[NGTM-1R]

But even then, master pilot?

Da fack are you talking about? Rey's one pilot outing showed no masterful use of stick and throttle, but the power of desperation and ignorance. She did what she did not in certainty she could do it, but in certainty she would die if she did not and in ignorance of how suicidal it was. Rey attempted what she did with the Falcon because she was not a master pilot.

I dunno, maybe you watched some other movie where she magically outflew the First Order TIEs so bad they all crashed following the Falcon but that's explicitly not what happened. It wasn't following her that killed them, as it was with some of the TIEs that followed Lando into the Death Star. It was a rookie move that put the Falcon more at risk than its pursuers, redeemed only by her maneuver at the end to give Finn a shot.

Master engineer?

Dunno man she's been doing mechanical salvage since she was like seven and ****, that's clearly not at all related to working on damaged machinery. (One mention of sorting out a problem on the Falcon doesn't make her a master engineer even if she's never touched a machine before either.)

[Scourge of Ages]

Not bragging, but watched Ep VII again yesterday. After reading through the relevant topic here, and this one, I watched the final lightsaber duel in earnest, and found that it actually holds up:

At the start of Rey's duel with Kylo Ren, he's been shot with a bowcaster and taken a good slicing by Finn. Rey was nicely rested after a brief unconsciousness (it's a well established movie trope, don't worry about it).
Rey attacks with all the skill of a flailing gundark, stabbing and slapping with the lightsaber, and is easily driven back by Ren. Ren is wounded, and wielding his own lightsaber one-handed instead of with both, because of the wounds.

Rey is driven back to the edge of the cliff, and their sabers lock. She now draws on the force with purpose and will, where previously she's mostly just done so instinctively. She pushes Ren back with new strength, and attacks again. This is the key part: She's still using the same shabby lightsaber techniques, lunges and weak slices, but she's doing so with the force guiding her strikes where Ren isn't defending, and with much more strength than before.

[Luis Dias]

I buy that explanation. I don't buy the "not a master pilot at all, she was just lucky not to crash and then make this amazing turn giving Finn the shot". Yeah. Luck. Must I pull a well known Kenobi quote about "Luck" here?

[Scotty]

Well, it is luck... from a certain point of view.

EDIT: That said, nothing Rey does is really excellent flying until the maneuver where she enters a stall (in a ****ing spaceship) to give the locked gun a clear firing line.  I don't blame the TIE pilot for not seeing that really dumb maneuver coming.  The first TIE didn't go down to Rey's flying, it went down to Finn's gunnery.

[Luis Dias]

"Dumb" is when Anakin just shoots everything in his newfound spaceship and manages to destroy a whole station by himself. As a kid. Punching buttons. That's dumb! And yes, that scene is way worse than anything TFA has to offer. Then again, you'll never catch me saying that this new movie is "as bad as the prequels". Now that would be dumb !

[Dragon]

Actually, that particular scene made plenty of sense. Remember that he ended up in a hangar bay. Try the same in a hangar of a modern aircraft carrier and you're likely to sink it, too. Randomly firing your guns (and especially missiles, which was what he did, going by the visuals) in a place full of fuel, munitions and other explodey things is gonna do that. What might raise an eyebrow is him surviving the resulting fireworks, or for that matter getting in there in first place, as opposed to being shot down on the way. Not to mention landing on the very ship that controlled the whole droid army (itself a blunder on the Federation's parts, but at least a plausible blunder), which, IIRC, was indistinguishable from other Lucrehulks in the blockade. But hey, the Force (and R2D2) was with him.

[Scotty]

That scene was terrible, Dragon.  Anakin Skywalker, accidental savior of Naboo was stupid.

[Goober5000]

I haven't read Honor Harrington, but just because Honor Harrington is a Mary Sue doesn't mean Rey isn't.  There are too many places in the film where Rey knows exactly how to do whatever it is that needs to be done to move the story forward.

Luke's piloting can be excused because he flew a lot in his T-16 back home.  Fine.  But he still is completely unfamiliar and unskilled with the Force, and has to be trained in its use, even though it's clear he has raw talent.

Rey's mechanical know-how can be excused because she scavenges in the desert.  Fine.  But there are a half-dozen other things she can do perfectly without any background or justification; and she is not merely talented in the Force, she is skilled in how to use it, and in which Force technique is needed for which situation.

John C. Wright, in his typically loquacious way, wrote at length about his thoughts on Episode VII.  This part does a good job of summing up the Mary Sue aspects of Rey:

Then she turns out to be:

    1. an ace pilot who can outfly trained fighter pilots.
    2. And she knows more about the engineering details of the Millennium Falcon than Han Solo.
    3. And she is a crack shot even though she seems not to know where the safety on a handgun is.
    4. And she saves [Finn] one more time, using her knowledge of the mechanisms of an unfamiliar ship.
    5. Then it turns out she has force powers like a Jedi, including visions of the future and past. She can resist mind-to-mind combat with Big Bad Sith, and even read his mind in the process. But, unlike Luke, she needs no training: she can do advanced mind-control techniques without a single lesson or even being told that such things are possible.
    6. Hence, she can escape from the innermost dungeon of a Sith Lord fortress unaided.
    7. And she can lightsaber fight without training against a man taller and stronger and trained in the art.

This last is after [Finn] yet one more time again fails at acting the man and is *****slapped and curbstomped by the Big Bad, so she picks up his dropped lasersword and finishes the duel. Then there is an earthquake, and the planet blows up, so that part was pretty cool.

Now, each of these improbable little acts of Li’l Miss Too-Cool-for-School might have been believable if the lazy writer had done his darned job and given the paying customers in the audience even the slightest reason to believe it:

    1. Maybe her ace piloting was because of her familiarity with the wrecks through which she had climbed and scavenged for years, and she knew where every strut and spar was like the back of her hand.
    2. Maybe her years of scavenging had given her such familiarity with machines that, uh, she had worked on Han Solo’s ship previously, as a grease monkey, and read all the engineering manuals.
    3. Maybe she was always a crack shot, because she used to bullseye wamp-rats back home in Beggar’s Canyon, and she was merely unfamiliar with this model of blaster, not with all blasters.
    4. Maybe she is a technopath, and has the same affinity for any starship circuitry as Speed Racer has for the Mach 5. She was using the Force. Maybe she is a cyborg, and could plug her brain directly into the ship core, and understand immediately where everything is.
    5. Maybe the Force is desperate to grant her extra powers to stop the evil Sith Lords or something. Or she has a higher mitochlorian count than Darth Vader. Or she has been practicing in the backyard on her own for years. Or she had years of training but forgot them due to a blow to the head. Or something.
    6. Maybe she was being allowed to escape, in the hopes that she would unwittingly lead the Sith Lords to the McGuffin.
    7. I myself, with only one lousy year of fencing training, could stand with my back to the wall and parry every attack made by a more athletic, younger and stronger man, and he had a foil and I had a broomstick. The idea that an untrained girl could hold her own against a trained opponent is absurd. Maybe the Big Bad was gutshot, wounded by [Finn], under orders not to kill her, or had some ulterior reason for making her think she can fence.

I can play the fansave game as well as any fanboy. But why the heck am I doing the writer’s work for him?

Time for a Writer’s 101 lesson: In any ensemble piece, each character needs a skill or a quirk or something that makes him memorable, and in the plot, and you need each character to do his one shtick at least once in the plot. R2D2 has to hack into the computer system via the electrical plug at least once, because he is the hacker, and Han Solo has to outrace pursuing battleships at least once, because he is the hotshot pilot, and Obi-Wan must sense a disturbance in the force at least once, and say something mystical and cryptic, because he is the Old Wizard and this is his shtick. But if Mary Sue can outhack, outpilot, and outwiz the robot, the rogue, and the wizard, she is a boring character because she can do everything, and they are all boring characters because they can do nothing. See? Simple.

But all this is a minor complaint. After all, James Bond both can outfight, outshoot, outdrive, outscubadive and outparachute any foe he comes across, and seduce any woman, and identify the year of the bubbly and which side of which field in France the grapes were grown. Heroines as well as Heroes get to be good at everything: fine. But James Bond is not part of a team. He is a loner.

My major complaint is that there was no chemistry, no camaraderie, no affection between Junkyard Girl and any other character. She was good at everything and so there was no need for [Finn] to be there. There was no need for Han Solo to be there.

Oh, and after Han Solo died, Chewbacca should have inherited the Falcon.  He earned it.  Rey had no business leapfrogging over him.

[Scotty]

She isn't an ace pilot, she did a maneuver that no trained pilot would actually do and it worked because it was unpredictable.  Unless nearly dragging the Falcon through the dunes is ace piloting?

She knows more about the converter that was installed without Han's knowledge than Han does.  The other issue that arises and is fixed is presumably non-unique to the Falcon, and one that we don't hear whether Han could fix or not.  My money is on him being able to.

She misses outright on her first shot (it's not even close) and corrects.  This isn't difficult to do on a weapon with no recoil.

Her lack of knowledge of an unfamiliar ship is why anyone is in danger from those beasts at all in the first place.

Five and six are the only entries on that list that remotely approach genuine gripes, and I'm willing to bet they're integral to the plot.  Though I notice five is addressed in the next list with something that would have assuaged Mr. Wright's complaint and could still be present with little difficulty in the next movie.

Seven has been discussed ad nauseum.  Shot, stabbed, exhausted, not-trying-to-kill-her Kylo Ren got beat by a Force inspired Rey.

I highly, highly doubt that Rey 'leapfrogged' Chewie for the Falcon.  Do you think she'd be able (or want) to stop him from flying off with it?

EDIT: I'm not even really digging deep into inferences here.  This is all stuff plainly visible in the movie.

[Det. Bullock]

Rey was exposed to the force directly first by the lightsaber vision and then via the mindmelding that Ren tried on her.

The latter is visibly responsible for her controlling the guard, if we can assume that when she was probed with the force she could somewhat "see" what Kylo Ren was doing (I imagine Jedi masters didn't use such a thing because they didn't like torturing their students, it would explain why Sith get stronger earlier) and tried to imitate it and not even succeding immediately.

After that simply channeling the force like she does later was only slightly different.

[Goober5000]

1) Flying the Falcon through the bowels of a Star Destroyer without crashing into anything is ace piloting.

2) I might be able to give the converter thing a pass, as it falls under the general junkyard/mechanical skill category.

3) So, one missed shot is enough to teach her all she needs to know about marksmanship?

4) Which does not at all imply that she knows exactly what to do to fix it.

5,6,7) Plausible, but all of these are, again, fan-saving the writers.

Rey leapfrogged Chewie because the end of the movie clearly shows her in Han's seat in the Falcon.  Chewie should have been in that seat.

And even if one conceded every one of the above points, there's still the issue that the ensemble doesn't work because Rey is able to do everything herself.

[Scotty]

You mean the Star Destroyer she's been scavenging for literally her entire life?  I bet she knows that layout better than anyone alive.  Even a rudimentary knowledge of how to pilot something, to say nothing of her force sensitivity, should put that to rest.  And really, the force sensitivity is the key here, because force sensitives are excellent pilots without exception in Star Wars.  My points above are that her piloting isn't nearly as perfect as everyone seems to want to declare.

How many shots did you see her take?  I count five, including the one she misses at the start.  60% is a pretty good number in terms of accuracy, but the sample size is abysmal.  And then there's the whole, you know, force sensitivity.

It doesn't imply she knows exactly what to do to fix it, but have you seen that scene again lately?  She ****s up and unleashes the Rathtars (I hate that name), the beasts go rampaging, everybody runs everywhere, Finn get snatched up and dragged off.  Rey runs in an all but random direction, and ends up next to the video panel.  She watches carefully, punches some numbers (there are numerals on the display, perhaps those ones?), and hits the door.  She didn't go running around looking for it, she didn't know to go straight for the blast doors.  It's a coincidence, and far lower on the list of suspicious coincidences than a number of other things in the movie.

Until we actually get Episode VIII in theaters, and we see whether the writers do anything with it, it's a bit early to be declaring that.  I highly, highly doubt that anything about Episode VIII has changed, especially something that significant, because of some internet complaints that everything wasn't tied up in a neat bow in the first movie of a designated triology.

Chewie sat in the Falcon's co-pilot seat for literally the entire time they owned the Falcon.  Clearly, Lando leapfrogged Chewie during the Battle of Endor, too.  Can't be the seat Chewie's most used to, no siree.

Rey is a serviceable pilot (Poe is better, significantly, explicitly the best), Finn is better with a blaster (he hits with significantly more than 60% of his shots, go ahead and count.  I looked, and couldn't find one where he missed ), Neither Finn nor Rey nor Poe can do the hacking thing that droids do.  What's this 'everything' you're saying she can do?  Unless you mean "technically capable of at a moderately proficient level", in which case Finn demonstrated most of those things, too.  Good with a blaster, has the exact same capacity for hacking that Rey does, and held his own in a lightsaber fight with a trained user.

The Force Awakens is not a perfect film.  Rey is not a perfectly written character.  That's not in question, nor was it ever claimed.  She is, however, not nearly as 'overpowered for the setting' (what the hell does that even mean, in a series that contains over the course of its history Palpatine flinging multi-ton senate seats at Yoda like they're made of papier mache, Mace Windu literally causing an earthquake with his fists, and Darth Vader's secret apprentice dragging a Star Destroyer out of goddamn orbit with the Force?) as the complaints in this thread make it sound like - which is to say she isn't at all.

[Mammothtank]

I recall that Rey's piloting ability happened to be from a scavenged Flight Simulator. But yeah, they could've atleast put it in the background.

[Mongoose]

Threads like these give me an intense desire to break out the spray bottle and yell "NO!  BAD nerds!"

[StarSlayer]

Nobody saw her wearing the rebel flight helmet playing make believe "Pew Pew?"  Seems like good training to me

[karajorma]

I love how every is ignoring the clearest, most unambiguous example. She can force pull better than Luke. Even though he actually had some training from a jedi knight and time to practice.

Why the hell is anyone still defending this?




Also, Scotty, what the hell are you on about? Chewie was on the surface for the entire battle of Endor!

[AdmiralRalwood]

She was also roomates with the Queen's sister

Cousin; Elizabeth doesn't have any sisters.

[Scotty]

Whoops.  Return of the Jedi is the one I've seen least recently, so I blame that for the slip.

The force pull is covered under Goober's points 4/5/6 that we've been lumping together to avoid massive quote chains on the same topic.  Namely, that it's alluded to pretty heavily in the film itself (and the sub-title to the entire film ), in character, that Rey is the subject/object of some considerable potential.  It is an unresolved plot thread, because resolving all the plot threads in the first film of a trilogy results in a single movie and not said trilogy.

If, for whatever reason, the explanation for that in Episode VIII (or IX) ends up being utter horse****, I'll gladly jump on the wagon with you.

She was also roomates with the Queen's sister

Cousin; Elizabeth doesn't have any sisters.

Right.  Massive difference, that.

[Luis Dias]

I have no idea why people are still defending it, it's purely irrational analysis without any hint of perspective. I can totally understand that one can make excuses and justifications for all the things we see her do, but when there's just too many of them, that's just Mary Sueness. It's not the *worst* Mary Sue I've ever seen (my cringe trophy goes to captain Janeway first few episodes of Voyager), but it *is* a Mary Sue. And I totally agree with the analysis that an ensemble only works if the protag cannot do everything. Only in RotJ we see Luke slaying the **** out of Jabba's people almost by himself, but even then he needs his friends' help and it's also a period wherein he's almost basically a Jedi Knight (the deleted scene before he goes to the Jabba palace is one where he builds his own light saber, which is supposedly a very "Jedi Knight" thing to do, as Vader implies later on, and as been "confirmed" in the cartoons and so on (yeah I know)).

Lastly, it's obvious why Chewbacca was "leapfrogged". He's a walking dog. Dogs are cool to have. To cuddle. They give company and might even help you do ****. But they are just pets in the end. And Chewbacca always was and apparently always will be... a big pet.

[Scourge of Ages]

Lastly, it's obvious why Chewbacca was "leapfrogged". He's a walking dog. Dogs are cool to have. To cuddle. They give company and might even help you do ****. But they are just pets in the end. And Chewbacca always was and apparently always will be... a big pet.

OR: Rey is Han's and/or Leia's daughter. Chewbacca's life-debt (and Han's property) passed to her after Han's own son killed him. Actually, this also explains why Kylo Ren freaks out that there was a girl on Jakku that helped Finn and BB-8.