garbage chute.

Did you see any other escape routes?

Loses to Vader, gets hand chopped off.

True.

Not very gifted with (hand-held) blasters.

Better than the stormtroopers, heh.

Gets surprised by Wampa.

Camoflauged predator and unfamiliarity with local wildlife.

Captured by Jabba after killing the Rancor.

If I recall, he didn't have a weapon with him.

A lot of shit goes wrong for Luke...

'shit going wrong' isn't a weakness.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

I'd like to point out that Enigmatic Hat didn't actually list weaknesses either. All he said was that he lacks weaknesses--and also listed some things which are blatantly false. Five of his points are either abstractions or generalizations.

He ISN'T good with a blaster. For a MAIN CHARACTER, he is not good at shooting the pew pews.

Loses to Vader as I said, he's not the world's greatest saber fighter.

He still gets surprised by the Wampa, he's force sensitive, he should probably know it's coming. Not super aware, and it's true, he just isn't very aware. It's shown time and time again as he is guided by Ben or one of the other characters--culminating with basically everyone dying at Yavin and him doing his hero thing and then again when he leaves the fighting to the fighters so he can just confront the Emperor.

Lack of leadership and diplomatic skills. Seriously, he's not very good at getting people to do what he wants in the movie.

Regardless of having a weapon or note, he got captured. Like, IT HAPPENED, lol. I don't think it's exactly planned out that way from the start.

But see, here's a key difference. Shit going wrong is important, because it means Lukes FAILS. And most of the time he doesn't get himself into bad situations. When he does, it's to save Han and distract the Emperor. When Rey fails it's either because she's too stupid or unlucky to avoid overwhelming force, or going to face down Kylo and Snoke for a selfish reason that really doesn't help the situation at hand.

EDIT: In addition, sometimes Rey and other new character fail because there literally is not enough time in the movie to have them succeed. Which is stupid.

EDIT2: Also sorry for so many grammar mistakes.

[Akura]

Captured by Jabba after killing the Rancor.

Wasn't that intentional? He didn't know exactly where Han, Chewbacca, and Leia were held, and killing Rancor meant that none of his friends could be killed that way. Both Lando and Leia(and possibly R2-D2) could have easily called Luke up that Jabba had one, either one or both could easily have been in the room when Jabba feeds that slave girl to it. Also, by royally pissing off Jabba, Luke ensured Jabba would want to kill them all at once using the slowest and most painful way possible. The reason he gave the droids to Jabba was to smuggle his lightsaber in, otherwise Jabba's guards would certainly make sure that would have been confiscated.

[smjjames]

He ISN'T good with a blaster. For a MAIN CHARACTER, he is not good at shooting the pew pews.

Compared to Han Solo, he doesn't look highly skilled, true.

Captured by Jabba after killing the Rancor.

Wasn't that intentional? He didn't know exactly where Han, Chewbacca, and Leia were held, and killing Rancor meant that none of his friends could be killed that way. Both Lando and Leia(and possibly R2-D2) could have easily called Luke up that Jabba had one, either one or both could easily have been in the room when Jabba feeds that slave girl to it. Also, by royally pissing off Jabba, Luke ensured Jabba would want to kill them all at once using the slowest and most painful way possible. The reason he gave the droids to Jabba was to smuggle his lightsaber in, otherwise Jabba's guards would certainly make sure that would have been confiscated.

Exactly, that operation had to have been planned for months with Lando going undercover and being there for long enough time to not arouse suspicions too much if he tried to place himself on Jabbas sail barge.

[Dorsidwarf]

I'd like to point out that Enigmatic Hat didn't actually list weaknesses either. All he said was that he lacks weaknesses--and also listed some things which are blatantly false. Five of his points are either abstractions or generalizations.

He ISN'T good with a blaster. For a MAIN CHARACTER, he is not good at shooting the pew pews.

Loses to Vader as I said, he's not the world's greatest saber fighter.

He still gets surprised by the Wampa, he's force sensitive, he should probably know it's coming. Not super aware, and it's true, he just isn't very aware. It's shown time and time again as he is guided by Ben or one of the other characters--culminating with basically everyone dying at Yavin and him doing his hero thing and then again when he leaves the fighting to the fighters so he can just confront the Emperor.

Lack of leadership and diplomatic skills. Seriously, he's not very good at getting people to do what he wants in the movie.

Regardless of having a weapon or note, he got captured. Like, IT HAPPENED, lol. I don't think it's exactly planned out that way from the start.

But see, here's a key difference. Shit going wrong is important, because it means Lukes FAILS. And most of the time he doesn't get himself into bad situations. When he does, it's to save Han and distract the Emperor. When Rey fails it's either because she's too stupid or unlucky to avoid overwhelming force, or going to face down Kylo and Snoke for a selfish reason that really doesn't help the situation at hand.

EDIT: In addition, sometimes Rey and other new character fail because there literally is not enough time in the movie to have them succeed. Which is stupid.

EDIT2: Also sorry for so many grammar mistakes.

you know you're basically providing excuses in a pretty basic way, that you would jump up and down on if the people who like Rey tried to offer.

"Its okay that luke is the most skilled person in a squadron of fighter pilots, he used to fly a cessna while waiting to join the air force!"
is a perfectly valid justification, while
"Rey learned some non-Standard languages while growing up after finding a multi-language display out scavenging"
is proof she's a total mary sue.


(Personally I dont like Rey, because i feel that she's just written to be Luke Skywalker But One Upping Him in many ways. Her background is thematically similar But Slightly More, instead of being nonsensically good at flying space fighter jets, she's nonsensically good at flying Everyone's Favorite Spaceship, and so on. Yes those are suish traits, she is a bit of a sue and anyone who says she isnt at least slightly is deluding themselves, but most movie protagonists exhibit suish traits. They're movie protagonists. )

[smjjames]

I didn't watch the previous two new movies, so, I didn't see her piloting the Millenium Falcon much. Most of the time (especially the crystal caves) it was Chewbacca flying it in TLJ.

Seems like a character being a mary sue depends mostly on perception unless they're a blatant mary sue.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

@Dorisdwarf, I literally just said she's not a Mary Sue???

I am fine with both Luke and Rey being good pilots, it seems to be a thing that force-sensitives are good at.

and if you think my excuses are no good, then jump up and down on them. Rey never really get's beaten. Luke does.

[Egan_BW]

A Mary Sue is a fanfiction character that's a self-insert and inexplicably skilled and well-liked, as a power fantasy for the author. That's specifically what it is. It's a little meaningless to discuss the term in film because it's a very different medium, with different goals.

[Reelya]

For film series sequels, it is more meaningful to make the analysis than for original works, because in a sequel, especially with new writers they are indeed inserting new characters into the canon. If you read Rey's synopsis in Wookiepedia, it reads like some crazy fanfic self insert story written by a teenage girl:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Rey

Rey was a human female Jedi and scavenger who discovered her latent Force-sensitivity while on a journey to find the legendary Jedi Master Luke Skywalker and bring a new hope to a galaxy on the brink of war. Rey grew up alone in the desert wastes of Jakku, longing for her family to return, until she met BB-8, who carried information about Skywalker's whereabouts. Together with Finn, a First Order defector, and BB-8—and with the help of Han Solo and Chewbacca—she journeyed to deliver the map to Skywalker to General Leia Organa and the Resistance. Along the way, she discovered Skywalker's lightsaber and awakened her Force powers before being captured by Kylo Ren, whom she dueled into defeat on Starkiller Base just before the Resistance destroyed the First Order superweapon. After traveling to the Resistance base, Organa tasked her with finding Skywalker and presenting him with his old lightsaber as a symbol of the only hope the galaxy had left: the return of the Jedi.

The constant name-dropping of famous canon characters, the especially unlucky childhood that was thereafter followed by extremely good luck and unlikely meetings with established canon characters who all cross paths with Rey, tasking her to help them with their problems and "get the team back together" and save the galaxy (again, after it was already saved) reads like teen fanfic level self-insert. Making it out that here parents aren't anyone special isn't making her that much less "mary sue"-ish. Since now she's just some random person thrown into the canon with zero connection with anything, yet she tick every box (force powers, getting luke's blue lightsaber that should have been destroyed at Cloud City) and meets every character who's canon.

Also, main characters can still be author's stand-ins, or meant to be audience stand-in's (e.g. appealing to the boy or girl demographic with a character they're meant to relate to), so many of the factors that create fan-fic mary sues are in fact relevant issues for non-fanfic works, too. Just as a "power fantasy" for the author can lead to "mary-sue" traits, creating an "empowerment" character can do the same thing. Note that "power fantasy" and "empowerment" are effectively saying the exact same thing, except media has branded "power fantasy" as being bad and "empowerment" as good. It's just new marketing for the same schlock.

Sure, some of the factors that are recognizable in fan-fic mary sues are harder to spot, e.g. if the main character has some special power, is that plot-relevant good writing, or is it a power fantasy that harms the overall fiction? While it's more apparent in mary-sue fan fiction (because there's an objective baseline of what's normal for a main character in that canon), it is in fact a type of poorly written plot that can affect any fiction: e.g. a protagonist who's abilities, backstory and luckiness are just out of whack with everything else in the universe building can kind of stink as unbelievable.

"inexplicably well-liked" can apply to canon characters too, not just fanfic characters.

[Dorsidwarf]

It seems disingenuous to say "she just happens to cross paths with all these famous characters", its like saying that its hack writing that when jimmy met the star pitcher of the Somewhere Baseball team, he also met the rest of them. They're a group of characters whose fates are intrinsically wound up in each others, it would be more fanfictiony if meeting one didnt lead to the other (Quite a few fanfictions like to sideline characters the authors arent so fond of, even if the ones the story is focusing on have many reasons to interact with them)

Also urist i appear to have replied to you instead of reelya oops

[Loud Whispers]

It seems disingenuous to say "she just happens to cross paths with all these famous characters", its like saying that its hack writing that when jimmy met the star pitcher of the Somewhere Baseball team, he also met the rest of them. They're a group of characters whose fates are intrinsically wound up in each others, it would be more fanfictiony if meeting one didnt lead to the other (Quite a few fanfictions like to sideline characters the authors arent so fond of, even if the ones the story is focusing on have many reasons to interact with them)

Also urist i appear to have replied to you instead of reelya oops

And yet Jimmy did not meat the rest of the baseball team. Rey met all the famous canon characters, and yet all the canon characters didn't even meet up with one another. They all died alone lmao, no on-screen chemistry, unless you want to count Justin Biebar and Will i am on holograms fam

[Reelya]

It seems disingenuous to say "she just happens to cross paths with all these famous characters",

No, it's quite non-disingenuous since she happens to just cross paths with stuff related to all those characters, even though none of them have crossed paths with each other in a long, long time. It's not the same as meeting a whole baseball team at once, it's more like if you were on a random journey across the entire nation, and you just happened to cross paths with every member of the 1983 Los Angeles Dodgers team, except in Rey's case, she's not traversing a nation of 300 million people, but a galaxy of countless billions of people, yet happens to run into just the right people.

Remember, she happens to come across clues to lukes whereabouts, then happens to come across the Millenium Falcon, then she happens to cross paths with Han and Chewie, then she happens to be given Luke's original light saber, by another person she meets at random, and then she meets Leia (which at least makes sense, as she was looking for the rebels), who happens to task her with finding Luke, for no particular reason that she got personally tasked with that, though I guess you can rationalize it as Leia being aware that Rey is "strong with the force". But still ... to be personally tasked what is supposed to be the most important task in the galaxy after just turning up out of nowhere with no credentials is pretty convenient.

Notice that people didn't give luke special treatment. He gets help and stuff from Obi Wan Kenobi, however that's perfectly reasonable, because Obi Wan was tasked with watching over Luke and views him like a son, and mainly gives him stuff that's his inheritance. Everyone else treats Luke as lower than shit for the first movie. Luke for example was only "Red Five" in the Battle of Yavin. Having found the message, rescued Leia etc, didn't actually mean he was automatically given command of a squadron or anything - he had to prove himself in the actual battle before being trusted with more authority. Whereas Rey basically pulls the same thing and is immediately given the task of commanding the Millennium Falcon to fly to the edge of inhabited space, find Luke Skywalker and convince him to help the rebellion again.

^ This is an example of "mary sue" storytelling. Luke wasn't given the benefit of the doubt: he was allowed to pilot a fighter because they needed every pilot they could get, but wasn't given any special rank or anything until he'd repeatedly proven his worth - but also note that most of the top rebel fighter pilots died at the Battle of Yavin. Luke being a squadron leader at the Battle of Hoth would be perfectly reasonable even if he didn't personally destroy the Death Star. Merely being a survivor of the Battle of Yavin would have given him seniority.

Rey was singled out for her "specialness" over and over again, such as being personally charged with caring for luke's lightsaber by it's keeper, and personally given the special mission to find Luke by Leia. So we're expected to think that across the entire Rebel movement, there's no one person that Leia would trust with looking for Luke, other than some random unknown person she's never met before?

[Lovechild]

Well she did duel and beat that Kylo Ren guy before being given the mission

[Reelya]

Nobody was there with a camera, unless she boasted about it they shouldn't have knowledge of that scene, all they would know is that Han's dead, Finn's mortally wounded in a coma, and she escaped. So sure, there was an awesome battle scene that the audience saw, but what Leia should have been aware of is when she comes back with most of her team pretty much destroyed. Chwebacca wasn't even there to witness the forest fight.

We need to be careful that we're not confusing audience knowledge of how awesome a character is with in-character knowledge of a character's achievements. Generally, if you come back with your team in tatters that in itself should be plot-worthy. People get killed and injured rescuing Rey after she's captured, nobody bats an eyelid, they just heap more responsibility her way.

This was not what happened with Poe. And the bomber deaths were not Poe's fault. Poe wasn't the commanding officer, the actual commanding officer failed to countermand Poe's call to bomb the ships. Then, Poe gets all the blame when things go pear shaped. That's another way to read it, but Leia Organa deserves the blame since she was actually in command as far as I can tell. If you read it as reality, it's more like she scapegoated him for her own failure to issue appropriate orders.