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I will die on the hill that it would have been a vastly better trilogy and truly subverted expectations if they had had the balls to have Kylo and Rey flip sides in the throne room confrontation. Rey was already an amazing Dragon, while Kylo always seemed to be playacting to get one of his father figures attention.
Daisy Ridley is maybe a touch too much younger than Adam Driver for my idea, but with different casting could have just copy-pasted the idea of Revan from Kotor. Rey was the one who seduced Ben Solo to the dark side, they destroyed Luke's Jedi Academy together and killed Mara Jade, Luke's best way of dealing with her when he beat her and drove off Kylo Ren was brainwashing her and dumping her on Jakku 10 minutes away from Han Solo. Also I'd just make Rey an XX-clone of Palpatine and Snoke a defective clone.
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Absolutely.
Watching the Darth Vader LARPer wake the fuck up? Adam Driver totally could have sold it.
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Yep.
There were like 50 ways they could have taken Rey's character to make the trilogy interesting and unique.
I distinctly recall talking to my friend after watching The Force Awakens and saying "I think they made Rey too perfect, but I am curious to learn about her background and I'm willing to see if they do anything fun with her." And they just drove her deeper into Mary-Suesville.
Having her turn in the second film would also suit the general "the good guys lose" trend of the second movies in the trilogy. And if they want to keep the circle of important characters small, then obviously have Finn be the one who either redeems her and/or kills her in the third.
Building up one character as an Overpowered prodigy to then have her flip to the bad side is a great way to raise stakes.
Likewise, one idea I've had floating around was... if you wanted to give Leia force powers, then why not have her whip out force lightning at some point in the film. A power that is universally associated with the bad guys, and Leia can use it, but maybe only under extreme stress or something. You can subvert expectations without just dumping on the actual work itself.
"Mary-Sue but evil" does sound fun -- I can't think of it having been done, in fact?
In a mainstream story, not a ton, and most of the cases I can think of it's at least arguable that the writer believed the character to be a hero or 'conflicted', all evidence to the contrary aside. For a male example, Aizen from Bleach (not recommended) or Jacen Solo from __ or Anton Chigurh from No Country For Old Men for a more entertaining version; for female ones, Kreia from KOTOR2 is probably the best-known among readers here, most others usually fall around into genres (romantasy and college drama stuff).
Actual Mary Sue turns evil stories are rarer. Kreia and Jacen fit, but only marginally.
Stories where a powerful Chosen One ends up turning to the Dark Side -- without being flat characters that wrap the story around themselves -- are a little more common, but usually different, not least of all that they typically have the actual protagonist take the center of the narrative away from them. Tai Lung from Kung Fu Panda, Dylan from Control. Arguably Wanda from the DCAU kinda straddles these two positions, but she's a pretty unusual case.
Fanfiction, everywhere. Quirrelmort from HPMOR was pretty overtly intended as a send-up of the concept, and succeeded so aggressively that even after the story's conclusion a lot of people didn't get the joke, but original characters, Draco, Hermoine, or Harry made far more competent (or faced off against dumber authorities) taking out their frustrations on random characters or fictionalized versions of real-world targets happened a lot. MLP had Gilda, Trixie, and Princess Celestia as pretty common go-tos, Transformer fandom's got a lot of people who love the Decepticons, yada yada. They're not always Sues, but they tend to be less considered stories, so not a surprise that they're common.
I admittedly have never heard of Kreia described as a 'Mary Sue'.
I've heard of alot of people dislike her, but never call her a Mary Sue.
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I would argue that this was almost the story of Anakin Skywalker.
Anakin's, um... a boy though?
That just means we get to argue about whether it's funnier to call him a "Marty Stu" or a "Gary Stu".
Assuming we argue here, that is. I guessed that TVTropes would have something about how "Mary Sue Tropes are too contentious to provide specific examples", but AllTheTropes was supposed to be the "We're not interested in Censorship", "Debate is Encouraged" fork and even there it's "No examples, please; Mary Sue Tropes are by their nature YMMV Tropes, and we don't need the flamewars."
"Competent and dangerous dude takes a heel turn" is a pretty well established (if not exactly common) trope though -- see, um -- Magneto, off the top of my head?
With women, I don't think I've seen it.
Ah, I get it - it's that combination of both tropes for that gender you've never seen before? That does get much harder! Two out of three, sure, but...
Personally I wouldn't even count Magneto, since IMHO a key part of the Mary Sue / Marty Stu concept is that they're a viewpoint character that audiences are expected to become invested in, not just a side character. Maybe I'm just ignorant of the comics, but at least in the movies Magneto always seemed to be a deuteragonist foil for Xavier at best. That "can't just be a side character" rule also rules out a couple female examples I've seen in video games, and maybe one from TV.
I think Daenrys Targaryen might be the only example I can come up with! And ... maybe that's the exception that proves the rule? I think the real underlying reason for everyone's disappointment with the Game of Thrones final season was the low quality of the execution once the showrunners no longer had books to work from, but one of the biggest explicit complaints was the way the story turned so many people's favorite Savior character into another villain. Is that a gendered thing, or would people have been equally pissed about Anakin if they hadn't known it was coming?
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they actually did that in Rise of Skywalker, with Rey using force lightning semi-accidentally (to not-kill Chewbacca)
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Yeah I could get behind that. I would even ship them as a couple. I think that would have hilarious for what a shit storm it would have caused Disney, but the actors had real chemistry together. After they separated it was like... wait, what is even the point of either of these two characters?
I haven't seen episode 8, I only read the plot summary to prepare myself for 9. So I have no view on how well handled it was, but I like the idea of the turn, marry me, and rule alongside me proposal. It's an interesting way of reprising Vader's offer to Luke.
It was handled... strangely. Almost like some 70s B movie. Kylo and Ray have some mystical soul connection which is never explained. There's a bunch of scenes of him unnecessarily shirtless, and Ray obviously pining for him like a lovestruck teen girl.
Then she's suddenly like "nope! Changed my mind!" And flies away on her own. It felt to me like the writers and actors all really wanted this romance to happen, but the producers stepped in to cancel it. But im just wildly speculating. I hope someone makes a documentary about the making of this movie someday.
Imagine if they'd gone the opposite direction. The climax of the movie could be a big, sweaty, BDSM themed sex scene between Ray-Lo. Both the boomers who want a girlboss, and the zoomers who hate sex in movies, would be totally freaked out. People would be talking about it forever. A forbidden love story for the ages.
(You might notice that I have very weird taste in movies)
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