Qualquer acusação de
marysuagem à Rey cabe também ao Anakin Skywalker - aliás, cabe muito bem a ele.
** Posts duplicados combinados **
JAN 4, 2016 @ 06:00 AM
No, Rey From 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' Is Not A Mary Sue
Erik Kain,
CONTRIBUTOR
Emerging from the sea of gripes over
Star Wars: The Force Awakens is perhaps the most peculiar of them all: That the film’s female protagonist, Rey, is a “Mary Sue.”
What is a Mary Sue?
A Mary Sue is a female fan-fiction character that is cloyingly perfect in every way. It stems from a character of the same name in a parody piece of
Star Trek fan-fiction by Paula Smith published in 1973 in the fanzine
Menagerie.
In “
A Trekkie’s Tale” (which is less than a page long, by the way, and can be read in its entirety at that last link) the character Mary Sue is perfect in every conceivable way, even as a teenager. She commands the love and respect of Captain Kirk, and intrigues Spock with her logical prowess. She wins awards, and dies a tragic death.
The point of the story was to spoof the worst tendencies of fan-fiction writers: To insert glorified, idealized versions of themselves into their fan fiction in unabashed acts of wish-fulfillment.
The character is Mary Sue because most fan-fiction is written by women and inserts female characters into stories. But there’s also a Gary Stu or Marty Stu male equivalent that nobody ever talks about.
Is Rey actually a Mary Sue?
Spoilers follow.
The whole thing started, or at least was popularized, when screenwriter Max Landis
took to Twitter to call
The Force Awakens a “fanfic movie with a Mary Sue as the main character” and Rey ”the worst fucking
Star Wars main character ever.”
That’s when folks started tweeting at people like me that Rey is a Mary Sue, a terrible character, boring, flat, and so forth. The floodgates had been opened. (Landis goes into
more detail here. He makes his case and tells us that “nothing you say” will change his opinion. Which is a wonderful leaping off point for a debate, or something.)
It’s not as though Landis is entirely off-base here, even if he’s wrong in the end.
Rey is certainly very powerful—surprisingly so, even, given she’s had no training in the Force. She’s well-liked by those around her, can speak more than one language, and is a decent fighter. In her final battle with Dark Jedi Kylo Ren, she holds her ground against an opponent with better training. She also performs a Jedi mind trick on a Stormtrooper, expertly flies the Millennium Falcon even though she’s never done so before, and basically kicks ass and takes names throughout.
That’s a lot of talent for one young scavenger woman from Jakku!
But it doesn’t make her a Mary Sue. Not even close. It certainly makes her fit well in the
Star Wars universe—a universe peopled by average people suddenly made extraordinary after being tossed into extraordinary situations. But Mary Sue is an exaggeration that ignores all the details.
Let’s take it piece by piece, argument by argument.
Rey starts the movie as a scavenger who’s with some piloting experience who knows how to fight and can speak in multiple languages. She can also fix things, like spaceships. That’s a pretty hefty skill set already for a loner scavenger on Jakku with no formal education we know about.
That’s true, but Rey needed a pretty impressive set of skills to survive the desert planet on her own. Somehow she made it out of childhood without being sold into slavery or dying of starvation, and my guess is that a combination of innate skill and force of will, as well as latent Force abilities, contributed to her survival.
She learned multiple languages out of necessity, living on a planet with various races and many different languages. Knowing multiple languages appears to be quite common in the
Star Wars universe, as well as in most places not called the United States of America.
Fighting, scavenging, fixing things, taking things apart, negotiating with big jerks—these are all tricks of the trade that Rey picked up between when the film begins and when she’s abandoned on Jakku (or hidden there, perhaps.) She’s not a pampered farm boy like Luke. She’s a loner and a survivor and she has the skills to prove it.
She flies the Millennium Falcon with no experience at all. That’s a little far-fetched don’t you think?
Frankly, flying spaceships in the
Star Wars films has never looked all that hard. In
The Phantom Menace, little pipsqueak Anakin is an ace pilot already and he’s just a dumb kid. He races speeders like a pro, beating people with tons more experience. In
A New Hope, Luke Skywalker manages to destroy a Death Star in an X-Wing despite having no training as a fighter pilot. Seems to me either flying stuff in
Star Wars is fairly easy, or young people with powerful Jedi abilities pick it up super fast even though their experience piloting vessels amounts to speeders on desert planets.
This also leads to a really big point I’m going to keep saying over and over again: If Rey qualifies as a Mary Sue, so do Anakin and Luke. Just because Luke needs help in some situations doesn’t mean he isn’t a Mary Sue (or Gary Stu or whatever.)
It’s just that nobody cared about Anakin or Luke’s capacity to very quickly pick up skills like piloting or using the Force, while Rey gets heaps of derision and scorn.
Frankly, I don’t think any of them really qualify as Mary Sues, but I think all three are presented as wildly skilled and powerful beyond “normal” human abilities. Which makes sense, since they’re each powerful with the Force in a fictional story about brave heroes and dastardly villains with magical powers.
Fine, so flying stuff is easy and Rey would have picked up her fighting and language skills out of necessity. What about that Jedi Mind Trick?
Free Beacon writer
Sonny Bunch asks: “How does Rey know about the Jedi mind trick?” He’s pointing out that even if Rey has the Force, how does she know about these sort of powers?
This is actually pretty simple to answer. It’s not like all the stories of the Jedi just vanished from the universe when Skywalker went into hiding. There’s no doubt Rey had heard about Jedi mind tricks and other Force powers. Rey’s heard about them like everyone else, and when she starts realizing she has these powers she simply tries them out. Kylo Ren even says at one point that she’s just begun experimenting with her powers, and that the longer it takes to capture her the more dangerous she’ll become.
So how is she able to use them so well so quickly?
I think the answer to that lies is in Kylo Ren’s conversation with Supreme Leader Snoke. We’re told quite plainly that there’s been an awakening in the Force. (Hell, the movie is called that for a reason.)
We’re left with lots of questions at the end of the movie, but what seems abundantly clear is the fact that the Force is coming alive in a whole new way, and we’re just witnessing the beginning of this wild transformation. Kylo Ren is undisciplined and still enormously powerful, able to read minds and stop blaster shots in midair. That says something about just how awake the Force actually is. It’s no wonder Rey can perform magic tricks she thought were only stories. The Force is bloody caffeinated.
Update: Readers have also pointed out that Rey is only able to perform the Jedi mind trick (and other Force stuff) after Kylo Ren attempts, and fails, to read her mind. She gets into his head instead. This is hardly a coincidence. We have no idea what she’s picked up simply by tapping directly into the mind of a powerful Dark Jedi. I suspect it’s both knowledge of her powers, and a bit of the Dark Side as well. I think we’ll see Rey struggle more overtly with the call to the other side in future films.
Okay, but if Kylo Ren is so powerful, how did Rey beat him in a lightsaber duel? Surely this is evidence that she’s a Mary Sue.
There are three major things that people overlook when making this complaint.
Chewbacca’s Crossbow
First, Chewbacca just shot Kylo Ren in the side with his crossbow blaster. The same crossbow that he and Han Solo spent most of the movie wreaking utter havoc with. It’s half blaster, half rocket launcher, and he made a direct hit against Kylo Ren with it. In the stomach. Instead of killing him, it wounded him really, really badly. That impacts his ability to fight. We see him bleeding all over the snow, struggling to even walk properly.
Kylo was only trying to capture Rey, not kill her.
Second, Kylo Ren never wanted to kill Rey. She was fighting at once for her life and out of revenge, but Ren—already weak and wounded—was trying to subdue and capture her, to bring her to Snoke. This is made very clear in the movie. Snoke directs Kylo Ren to bring the girl to him. Kylo even attempts, however lamely, to offer her his services as teacher.
(Similarly, why didn’t Darth Vader kill Luke in
The Empire Strikes Back? Why were Vader and Luke both left standing? Not because Luke was so powerful, but because Vader wanted to turn Luke over the Emperor and the Dark Side. That’s the same thing Snoke and Kylo Ren wanted for Rey, not to kill her.)
The lightsaber itself played a part in the fight.
Finally, the lightsaber itself calls to Rey in Maz Kanata’s establishment. When she touches it for the first time, she’s overcome by visions. We hear the voice of Obi-wan Kenobi. We see a hooded Luke, and Kylo with his Knights of Ren. It seems clear to me that when Kylo Ren says it belongs to him, the lightsaber itself has other plans. When he tries to use the Force to grab it, Rey is able to instead—not because she’s more skilled, but because the lightsaber makes its own choice. It may be part of what guides her through the fight as well. In fact, I’d say it’s quite likely that this is the case. That for some reason we can only guess at, the lightsaber is aiding Rey against her foe. Another indication that Rey couldn’t have done any of this alone, and needed a ton of help along the way.
There’s one more tiny detail that moviegoers won’t necessarily pick up on. In the movie’s script we’re told that killing Han actually hurts Kylo Ren. “Kylo Ren is somehow WEAKENED by this wicked act,” the script reads, adding yet another handicap to the Dark Jedi’s fighting ability.
So not quite a Mary Sue here either, given that she was fighting a wounded opponent who was only trying to subdue her while Luke and Anakin’s lightsaber came to her aid.
But everybody loves her! She never makes mistakes!
Now you’re just grasping at straws. She’s likable. Everybody liked Luke also. Everybody liked Han, even if Leia played hard to get. And everyone also liked Leia, even if Han pretended not to.
Star Wars has likable characters—it pretty much defined the original trilogy. The prequels failed largely because the characters were so unlikable in comparison.
Rey and Finn get off to a bad start, actually, but that turns around quickly after they escape the Tie Fighters. They’re like two little kids bouncing up and down praising one another. It’s charming, an enormously upbeat moment in an age when movies tend toward cynicism.
When Han Solo takes back the Falcon, he doesn’t want Rey and Finn around at first. It’s only the attack of the pirates that changes his mind. And it’s in this scene that Rey makes one of her biggest mistakes, accidentally releasing the Rathtars Solo is transporting by mistake and very nearly getting everyone killed. (That it works out well in the end is not some stroke of genius on her part, either.)
The struggle is real.
Landis and others point out that a strong female character needs to be “well drawn” and face some adversity. But struggle isn’t merely an action sequence. A strong character, either female or male, needs more than snow monsters and trash compactors. They need internal struggle. And Rey faces more internal struggle when she’s presented with the Force than Luke ever does in
A New Hope. It’s only when he learns of his father that Luke is faced with any real doubt, and even then he’s never really tempted by darkness.
Rey? She runs. She wants to go back to Jakku to wait, just like Finn wants to go as far away as possible and hide. Neither character’s instinct is to go toe-to-toe with the First Order. But they’re not really given a choice in the matter.
Landis says that “Luke sucks” and needs saving constantly, but Luke also destroys the Death Star, almost single-handedly, in the very first movie. He uses the Force to fire the perfect shot, mustering his strength at just the right moment, almost exactly like Rey does during the duel with Ren.
Rey actually faces plenty of struggle, just a different kind. She’s been stranded on Jakku alone for her entire life. She only helps Finn because he lies to her. She doesn’t want the lightsaber when it’s handed to her and instead runs off, placing herself and her friends in danger. They go to rescue her, and just because she escapes her cell doesn’t mean she would have escaped the Starkiller base alone. Nor does Rey actually do anything to destroy the base or stop the bad guys. She simply escapes a Dark Jedi. Han and Chewie do the explosives work, and Poe Dameron seals the deal. If Finn hadn’t been there to get in Kylo Ren’s way, he would have easily captured Rey at the start of their final fight. Time and time again, Rey needs help and help is given.
Luke needs help, too. But in
A New Hope he’s the central hero. Rey isn’t. At least not yet.
This is just the beginning.
Landis, and others, apparently want Rey to face all the conflicts Luke experiences over the course of an entire trilogy in just one film.
But in
The Force Awakens we only spend three or four days with our characters, if that long. We don’t know much about any of them at this point. We know Rey is brave and good, but we also know she’s impatient and a little hot-headed. We don’t know where she comes from or what explains her powers or visions. In the novelization of the film, we discover that she’ss already wrestling with the Dark Side, hearing a voice after she knocks Kylo Ren to the ground urging her to kill him.
In
A New Hope Luke’s greatest failure is not saving Obi-wan Kenobi. Rey couldn’t save Han Solo either. And unlike Rey, Luke hasn’t lived a life of struggle and hardship. He’s a farmboy who never had to take care of himself. Rey’s already comparatively seasoned, beginning the first movie with a lot more experience under her belt than Luke. She’s easily leveled up a few times already when the movie begins, whereas Luke is a level zero nobody. That she doesn’t start as foolish or naive as Luke also doesn’t make her a Mary Sue. It means we join her at a different point on her journey.
And yeah, it’s all a bit rushed. I would have loved more character development for her, and more time devoted to that arc. My guess, however, is that her arc is supposed to be different from Luke’s. We see Luke as a whiny little teenager in
A New Hope; as a competent rebel fighter in
Empire Strikes Back; and as a fully formed Jedi Knight by
Return of the Jedi.
Rey is a tough survivor in the first film of this new trilogy. We don’t know what she’ll be in the next two films, but obviously her story is different from Luke’s, even if the two are bound together.
What we don’t have is a full three movies to truly judge Rey or Finn or any of the other characters yet. Just look at the lambasting of Kylo Ren, perhaps the film’s most interesting character.
It’s funny to say Kylo Ren is emo—that Twitter account is a wonderful parody—but I love that Ren is a moody, emotional villain rather than just a badass. I love his temper tantrums and his admission that his task to kill his father is tearing him apart. What a human bad guy!
Sadly, we have the flipside of the Mary Sue coin when it comes to Kylo Ren. People complain that Kylo Ren isn’t enough of a straightforward villain at the same time as they say Rey is too much of a badass. The guy is too emotional, the girl is too tough. Whatever will we do with these slightly not-traditional gender roles?
Sure, Rey isn’t fully drawn. Finn isn’t either. But neither was Luke or Obi-wan or Han Solo or Leia by the end of
A New Hope. People judge
The Force Awakens as though it has to be all three movies at once. But imagine you’d only seen
A New Hope. Imagine how many problems that movie actually has. It wasn’t until all three originals were out that we could truly judge each character. What we knew and understood of Darth Vader, of the galaxy itself, of the Force, was greatly expanded with each film.
The Force Awakens isn’t a perfect movie. The action is great but it can overshadow the slower moments. The characters are great, but they aren’t terribly fleshed out…yet. This is merely Act One of this story. It’s no accident that Rey finds Luke on a planet called Ahch-To (according to the film’s script.) Ahch-To sounds an awful lot like Act Two, after all.
We’ve established the universe decades after the events of
The Return of the Jedi. The stage has been set, but the story has only just begun.
Writing off Rey, the first female Jedi in any of these films, as a Mary Sue is pretty lame it turns out. It sounds good on paper, so long as you ignore major sections of plot from the movie. You can check off all the boxes, so long as you leave out huge clues to the contrary. If Rey had actually been written as a Mary Sue, she would have done all of the above but beaten Kylo Ren without any of his handicaps in play. She would have rescued Poe Dameron from his burning X-Wing and then flown it expertly to fire the final shot. She would have known she was a Jedi all along, and never would have been captured, instead leading the effort to rescue Finn. And so on and so forth.
To me Rey is far more complex, mysterious and interesting than her critics allow. Maybe Episode VIII will prove me wrong, but I wouldn’t count on it.
Star Wars was always about somewhat unrealistic characters in a totally unrealistic space opera. That’s part of what makes it so great. Rey fits into this universe perfectly, at least so far.
Fonte:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkai...force-awakens-is-not-a-mary-sue/#7376d6bad45b
na verdade se chama Ben Solo... o nome que no antigo UE era do filho do Luke.
![ROGUE ONE_ A STAR WARS STORY Official Teaser Trailer.mp4_snapshot_00.17_[2016.04.08_21.14.12].webp](https://www.valinor.com.br/forum/data/attachments/51/51963-5ee4c41006af67a1497ea5b46b4f8ffd.jpg?hash=8JiI6oin6C "ROGUE ONE_ A STAR WARS STORY Official Teaser Trailer.mp4_snapshot_00.17_[2016.04.08_21.14.12].webp")
