You need to accept that people are overly defensive when it comes to criticizing female characters

You have just given a clear example of why that it. To you woman equals women rather than a woman just representing herself.

Like Rey i'm one of those people who just has natural talent at many things.

This, this doesn't matter, not everything makes a good character, many people in life exist that would make bad characters to watch if translated accurately to the movies, there's a reason they make things up or exaggerate for films based on real people

Even Ellen Ripley was far more capable without having to detail every single thing she could do. She just did them, and people accepted it.

and to the reason why that was, she had character, what little character Rey had was overshadowed by simply being good, if Reys character had been stronger (character as in personality) people would have overlooked or not cared as much.

You can just come out and say you like this type of character, nothing wrong with that but then understand why others don't

@tazirai: Generalizations, and not one post in this thread has indicated that a person didn't like her because she was a woman to prove them.

I'm glad you're naturally talented at many things and have the confidence to say that. But I don't really care..

People accepted Ripley because she was a great character and well written. And everything she did felt natural throughout the movie.

It's understandable why people would be upset with Rey's character. Compared to Anakin and Luke, she was perfect. It's Star Wars for Christ's sake, lol. This franchise has a legion of followers and fans, and is arguably the most popular franchise ever. So of course people are going to criticize characters and the movies.

So I don't have a clue what a Mary Sue is and Google isn't giving me a good explanation, so what're y'all talking about?

As far as Rey is concerned, I think they played her well... up until the interrogation scene and the fight (which I saw the conclusion of that fight happening before it did thanks to the interrogation). Now as far as her unexplained Force power use, the only acceptable conclusion I will accept is when Kylo was doing his "mind meld" she either used some sort of occulemency (wrong fantasy series I know) and learned it from a previous experience he had OR he told her to do it during their melding.

As far as the fight goes, and her unexplained skill, the only thing I can think of is they are deciding to do a "Legend of the Seeker/Sword of Truth" thing where because the lightsaber was Anakin's/Darth Vader's/Luke's passed that information to her on how to fight or what she needed to do specifically to counter and defeat Kylo.

Another conclusion I can draw is her staff helped her with some lightsaber ability, not enough to defeat Kylo the way she did, but just enough to defend herself. Now I know it is possible that her staff is just a staff, and other than knocking the crud out of the two thugs and Finn she didn't really use it, but according to canon Plagueis' lightsaber was a staff. What if she has the lightsaber and did some basic training with it? I mean throughout the whole movie we only ever saw her carry it so the possibility is there.

The original trilogy has so many holes as well, don't get me started. Not everyone is exactly the same as far as talents are concerned. Rey is just the Michael Jordan of the Jedi. Also, in the book it states she battled with thoughts of the dark side. It's only the first movie and the force is about balance. The Sith always were more powerful when their were more Jedi in existence. Luke at the time of the movie was the only one left up until Rey, it's natural that the force would "strengthen" her or unlock her potential at the time it was needed in order to bring back balance amongst light and dark again.

@omanlew: Even Michael Jordan failed miserably at baseball.

Hmmm...let's see, she's an expert pilot, speaks at least four languages (one of which is wookie!?!?), an expert mechanic, a crack shot, morally pure and righteous, lethal hand to hand combatant, oh and also picks up the nuances of the Force in about 10 minutes of screen time. Sure sounds Sueish to me. Where do you go from there? What is Luke supposed to teach her? Where is there any room for growth in the character?

The problem for the filmmakers now is that they've painted themselves into quite a corner. Rey has become the avatar for an entire generation of third-wave feminists and the hero of millions of little girls ecstatic that one of their Disney Princess characters now inhabits the Star Wars universe. This severely limits what they can do with Rey's character now. There will be scattered showers in hell before Abrams and Disney let her go to the Dark Side or something cool like that.

One thing I hope they don't do is make her Luke's kid. Because any father who would abandon his 5 year old daughter on Planet Afghanistan under the care of that junk dealer scumbag is not too much better than a child molester. Please Mr.Abrams, you've already shat all over the Luke character, don't finish him off by making him a terrible father.

A few counters to points I've seen people bring up. To those who argue that Rey was just a Force savant, Bobby Fisher was a chess savant but he still had to be taught the rules of the game and how the pieces move.

To those who argue that she's an expert mechanic because of scavenging parts in a junkyard, when my car breaks down I take it to an auto mechanic, not to a junk yard owner. Knowing how to strip parts doesn't mean you automatically know how those parts work.

And for those who argue Kylo was injured. The only sense we get of that is when he takes a knee after getting hit. After that he calmly gets up and walks after Rey and Finn, somehow getting ahead of them which means he must have been chasing them at a dead run (so much for being injured), and begins hitting the wound to make it hurt so he can get angry. The guy obviously ain't gravely wounded here.

Look any one of these expert abilities would be fine, but not all of them. If she were just an expert fighter or just an expert mechanic or just an expert pilot or just an expert Force user she would not be a Mary Sue. It's the combination of all these things that pushes her over the edge. It's like The Force Awakens is a video game and Rey is playing it in God mode.

"She mastered flight"

Luke was pretty skilled himself for some reason, also that was a very crappy takeoff.

"Jedi Force skills"

Used it....three times in the whole movie, Luke was able to use the force to move the lasers too, light doesn't just turn at 90 degrees for no reason.

"lightsaber forms"

Keep in mind that she not only didn't look like she knew what she was doing, but Ren wasn't all that skilled either, Finn was able to land a hit on Ren as well meaning Ren is poorly trained, also having a blaster wound in the stomach doesn't help either.

"how to operate and repair antique ships"

Were you asleep at the beginning of the movie?

"beat trained Jedi-types at lightsaber and Force combat by the time she was 5 and dumped on jakkoff"

Huh?

"Oh, and not to mention that everyone loves her, and the Resistance trusts her with a sensitive mission and details within 5 minutes of meeting her"

She didn't meet the resistance till the end of the movie. Han was meh with her, the people on Jakku either didn't care for her, were ripping her off, or didn't like her. The first person who liked her was BB-8 then Finn. Everyone had a legitamate reason to like her. Also typically beating a sith and helping destroy a weapon that destroys 5 planets at once tends to make people trust you. Keep in mind she also nearly got Finn and herself killed twice, once while running from Tie fighters, the other when she released those super tentacle monsters.

"speaks at least four languages (one of which is wookie!?!?)" To be fair, it seems like everyone can speak everything except for Finn, i haven't seen a single person not understand what anyone was saying except for her. Seriously, we gonna get subtitles one day.

To those who can't understand why folks accuse Rey of being a Mary Sue, ask yourself, if you were written into the Star Wars universe what would you want your story to be?

Obviously you would want to be a Jedi. Powerful with the Force, maybe more powerful than anyone who has come before. Hell, maybe even The One. But even with all of your magnificent power you would still want to be trained and since Luke is the last Jedi what better way to meet one of your favorite heroes from the original trilogy?

Also you would want to meet Han and Chewie and have them take an instant liking to you. And you would want a ride in the Millenium Falcon. Wait, scratch that. Why not make yourself an expert pilot so you could actually fly it yourself? And maybe, just maybe, you're an expert mechanic as well, so you actually repair the Falcon. Heck, make it so you know more about the ship than Han does! Oooh and Han likes you so much that he offers you a job, after knowing you for all of 30 minutes.

And, obviously, you would want to take part in a climactic battle with the big baddie in the film and totally kick his ass. Even though he may have had more training than you, who cares? This is your story dammit!

And in the end you save the day and find the MacGuffin when no one else could and everyone from the original trilogy and all your new characters love you!

Now, can you see why Rey is nothing but a flat, wish-fulfillment wet dream?

Part of the problem is Abrams style which we saw with Lost. Lost had incredible scenes and sequences which were segued together with mystery rather than story.

Its not so much that Rey is a bad character or that the acting is bad, it just bad writing really. Abrams wanted to have his lightsaber battle at the end, and he couldn't come up with a rational way in the story that would allow for it so he used mystery instead (lightsaber visions....). He admitted as much when he said that he wanted to have Rey meet Luke at sometime in TFA, but couldn't make it work. So he left Rey learning the force quickly, without any explanation as for why.

Also the relationships where Leia, Finn, Han Solo, Maz Kanata, and Kylo Ren seemed to know more about Rey than they should having just met. I think Abrams didn't have time for dialogue, or couldn't come with anything interesting for the characters to say to each other, so he just made everyone instantly trust Rey, and Rey instantly know who is good and bad, aside from her attacking Finn initially.

I think the problem was not only that was good at everything, but that the other charactrers where kind of underwhelming in comparison. In A new Hope the balance between the protagonists (Luke, Leia and Han) was better, since Luke had the force but was apart from this not as bad ass/experienced as the other two and Vader was a super menacing villain.

Here you had Rey who was super bad ass. Finn on the other hand was kind clumsy in comparison (a little bit like a Luke without force Jar-Jar), which is strange if you consider that he was trained from birth to be a storm trooper, and was (according to the star wars wiki) one of the best in the training. And Poe who would have been more on Reys level, was hardly in the movie.

And Keylo Ren had a cool first scene but was very quickly deconstructed.

@linsanel_doctor:Precisely, the only reason the audience were actually affected by Alderaan's destruction was due to Leia's reaction. We knew it affected her, which in turn affected us. But Starkiller Base destroys the entire New Republic system (again trying to copy the OT) and no one even bats an eyelid.

Anyone that argues that Rey's level in the Force isn't crazy is damnright lying to themselves. She possesses the same (if not more) level in the Force than the Chosen One during Attack of the Clones, bear in mind this is the person with the highest affinity (connection) to the Force ever and has trained a good what decade in the Force under Obi-Wan Kenobi. But Rey, oh she's never even used the Force before the movie and yet somehow after literally learning she has it achieves feats that a Jedi Master can. Yep, totally not overpowered. If anyone says "Maybe she's more powerful than Anakin" I say shut the fuck up, so a being created by the Force is going to have less power than another Force user? No one could achieve a higher affinity, at best they would have an equal (if they were also created by the Force, but then that would just be an utterly terrible and unoriginal storyline.... oh wait...). She even managed to best a third generation Skywalker's Force abilities despite her having no training and him having been trained as a Knight of Ren.

Let's get to her understanding of Wookie: I can accept her knowing droid at a stretch but Wookie? She spends her entire life scavenging to survive and manages to learn fluent Wookie and droid? It's not like we even see a large population of Wookies on Jakku or a Wookie vendor or anything. The writers just wanted a way of communicating what Chewie was saying.

So because she's been a scavenger all her life she somehow knows how to fix the Falcon better than Han (who's been maintaining her most of his life) and knows how to use basically any technology? Sure thing.

She manage to basically beat Kylo Ren in a Lightsaber duel despite him having actual training and her having non (sure you can argue staff, but that's almost completely different from a Lightsaber); before anyone argues "Finn managed to hold up" he was trained as a Stormtrooper since infancy (the FO Stormies are also much more elite and better trained than the GE as they don't have the luxury of numbers) so of course he would manage to at least hold his own, remember when he fought that Stormtrooper with the anti Lightsaber staff or whatever? That shows that all Stormtroopers were at least trained in that style of weaponry (he had nothing to distinguish him from average Stormies such as special markings).

The list goes on and on.

Actually this thread has given me an idea.... what if Rey was a female clone of Anakin? That could be an intriguing and original way to explain her great affinity to the Force. Even so it doesn't explain her great powers with no training.

I think this sums up a lot of these points: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1zNOnoehpM&feature=youtu.be

There isn't anything wrong with being a Mary Sue.

And she's not the worst character ever made