This is probably the most unpopular thing i will post
Luke Skywalker is more of a Mary Sue than Rey was.
Luke was on a desert planet and shot rats and repaired things. He doesnt know what the force is and then claims he s a pretty good pilot in the catina for no reason. He goes into the Falcon, then shoots down a entire squadron of Trained TIE Fighters. (First time in Space!). He then, on his first time on a X wing (i think) survives the trench run and scores a 1 and a millon shot into the Death Star. In ESB, he then telekinectically throws the lightsaber at himself, which no one has done before and no one has even seen before. He recieves no lightsaber training from Yoda, and gets thrown down a hatch, where he is able to send a telephatic message to Leia to pick him up. (With still no lightsaber training !) hr manages to beat Darth Vader despite Vader having slaughtered plenty of Jedi before.
I m just saying.
Luke was on a desert planet and shot rats and repaired things. He doesnt know what the force is and then claims he s a pretty good pilot in the catina for no reason. He goes into the Falcon, then shoots down a entire squadron of Trained TIE Fighters. (First time in Space!). He then, on his first time on a X wing (i think) survives the trench run and scores a 1 and a millon shot into the Death Star. In ESB, he then telekinectically throws the lightsaber at himself, which no one has done before and no one has even seen before. He recieves no lightsaber training from Yoda, and gets thrown down a hatch, where he is able to send a telephatic message to Leia to pick him up. (With still no lightsaber training !) hr manages to beat Darth Vader despite Vader having slaughtered plenty of Jedi before.
I m just saying.
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Replies
Luke beat a trained sith but there is an argument that his father was holding back on him as there is almost no way he beat a lightsaber dueling master like vader who was trained by masters like obi wan and yoda and then palpatine later.
But Rey beat Kylo who was trained by luke and snoke and even though he was holding back on her, her use of mind tricks with the force was pretty crazy for someone with no training.
TL;DR they're both pretty powerful but not as OP as people make them out to be
btw this should go to "off topic"
Luke was born on a desert planet, it's true, but he was an accomplished pilot in local vehicles. Flight vehicles, too, not just landspeeders. Compare and contrast that with Rey, who simply practiced in simulations a lot. Essentially she was a good video game pilot.
As for Force use, Luke does pull off some incredible feats, but there's at least a basis of training he went through. He learned from an actual teacher how to open himself to the Force, and use it. Rey, meanwhile, was told she had the Force and all of a sudden (without anyone telling her it was even possible) she's barking commands at a stormtrooper, expecting to make him release her. And when it doesn't work, she is convinced enough it'll work to actually try again.
Lightsaber technique and battling is about even. Vader was likely holding back with Luke, but he still should've decimated Luke easily. But the same is true of Kylo and Rey. Rey had never used a lightsaber before, and all of a sudden she's an elite duelist.
Now, mind you, I don't have any issues with Rey. She's fine as a character, and better after episode 8. She's not really a Mary Sue.
http://swgoh.gg/u/Corrog/
http://swgoh.gg/u/Talshin/
In the OT there were also gaps in time between each film giving him more off screen time to train.
Luke and Rey may not be too disimilar but Rey is Luke on fast forward which is the part that makes it harder to swallow.
One in a million shot on the Death Star. He uses the force, I’m pretty sure that some old guy speaks to him or something and says something like, ‘use the force’. Could be wrong though.
ESB takes place 3 years after ANH, so i would assume that Luke may have had a little bit of practice with the force and probably has communicated with Obi-Wan at some point.
Saying that Luke shouldn’t be able to pull his lightsaber out of the snow is like saying how can Luke ride a Tauntaun? Did he have lessons? Is this his first time? Does he comb its fur?
Yoda’s training was about discipline, not how to use a stick. And again, how would lightsaber training aid Luke in calling to Leia through the force. Would you have prefered it if he threw his lightsaber at her to get her attention.
And following from all that, RotJ is set a year after ESB. So in total, Luke has had 4 years to train in using the force/lightsaber.
Call me a defender of the OT if you want, I just thought that all the points you brought up were quite easily explained just by watching the films themselves.
PS I like TFA and TLJ
Rey has had no training, nobody to tell her what the force is, nobody to tell her how the force works and on her very first attempt of using it, she is already capable of using Mind Trick, an advanced force technique. She then proceeds to fight with the bad guy not in the 3rd movie but the first one and she beats him without any use of the dark side.
Do you see the difference?
P.S. I'm a prequel fan not OT so 3rd comment is invalid.
Pilot Abilities
Luke is a farmboy, as we all know, so he is likely to have experience operating machinery and according to Star Wars lore, his T16 was manufactured by the same organization that makes the X-wings, so there is some basis for being a decent pilot there (even though this may have been explained after the fact and isn't mentioned in the movies).
Rey is a scavenger, and as such, would likely know which parts of an aircraft are the most valuable, probably what they're good for, and just generally know her way around an aircraft.
Both characters did amazing feats of piloting, given their limited experience. This could be chalked up to beginner's luck or being extremely Force sensitive (most likely explanation within the context of the films).
Combat Abilities
Luke is a farmboy and as such, probably didn't do a lot of martial combat. He carries his rifle along with him and has no doubt dealt with Tuskens and the other harsh inhabitants of Tatooine. He didn't really do anything all that impressive with his lightsaber in any of the movies except square off against Vader, who could have certainly been pulling his punches or otherwise not at his top form due to his inner conflict over his son. I feel like his performance versus his training were fairly well represented.
Rey is a scavenger from a harsh planet and carries a bo staff along with her and no ranged weaponry that I can recall. We can safely assume she does a great deal of martial combat and exhibits as much as soon as she meets Finn. She is clearly adept at melee and this is represented well with her battle against Kylo in TFA and her battle against the guards in TLJ. She was likely under constant threat and attack on Jakku, so it's not too far-fetched to imagine she is a skilled warrior.
Force Abilities:
Luke had the Force explained to him by two of arguably the best wielders of it in Star Wars history. Even so, he didn't really do very many impressive feats on his own. In A New Hope it is debatable that The Force guided him and led him to destroy the Death Star, without a lot of of action on his own behalf. In The Empire Strikes Back, I can recall him struggling to even pull his lightsaber to him in the Wampa cave, needing to close his eyes and really concentrate. Lifting an X-Wing was a feat that proved a bit too difficult for him as well. In Return of the Jedi, I can't really remember anything that jumps out at me as an impressive use of The Force by Luke.
Rey is simply reminded that The Force, the Jedi, and all of it is actually true in TFA. Who knows how much had been handed down as legend and what powers she may have heard of over the years as stories (though one would wonder who told them to her as she seemed to have grown up alone on Jakku). Anyway, if she had heard of what the Jedi were once capable of, it's not too unbelievable that she would try some of the things they were supposed to have done. Perhaps she is extremely Force sensitive and as such feats like Mind Tricks come easier for her. Perhaps bending a person's will using the Force is not so different from lifting a pile of rocks. I wouldn't know based on the movies alone.
Anyway, the point is, they both have some loose justification for their abilities, and given they're both protagonists in a Star Wars trilogy, a little bit of luck, intervention from The Force, and a suspension of disbelief is pretty standard fare for both of them.
A hero without a significant obstacle to overcome really isn't all that interesting to me personally.
Vader was always that obstacle and he played that role perfectly throughout the trilogy. The fact that Vader bowed down to the Emperor while being such a badass tells us all we really need to know about the Emperor.
While I actually liked the idea of Kylo dealing with his own inner conflict, they either needed him to become a true force or keep Snoke alive to be that final obstacle for both Rey and Kylo in the final film.
Instead Snoke is killed but Kylo is still made to look like a fool almost immediately.
The result is we have Kylo who is no longer seen as a credible threat heading into the final film so where is the interest going to come from?
I feel Rey is suffering from inconsistent storytelling more than anything else., but having her be triumphant in 3 consecutive films is not that interesting to me.
OP is exactly right.
Feel free to explain the standard litersry structure so we can all understand how the cast comparing it to a fairy tale equates to Luke being a Mary Sue.
The Force is very strong in him due to this.
To date, we don't know anything useful on Rey's parents (2 stupid wine-drinkers if Kylo said the truth....).
So... Luke: great, the central hero of the whole saga together with his father. Rey: beautiful character but the true and perfect Mary Sue.
Lol no...just no.
The term is very subjective but basically it's a character who is too perfect/idealized or accomplished at multiple things beyond reason to be seen as realistic.
Lol, you really have no idea what a "Mary Sue" is, do you? Or a fairy tail, for that matter.
So since you either didn't know that, or decided to ignore it, not gonna waste time rebutting the rest.
Anakin? Whose hand was chopped off in EPII?
And later went to the dark side.
And I don't think Anakin was liked by everybody either. And made lots of mistakes. Speaking of mistakes. Luke made plenty. Rey on the other hand- liked by everyone she meets, no mistakes made, no consequences, has both hands, can fly millennium falcon (a ship that has no counterpart) better than the lifetime owner, can repair it. Can outfly those same tie fighters like did even though she was an orphan living alone, where as Luke was getting ready to join the imperial academy and flew a T-16 on the reg
Says the guy using words he doesn't actually understand in an attempt to sound like an authority on a subject meant for 12 year olds.
It’s more about the fact that they made him space Jesus. He was literally born of a virgin birth and his father was -god- the Force. They invented a scale called midichlorians just so the could say he was off the scale and that he was stronger than Yoda. He was, at 9 years old, the only human being who could podrace and managed to blow up the trade federation capital ship despite never flying before. Later on he is described as both the most powerful Jedi ever and the best pilot in the entire galaxy.
That being said, I don’t have a problem with that. There’s a reason we’re watching Anakin and Luke and Rey and not Eeth Koth. Some stories call for powerful heroes. It’s why Superman and Hercules and people like them are such popular characters.