Jesus....

I think it raises some fair points. "Mary Sue" has become an intrinsically derogatory term, while it's male equivalent is rarely used. And it's right about some comparisons between Luke and Rey - in the course of a few days, and with minimal training, Luke goes from backwater refugee to an incredible pilot who can navigate the lethal Death Star trenches, outfly Vader (supposedly the best pilot in the galaxy) and make a 0.0001% shot to blow up the Death Star. He's even put in charge of a squadron during the most important battle in the Rebellion's history to date, presumably leapfrogging ahead of loads of more qualified and experienced people. His learning curve is no less astonishing than Rey's.

Well to begin with storytelling has evolved a lot since the original star wars, so I think it's pretty weak to hold characters to the same standard of that era in film.

Having said that, no.

Luke doesn't outfly Vader, Han comes back and rescues Luke.

Luke doesn't make that 0.0001% shot due to his own skill, he trusts in Obiwan who helps him to use the force.

In fact it's a pretty major part of the story that Luke doesn't do these things by himself, but is able to accomplish them because of the friendships he made throughout the movie.

Vader is flying right behind Luke in a narrow space where there's little room to manoeuvre and yet is unable to shoot him down. He's even surprised at how good Luke is, saying "the force is strong with this one". Vader probably would have got Luke given more time but there was a definite period when he's being outflown despite his hugely advantageous position.

I'm aware, which is exactly the point when it comes to Rey. It's implied throughout that she's being guided by the force, and that implication becomes explicit in the fight with Kaylo Ren.

Rey has Finn's help to shoot down the Tie Fighters when piloting the Falcon and the assistance of Chewie, Finn to beat Kaylo. Zoe Saldana, some combination of Luke/Obi-Wan (when she touches Luke's lightsaber) and even Kaylo all help her realise that she's a Jedi.

No. Wesley Crusher was constantly refereed to as a Mary Sue, and his character was almost universally hated my fans, so it has nothing to do with gender.

Wat?

You don't just "realise" you're a Jedi. It took Luke 2 and 3/4 films to become a Jedi; Anakin two films. Rey manages it 20 mins of screen time after finding Anakin's Lightsabre. That's what some people have a problem with.

I would have assumed any hate was due to him being an irritating character who is badly acted.

That is pretty thin...

I think you actually sum it pretty well with that last part though:

That's the problem.

Luke has people help him become a Jedi by overcoming his flaws. She realizes she is a Jedi already and has no flaws.

....irritating because he saved the Enterprise every other episode. No actor could have salvaged such bad development and writing.

I'm just pointing out that Rey has as much assistance as Luke does with her achievements, which are also a lot less spectacular than Luke's. As has been pointed ITT and other places, there are caveats to the calibre of Ray's accomplishments. She does initially struggle with flying the Falcon. She beats Kaylo but he's been seriously injured and isn't fully trained, and her swordplay isn't too impressive. It also takes her three tries to pull of the Jedi mind trick. I think the movie mad it fairly clear that she's not at Luke's Chapter IV level.

I admit that her quick mastery of the Falcon was the one moment of extreme competence that was a problem for me (and even the i09 article). It must be a much larger, more complicated ship than anything she's flown before and it's meant to be piloted by two people.

That's pretty bad, thoroughly ashamed of myself.

What? She teaches herself Jedi mind tricks (Luke first does this in Ep.6), is able to move objects using her mind (Luke Ep.5) and engages someone with a lightsabre (Luke Ep.5).

Ok Luke blows the Death Star up, but he is being explicitly guided by Obi Wan, is part of a squadron and also gets help from Han.

Pretty sure you're just trolling at this point though. Zoe Saldana kinda makes me think you haven't seen either movie.

Right, so thinking that Rey isn't a Mary Sue (I'm hardly alone in this) and a silly lapse in referring to the actress (I know it's Lupita Nyong'o) makes me a troll. Great reasoning.

On something else completely, how much of the literary extended universe is considered canon? I understand that everything from Zahn's Thrawn trilogy onwards can at best be regarded as taking place in an alternate narrative universe following TFA, but what about stuff set before or during the original trilogy?

Movies, cartoons, and whatever Disney (and it's subsidiary companies - Marvel) have published since purchasing the franchise. Everything else is considered Legends. So if it's more than a year or two old in print, it's probably wiped.

If Disney is going to rip anything off in the new Star Wars stuff, they should bring back Thrawn.

I agree with the main points of your argument, and you really highlight why Ep.4's pacing was so much better than 7. As far as Wedge and Biggs go, they certainly can't be less experienced than Luke in an X-wing, and unless the instruction was to let the least experienced pilot take the shot at the Death Star, while the more experienced ones covered, which is 1, unlikely, as Red Leader took their shot; and 2, Sounds like some of the ropey excuses presented ITT for the holes in Ep.7.

Anyway, its something that can be challenged on the basis of not making that much sense, and could be described as a plot hole. However you look at it, there are not as many in 4 as 7 imo, and at some point in 7 the plot holes got so big and so frequent that it caused me to suspend my disbelief and detracted from my enjoyment of the movie.

There were multiple pilots taking shots and missing, plus other pilots who intended to but got shot down.

Finally got around to seeing this. As a lifelong Star Wars fan who was into all the toys/games/books as a kid, I'm very happy with how this one turned out. All the gee-whizz sci-fi and loveable characters that made the first trilogy work are there. The Kylo story arc seems to click really well. BB-8 is way less irritating than I expected.

There are some niggling problems. As with the Star Trek movies, JJ spends way too much time doing fanservice and recycling old ideas instead of crafting his own storytelling (Let's do another Death Star assault! Hey, let's back Khan as the bad guy!). Kylo Ren immediately stops being cool when the mask comes off and we find out he's all emo Twilighty. C3PO with a red arm for no reason tilts me.

Still, if the worst you can say is "It's too much like the first one, only with better visual effects," then I gotta believe this franchise is in good hands and I'm already hyped for the next movie.

Also, Lord Voldemort as the head of the First Order was quite a surprise. I don't know how they managed to work out the licensing for that.

IIRC only Red Leader and Luke actually took shots at the exhaust pipe.

One is shot down before he's able to shoot, another takes a shot and misses.

You're both correct.

I rarely post in the lounge but I just had to post somewhere. Rotten tomatoes really ****ed up the rating on this show. It got a 93% rating. LOLOLOL. Please.

Kylo Ren was a massive badass when he appeared in the first scene. He is the ONLY force sensitive villain or jedi to EVER stop a laser shot in mid-air. Somehow he barely defeats a stormtrooper with a lightsabre? Are you f***ing serious? He could have ripped Finn's throat out with his force powers but nope, Finn even manages to land a shot on him. He manages to pick Rey up and throw her into the trees in the same scene but nah.. she can defeat him in a lightsabre battle because LOLz. The justification for this sudden weakness is that he's hurt even though he just threw Rey like a ragdoll. Why couldn't he stop Chewie's bullet even though he roared before he fired? The pilot guy shot him from behind silently and it was stopped.

Also, I could have choreographed a better lightsabre battle than that. The prequels had WAAAAAAAAAAY better lightsabre scenes even though the story was poor. The battle in Return of the Jedi was significantly better than this one.

I figured Han was going to die at the bridge scene since it was spoiled in the trailers. Kylo was being emo on the bridge but the trailers already indicated that he was going to fight Finn at some point so duh, Han had to die.

Kylo was very chilling with his mask on but he turned into a *** every time his mask was off. WTF is this ****.

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Here's some spoilers for you guys since I'm mega disappointed in this movie. These are just conjecture but whatever.

1) Snoke is Plagueis aka Sidious' master

2) Leia is going to convince Kylo to be a good guy, either on her deathbed or by meeting him. She needs to be relevant in the movie somehow so that's what she's going to do. He isn't going to kill her because no one gets to kill/dismember women in Disney films.

3) Rey is either Obi-wan's or Luke Skywalker's baby. She can't be a midi-chlorian baby like Anakin because she has visions of someone leaving her behind and gets emo whenever she sees a plane flying vertically into the sky. Kylo Ren also seems to have an indication of who she really is.

4) There's going to be another villain (not Snoke) who is going to wield the sabre like a badass and Kylo will fight him/her. Probably the Knights of Ren. If it's the Knights of Ren, Rey will join Kylo in his fight against them.

Disappointed that I looked forward to this movie for so long and avoided all spoilers online, only to be shown a mediocre turd. 5/10 imo.

Hmm I just saw the second teaser trailer of Force Awaken's and Luke says, "The force is strong in my family. My father has it. I have it. My sister has it. You have that power too."

Rey is Luke's! Unless he's somehow talking to Kylo. Hmm.

I'll defend the better lightsaber duels in the prequels by saying that they were fully, classically trained jedi/sith in an era when the jedi were thriving. They had a lot of time to learn that ****. There's only one person in this movie that's ever even used a light saber before and he has a pretty unstable one at that, so the fight's shouldn't have looked as good.