Of all the Gary/Mary examples, this is far and away the worst offender
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JJ Abrams to direct Star Wars Episode IX, Chris Terrio co-writing, now due Dec 2019
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Of all the Gary/Mary examples, this is far and away the worst offender
My God...maybe we're all Mary Sues!
Someone call Max Landis! We need 150 page PDF stat!
DeathoftheEndless
Crashing this plane... with no survivors!
Also, there's a chance that her force proclivity will be explained in a future movie.
badcrumble
Member
I think TFA is an absolutely beautiful film but it could have done a lot better with visual storytelling, in the sense that all of the space-dogfight stuff at the climax didn't communicate itself to the viewer nearly as well as the Death Star trench run, the asteroid belt fight, the Death Star 2 fleet battle, or the Rogue One fleet battle. I'd argue that outside of the fantastic opening sequence of Revenge of the Sith, though, the prequels were similarly incoherent with that material.
I've been saying since I walked out of TFA for the first time
"There's more going on here with her force experience than we currently know"
Book it
DiipuSurotu
Banned
The Emperor wasn't a huge villain in ANH. The script and novelization treat him as a figurehead who has no political power (and who wasn't even the first emperor in the Galactic Empire). It wasn't until ESB that his character was developed into a "final boss" style villain.
They only criticise him when it fits their agenda. When it comes to the Rey argument they ignore those Anakin moments because he is not female.
None of that stuff is the actual story though, that's the point (and you kind of ignore how often TFA intentionally sets up a situation we already know with the purpose of subverting it a moment later).
Who's the character in ANH who is keeping themselves tethered to the past as a crutch, unwilling to let go and move into an uncertain future? Who's the character grappling with the morality of their existence up to that point, having to choose between running from what scares them or sticking with their new family? Where's the villain who is obsessed with his own place in his lineage, trying to derive a purpose in his life to the point of self destruction?
Because Anakin was criticized for his poor writing and bad acting. He was never criticized for being overpowered and all of his abilities being unearned like Rey has, which is hilarious considering Anakin is literally put on a Force Jesus pedestal in Episode 1
ironjoe989
Member
Having played way too many video games based on Star Wars (and read a decent amount of the extended universe), I always took it as taking many years of practice to use the force like Rey does. I guess I always ignored ANH as an earlier prototype of how one learns to be a jedi, and that the reality is it takes a lot of training.
So when I watched Force Awakens, I felt like she learned far too quickly to use the force, to the point where I thought she might have been trained prior, and subsequently had her abilities buried by a mind wipe or something. It seemed abrupt and felt unearned to me. I suppose Anakin and Luke are the same when I reflect upon it, but I found it jarring at the time for Rey. I would probably feel the same way if I watched ANH for the first time today. I remember being so bummed out at Phantom Menace that I didnt even reflect on Anakins ridiculous skills.
So when I watched Force Awakens, I felt like she learned far too quickly to use the force, to the point where I thought she might have been trained prior, and subsequently had her abilities buried by a mind wipe or something. It seemed abrupt and felt unearned to me. I suppose Anakin and Luke are the same when I reflect upon it, but I found it jarring at the time for Rey. I would probably feel the same way if I watched ANH for the first time today. I remember being so bummed out at Phantom Menace that I didnt even reflect on Anakins ridiculous skills.
No one critized him for being a mary sue and figuring out things on his own too easily.
People (such as you) did for Rey, when Anakin figured out the force and accomplished incredible tasks far quicker with far less teaching than Rey.
ESB did it as well. Luke was able to lift his saber with his mind without a single bit of training on how to do that, hell he wasn't even shown or told that a Jedi could move things with their mind even once before and he was able to do it.
Hey Bobby I got one.
Context is key for some of these.
Removed from the context of how they live, with Luke's situation being he has a comfortable family life that he secretly wants to escape, while Rey lives a solitary life she is fine with remaining in until her family returns. The two desert planets are also shown to be fairly different, both in culture and in feel (with Tatooine being a huge empty desert, and Jakku being a scarred battlefield).
This is fair.
This is somewhat fair, but ultimately strips out a lot of context. R2 encounters Luke and tries to get him to help. Luke refuses and only gets caught up when R2 runs away. Rey chooses to help BB-8.
Torture is a thing that happens in films in general. This is an unfair comparison, and the scenes are not even the same.
Palpatine isn't introduced until ESB. If anything Vader is subservient to Tarkin, with Hux being the analog. And that comparison isn't really accurate either.
Context! This is done on purpose to explicitly set Kylo Ren up as a somebody who wants to be Vader but isn't.
This is a general thing in movies and wasn't even original in ANH. The relationships are also a bit different.
Again, context. If you lazily strip away all the meaning and shit, sure, it's a direct copy of ANH. These scenes are entirely different in how they play out and in the actual meaning behind them.
This is fair. While you can logically justify it, the movie needed to do a better job doing it itself.
This is 100% unfair. The DS1 was destroyed by the X-Wing firing into a structural weakness on the station's surface. Starkiller Base is destroyed by the heroes on the surface of the base blowing a huge enough hole in the structure that an X-Wing is able to fly in and shoot at an actual weakness.
...which TFA actually does once you stop doing simple surface viewings.
FriendlyGoat
Member
What if I told you it could be both ways though. It still DOES take a lot of training to use the force at will, while in moments of desperation you can tap into it. This is how the force has always worked in games, movies, books, etc whether canon or otherwise.
Luke was desperate when he blew up the death star and pulled his lightsaber in ESB. He struggled to use these powers on command during training. Then he was choking fools and pulling his lightsaber left and right after the ESB->ROTJ timeskip, post training. Similarly, all of Rey's force moves were from moments of desperation.
Assuming she is an expert at it and can suddenly do all this shit on command kind of defeats the purpose of seeking out Luke. I'm gonna go ahead and guess she'll struggle a bit to do the basics in TLJ.
DeathoftheEndless
Crashing this plane... with no survivors!
Holy shit, I never even thought of that possibility.
Extremely powerful as a child, but difficult to control, so her parents abandoned her in a desolate place. And its similar to a plotline in Looper, directed by...Rian Johnson
We may be onto something here...
CrichtonKicks
Member
How about look telekentically pulling the lightsaber to him in Empire? Ben was a disembodied voice who wasn't doing much training at that point.
It's not even clear if Luke knows the force can even be used that way at that point. The only time we see that use of the power in ANH was in a scene with Vader which Luke isn't present for.
KoopaTheCasual
Junior Member
I think Rey is obviously one of the kids from Luke's failed Jedi Academy, and she had her memories repressed to protect her. Why she was abandoned and almost left for dead? idk, but I feel like it would make Rey's quick ascension make a lot of sense.
There's something going on here /Trump
Yeah, I dunno what it is exactly, if it's a mind wipe, but there's more to Rey's story that will give us more background about some of the things she does and ways she behaves in TFA.
Because as much as people give Anakin shit, they always gave him a free pass for the same exact criticisms Rey received.
I wonder
Why is this?
Yeah, I dunno what it is exactly, if it's a mind wipe, but there's more to Rey's story that will give us more background about some of the things she does and ways she behaves in TFA.
Because as much as people give Anakin shit, they always gave him a free pass for the same exact criticisms Rey received.
I wonder
Why is this?
The next one will have a literal bullseye on its surface
DiipuSurotu
Banned
Well the first one was designed by Mads Mikkelsen
Subpar Spatula
Banned
Didn't folks believe he was space jesus and so did the audience? He is the chosen one who would bring balance so...
Did you even see his midochlorian count?!
Elfstar
Member
It just looks like you are trying way too hard to imply that everyone who criticizes Ray (i didn't even do that in particular) has actually some sort of secret agenda, and i don't know what kind of argument is even possible to have when you have a witch hunt going on.
I wanna see an interview with JJ discussing things he will be doing differently, in terms of filmmaking approach, with EP9.
What his takeaway from TFA was.
Not really. Yoda is pretty much like "you're wrong" when Obi asks if he's the chosen one.
And like I said
Do you think Rey being a fucking space jesus would have similarly passed by without complaint or critique?
Why are we having this conversation aboaut Anakin NOW and not in 1999?
What his takeaway from TFA was.
Not really. Yoda is pretty much like "you're wrong" when Obi asks if he's the chosen one.
And like I said
Do you think Rey being a fucking space jesus would have similarly passed by without complaint or critique?
Why are we having this conversation aboaut Anakin NOW and not in 1999?
Doctoglethorpe
Member
Coming 2020, Mary Sue, a Star Wars story. Follow the main character as we painstakingly delve into every minute detail of her life for three long hours, showing her rise from diapers to teenage woes to light sabers, followed by a 10 second finale where she puts all her super earned skills to the test and kills the villain (who wasn't revealed until just then, what you thought we had time for two characters?) with a single swing, roll credits!
So many awards, so many awards. Bravo Lucasfilm for making such a deep and multidimentional character! Only complaint, just a small gripe really, but giving some time for the other character to develop would have been swell. But I get it, you didn't have time, people were already screaming "I HAVE TO POOP, BUT THIS CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT IS SO FUCKING GOOD" by the time he movie ended. Any longer and it would have been a very messy theater.
I'm bored.
So many awards, so many awards. Bravo Lucasfilm for making such a deep and multidimentional character! Only complaint, just a small gripe really, but giving some time for the other character to develop would have been swell. But I get it, you didn't have time, people were already screaming "I HAVE TO POOP, BUT THIS CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT IS SO FUCKING GOOD" by the time he movie ended. Any longer and it would have been a very messy theater.
I'm bored.
Chained Prometheus
Member
Same here, though I have a hunch we won't hear much from him until after The Last Jedi is out. He'll want to let Rian have his time out in the spotlight for his film first.
Yup. Not for a long time I suspect.
Elfstar
Member
I see, but trying to shut down any kind of argument with this is both childish and lazy.
CassidyIzABeast
Member
You know, after dealing with years of Ferngully, Dances with Wolves, and Pocahontas comments I now realize I must stand with my TFA brethren in solidarity against "its just a *movie title* rip off" slander.
Kyle Katarn ring a bell?
He literally just gets a lightsaber from his dead father and already knows force powers right away.
Chained Prometheus
Member
Eh, it won't be too long, I think.
JJ started talking publicly about TFA pretty quickly after he got the gig in 2012/2013. I think he'll wait until sometime early in 2018 to start talking about Episode IX and what he's aiming to do differently with that film compared to TFA then.
Anyone who says Mary Sue, and isn't using it ironically, isn't really worth the time of day. Shit got old real quick in 2015 and it's not getting any fresher.
Uh oh
This sounds oddly familiar
And the takeaway here is that.. Anakin got a free pass for Rey's criticisms in 1999. Why do you think that is? He does even MORE unbelievable shit than Rey.
Yet I didn't see one argument that he was just too powerful.
I dunno, I see where it's coming from though. The female main character is being subjected to criticism her male counterparts are not subjected to even though the male counterparts have the exact same issues that are thrown at Rey
Bobby Roberts
Banned
And people say these threads aren't worthwhile.
Master Yoshi
Member
Seems like the opportunity of a lifetime, but with tremendous pressure and responsibility as well. That being said, I still can't believe he passed it up.
Well, the New Order tried. I get a kick out of how Starkiller Base tried to fix the previous Death Star fatal flaws.
A New Hope: torpedo into an exposed vent
Return of the Jedi: they projected a shield over the whole Death Star. Rebels take it down by going to the shield generator on the nearby moon.
The Force Awakens: There's a giant blast shield over the oscillator port (fixes the flaw from ANH), and the energy shield is projected from the base itself (fixes the flaw from Jedi).
And it still got blown up.
DING DING DING (nope, not Bobby's ding)
I bet it's just that he simply didn't have enough time since he is still working on TLJ. Also, he probably really wants a break.
Inferno313
Banned
Same reason JJ didn't do The Last Jedi, I bet. Doing these things back to back is fucking hard, and part of the reason for getting different directors for these is so that Rian could be prepping TLJ at the same time JJ was shooting TFA. If Rian were to have come back for this, it'd likely have had to be delayed even further than December for him to have had the same amount of prep time he had on TLJ.
Probably the same reason JJ didn't do VIII. Too much pressure, too little time, even if they both had the time of their lives doing their movies.
Great friendships were born here today.
Chained Prometheus
Member
I don't think Rian really needs to say anything on the matter. The most likely answer is that the schedule just wasn't right. Dude probably needs a nice long break after working on The Last Jedi for so long.
Speaking from personal experience, albeit on an amateur/film student level, filmmaking is tough. It can wear you down and feel pretty overwhelming, depending on the type of person you are. Hell and that's only on a cheap low-budget level. I love making movies, but I can't even imagine how stressful it'd be if I tried to do a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster anytime soon.
I think we'll see Rian helm another Star Wars film eventually. Maybe even for Episode X or the Obi-Wan film if Daldry leaves that at some point. It just wasn't the right time for him as far as it went for Episode IX.
CrichtonKicks
Member
The dude just spent years of his life writing and directing one of the most anticipated movies of all time. And coming out of TLJ his career will be on fire.
I'm genuinely surprised Abrams is willing to come back on without at least doing another palette cleansing film first.
Elfstar
Member
Uh oh, time to embrace your pitchfork! You really proved me wrong here!
Hypotetical people contradicting themselves is not an argument at all.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
That aint my ding
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