Luke v Rey: The Mary Sue Debate

Since I talked about Mary Sues on Monday, let's wade into one of those annoying Star Wars debates that's been rehashed a bunch more times with the new movie coming out.  A lot of people argue that Rey in the new trilogy is a Mary Sue.  Then you get people who can't deal with that and say, "Well, what about Luke in the original movies?"

If you actually watch the movies, then Rey is far more of a Mary Sue than Luke.  In The Force Awakens, Rey has spent most of her life on a desert world climbing around wrecks to salvage parts that she'd load on basically a scooter to take back to town.  And yet in the movie she's able to almost instantly not only fly the Millennium Falcon, but fly it THROUGH a downed Star Destroyer and into space.  Someone on Twitter was like, "But she hit the ground a little at first!"  Sure, she struggled for about a minute.  It's basically like if someone who's only ridden a bike gets in a NASCAR car, bumps a wall on the first lap, but then wins the race.  It's pretty much impossible.  The best argument that can be made is that she took stuff out of a lot of ships, so that helped her fly one.  Like if I take apart a lot of cars, I'll know how to drive one, right?  And not just drive but do all sorts of Fast and Furious shit, right?

Now I was willing to write it off if she were a Skywalker because the Skywalkers are great pilots, demonstrated in the previous six movies with Anakin and Luke.  Buuuuut...along came Rian Johnson to say she's not a Skywalker, so there goes that theory.  And Palpatines aren't known as pilots; I mean we never even see the Emperor fly anything.

Also in The Force Awakens, Rey calls Luke's old lightsaber to her hand and fends off Kylo Ren.  This I was less concerned about because she spent her life in the desert with that quarterstaff thing, so she at least had some training with weapons.  I loved the moment when she called the lightsaber initially because I thought, Luke's lightsaber (and Anakin's before him) knows she's a Skywalker!  Buuuut...along came Rian Johnson, so fuck that.

In The Last Jedi, Rey has like two partial lessons with Luke and somehow she can move a whole bunch of rocks and fight a whole bunch of guys with Kylo Ren.  In The Rise of Palpatine Skywalker, Rey can heal a giant snake and Kylo Ren, which is not really something we ever saw before.  She learned that where?  Um...books?

Thanks to an episode of Robot Chicken, I was reminded of Rey's escape from Starkiller Base.  She uses the "Jedi Mind Trick" on a stormtrooper, I think the one played by Daniel Craig, to release her so she can escape.  And she can do this because...she heard Jedi had done that before?  I mean she has no training at all and she can do something that would take Luke until the third movie to do?

And then you might say, "Oh yeah, what about Luke?"  What about him?  Luke didn't even move anything with the Force until Empire in the Wampa's cave.  That was a year or two after he'd met Ben Kenobi and got a lightsaber.  The Wampa was also the first time Luke actually used the lightsaber as a weapon; until then he'd only deflected bolts from a drone.

If you actually go back to A New Hope, all Luke does with the Force is deflect a couple of drone bolts and shoot the torpedoes that blow up the Death Star.  That's it.  Compare that with Rey after one movie.  You might say, "Well what about flying an X-Wing and blowing up the Death Star?"  He'd been flying his T-16 around the desert bullseyeing Womp Rats, so he clearly already knew how to fly.  Though I suppose that's like going from flying a Cessna to an F-16, but he is a Skywalker and they're natural pilots, so there you go.

Before Luke could move a bunch of rocks, he had weeks or a month or however long it was on Dagobah with Yoda.  And working on it a lot more than two half-assed lessons.  Then he goes off for his first fight with a lightsaber...and gets his ass kicked, losing a hand in the process.

In Return of the Jedi, which was a year or so after Empire, Luke has learned the Jedi mind trick, but that's really all he adds to his repertoire.  Mostly other than that he just moves stuff, like calling his lightsaber to his hand and making Threepio float.  And this was all over the course of three movies covering a few years.  So you really can't argue that he was instantly good at stuff.

Then you might say, "What about The Last Jedi?"  Well that's one of the reasons I hate that movie.  The idea that Luke could just beam himself across the galaxy was so inconsistent with really the entire rest of the Star Wars canon to that point.  At least in the movies. In comics and books Luke was more of a Mary Sue because lazy writers would just make him have whatever powers they needed.  In good books, like the original Zahn trilogy, Luke doesn't do anything more than he does in the original movies, except for a hibernation trance.  But that's something not too amazing since Jedi meditate a lot.  The idea of slowing your heartbeat isn't unique to Jedi either.

Anyway, if you compare original trilogy to new trilogy, Rey doesn't really earn all her powers and abilities, while Luke does.  Other than a couple of half-assed lessons, Rey really had no training to make her good at stuff.  Millennials, right?  Gen X heroes had to actually learn their skills.  So there.