Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (spoilers obviously)

That, and people having no fucking idea how writing works and just seizing onto the first square peg that looks even slightly round.

People who are driven by sexism, racism, elitist hate, etc and so on want to say stuff like "I don't like that a female character is so important," but they can't outright because then people would cotton onto their real intentions and reject them. So instead they try to hide it by pushing faux-criticisms and misinformation and spam the airwaves enough that people start to believe and give validation to them.

• "Rey is a Mary Sue."
• "Carol's a villain! That's what a villain looks like!"
• "X random person in development has an agenda to force non-male / non-white in, and the problem is the characters weren't in the director's actual vision."
• "Stan Lee would never have stood for creating a female version of his own characters." ^note this one got especially eviscerated immediately, seeing as She-Hulk is a Stan Lee creation

Etc. All bullshit.

Stuff like the "Rey is a Mary Sue" claim is only so prevalent because it was just before exposing these kinds of claims for what they were became commonplace, even among the media (the more sensation news being kind of accepting of the Fandom Menace instead, at the time of TFA).

Edited by KnownUnknown on Sep 28th 2020 at 9:02:07 AM

People only defend Rey because she's a movie character. If she were an EU character I have little doubt her defenders wouldn't be taking any issue with what's said about her with how common calling pretty much every prominent EU character a Sue was.

We have a Star Wars thread in Literature going back a decade. I don't recall much Mary Sue accusations being throne around.

Jenna silver blade is... just look up My inner life. I can’t describe the horror.

We have a trope page for that.

People used to call Mara Jade a Mary Sue. Hell look up her old title in Tv tropes pantheon.

My how the tables have turned. And showed how shallow that designation became.

Edited by RedHunter543 on Sep 28th 2020 at 12:39:11 PM

Pointing out that "Mary Sue" is a worthless term thrown at any character somebody dislikes isn't the same as defending a character.

I have my own issues with Rey, mainly that some of her skills needed an explanation that we never got, but that doesn't make her a "Mary Sue". It just means the character wasn't explored properly.

Honestly, the only time "Mary Sue", as defined by Overly Sarcastic Productions (basically, a character who warps the story around them), applied in Star Wars was whenever Karen Traviss' Mandalorians showed up.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Sep 28th 2020 at 6:49:28 PM

Rey isn’t a Mary Sue, but there is a general resistance in the writing to give her flaws that stick or aren’t present and overcome by way of plot contrivances. They paint a really thin veneer of three dimensionality to her character, but very little, as if they’re afraid that any perceived flaw will make her unlikeable, so she gets sort of like the Burger King version of character development. They aggressively try to make her like able, powerful etc, and therefore she becomes sort of irritating.

It’s actually sort of apropos that she’s Palpatine’s granddaughter because she’s sort of indicative of why Palpatine just wouldn’t work as a polar opposite good guy. Someone who’s innately good, innately skilled, innately likable, etc. isn’t a Mary Sue, not are they necessarily boring. But they’re profoundly irritating because they reflect insecurity in the writing’s intent.

You shouldn’t be afraid to have moments where your hero is an asshole or has places in their outlook where others find them disagreeable.

Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Sep 28th 2020 at 12:53:07 PM

One of these days, I'm going to have to read Traviss's books just to see what's so bad about how she writes the Mandalorians.

Don't do that to yourself, Windle.

We went from calling "pretty much every prominent character in the EU" a Mary Sue to just one character? That's a Star Killer sized gulf right there.

Honestly, I've alawys found it annoying when people defend Rey being a Mary Sue by saying "She's not a Mary Sue because she has flaws, and make mistakes, and so on...". Yes, she doesn't fit the definition perfectly, but the thing most people are complaining about when they say she's a Mary Sue is that she's stupidly overpowered without justification, which is undeniably true. While using the term "Mary Sue" is not entirely correct, that doesn't change the problem.

People throwing the term "Mary Sue" around like it's cheap candy is a problem in itself. It pretty much strangles all worthwhile discussion.

This is pretty much how I feel whenever that shit comes up.◊

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Sep 28th 2020 at 8:07:24 PM

X4 Curiosity. It's a hell of a drug.

It's also a noticeable example of people blaming the character for what is actually endemic of the writing across the board. The whole "Rey is stupidly overpowered" thing started because in the climax of Awakens she beats Kylo in a fight, something her detractors swear up and down had to be impossible. Discounting the blatant power levelling there (something that has little place in Star Wars, imo), that ultimately it just directing onto Rey something that's just kind of standard in today's screenwriting environment.

Finn defeats the far more trained Phasma in a fight at the end of Jedi. Poe manages to defeat a drastically overhyped fleet of a thousand superships by flying under them and then hitting the bridge of a single ship. Kylo gets completely humiliated by Luke with a previously unseen force ability immediately after rising to the role of Big Bad in Jedi. It's the way these movies tend to be written today: the hero gets the second wind, the sudden brilliant idea, the sudden burst of strength needed to net some kind of win within the current narrative - the days of a hero like Luke going three whole films without being strong enough to defeat the villains is somewhat past - and you're especially going to see this in a series that focuses so heavily on the protagonists doing everything of import as the sequel trilogy is.

I always compare the Hobbit films, which added a random and pointless but long segment in which the Dwarves trap and defeat Smaug in Desolation, just so that there can be a climactic battle and victory at the end of a story that - at that moment - doesn't have one, even though then following the actual story renders the whole thing irrelevant immediately. It's not surprising that the directors chosen for the ST decided to include those sorts of things as well.

The focus on the protagonists before anyone else results in many problems across the ST's run, but that doesn't mean Rey is overpowered in the scope of its story. It just means she's a modern action movie hero, played straight.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Sep 28th 2020 at 11:32:21 AM

Which is why the deconstruction of the Jedi and everything about Star Wars falls flat in TLJ. They work better in response to modern action films but not with the prequels or the originals where these tropes were rarely, if it at all, played up. And that's not going to the fact that TLJ ultimately played those straight in the end after nearly two hours of deconstructing them.

Don’t forget that the person who put “Rey is a Mary Sue” in the public conversation was Max Landis, and there are books to be written about how disgusting he is.

The whole mind probing scene would be more concerning, either for really making a dent on Ren's menace or showing Rey's talent, but I am not sure.

Tbf Ren has never been really depicted as a intimidating bad guy in this trilogy. Hes a whiny incompetent manchild which wouldn't be too bad if he could at least show like Joffrey why he is still dangerous despite the idiocy or have other more competant guys to constrast with but Thats not present.

I think people fail to realize that TLJ is a Decon-Recon Switch. The very text of the movie is, "Your heroes are only human; they're deeply flawed and made serious mistakes. But in spite of that, they matter."

And this has been pointed out to death, but Rey in TFA isn't any more powerful than Luke was in ANH. The only thing she does that looked like it may need an explanation was resisting Kylo's mind control, but iirc anyone with strong enough willpower was always able to resist that anyway.

EDIT: Kylo wasn't intimidating like the various Darths, but he was certainly dangerous. Real history is full of cowards who wrought great harm. I think he could've been very effective as Supreme Leader if TRoS had let him.

Edited by ThriceCharming on Sep 28th 2020 at 2:14:31 AM

That comes across far more as the writers messing up then intentionally going for that with how marketed he is tbh and the fact that his introduction is him casually showing off new Force abilities that hadn't been done before.

Kylo Ren feels like an attempt at pulling a Parody Retcon when they failed to make him the new Vader.

Did anyone say Kylo was a parody? Because even in TFA he's portrayed as an immature whiner. To steal a phrase from the great Ian Malcolm, he's like a kid playing with his dad's gun. The characterization seems 100% intentional.

My favorite description of Kylo I've heard is "School shooter who thinks he's a Philosopher-King."

That's because how generous you are to what the filmmakers are doing informs your perception of well executed the ideas are.

Bluntly, that comes across as them realizing people were laughing at him when they gave him moments of losing his temper and tried to go "I meant to do that!" with how actually skilled he's shown to be in combat and how the EU goes off and has him explicitly viewed as one upping Vader by former Imperials now with the FO by succeeding in places where Vader had previously failed.

The eu shills for him alot. Which really makes the whole he's supposed to be a whiny mamchild argument suspect.