Sup Forums, is calling a character a "Mary Sue"(or Gary Stu) a valid point of film criticism...

Sup Forums, is calling a character a "Mary Sue"(or Gary Stu) a valid point of film criticism, or is it just a shitty meme?

It was a fair criticism of the fan fiction it originated from but since it has become a shitty meme.

name a good character that is also a Mary Sue

>Protip: You can't

OP posted her

Its a fair criticism for any film thats meant to be more than a popcorn flick. Every character in a popcorn flick is a mary sue though, so calling Rey a mary sue is really just revealing your gender based insecurity.

Does anyone have that picture of the concept art of her slicing a star destroyer in space while flying through an x wing?

She's also a Larry Stue if you really think about it

It's essentially the same as calling a movie "boring" or "unfunny". You need to give examples in the movie and explain why they detract from the experience.

>Every character in a popcorn flick is a mary sue though

Nahhh, Rey is just a poorly written character. Nothing to do with sexism. Nice non argument though.

>You need to give examples in the movie and explain why they detract from the experience.

They've been typed thousands of times. It's just entertaining to watch you tasteless fags defend your horse teethed shit actress.

It's a legitimate complaint about the lack of depth in her character, though the terminology is sexist

This is the fault of Jar Jar Abrams, who can;t make a fucking flawed main character for shit. See Kirk in Star trek.

Rian Johnson please save us from this shallow hell

Are they going to have better lightsabre battles?

TFA had pretty boring battles

They are all poorly written characters in a poorly written movie, but do keep showing your ass

Why does a character "need" to be flawed?

>though the terminology is sexist

Sexism is deflecting criticisms of female celebrity performances/roles with the defense that the criticisms are sexist.

Because a flawless character is boring and uncomplex

Because its human, and immersive, and you don't have to talk about why Rey was so boring and feasibly a Mary Sue months after the movie has left theaters.

the issue is that only 4channers know what a gary stu is, and only OP female characters are criticized it. like that guy said nobody was complaining about kirk being OP.

Kirk is an established character that always overcomes the odds, Rey was a new character who now everyone only knows as being perfect.

Yes, because of the inherent problem it causes. You can't really get involved with a character that is not relatable or believable.

>Character is the most perfect at everything in the galaxy
>kills trained stormtroopers armed with guns, with a staff
>is a better mechanic for one random ship out of the billions that exist than the previous owner for decades of same ship
>is a better pilot than all trained pilots even though she is not shown to have any vehicles of her own
>able to escape from imprisonment in a heavily guarded military fortress
>able to pick up a lightsaber and use it and defeat a heavily trained dark acolyte from the most powerful force user family of all time
GURLLLL POWER XD

dont give a shit if the character is a man or woman, its stupid that she was immediately, completely perfect at everything she tries

look you fucking squid I don't give a fuck about your beef with star wars or TFA in general, OP asked if calling a marry sue is criticism and that was my answer

uhhh no? in TOS yes, but not in the fucking jj reboot, which was an ORIGIN STORY. And he was a cadet

This

In the first movie Luke, the protagonist was shown to be pretty good at shooting a blaster and piloting a ship.

In Force Awakens Rey is the most formidable foe the bad guys could possibly have.

Luke Skywalker. Indiana Jones. Batman. Superman. Any Clint Eastwood action character.

>You can't really get involved with a character that is not relatable or believable.
Thinking a character needs to be relatable in order to be good is a pleb way of judging films.

>implying it is hard to kill stormtroopers
Stopped reading there.

>excuse me you fucking bitter white male, luke was actually a complete mary sue if you say rey was one! he blew up the death star!!!!1!1
yeah if you excuse how worthless he was up until he was guided by his mentor from beyond the grave to trust in the force

>killing storm troopers with blasters is comparable to beating them up with a big stick
your single mother failed you user, i know its not your fault

What the hell is your problem? Do you even read the posts you reply to?

Wrong, wrong, wrong, right, wrong.

And the one you got right was a comic book character, maybe you don't belong on this board.

James Bond

Rocky

>trains for 6 weeks
>now good enough to go toe to toe with the heavyweight champ

But TFA had "emotional" lightsaber battles. I almost cried

>special agent
>mary sue
You don't get it.

first post was meant for also nice trips

>Daniel Craig's James Bond is a garry stu.

If a character is just good at everything then there's no conflict
And conflict of some kind is at the heart of every good story

Nah dude if they had a male character in Rey's place people would still hate it
Luke wasn't a master at everything at the very start he was talented but he didn't beat Vader in the first movie

didnt fucking beat him in the second movie either

but rey has the power of social justice so it makes sense she beat the creepy white cis male

Mary Sues can sort have a place in cinema (see comic book movies), but in TFA it was jarring since its a remake of ANH and in ANH Luke was definitely not a Mary Sue.

Depends if you use evidence to back up your claims and why you came to the conclusion. Obviously a lot of people just like to use it as an insult to the character they don't like.

Rey is not a Mary Sue. Luke was a mary sue. Rey is a good character.

p sure luke sucked at a lot of things in the first couple films

How can you guys justify calling a character a Mary Sue when you haven't learnt all that is to be said about the character
it may be that she turns out to be extremely weak at things in the next 2 movies
you don't have all the information on her character yet
stop making assumptions
you're all retarded if you continue doing so

Rey

Amazing! A reasonable person on Sup Forums.

/thread

>is a better pilot than all trained pilots even though she is not shown to have any vehicles of her own
not shown to be better than all trained pilots
in fact Po seems better for just one example
>is a better mechanic for one random ship out of the billions that exist than the previous owner for decades of same ship
more likely her mechanic skills are like that of anakins, she probably has a (super) natural understanding of it
she's also not shown to be a better pilot she simply solved a problem before Han did and that's not saying much as he's meant to be a bit more flawed and slow in his old age

yeah of course it's fair friendo

it's a criticism of cliche character writing

Sup Forums, is calling anything I don't agree with a "shitty meme" a valid point of criticism, or is it just a shitty meme?

Because flaws make us human. All people are flawed. Even God makes the occasional platypus.

A flawed character is more relatable to us. We've all fucked up before and we know what it's like and can empathize when characters on the big screen fuck up.

I remember being an impulsive, emotional teenager, even if that was a decade ago. I've gotten angry and felt like smashing things before, and even if I handle that kind of impulse better than Kylo Ren, I can relate to it. I've lost faith in things I used to believe in, and felt alienated in new areas before. I've felt scared and wanted to run away before. Even if I've never turned traitor on an army and blown up stormtroopers I used to serve with, I can relate to how Finn feels.

I can't relate to Rey or Poe, who is every bit as much a mary sue as Rey. Frankly, I stopped finding anything to relate to with her after she stopped scavenging and doing shit work for no pay and started flying and fixing the Millennium Falcon better than Han Solo and winning lightsaber duels with a trained Sith who slaughtered an entire Jedi Academy and out-shot Stormtroopers the first time she held a gun. She's invulnerable, and therefore less interesting.

That's why characters should be flawed. Because the characters should feel like real people if we're supposed to relate to them and empathize with their struggles, and real people are flawed.

What are you talking about? People on a website concur the praised character is a Mary Sue so that makes it a shitty meme? How is that reasonable?

...

Its a meme and a way to mock crybaby liberals. When people call Rey a Mary Sue, they are turning shit liberals say and do against them to make fun of them and their fragile minds. Their only line of defense against this is saying shit like "see Trumptards get even more triggered than US at silly things they are even worse!!!!111!!1!1" when in reality we don't give a shit, we just like making fun of them.

>Poe, who is every bit as much a mary sue as Rey.
THIS

she gets more attention because she's the star of the movie and he gets two minutes of screentime, tops. But this utterly belies the "you're just sexist!" horseshit proposed by Disney marketers and thoughtlessly repeated by liberals as a thought-stopping technique meant to preclude criticism.

Poe gets captured literally at the start of the fucking movie how is that flawless

>Kylo Ren is a tragic and flawed person whose downfall, we are told, stemmed from relatable mistakes we can understand making, like being emotional and vulnerable and not yet mature enough to feel secure in the world, and being misled by an evil person who preys on insecurity and vulnerability

>Rey is instantly good at everything she tries, even better at it than established characters who are supposed to be good at these things - she out-shoots trained soldiers, she's better at flying and repair than Han Solo, she out-fights Kylo Ren, she out-Forces Kylo Ren repeatedly - and her only "human" moment is giving up on a vague idea that someone is coming for her when we're not really shown when or why she came to think this

Which one of these two is easier to relate to, and why?

>Finn is a flawed but good-natured person grappling with fear and guilt and occasionally making selfish choices out of fear, though over the course of the film and due to his interactions with other people he finally accepts the call to rise to the challenge rather than flee from it

It's not "sexist" to point out the male leads are more interesting than the female lead on their merits as characters. Calling it sexism is a blatant smokescreen, an attempt to silence critique. It didn't work in the elections and it shouldn't, and won't, work in film critique either.

Kirk is oftentimes either wrong or ignorant to what is going on at the beginning of TOS episodes. Kirk overcomes the odds in vary explainable ways and the audience can see the trial and error in Kirk's actions.

Was meant for

Because he only does so as a chance to prove how valiant he is and due to circumstances beyond his control (he couldn't possibly have known Kylo Ren could stop a blaster bolt in midair - if he did know that, he wouldn't have fired), he's clearly unphased by Kylo and immediately starts dropping Marvel-tier quips, completely ruining the previously serious and grim atmosphere, and then escapes in the very next scene by hijacking the only TIE fighter in the entire fucking galaxy that doesn't explode the first time it's hit. Seriously, find me one other TIE in the movie that takes hits from any enemy weapon and is merely disabled and sent into a crew-survivable crash rather than exploding in midair.

The only two other times he shows up, he's a completely invincible combat pilot who downs dozens of enemies singlehandedly without a scratch.

It cannot be denied that Rey is a boring character with incredibly few flaws considering her origin. It's not her power that makes her a Mary Sue, it's the fact that literally everyone who meets her either likes or is fascinated by/feels a connection with her, in Kylo's case. They treat her like she's special and important before she gives them a reason to.

However, it's pretty much guaranteed that she wouldn't get nearly as much backlash if she were a man. People would say Reyguy is a boring Luke rehash, but there wouldn't be threads and threads and pages and pages of rage about it.

Also, to be fair, you listed out Finn and Kylo who are the only interesting and flawed new characters in the movie. So of course they look better than Rey.

Poe is a gary stu for sure and I don't know why they advertised him as one of the "hero trio", since he doesn't even meet Rey. He's already a complete character who's at the top tier that he can be as a non-Force user, and there's nowhere for him to grow.

I'm not sure why people are clamoring to see more of him. I can't think of anything that makes him interesting other than SJWs wanting to see him fuck Finn for muh progressive.

"Bad things happening to a character" does not mean that character is not a Mary Sue. This is a common mistake from people with a shallow understanding of what a Mary Sue is.

If Poe got captured because he made mistakes stemming from his flaws as a person (such as, for instance, pride or arrogance), that would mean he's a character who has meaningful flaws.

>the fact that literally everyone who meets her either likes or is fascinated by/feels a connection with her, in Kylo's case. They treat her like she's special and important before she gives them a reason to.
Also this.
>Han Solo dies
>Leia ignores Chewbacca and hugs Rey over it, even though she met Rey once and Rey knew Han for all of 24 hours, rather than his literal life-indebted partner who has flown with him for decades and has decades of history with Leia
>we're supposed to empathize most with Rey for losing someone she just met

>Also, to be fair, you listed out Finn and Kylo who are the only interesting and flawed new characters in the movie. So of course they look better than Rey.
I get the sense that's why they're the other two lead characters.

>guaranteed less backlash
This is both unknown and unknowable. This is not a "guarantee," you're projecting your own underlying assumptions and then using that as "proof" of your assumptions. The idea that a new Star Wars movie would ever not get "threads and threads and pages and pages" around here is absurd.

>to prove how valiant he is
even if that were true it would make Poe a dumbass therefore flawed
try again
everything else he's good at is part of the character and justified
>immediately starts dropping Marvel-tier quips, completely ruining the previously serious and grim atmosphere
by which you mean adding contrast to Kylo's character and getting the audience on Poe's side
>find me one other TIE in the movie that takes hits from any enemy weapon and is merely disabled and sent into a crew-survivable crash rather than exploding in midair
the one Darth Vader is flying behind Luke
GTFO

How can you say Poe got captured for any other reason, he's clearly an overconfident moron
he tried to shoot a fucking sith
that's pretty flawed non

let it rest, autismo

>>find me one other TIE in the movie that takes hits from any enemy weapon and is merely disabled and sent into a crew-survivable crash rather than exploding in midair
Your answer:
>The one from a completely different movie
You're a special kind of stupid, aren't you?

And no, Poe isn't a dumbass for acting against information he clearly didn't have. Ignorant, perhaps, but not stupid. If he clearly observed Kylo Ren stopping blaster shots and then shot at him anyway, then he'd be a dumbass.

A Mary Sue is an author insert character. I'm sure J.J. wants to be a teenage girl but Rey is not a Mary Sue.

Please, the last time a Sith went running around he was defeated by a nobody farmboy.

That may be the origin of the term, but slang evolves even quicker than most language does and the term has come to encompass more than a simple wish-fulfillment self-insert in Star Trek fanfiction.

>Kylo Ren
that annoying whiny brat may be an interesting character but he is a shitty villain as he poses no threat whatsoever to our protagonist

even rey would be bearable if crylot would have kicked her arse at the end before the icy planet exploded

>Poe got captured!
He clearly knew this was a possibility, else he wouldn't have given the chip to BB-8 and told him to haul ass beforehand. Poe knew, or at least reasonably suspected, that he'd likely get captured and did so anyway. He neither arrogantly, nor stupidly, assumed he wouldn't.

I mean threads and threads of specifically raging over Rey. You can pretend it's not true, but we all know.

You forgot the "- Period - " It's literally the most important part of the meme

>Whiny

When? I can't remember one scene where he whined and yet people always use that descriptor for him. He's pretty pathetic but not whiny.

>american education system

>Poe isn't a dumbass for acting against information he clearly didn't have
He's one of the leading pilots in the resistance the main purpose of which is to oppose and bring down Kylo Ren
Poe knows who he is and knows he's powerful he was stupid
just accept it user

That's frankly a flaw I put on Rey's character, not his. His only problem was capturing the snowflake who can't lose. Unlike Vader, we're never actually really shown Kylo Ren menacing anyone in a successful manner. At least when Vader captured Leia she required rescue, and she still got the independent womyn who don't need no man bit rather than just a damsel in distress for helping to fight her way out afterwards.

It's horseshit. We get pages and pages of people raging over Finn for being black and over Kylo Ren for being whiny. Those two get less of it, though, because they were likeable, not because they're men.

Making wild speculatory claims like "this only happened because the character is female" and treating them like they're proven facts is retarded.

What's the difference between a competent character and a Mary Sue?

It's a valid point of criticism (see Rey) but of course idiots on Sup Forums just shout it at female characters now

>It's not her power that makes her a Mary Sue, it's the fact that literally everyone who meets her either likes or is fascinated by/feels a connection with her
This. The fact that she's unbelievably good at everything can be waved away with "the force lmao" magic wand, but every original lore character being inexplicably in love with her is the literal definition of a Mary Sue.

whether or no the person discussing them likes them or not
this place is cancer
>character is flawed = dumb character
>character is perfect = character is unrelatable

A competent character has a plausible backstory that explains why the character is competent. And that character usually has flaws/weaknesses that offset whatever he/she is good at.

The only hope for the new trilogy is Kylo Ren redemption arc alongside Rey going sith. Completely fixes her being a Mary Sue. It would need to be very well executed, but that sort of arc has the most potential.

When he learns the plans weren't captured he immediately turns and starts wailing on a random computer while screaming about it. We're later shown this is pretty common for him. I'd call that pretty whiny.

A competent character builds competence by overcoming real, impactful flaws. That is to say, they have flaws and vices - such as ego, pride, arrogance, greed, laziness, or just being in over their head - these flaws directly cause problems for the character that impact the plot - and the character overcomes these flaws by learning from their mistakes, thus gaining in competence and capability.

For instance, Luke is initially shown as being petty and lazy, and only steps up to the challenge after suffering through trials that change him as a person.

See

P sure no one where she lived on Jakku liked her or found her fascinating

Disney doesn't have the balls for it, but HOLY SHIT would that be a fucking fantastic trilogy.

He doesn't scream during that scene. He just breaks the computer. Breaking shit isn't whining.

It would also be pure pottery after little ani blew up the trade federation control ship with no piloting experience

Fair point. He's having a tantrum then.

Rey would never go full dark. My prediction is that Rey will start going dark, Kylo will see it and get bothered by it, thus kickstarting his redemption arc. Then in the end he helps Rey bring herself back from the brink because he has personal experience of being on it.

I still theorize that the last scene of VIII will be Rey willingly in front of Snoke for some reason or another.

Also, Daisy Ridley herself has said that she worries how people who loved and idolized Rey in VII will react to her in VIII. And Rian Johnson has said that she gets put through the emotional wringer in VIII.

Breaking shit is totally whining, yes he does, and he does the exact same thing when Rey escapes too.

He also whines to his daddy about how he feels torn apart and the pain is too much.

Try reading the posts you're responding to next time.

He's having a Vader tantrum but breaks things instead of people. I wonder if that'll change in VIII.

>not shown to be better than all trained pilots

Somehow she manages to pilot the Falcon by herself, when it took Han and Chewie together in the OT. Not to mention in the Battle of Endor it took a full crew to pilot it (Lando, Nien Nunb, plus a bunch of rebels).

Not to mention the manner in which she flew it was under the duress of combat, in an atmosphere (low to the ground), and through the superstructure of a massive wreck.

Breaking things and whining are two entirely different things, and talking to his father isn't whining unless talking about emotions at all is always whining.

>not shown to be better than all trained pilots
this is so fucking stupid

she outmaneuvered a whole fucking tie-fighter squadron in the remains of a crashed starship in a ship she never piloted before

how much better at piloting can she be?

JJAbrams is an alternate version of Michael Bay. He films things that he thinks looks cool and that pretty much summarizes everything you could say about his movies.

Don't underestimate the power of the montage