In Defense of "The Force Awakens" Episode II: Rey Is Not A Mary Sue

Though I quite enjoyed Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, I've learned since watching the movie that not everyone shares my affection. Having read more Star Wars hot takes since December 20 than I hope ever to read again, I have identified the four strongest and most common criticisms of The Force Awakens: 1) The politics are too vague/confusing; 2) Rey is too perfect/powerful; 3) It is too similar to past Star Wars movies; and 4) There are too many plotholes. I responded to the first criticism here. Here follows my response to the second criticism. 

"Do you really think I am a Mary Sue?"

2) Rey is too perfect/powerful.
Examples: Megan McArdle, Sonny Bunch (again)  

The basic thrust of this argument, one of the first to emerge against The Force Awakens, is that the character Rey (played by Daisy Ridley) is just too perfect. The particular phrase used is “Mary Sue,” which refers to a character for authors of fan-fiction who appears in an already extant universe and is both perfect and represents the author herself. Of course, Rey cannot literally be this, as some critics claim, since all of the screenwriters and the director are male and she is female. It is also odd and highly speculative to think that those writers would want to insert themselves into a Star Wars movie. Perhaps this is a case of projection by critics? But I digress. 

Rey, the argument goes, is multilingual, technically proficient, good in hand-to-hand combat, an ace pilot, figures out how to use the Force and a lightsaber without anyone to train her and bests a trained Sith in combat, and, overall, is uninteresting and never does anything wrong. This is inaccurate for many reasons. The first three traits (multilingual, technically proficient, good in hand-to-hand combat) are logical outgrowths of a lifetime spent taking care of herself as a scavenger on a hostile, diverse desert planet (also, note that Han Solo was fluent in at least three languages in A New Hope: Wookie, Hut, and whatever the heck Greedo spoke).

Rey’s piloting skills, Force ability, and lightsaber prowess are also wholly defensible. One can account for the first from a combination of Rey’s familiarity with starships from her occupation and her latent Force ability (the same sort of ability that allowed a young Anakin Skywalker to win the Boonta Eve podrace and destroy the droid control center in The Phantom Menace, and that allowed Luke Skywalker to fire two proton torpedos into a 2-meter wide space on the Death Star). Rey herself is a bit mystified by her piloting skills, which further suggests a manifestation of Force sensitivity. 

But that’s just piloting a starship. What about Jedi mind tricks, use of the Force, and lightsaber dueling? Concerning the first two, it’s inaccurate to remark, as some have, that Rey has no reason to know it’s even possible to use the Force, much less in the way she uses it. For in addition to imbibing a sort of mythic sense of Luke Skywalker at some point in her life prior to the movie, learning from Han Solo that the Force is real, learning from the wise Maz Kanata that the Force has called to her, and having an introductory Force “vision quest” from Luke's lightsaber, Rey has received unwitting instruction from Kylo Ren, her rival by the end of the movie, in the ways of the Force by his using it against her. This Force feedback loop is especially apparent when he, attempting to read her mind, gets his own mind read, but it is reasonable to infer that this happens at other times (e.g., Rey learns that the Force can influence the minds of others when Ren uses it to knock her out; she learns the Force can be used telekenetically when Ren uses it to throw her against a tree). 

But what about the lightsaber fight? Surely even a self-awarely Force-sensitive youngling couldn’t best a trained Sith like Kylo Ren? Au contraire. For not only is Ren--whose training, we learn from Snoke, is incomplete--compromised emotionally--by killing his father (note his somewhat-psychotic punching himself where wounded to make himself bleed)--and physically--by a shot right to the stomach from a weapon established earlier in the movie as quite powerful--but he also faced Rey after having already dueled and dispatched the valiant but Force-insensitive Finn. Rey also fights Ren with a weapon established earlier in the movie as having a mind of its own, a mind that has sought her out, and a mind that seems to act in her favor. Ren is also fighting her not to kill her but to capture her for Snoke (for Pokemon players: Ren wanted to catch Rey, but he didn’t have a Master Ball).

When Ren and Snoke discuss Rey, moreover, they speak of an “awakening,” a term that has not appeared in any prior Star Wars film, which suggests Rey is taking a different path along the Force than we have seen before. Ren and Rey’s unusual Force potency likewise suggests that the Force itself is acting differently from past movies (the movie is called The Force Awakens). This becomes ironic in light of the criticism (I shall discuss next) that The Force Awakens is too similar to past Star Wars movies, as many of its critics hold simultaneously that a) Rey’s path to the Force is too different from what we’ve seen in past Star Wars movies and b) The Force Awakens is too similar to past Star Wars movies. And if Ren and Supreme Leader Snoke, two of the galaxy’s three most powerful Force users, felt Rey’s awakening, then surely Luke Skywalker, the galaxy’s third, felt it as well. This is speculation for now, but who is to say that Luke did not guide her from afar?

Stepping again outside of intra-movie logic, recall that Star Wars is replete with powerful characters. Indeed, the Force itself is a bit of a cheat, enabling whatever powers or plot points required at any given moment and generating powerful characters, problems that have been with Star Wars since the beginning and are hardly unique to this movie. (A friend of mine once suggested to me that the best way to understood Star Wars is to replace every instance of “the Force” with “the plot.” E.g., Star Wars Episode VII: The Plot Awakens; “The plot is strong with this one”; “Use the plot”; “The plot is all around us,” etc.). Even so, Rey’s reliance on “feelings” to become greater in tune with the Force is consistent with the Force’s somewhat inconsistent logic.

 
It is also untrue that Rey is uninteresting and fails to do anything wrong. Unlike the whiny, spoiled, wanderlusting brat Luke in A New Hope, Rey clings to her life on Jakku in the vain hope that the parents who long ago abandoned her will return; it visibly pains her to leave that hope behind. The next claim (never does anything wrong) is also untrue: On Han Solo’s freighter, she accidentally releases dangerous monsters, nearly killing several of her friends; in Maz Kanata’s castle, she runs away from her apparent destiny to be a Jedi, persisting in the hope of returning to her parents; having run away, she nearly gets herself killed when failing to fire a blaster properly (something Luke, in this argument a superior character, never had any trouble doing, by the way), and soon afterward gets herself captured. 

Thus, Rey is a far more interesting, believable, and defensible character than the rap against her suggests. And we haven’t even seen her arc play out fully. Luke was nothing interesting by the end of A New Hope; it is unfair to ask Rey to have a trilogy’s worth of character development in one movie.

Next, I shall address criticism 3): It is too similar to past Star Wars movies.