More Star Wars thoughts

[sabotabby]

The one person I know IRL who did not enjoy the movie said that he felt the villain was really underpowered and unimpressive compared to the protagonist, and Star Wars should be all about the scrappy rebels taking on more powerful forces. But...

[Zizek voice] This is the face of white male privilege and thwarted masculinity, you see. Under the mask, Kylo Ren is a scrawny emo teenager. (Yes, of course he is supposed to be in his 30s, but he doesn't look it or act it.) He is Reddit and 4chan and UKIP and Donald Trump. He has had every privilege—his parents are among the most powerful and celebrated people in the universe, and on the winning side of the war that defined their generation—and still he's unhappy. Resentful. Longing for the era of the Empire, when he could have had more power. The beauty of the Triumph of the Will scene is that it's all about nostalgia for fascism; it's Golden Dawn and the National Front, not the National Socialists, because they're dead and gone.

And to a large degree, at least in the West, we don't face great epic battles of good and evil. If we die violently, it's at the hands of an abusive husband, a mass shooter, a trigger-happy cop, all of whom have, at the basis of their motives, a toxic combination of privilege and resentment. They have most but they want all.

That's why Kylo Ren is scary. Because he's not Darth Vader. Darth Vaders are rare, and more easily toppled because of that scarcity, and the fact that everyone can be aligned against them. Kylo Rens are everywhere, and you're much more likely to have encountered one. I know I have.

Naturally, the people who arise challenge him? A woman, a black man, a Latino man, and an enslaved robot. And his lightsaber malfunctions, which is clearly a metaphor for impotence. [/Zizek voice]

The more I think about this movie, the less derivative it seems and the more I like it.

Comments

[priscillagreen.livejournal.com]

Yes, I get the whole magical thing. Still, taking down the Death Star was the one thing Luke did. Stuff made more sense with him, I think. Rae, though, she IS a Mary Sue.

[sabotabby]

It's a weird position, defending a franchise I'm not really invested in and spent months complaining that I didn't care about, under the helm of a director who screwed up two franchises I did care about, but I am heavily invested in overanalyzing pop culture, so here goes.

The definition of what a Mary Sue is now is so watered down from the original meaning that it basically amounts to "any female character who is good or special in some way." Back in my day (when we had to climb uphill both ways in the snow to find fanfic) it meant a silly self-insert who romanced the lead male character by being unrealistically good in stuff. The difference between Ebony Raven Darkstryder with brilliant violet eyes and a psychically bonded unicorn companion and Rey is pretty astronomical.

But the definition changed, so here goes. My bar for whether a character is a Mary Sue is two-fold:

1. Is what the character can do unrealistic for the universe?

With Rey, nope. There is magic, it's established that she's magical, and every skill she shows makes sense for the world (she's good with ships because she scavenges old ships, she's a good pilot because she understands the mechanics based on scavenging old ships, and she can fight with a melee weapon against an injured and untrained opponent because she's had to defend herself with a similar weapon for years, she can do mind control because she's just had it viscerally demonstrated by someone else who can use mind control, and it takes her a few goes). If she was doing the kind of backflip acrobatics we see trained Jedi do in the prequels, I'd agree with you, but within the context of heroic fantasy and a character that likely has two parents who are Force-sensitives, it's impressive but not insanely overpowered.

2. Would the character be considered a Gary Stu if she were male?

Again, no. Plenty of male Force-prodigies in the originals and prequels and no one objected. People forget just how compressed the timelines of A New Hope and Empire were because they're cemented in our cultural consciousness, but they both stressed that Luke could do special things because of hereditary magic and because instinct and feelings were more important than training. Rey, who is shown to have the basics of most of the skills she's uses, is only being dubbed a Mary Sue because she does special things and is also female.

Ultimately, it either works for you or it doesn't. But I don't think it makes sense to criticize this movie for working off rules established in the old movies.

[priscillagreen.livejournal.com]

Well, I can only speak for myself when I say I don't think Rey is a Mary Sue because she's a girl who can do a bunch of stuff. I would certainly feel the same were the hero a guy. With that said, it just didn't work for me, that and many other things. The characters don't make too much sense. Not only Rey, Finn doesn't make sense either. And then there's Kylo Ren, although I will reserve criticism here, because I do see potential in him.

I won't say it's a bad movie, it is a fun movie to watch, it just isn't great. But I do feel sorta the same about the old ones too, so I kinda get what you're saying about working off pre-established rules.