Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Started by Grissom, Sat, 29 Nov 2014, 18:22

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Quote from: Catwoman on Tue,  5 Jan  2016, 08:34By the way, I never knew what "Mary Sue" and "Gary Stu" meant so I decided to look them up and calling either character that is pretty ridiculous, Rey in particular. We see plenty of flaws with her.
Name a few.

I can name one or two for Finn, a big one for Luke (though it's totally retroactive thanks to TFA), flaws for Han and Leia and probably other characters too.

But if Rey has any, I (and others) totally missed them.

Quote from: thecolorsblend on Wed,  6 Jan  2016, 07:50
Quote from: Catwoman on Tue,  5 Jan  2016, 08:34By the way, I never knew what "Mary Sue" and "Gary Stu" meant so I decided to look them up and calling either character that is pretty ridiculous, Rey in particular. We see plenty of flaws with her.
Name a few.

Ok :)

Spoilers ahead for people who haven't seen the movie.

First of all would a Mary Sue be living a scavenger's life on some desert planet, surviving on quarter portions of whatever the hell that was that she was eating? No. She would be living the good life as supermodel Miss Galaxy.

Would a Mary Sue be so wrapped up in her own emotions and her own selfish desire to get back to Jakku (even though, like Maz says, she knows the people she's waiting for are never coming back) when the Resistance needs her that she runs away from the castle? No. She wouldn't have even needed Maz to clean the Falcon or lead them to the base, she would have recognized the ship was dirty, blown every other ship out of the sky anyway, flown straight to the Resistance base, waltzed right up to General Leia, pop bubblegum, say "I'll handle this, girlfriend," hack the Starkiller base and blow it up while humming the Star Wars theme (Cause she is so self-aware) and watching a kitten video on BB-8's projection screen.

Would a Mary Sue have been captured by Kylo Ren so easily after he froze her in place, read her thoughts, and knocked her unconscious (this after she forgot to take the safety off her gun)? No. She would have let him read the deepest, darkest, most horrible thing she could think of so he was incapacitated by horror, then kicked the ever loving sh*t out of him.

Would a Mary Sue stand by and watch the (apparent) first father figure and mentor in her life be struck down in front of her eyes, helpless to do anything? No. She would have probably counseled Kylo Ren into giving up the dark side altogether, getting him to hug Han, then they would have all destroyed the base together and had a party on the Falcon.

Would a Mary Sue get flung like a rag doll into a tree with a flick of Kylo Ren's wrist (and the force)? No. She would have turned the flick against him and thrown him into the f***ing sun, which never would have gotten sucked dry by Starkiller base to start with cause, like, she disabled that before this movie even started yo.

Would a Mary Sue have needed Kylo to be rather seriously injured (remember he got shot by Chewie's crossbow which is shown repeatedly in the movie to pack a hell of a punch, which is why he was able to later be further wounded by Finn) in order to hold her own in a lightsaber duel? Hell no. She could have taken 500 Darth Vaders by herself. This chump is little more than a fart in her sleep.

Would a Mary Sue have needed R2 D2's larger Imperial map to go along with BB-8's piece to find Luke? No. She could have taken BB-8's piece, said "I know right where that is!", taken everyone there, and as soon as Luke saw her he would have immediately taken the lightsaber from her, thanked her with a big hug, and then everyone would have sang along to the Ewok victory song.

Basically if she was flawless this movie would have ended with a crawl talking about how amazing she was and we could have all gone home.

Your complaint that she is a Mary Sue obviously comes from the fact that she was able to think quickly on her feet, was resourceful, and so forth. If you would have paid attention to the narrative of the movie instead of finding every tidbit to nitpick and piss and moan about you would have found plenty to substantiate all of that. She lives a scavenger life. She has to be resourceful to survive. She has had to learn to recognize what is valuable, how to make things work, and so on in order to be allowed to even eat. She's not flawless. She's had to learn and adapt in order to survive and she's able to apply the skills she's acquired through that in order to keep surviving and play a role in saving the day. A Mary Sue would have had zero issue surviving and she would have saved the day on her own. She's only flawless if someone watching the movie isn't paying attention, in which case you shouldn't even waste our f***ing time.

You know, this sh*t is why people are crying sexism when it comes to Rey. If a male character does what she's able to do in the movie, oh, well, that's just the way it works (except in colors case, I'm still wondering how Poe Dameron is a "Gary Stu" when he was captured in the beginning after watching that whole village be massacred and not being able to stop it, then Kylo Ren was able to read his thoughts to find out the map was with BB-8). But she does it and she's all flawless and such a bad character and all this garbage. I don't throw the sexism label around very much but if the shoe fits right now, wear it.

Fair call. I have zero issue with a female being the hero of the piece. And I like the fact a black actor gets a front and centre role in a big franchise. That's how you do it - create original characters. Don't hijack existing ones.

I am a fan of Rey and Finn. They haven't disappointed me with the new characters or the old in TFA.

Quote from: Catwoman on Wed,  6 Jan  2016, 12:36First of all would a Mary Sue be living a scavenger's life on some desert planet, surviving on quarter portions of whatever the hell that was that she was eating? No. She would be living the good life as supermodel Miss Galaxy.
You obviously don't understand what a Mary Sue is.

Quote from: thecolorsblend on Wed,  6 Jan  2016, 19:22
Quote from: Catwoman on Wed,  6 Jan  2016, 12:36First of all would a Mary Sue be living a scavenger's life on some desert planet, surviving on quarter portions of whatever the hell that was that she was eating? No. She would be living the good life as supermodel Miss Galaxy.
You obviously don't understand what a Mary Sue is.

You apparently don't either. It's an autobiographical character stuck into a fanfic for self-serving purposes and is so perfect and wonderful. Rey is a wonderful character, but not perfect.

This argument is f***ing stupid anyway. You hated it. Yippy dippy damn. Why the hell am I wasting time trying to present opposing points? Cause I'm an idiot, that's why.

Quote from: The Dark Knight on Wed,  6 Jan  2016, 16:36
Fair call. I have zero issue with a female being the hero of the piece. And I like the fact a black actor gets a front and centre role in a big franchise. That's how you do it - create original characters. Don't hijack existing ones.
I'm very pleased to see we agree on this topic.  :)

It reminds me of the old days when we used to get along.  :)
Johnny Gobs got ripped and took a walk off a roof, alright? No big loss.

Quote from: The Dark Knight on Wed,  6 Jan  2016, 16:36
Fair call. I have zero issue with a female being the hero of the piece. And I like the fact a black actor gets a front and centre role in a big franchise. That's how you do it - create original characters. Don't hijack existing ones.

I agree about creating original characters. Changing existing characters to pacify a few doesn't really satisfy anyone. Fans of the original should keep that version while people wanting a character in their ethnicity should get someone new and fresh that they can wrap their arms around and enjoy instead of a cheap, lame-ass rewrite. The thing is, and this is the case with Finn, if it's a good character then he or she will appeal to everyone.

As for John Boyega, the fact that he's black meant something to me for about 5 seconds when I saw him in the trailer. It was like "Hm, wonder who this guy is." When the trailer was over, I looked him up and about the only way I knew to describe him was "black guy in the Star Wars trailer," I found out he's a huge ass Star Wars fan (did y'all see the hilarious video of him with all the Star Wars merchandise?) and was like "Cool. Hi John." I mean yes it's good that things are diversifying or whatever but a person's race quit interesting me a long time ago. The only races I'm interested in are the ones I watch on TV or attend in person so I guess I didn't get that excited about it. I just wanted a good enjoyable interesting character and Finn totally is. He's hilarious but he's also so convincingly serious when he's supposed to be.