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Notes -
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?
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?
I actually think the way Anakin's story in the prequels was criticized is pretty similar to the way Dany's season 8 story is criticized. They're both heel-turns that sound great in theory, but felt rushed and inadequately motivated in execution. Anakin goes from trying to arrest Palpatine to murdering children on his orders in the span of like 6 minutes of screen time.
It's only in recent years with all the prequel revisionism from the gen-Zers who grew up watching the Clone Wars that people have come around on Anakin as a character. His turn to the Dark Side was heavily criticized as one of the prequels' major bungles at the time.
I will die on the hill that, execution aside, that was probably always the direction Daenerys was going in. I think Martin was dropping a lot of hints throughout the series that she was unstable and vindictive, while cleverly always making her the good guy because all her reasons for being vindictive that we had seen were for good reasons against bad people.
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