Is Rey a Mary Sue?

Posted By: Peter DavidPosted On:

This will be the first of a few blogs I’ll be doing about “Star Wars.” I’m waiting a little before I do stuff with spoilers, but I thought I’d address this current bit of business that’s bopping around the internet. Namely, is Rey a Mary Sue?

The answer is, Of course not.

A Mary Sue is something very specific: a female hero substitute for a fannish author so that she can interact with Kirk or Spock or whomever. She is generally so fabulous in everything that she does that all the male characters fall in love with her. That’s Mary Sue.

It seems absurd to transform Mary Sue into the current definition that’s rattling around: the addition of a strong female character into an already existing universe. If we stick with that definition, Supergirl is a Mary Sue. So is Batgirl. Of more recent vintage, Silk.

Furthermore, Rey is not a Mary Sue for the simplest reason of all: the authors of the work are male. She can’t be wish fulfillment for a female writer because a female didn’t write it. End of story.

Glad I could clear that up.

PAD

84 comments on “Is Rey a Mary Sue?”

  2. So from your argument she would be a Mary Sue if on of the writers were female. Considering Kathleen Kennedy’s substantial involvement in the movie, I can’t help but wonder if that criteria was met. Regardless Max Landis’ argument still stands as she is portrayed as near perfection and as the movie unfolds we just learn more ways on how flawless she is…aka classic Mary Sue. Missing a single check box out of a list of checkbox doesn’t mean the stereotype was avoided after all.

    1. It’s not a single checkbox: It is the definitive reason for a Mary Sue’s creation. The author putting herself into the story by proxy. You have zero proof that Kennedy had the slightest involvement with the creation of Rey as a character. “Near perfection?” She has serious abandonment issues (which makes sense since she was abandoned.) All she wants to do is return to her homeworld for the family that will never return to her, and she is genuinely surprised when Finn returns to her. And she doesn’t want to go after Luke either. Yes, she changes her mind, but that’s part of her character development. She’s hardly perfect.

      PAD

      1. It’s a trope. She doesn’t literally have to BE Marry Sue..AKA the EXACT character from the fanfic. Rey fit the criteria of an overpowered Superwoman character whether she was created by a woman as a self insert..or if she was created by a team of male writer as a superwoman character to satisfy the mandate of creating such a character to draw women to see the movie.

    2. I think Max Landis has a hëll of a lot of gall criticizing this screenplay after writing two of the worst-reviewed movies of the year, “American Ultra” and “Victor Frankenstein.” I saw the former, and it was BAD, and that was almost entirely on the screenplay, which squandered a solid cast. Didn’t even bother with the latter. Meanwhile, I thought “The Force Awakens” was among the year’s best films, and the critical reaction seems to bear that out.

  3. Whatever you call her, she’s wonderful. As are Finn and Poe. And, in a totally different way, Kylo Ren.

    1. Yup. This new generation has me just as hooked as the old one did.

      Man, when [spoiler] [spoiler]ed Kylo Ren’s [spoiler]…

    3. I’m used to defining a Mary Sue as an idealized version of the author; so I’ve seen Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, and Superman as Mary Sues, as well as perhaps Heracles, Beowulf, etc. I don’t think of Mary Sues as necessarily a bad thing, but I thought it got a little grating in the movie. (Then again, I thought it was ridiculous that an unarmored 70+ year old man was mopping the floor with armored, trained soldiers in their peak. The one comforting thing from the old days? That Stormyrropers are about as accurate as ever.)

    4. The Dr. is an intentional caricature of a Marty Stu. Meanwhile…the women he travels with have 1/1000 his experience but still manage to hold their own. Which one is actually over powered compared to their backstory?

  5. I thought a Mary Sue was an character, usually a low-rank or supporting character which acts as a mouthpiece for the author, often moving the plot forward by exhibiting a disproportionate amount of knowledge compared to the main characters, in order to effect a sense of wish-fulfillment for the author.

    2. In part. “exhibiting a disproportionate amount of knowledge compared to the main characters” is the part that fits the trope, but it’s not everything. An OFFICIAL Mary Sue has to meet a much larger series of requirements….but the general premise is a character who’s too good at everything that it breaks suspension of disbelief. Usually this person is simply good at everything without an explanation.
      The Sue (or Stu) doesn’t need to be a supporting character, writing a main OC that holds the general characteristics is just as common.

      1. By that definition EVERY character on CSI: New York is a Mary Sue/Larry Stu!! Main characters (which Rey is) are SUPPOSED to be good at most everything. That’s what allows them to triumph over plots conflict.

  6. Acording to Max Landis, she is, and he makes a compelling argument of why she is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpS6TlqgLIQ Now, whether or not she is or isn’t, the fact is that he, and others like him think that she developed really quick. She goes from peasant girl to Jedi Knight in the course of 2 days. I sort of agree with him. She just developed really quick.

    1. Sorry. Max Landis is an idiot. As for her development: Luke started out as a know-nothing farm boy and by the end of the film he was using the Force to detonate the Death Star. No one complained. Why? He’s a guy. We know nothing of Rey’s background and I very much suspect reasons for her skills will be spelled out in the subsequent films. No, this has nothing to do with an understanding of what a Mary Sue is and instead the simple sexist pride-of-ownership of a young boy mentality that absolutely has to find reasons why females can’t be capable characters.

      PAD

      1. There is a deleted scene from the theatrical release of Star Wars in which the rebel leader expresses some skepticism over whether Luke can fly an X-wing. But Biggs Darklighter, Luke’s friend from Tatooine, vouches for him.

        LEADER: You sure you can handle this ship?

        BIGGS: Sir, Luke is the best bush pilot in the Outer Rim Territories.

        Apparently, when the scene was added to the 1997 special edition, they left off even more dialogue where one of the rebel leaders reveals he knew Luke’s father. This has probably been retconned out of existence, but it would provide another reason he trusted Luke’s abilities.

        even then luke was not an expert in any other area, unlike Ray, now i understand why she so skilled in may different ways but i think a character who is so developed very early without any problem or struggle to confront, is a very mary sue boring character personally

      2. Anakin Skywalker was a tech genius that was the only human able to pilot pod racers without any Jedi training. On his first lesson, Luke Skywalker was deflecting laser bolts with a lightsaber with his eyes covered. I don’t care if Ray is a Mary Sue or not, but if she is then Anakin and Luke are the male equivalent. In any case, Ray fits perfectly in the Star Wars Universe.

      3. Is the radio adaptation canon? If so, they didn’t trust Luke right off. They had him spend time in a flight simulator to see what he could do and only then were impressed enough with to give him a shot in an X-Wing.

        As for his developing his Force abilities, he had who knew how long – the interval in the Falcon is not specified as to how long and he’s got Kenobi to help him along. Rey has no one immediately obvious so we may have to wait for VIII or IX to explain her unusually rapid progress. Ditto Finn who’d never handled a lightsaber and should not have managed to survive against even a wounded Ren for more than about five seconds.

      4. Luke started out as a skilled pilot who has spent years practicing his skills in a T-16. He gets lucky with a force guided shot. Rey….is uber good at everything without training, coaching or practice.

    2. Bears repeating from above: I think Max Landis has a hëll of a lot of gall criticizing this screenplay after writing two of the worst-reviewed movies of the year, “American Ultra” and “Victor Frankenstein.” I saw the former, and it was BAD, and that was almost entirely on the screenplay, which squandered a solid cast. Didn’t even bother with the latter. Meanwhile, I thought “The Force Awakens” was among the year’s best films, and the critical reaction seems to bear that out.

  7. Thanks for the definition. Reminded me of Dorothy Sayers who was reputed to have fallen in love with her creation, Peter Wimsey. She created Harriet Vane, a mystery writer as her stand-in and who ultimately married the eccentric sleuth. So, I guess that would be taking the example to an extreme.

  8. I don’t think Rey is a Mary Sue. I do have a theory as to why she’s strong in the Force, but I’ll address that when PAD posts a thread that gets into possible spoiler territory.

    PAD is right that no one complained about Luke using the Force to help him blow up the Death Star, so complaints about Rey’s Force-related abilities are invalid. Plus, she has the advantage of knowing more about the Force and the Jedi than Luke did at her age, given the legends that have grown around Luke (and by extension Jedi in general). She’s likely heard that Jedi can do this “mind trick” thing and decided she had nothing to lose by trying it. Luke, by contrast, had never heard of the Force and was surprised that Ben Kenobi (who he thought was just a hermit) could influence a stormtrooper’s mind.

    If Rey is a Mary Sue, then Luke must be a…uh.. Marty Sue or some such. If it applies to the scavenger girl, it also applies to the farm boy.

    Rick.

    1. Luke as Marty Sue. There is an argument for that. At least he screws up, has to be rescued (frequently), taught some of the force, and shows more character flaws in his introduction the Rey in the entire movie (indecisive, whiney, untrusting, trickery, and so forth). Rey never had to be saved, never had to shown any Force training, never screwed up, knew exactly what she need to know at the time it needed to be known. Her greatest, and really only flaw, is worry she will miss her family by leaving the planet and she even got over that pretty quick after a conversation about it with whatshisname. She is currently a one dimensional character that people like because a) the character and actress are charming as hëll nd b) the stuff she does is great. If we replaced Rey with Ray and used he instead of she, would your love remain the same? I would be replacing Mary with Marty but rest of my issues with the character would remain the same.

      We have enough Marty Sues in action movies that only miss the designation because really the idea didn’t exist at the time. I guess Rey can be the start of a new tradition of Mary Sue action movie characters but I hope not.

      I suspect more than anything, she is an example of bad writing as making her so on the spot with solutions allowed the writing to effortlessly maintain momentum. The character potential is real and I hope the writers in the next two movies add that depth but there was none found in the Force Awakens.

      1. Take another viewing.

        Rey has as many flaws as Luke if not more. She’s naive, dopey, at times too cocky, at others too reticent. She runs from important challenges crying like a child. She’s in denial about her past, present and future. She has talents but most of them are raw. Fundamentally she comes across as simply very, very young. She matured in this film but still has plenty of room for maturing across the series.

        She screws up plenty in the film. She practically wipes half of Niima Outpost off the map trying to get the Falcon off the ground, she nearly kills everyone by inadvertently releasing the rathtars, and she is a disaster with a blaster.

        Her friends do come to her recuse, and they work with her to get out of several scrapes.

        Her rapid rise with the force is well motivated and serves a purpose that extends beyond her own story, and exists as much to support Ren’s story as anything else.

        Honestly, I find these arguments that she is perfect, flawless, never wrong or maladroit, so ridiculous I don’t know what make of them.

        It’s as if people had their eyes, or more likely their minds, closed while they watched the film.

    2. I have no problem with Rey using the Force. I just question the wisdom of her being so able to hold her own against a villain who has received considerable training in its use. Not because it elevates her–good!– but it makes the bad guy pretty small potatoes. All that training for zip. (I’ll grant them a small touch of forgiveness for showing that he was indeed wounded so she was not fighting him at 100%). A few weeks with Luke and she should be able to give Kylo Ren a wedgie from 12 parsecs.

      As it stands, while we hate Ren for what he did I see no reason to think the next faceoff between the two of them will go well for him. Obviously they will make it more of a contest than it would seem right now…just seems to me that it would have been easier to have the Yawning Abyss of Convenience show up at a moment when she was in danger of losing. As is, it seemed to me that Ren got dámņ lucky.

      Rey is a great character. I hope the next movie spends as much time with her as EMPIRE did with Luke. But she deserves a great villain. remember that shot where Luke sees Vader standing there, waiting for him? And we all thought “Uh oh.” Unless Snoke teaches him some new tricks or gives him the Infinity Gauntlet or something, at this point my reaction would be “Ho, ho, you’re in trouble NOW, Snape!”

      I loved the movie, btw. IMAX 3-D, holy crap. The sounds of the lightsabers drilled right through you, made Sensurround sound like my granddaughter’s Hello Kitty headphones.

      1. Also, I know that Snoke only looks like the Lincoln Memorial statue because he is a Hologram and he’s trying to look imposing, possibly to work out serious feelings of inadequacy from high school, but I really hope he IS 50 feet tall! Hëll, maybe the hologram SHRINKS his actual size, just so they didn’t have to build a bigger room.

      3. And now I’m having a Buffy moment…

        “Don’t taunt the fear demon.”

        (And Bill … granddaughter? When did that happen? I must have missed something — belated congrats!)

      4. You make a good point…..Making Rey win the fight makes Kilo Ren look VERY bad. Any future meeting between them will suffer as a result.

    3. There’s a big difference between using the Force to help aim missiles at a target, and using it to suddenly become a badass Jedi with no training. However, there’s also clearly a big difference between Luke and Rey, for reasons we don’t know yet. And THAT’S why complaints are invalid.

      1. They show early one that ray could hold her one using a staff. So it is not that big of a stretch that she did well. Also, just like Vader with Luke on the Empire Strike back. Kylo wasn’t trying to kill ray. He wanted to turn her to the Dark Side. I hope we see her using a double light saber in a future movie.

      2. I don’t concede the Rey has had no training in the Force. I think she was one of Luke’s young students at some point before she was placed on Jakku. When Kylo Ren is trying to Mind Probe her memories, he talks about an island.

      3. Tim, I sort of miss the days when this was the place to do stuff. Sure, facebook is great but the ability to paste in cat videos does take away the need for actual writing.

        So yeah I have a 4 year old granddaughter, practically a mini-me of my daughter, down to the red hair and break your heart cuteness. Currently visiting in MN–unseasonably warm at around 25 degrees.

        Merry Christmas and happy new year to everyone! Many Star Wars viewings for all (I am hoping to catch the HATEFUL 8 70mm Roadshow while I’m out here)

  9. Never even crossed my mind that Rey could possibly be a Mary Sue. A…well…no spoilers…yes. But a Mary Sue? No.

    Jessica Jones.
    Miles Morales.
    Amadeus Cho.

    All Mary Sues. But not Rey.

    2. Jessica Jones is a Mary Sue???? She has more flaws than most characters have attributes.

      Not every ultimately victorious character qualifies as a legit Mary Sue.

      1. Jones is a Very Important Character to the lives of longer-established, more prominent characters.

        While an argument might be made that, rather than a Mary Sue, she’s more just one of Bendis’ pet characters, she seems like a Mary Sue to me. Perhaps not to the level of Bendis’ other pet Marvel character, Miles Morales, but a Mary Sue just the same.

        –Daryl

  10. I find it sad that anytime (every time?) there’s a strong female character in science fiction, the character is almost always and immediately accused of being a Mary Sue, no matter how little support there is for that.

    Then again, some STAR WARS “fans” heard a black actor was one of the leads and accused the franchise of “white genocide,” so there’s plenty of ignorance and obnoxiousness to go around. Anyone remember when sci-fi fans were supposed to be idealistic and able to dream of a better world?

    1. “Anyone remember when sci-fi fans were supposed to be idealistic and able to dream of a better world?”

      Yep. And that time has passed, I’m afraid.

      I’ve pretty much tuned out the “Rey is a Mary Sue” nonsense, because, to paraphrase Harlan Ellison, it just sounds like so much adolescent nonsense on the level of a baby showing his pee pee.

    3. Replace Rey with RAY and her with he…. and see how much criticism the character would get as a Gary Stu from the same women defending Rey right now. The same women screaming James BOND and Ethan Hunt….. would be Screaming RAY and accusing them all of being unhealthy role models for women of perfect men with no flaws.

  11. Not a Mary Sue, no. But perhaps (if I’m right) a new version of Sidney Bristow. After all, like Sidney, she might have received Jedi training during her childhood, accompanied by a memory lock which was opened when she touched that object.

    As for that fight, let’s not forget that Kilo(meter) (yes, I know, too easy)was : a) wounded by Chewbacca, which means he was not at the peak of his abilities, b) had to fight a trained stormtrooper (I presume that said training involves close combat and close quarters weapons), and c) fighting a woman we’ve seen before handle three or four thugs easily. To be fair, Finn didn’t last long, but got a couple of lucky shots. All of that may have played a part in his defeat.

    Now that I got that out of my mind, I will say that, for me, The Force Awakens can be considered the second of third best movie in the saga (first being of course Empire, followed, maybe by Revenge). I loved it from start to beginning. The HSQ was very strong at some moments. And in Daisy Ridley a new star found we have. I hope to see her in more diverse movies.

    And I enjoyed Daniel Craig’s appearance.”aaaand I will drop my weapon !” 🙂 And the music of John Williams, of course. The Old Guard still has it, the Young Guard is showing a lot of promises. All in all, a very good addition to the saga.

  12. Someone else suggested that Kylo Ren may know a lot about the Force, but may be an indifferent lightsaber combatant. Certainly, Rey is competent to good staff fighter; using a lightsabre as a staff is a different enough technique to have given Ren a bit of trouble even if he was in top shape.

    (But it certainly is true that this gives Rey no room to grow right now; Ren is going to have up his game tremendously to last as a character. I’m guessing that Ren is decisively going to beat Rey in the next movie…..)

    1. You can’t use a standard lightsaber as a staff….just ask Darth Maul. better yet..ask Ray Park.

      As a quick example..Kilo Ren’s lightsaber cross guards are massively more difficult to work with than a normal sword with cross guards because you can’t interact with them. Darth Maul’s lightsaber staff….is MUCH harder to wield than a normal staff…because the wielder can’t interact with it like a normal staff.
      Rey was untrained and was almost as likely to cut her own arm off using a lightsaber like a staff…as she was harming the enemy.

  13. Rey is a mary sue.

    Luke was not a marty sue, he failed at pretty much everything he did save for firing those last two missiles, which he had help from han and obiwan.
    in the first movie alone, he needed to be saved countless times, most those times, the predicament was of his own making. People who say Luke was a mary sue, have simply forgotten how in over his head he was for the vast majority of ANH.

    Wesley Crusher was a Marty Sue and like all marty’s sues he was quite hated, as it should be.

  14. I’m not getting the negative on some of the characters here. I thought Rey, Finn and Kylo Ren were all terrific, complex, interesting folks and I’m fascinated in finding out where they go further. (Poe? Well, he doesn’t seem quite as developed thus far.) Seems to me that if you’re to compare Rey and Luke, of course Rey is going to be more competent initially than Luke. Luke grew up with a family taking care of him (not to mention Obi-Wan Kenobi secretly keeping an eye out to keep Luke from serious danger). Rey hasn’t had that protection. She’s had to fight for survival since she’s been a young child. Yes, she’s using the Force instinctually but that shouldn’t undermine the skills she already brings to the table.

  15. “Rey is not a Mary Sue for the simplest reason of all: the authors of the work are male. She can’t be wish fulfillment for a female writer because a female didn’t write it.”

    So a male writer can’t possibly wish that he were a female?

    Mary Sues are IDEALIZED wish fulfillment characters. They don’t mirror the author very perfectly at all, or they could not qualify as Mary Sues, since the authors themselves certainly don’t possess “Mary Sue” qualities. For example, a middle aged, balding, overweight author would not create a middle aged, balding, overweight Mary Sue character. Instead, the character would be young, fit, and have a luxurious head of hair.

    Also, whether a Mary Sue IS a wish fulfillment character is NOT the test of whether a character is a Mary Sue. The test of a Mary Sue is how far out of proportion they are in terms of other characters in the story. Being wish fulfillment characters is just a generally accepted explanation for WHY these Mary Sue characters pop up so often in certain types of fiction.

    I think the worst consequence of this whole “Rey is a Mary Sue” debate is that so many authors who do not understand the Mary Sue phenomenon have decided they are qualified to comment on it, possibly because they feel some duty to defend a beloved franchise.

    1. “So a male writer can’t possibly wish that he were a female?”

      Sure. But that’s no longer a Mary Sue. Now you’re off into fabricating an entire way of thinking that transforms any potential character into a Mary Sue in order to suit your tortured definition. Your “test” of a Mary Sue is something that folks such as you have come up with in order to disenfranchise and show a lack of respect for female characters that you feel have no business being there.

      You don’t like Rey. That’s fine. But her abilities are NOT way out of proportion to anyone else, and the sad fact is that if her name were Ray and she were a male character, the entire conversation would be that he was the obvious heir to Luke Skywalker, and he probably has an intriguing backstory, and wasn’t it cool when he force grabbed the light saber in the forest. But she’s female, so there must be something wrong with her.

      PAD

      1. I can’t believe peter just wrote that, Rey’s ability as given in the movie are so far out of whack with the rest of the star wars universe.

        By cannon Luke and Anakin are the most powerful force users, and they took years and years of training to do the stuff rey pulled off with zero training. it goes against everything established about the use of the force.

        She did a force pull, a mind trick, and beat a jedi user who had been trained by both luke and snoke, with by the movie zero training. What???

        please stop with sex B.S. People hated Wesley crusher for the same reason. They are people that hated the 11th doctor who for the same reason. no one complains wonder woman is a bad ášš, or she-hulk, or captain marvel. Stop it, it’s disingenuous and total abdication of any real responsibility to even make a cogent counter argument. Rey within the context of the universe she’s in is a mary sue or if you want to get hyper technical the idealized girlfriend.

  16. No, she’s not a Mary Sue. She’s an excellent lead heroine who is vulnerable and assertive, unsure of her destiny but extremely capable, principled, compassionate and brave. She does not require anyone else in the film to be less of a strong character for her to be heroic. At no time does she bust balls. At no time does she do or say anything that could be construed as “look at me, I’m a girl but I can do traditionally boy stuff.” She doesn’t talk smack. She’s not prickly or horrifically damaged. In short, she’s awesome.

    I think (some) folks are tacking “Mary Sue” on her because she’s a female character who is capable and not AT ALL abrasive or edgy. And for some reason they can’t stand that.

    I did think for a few seconds that it was a little odd that both she and Finn were strangely proficient with a lightsaber, a weapon neither of them had used before, but then I decided that Finn was probably trained to fight in a variety of ways, Rey possibly was aided by the Force, Kylo Ren was already wounded and probably a mite emotionally unbalanced, and that ultimately I just didn’t care. But Rey a Mary Sue? No.

    1. “She does not require anyone else in the film to be less of a strong character for her to be heroic.”

      Except that the Bad guy has loose ALL his force abilites to manipulate objects and to take a Blaster to the gut and fight another character first… so the writers to soften him up so she can magically gain lightsaber skills and take him down.

  17. I’ve made the argument from the very first that Rey is overpowered, and I’ll keep making it. To be honest, I think it’s crap to deflate any possible criticism of the character by accusing the critic as being sexist. I happen to love female characters, and I’m all for a strong woman taking the lead in this franchise. I found Daisy Ridley incredibly charming and tough, and I wanted to root for her all the way through.

    Rey is the best pilot, best mechanic, and best Jedi/Force User in the movie, and she is all of these things with virtually no explanation. That fans all over the world (including me) are rewriting the script in their heads to justify Rey’s disproportionate abilities (she’s already trained as a Jedi! She’s had to be scrappy! She works as a mechanic–she said so!) is a terrible comment on the quality of the script. People are filling in the gaps for Abrams and ignoring the undeveloped characters.

    1. Okay, perhaps a bit of a valid point…except why is no one also calling Finn a Mary Sue (or Marty Stu, or Gary Sue, take your pick). He’s taken as an infant from his family and raised to be a Storm Trooper, yet out of thousands of other Storm Troopers, he alone has magically develloped enough of a conscience to be bothered by what the First Order is doing? He behaves remarkably like a normal guy for someone who, by all rights, ought to be acting like a cultist raised in a bubble. He, as I said, is weirdly proficient with a lightsaber, something he didn’t even recognize as a weapon when he first saw it, and proficient enough to fend off a trained Sith (or whatever Kylo Ren is). Odd that he needed Poe Dameron to fly the Tie Fighter…

      These are valid points, but possibly the reason critics of Rey are getting the sexist charge is because they’re levelling their “over-powered, over-perfect” jibes at her alone. And Rey isn’t the best pilot (that’d be Poe) nor the best mechanic (that’d be Chewie). She’s a GOOD mechanic, certainly good enough to earn Han Solo’s respect, but nowhere does it say she’s the best. Possibly she impressed Finn all out of proportion because, just as he can’t fly a Tie Fighter, possibly he doesn’t know anything about ship maintenence either. Remember too that Luke knew quite a bit for a dude who’d never been away from home, either.

      Again, it ain’t that you aren’t making possibly valid points. It’s that they are, somewhat suspisciously, ALL being aimed at Rey when, if they apply at all, they apply to more characters than just her.

      1. You know, it occurred to me during the movie that “the Force awakens” might be referring not to the obvious choices, but to Finn.

        Get away from all the mitichlorian nonsense, if the Force is any kind of substitute for Universal Good or Karma or God or whatever, it seems to me that Finn is the one who seems to have had the “awakening”, as though touched by some greater power. And take Finn out of the picture and it all ends badly. Finn’s “Road to Damascus” moment is the clearest possible example of The Force influencing events by making a character stronger–not more powerful–and acting against their immediate self interest.

        Also, I’m no doctor but it looks to me like someone hit Snoke with a lightsaber right in the noggin. So maybe he’s the (presumed) long dead Darth Plagueass or whatever, that the emperor was prattling on about. He could raise others from the dead, why not himself? (I’m sure this is already a popular fan-theory, along with Snoke being the emperor cloned, Rey’s dad, Boba Fett, and a small man from Kansas manipulating an animatronic Snoke from behind a curtain.

      2. People aren’t calling Finn a Mary Sue because the guy gets his butt kicked no less than three times in one move:
        -By Rey when they first meet on Jakku, he gets knocked on his ášš.
        -Second, by the Storm Trooper with the vibro-staff. Here he has to be saved by Han at the last second or he would have been killed.
        -Finally, by Kilo Ren, who at first toys with Finn. But one Finn gets a hit on Kilo, he is immediately disarmed, slashed in the back and left for dead.

        How anyone can compare Finn (or Luke in ANH) to the overpowered hyper-competent Rey is beyond me. If you like Rey’s level over power, then just say so. But suggesting that Finn is that the same level is simply ridiculous.

      3. Fin…was raised as a storm trooper and when faced with combat..has a PTSD moment and runs away. He’s not a mechanic or a pilot..so he grabs Poe to fly him out. He gets into a TIE..and looks like he’s going to šhìŧ himself. Poe explains the controls to him and Fin manages after a few dozen shots to figure out how to aim and eventually shoots another TIE. They crash and he wanders off..meets up with Wonderwoman and eventually gets handed a lightsaber. He gets into a fight with another Stormtrooper where he waves the lightsaber around blocking the other guy’s weapon till somebody shoots the trooper. Later, he defends himself from a injured Kilo Ren…and gets his ášš handed to him.
        This is not a Gary Stu character. This is an average stormtrooper with an average background and an average skill set acting average. His only special plot treatment…is not dying from lightsaber wounds.

    2. It’s as simple as this for me…..
      If we changed the character from Rey to Ray…would we still feel the same criticism? For me? YES! I would still feel this character was WAY TO ÐÃMN OVERLY GOOD at EVERYTHING without any explanation.

  18. I know a guy who hated the movie, although considering he claims to hate everything, we sometimes doubt his sincerity. One of his myriad reasons is it alters the world where he always wanted to be. When I read that, I started to wonder if a person’s perception of a characters Mary Sueness is proportional to their own desire to be in the story.

    1. Where did he always want to be in the original? Tatooine is hot and dry, Hoth is cold and wet,The traffic on Coruscant makes me want to open an artery, and Endor is a radioactive deadzone of Deathstar debris and dead Ewoks…

  19. Just had my second showing, and I think I have a plausible explanation for Rey’s sudden, out-of-nowhere Forciness.

    In the Marvel universe, sometimes a traumatic event can trigger a person’s mutant ability. Perhaps something similar can happen with Forciness. If that is the case, then Kylo Ren’s attempted mind-rape (and let’s be blunt, that’s what it is) could have triggered her latent Forciness.

    And note that (as I recall) she only used it for things she saw Ren use it for — telekinesis, mind-influencing, and swordfighting. So maybe when he was trying to take things from her mind, he instead gave her some of his knowledge…

  20. I’d like to point out that there is a difference between being a Mary Sue and a hyper-competent. Gulliver was hyper-competent in Gulliver’s travels (could pick up a ton of languages easily, demonstrate any survival skills necessary, defeat any foe necessary, etc.) because the plot required it. Probably the same with Robinson Crusoe. What bothered me in the movie was that Rey being super-proficient in piloting, mechanic repair, any fight, and could use difficult force skills with no training, and defeat a Jedi rather quickly seemed superfluous. I also thought that it was ridiculous that Han Solo, a 70+ year old man was out shooting what looked like an entire army, as in, trained, armored troops who were probably at their physical peak. Yeah, I know that it’s just a film, so it’s not a huge deal. I’ll also accept that the Jedi wasn’t fully trained, that he was wounded, etc., but I thought it would have been better for both of the protagonists to fight him at the same time, and maybe have one shoot him, than for the fight to go down that way. Luke got his ášš kicked by Darth Vader repeatedly, I think if he had ended the first film by out flying, out shooting, out dueling Darth Vader as well as picking up the mind trick, the fans would have found him boring. Maybe they’ll give Rey an interesting backstory in future films, and maybe I’ll change my mind when and if I see the movie a second time, but I don’t believe that all of the criticism towards the way they wrote Rey is from sexism.

  21. Is she a Mary Sue? Don’t they have to be inexplicably good looking as well? Daisy Ridley is no slouch but I wouldn’t call her super model caliber. Rey is okay as a character, I think her knowing the ins and outs of the Millennium Falcon or any type of air craft as a bit of a stretch. Sure she had to make things work to get more food (as the theories online go) but I wouldn’t think she would know how to fly anything, particularly since I would think her captor would keep her from doing so from escaping. Also since she works long hours, often to fatigue, I would think it would be hard for her to even care to learn how to fly anything (her junker is like a car so it doesn’t count, it’s also significantly smaller, it’s like her going from driving a car to flying a jet liner–not possible–not even with magic force powers).

    I also thought the finding of the light saber scene was kind of forced (pun intended) as well. Why did she get up and leave? Did she need to go to the bathroom? Why was Maz just keeping it lying around if it was so important?

    It was an okay movie but it was kind of a redux of episode 4. And I’ve noticed that with Abrams and it’s disappointing. He particularly sucks with technology. That Starkiller Base really bothers me. If it sucks the sun out of the sky, everyone–especially Rey in her thin desert outfit–should have died from hypothermia due to the extreme drop in temperature. Then if they weren’t dead enough I think they would have suffocated to death. Also, how does the big weapon on the planet not throw off the gravitational pull of the planet (or would it make it collapse in on itself?). Lastly, how does a planet break free from it’s original orbit and putt around the universe? It would need it’s own proportion unit and that would use a lot of energy, perhaps more so than firing super weapon. And on top of that why would any government keep making the same mistake over and over again–this is like the 3rd time the same entity made the same thing and got the same result.

    I know, it looks cool and no one else cares. Buti t’s just so rudimentary–this is a major production with all resources available and you couldn’t be bothered to get some technical advisers or theoretic physicists?

    1. Ok, on the StarKiller weapon…

      First, it was charging up, and absorbing the output of an entire sun. It then redirected that energy into a warp speed energy stream, or streams, that was so powerful that it was visible in normal space. I don’t know for sure that the energy it absorbed was the actual beam, or only the energy required to CONTROL and DIRECT the beam! Also, there was an awful lot of snow and ice on that planet, especially in the temperate zone! Seems that a lot of its solar insolation had be redirected somewhere…

  22. The term “Mary Sue” has become a rhetorical short hand — a critical “cheat,” I think, that enables someone to criticize a character without going into actual detail. As others have pointed out, Luke Skywalker would qualify as a “Mary Sue” and so would Neo from THE MATRIX and Harry Potter. That makes the generic use of “Mary Sue” either sexist or critically useless (“Oh no, I’m creating a ‘Mary Sue’ — you know, a protagonist often found in some of the most successful films in history.). It reminds me of the term “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” and how it was equally abused — no longer was a criticism of a specific character in a specific type of movie but a descriptor generic enough to include Annie Hall and Susan Vance from BRINGING UP BABY (again, as a writer, I would *kill* to create such successful characters).

    I don’t support name-calling in film criticism any more than I do in real life. Stick to the facts. What works and what doesn’t.

    Wesley Crusher was not a popular character but referring to him as a “Mary Sue” or “Creator’s Pet” doesn’t go into sufficient detail to be useful. (Tangentially, I think he’d been better served as a “Chekov” — a young ensign who is brighter than he is mature. Having his mom on the ship also wasn’t wise.)

    The Doctor Who Christmas special brought up more complaints about River Song as a Mary Sue. I think that diminishes the rapport Alex Kingston built with fans, who love seeing her on the show.

  23. Rey most certainly can be a Marry sue…even if written by a man…because men can still write female wish fulfillment. Unless future episodes explain that she was previously trained and gained her skills and knowledge before something like amnesia…. She most definitely IS a classic Marry Sue in all but name.
    If you don’t believe me… Imagine Episode 4 if Luke and Rey switched places.

      2. I think people really need to watch AHN again, Luke is pretty terrible at almost everything he does, and fails allot. further his victories are explained in the movie. he’s a good pilot and a good shot, and you are told exactly why in the movie.

        Someones actually did write up of what would happen if you made luke like rey in ANH, and it’s ridiculous just how powerful she is.

        but the biggest thing, is that luke’s flaws have actual consquences in a ANH. his rashness requires him to be saved, places others in danger.

        Nothing Rey does, nor any of her weaknesses have any conquences she cannot solve on her own. in fact her biggest “error” is what saves han life, and the negative consequence is recified by her and her along when she saves fin life by closing the door.

  24. If you’re interested in how Episode IV would have gone if Luke was as powerful as Rey….

    https://jedijones77.wordpress.com/2015/12/30/if-luke-was-rey-a-k-a-the-star-wars-a-new-hope-mary-sue-rewrite/

    It’s really kind of amazing how feminists today have managed to make EVERYTHING about their own stupid inadequacies.
    Rey narrowly escapes the Textbook definition of a “Marry Sue” only because she wasn’t written by a woman. She’s a kind-hearted angel who’s loved by everyone except one minor antagonist, is incredibly hot and has no real flaws. Oh sure, she’s in denial that her family abandoned her on Jakku, but nothing is really done with it in the narrative, so it’s impossible to care about it. She’s tempted by the ‘sixty portions’ for BB-8, but this is almost instantly abandoned because she’s too kind to hand him over (like we all knew because we’ve seen this before).
    She’s so powerful in the force that she masters the Jedi mind trick (which she has never even heard of, by the by) in one scene. Moreover, we’re given an actual time frame – this had to have taken place in less than 15 minutes (i think it actually takes her less than FIVE, in fact). It took 3 movies after seeing the technique performed for Luke to even ATTEMPT the mind trick, and this random girl suddenly masters it in 5 minutes?
    Rey also knows how to fix up and fly the millennium falcon well enough to impress Han, despite never flying a spaceship before in her life (we know this because she’s never even tried to leave Jakku) and specifically calling out the Falcon as a terrible ship.

    (On a side note, why did she know how to speak droid when Finn didn’t? Finn’s been around more droids more often, he’d be more inclined to learn droid language than a random scavenger. I know that, narratively, BB-8 had to find her first, but it’s still weird)
    It’s not hard to see why one would look at this character that is beautiful and perfect in most every conceivable way and think that she’s a Mary Sue.
    While Rey’s skill level and skill set is absolutely ludicrous (i don’t think anyone would deny that) it is not limitless. Her only observed ‘flaw’ is an initial reluctance to take the lightsaber…which she eventually does anyway rendering this a mute point.
    In addition, she only manages to avoid killing Kylo Ren by sheer luck – an entire FISSURE broke up beneath her feet and separated her from her opponent

    1. “It’s really kind of amazing how feminists today have managed to make EVERYTHING about their own stupid inadequacies.”

      It’s really kind of amazing how misogynists today have managed to blame EVERYTHING about their own stupid inadequacies on feminists.

      As a general response to several comments above, particularly with regards to the use of Force powers in this movie: why is everybody complaining about Rey’s use of the Force but not Kylo Ren’s? Doesn’t he have a bunch of never-before-seen powers that really make no effing sense as well? Yet, it’s Rey that takes the flak. No surprise there.

      My theory: the writers simply felt the need to up the ante compared to previous films (which obviously the Prequels did as well). Whether it’s the the style of lightsabers, the method of mass destruction, or the capabilities of the Force, each trilogy has been trying to outdo the last.

      Not to mention, there is also imo the assumption that audiences don’t have the patience to watch a character grow over the span of a trilogy. So, the process of gaining abilities and such has been sped up or skipped over altogether.

      1. I was really reluctant to see TFA after the trauma of I,II and III. I got dragged along by force, er, my wife, and was in a grumpy, critical mood. I was definitely *not* looking forward to some whiny Mary Sue character.

        I tried really hard to dislike the character, but Rey is well-written and likeable. And Daisy Ridley is an excellent actor.

        I’m baffled by the complaints about her skills.

        She’s an adequate pilot, decent mechanic. Gets caught in the middle of something she wasn’t looking for, and tries repeatedly to get back to her life, but circumstances just don’t permit. The Millennium Falcon barely survived her piloting. Obviously she’d had some practice flying: she had her own landspeeder-thingy, and knew which ship (the quad jumper) would be good for escape. Other throwaway lines hinted at previous experience. She wasn’t at all unbelievably skilled for this genre.

        I thought it was readily apparent that her rapid mastery of various Forcey skills came only after her latent talent was given a kickstart. As Jay Tea pointed out, that was likely Kylo Ren’s botched attempt at mind-reading. Instead of Kylo Ren getting what he wanted, she pulled knowledge and skill from the exchange. The dialogue demonstrated that. Kylo Ren nearly said that in so many words. Etc. It was only subsequent to that scene that she started manifesting extraordinary abilities. I’m not sure how the filmmakers could’ve been more clear without using prequel-clumsy exposition.

        I thought it was an elegant and clean way of giving her skill and power. It also allows the sequels the opportunity to avoid a predestination/chosen one storyline (fingers crossed), which I think has been overdone.

        Not a Mary Sue at all. She’s more the reluctant hero archetype. Including how she is trying to give away the mythic weapon/lightsaber.

  25. All the comments about Rey being a Mary Sue because she beat Kylo Ren fail to take into consideration that we don’t know what training Ren actually received. Snoke makes a point of telling Hux to bring Ren with him so because “it’s time to complete his training”.

    For all we know, stopping a blaster bolt in mid air is the extent of his training in the Force.

    He’s NOT Darth Vader. He wasn’t going around force choking people like Vader did. He’s a petulant child who destroys probably expensive equipment when things don’t go his way. He’s not a Sith or a Jedi.

    And, like has been mentioned, we don’t know ANYTHING about Rey’s past yet. She may have training that we, and possibly she, don’t know about yet.

    1. fighting abilities althouh very important for story consistency is not the main point here.

      The main point is the mora construction of the charachter.

      Anakin was raised firstly by a loving mother and after that by a great jedi Obi Wan Kenobi. But he has dark spots on his personality (too dark indeed)

      Like was raised by a loving well structured family of farmers. But he’s a little selfish in wanting to leave his uncle to lead a life of adventures, and he is also too impulsive , he doubts their own ability to control the force

      Ben Solo is raised by loving and heroic Leia, Solo and trained by Luke … and he becomes Kylo Ren

      Rey is raised by herself in a hard mean world and yet she is a paragon of virtue !!!

  26. You don’t like the current definition of “Mary Sue” you prefer the original one. Ok no problem with that.

    How do we call a character who is too perfect to be human, too perfect to feel identified with him/her ?

    I don’t know, but let call it : “A White-Angel” it is a name as good as any other .

    So … Yes . Rey is a “White-Angel” .
    She is not only the best character of the film in absolutely all the skills ( fixing ships, piloting, shooting a blaster gun, using the force, escaping, fencing with the light saber, resisting mental interrogatories, resisiting the temptation of the dark side … )

    Moreover She is perfect from a moral point of view. Can anyone tell me any weak point of her behaviour ?

    Luke in IV and V episodes was too impulsive and had too much thirst for adventures ( Yoda warned him about that)

    Solo was a smuggler, and completely selfish at the begining.

    Leia was too flirtatious and a bit displicent

    Anakin of course was insecure and fearful

    And Star Wars is about those things, Star Wars is about the weak and the strong points of one’s personality.

    The whole saga is about wether the characters can overcome their weakness or those weakness make them fall on the dark side.

    As far as Rey is perfect, She has not weakness, there is no more Star wars .

    1. She’s the hero. She is displaying nothing more than the traits of any top quality hero. Her major personality flaw is that she is too obsessed with waiting for the family that abandoned her. She declares she wants nothing more to do with the adventure and abandons both Luke’s lightsaber and BB8 so that she can return to Jakku and wait for the family that will never return. The first time she battles Kylo Ren, he kicks her ášš with no trouble. It is obvious to anyone actually watching the film and not gender-judging everything that it is the mental probing by Ren that awakens her real connection to the Force as she is able to turn his abilities against himself and begins to become aware of what she can do.

      She obviously knows about the Jedi, their history and mythos. If she starts to twig that she might have the Force strong within her, then she might as well try to manipulate someone using the well-known Jedi mind trick. Which she tries to do. And fails. It takes her several tries to get it right.

      She then faces Kylo Ren a second time, and he kicks her ášš with a mere hand gesture. It is only the third time she takes him on that she beats him. She beats a guy who hasn’t completed his training and has a gut wound from Chewbacca.

      Color me convinced.

      PAD

    2. She repairs the Falcon…she’s a scavenger who likely picked up some tech/mechanical abilities. She pilots the Flacon…and almost crashes, more than once. She fires a blaster like twice…misses the first time, hits the second. That’s a 50% success rate.
      She also spends almost the entire lightsaber duel with Kylo Ren running away from him. It’s only at the end, when she gets up close and forces his hand down into the snow, that she gets in a shot and “wins”.

      For her to be a true Mary Sue, she would have to be a better pilot than Han (she isn’t), better with a blaster than Han (she isn’t) and better with the Force/a lightsaber than Luke (she isn’t).

      She’s the MAIN FRICKIN’ CHARACTER. She’s the star of the movie. If she wasn’t good at stuff, what’s the point of telling her story?

      1. We are talking here about if Rey is a Mary Sue or not. The discussion is not about if she is the Almighty God .

        A Mary-Sue character is not a God/Goddes of infinite power .

        A Mary-Sue is a character who is good at everything he/she tries, and without dark points in his/her personality .

        Rey is the best of the film in everything she tries : Fixing ships, piloting the Millenial Falcon, shooting the blaster, resisting mental interrogatories, controling the force (she pulls the light saber up the snow , much stronger than Kylo Ren ) and fencing with the light saber.

        She does not show even an iota of: selfishness, fear, fearlessness, flirting, ethics doubt .

        I think, from now May-Sue sue characters can be called REY-Characters

      2. “Rey is the best of the film in everything she tries : Fixing ships, piloting the Millenial Falcon, shooting the blaster, resisting mental interrogatories, controling the force (she pulls the light saber up the snow , much stronger than Kylo Ren ) and fencing with the light saber. She does not show even an iota of: selfishness, fear, fearlessness, flirting, ethics doubt .”

        She spends 20 years on the planet being a scavenger, so it makes sense that she would learn how ships are constructed.

        She flies the Falcon for exactly eight minutes in the film, has a very shaky take-off and nearly crashes it repeatedly.

        Her first shot with the blaster, she forgot to take the safety off. She then managed to shoot a few storm troopers before proving completely inept at using it to thwart Kylo Ren.

        At first she is unable to resist the mental probe as Ren effortlessly scans her mind. As the interrogation continues, it is only then that she is eventually able to fight back. So there is a distinct learning curve.

        It took her one movie to grab a lightsaber mentally instead of two. Horrors.

        She was much stronger than Kylo Ren. Kylo Ren who effortlessly kicked her ášš twice and when he did lose to her, was bleeding out from a wound Chewie gave him and had to keep punching it so that the pain that caused would enable him to remain conscious.

        She never shows any weaknesses…except when she flees from danger which she does repeatedly, is terrified of the visions the lightsaber gives her, and runs out on Maz and BB8 declaring she wanted nothing to do with any of it.

        It’s actually a good movie if you watch it with an open mind as opposed to hating a female lead.

        PAD

  27. One further thought. If Rey is a Mary Sue, then so is Anakin. In Episode One, he is shown to have built his own protocol droid out of scraps at the age of nine. He’s the only human to ever successfully pilot a pod racer – again at the age of nine – and he wins his first race against more experienced pilots.

    Since Anakin was said to be unconsciously tapping into the force to do all this, why is it so hard to believe that maybe Rey was doing the same?

    We also know nothing about her life before she was abandoned on Jakku (she looked to be maybe 8 or 9 in the flashback). So we don’t know that she wasn’t trained, and just made to forget.

  28. I don’t see how Rey is too perfect or overpowered. She’s got serious abandonment issues, is in denial about her past and whether anyone will come to Jakku and rescue her, seems genuinely scared of the Force once she starts using it, gets captured and spends most of the fights she was in on the defensive and essentially running away from more experienced fighters. The only potential argument that she’s too perfect is that she didn’t have to do all sorts of training to do the most basic Force tricks. They cut to the chase rather than having her block laser bolts while blindfolded or carry her teacher around piggyback (which would be really strange if Luke ends up teaching her. It really only works when it’s Yoda).

  29. Untrained can wield the force like a Jedi,,,expert in combat with a light saber and knows more about the millennium falcon the Han Solo,,,,,RIGHT.

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