Such OP. Much Bother. Wow.
And now, we finally get to the main controversy that has been surrounding this movie: the character of Rey. People have been criticizing this character from here to eternity, but are they actually accurate? Is Rey a good character… or are people like Tasha Robinson completely off their rocker and eager to bellow about being bigoted against strong female characters?
I think you can tell whose side I’m on. To be clear, Daisy Ridley did a great job with the material that she had to work with. Unfortunately, it doesn’t mean that some of the material was any good. For the sake of clarity, I’d like to address one thing before we begin our analysis:
It’s Not Because She’s A Woman, You Nutcase.
Feminists have been hailing Rey as an incredible character, even though she is lacks any sort of flaws and acts as a walking plot convenience for whenever the story requires it. Apparently, the fact that commentators like myself have the capacity to notice this makes us into sexist buffoons that just hate the fact that women are leads on screen.
No, you morons. We hate bad writing that brings down movies.
A lot of opinion pieces from rag sites like Vox or The Mary Sue try to point out that no one yells when male characters are unrealistically talented, offering up examples like James Bond. I’d like to offer up a simple explanation as to why that is not exactly true for James, just to keep it simple. Before the Daniel Craig era, Bond established itself right from the beginning as a cheesy series of spy movies that involved a highly trained covert operative that likes to crack one-liners. He was unrealistic, but then again, the villains were completely over-the-top and silly as well. Now, Bond gets beaten up, stabbed, and shot at while his enemies are more down-to-earth, which is a welcome change.
Let’s contrast this with Rey, shall we?
You Have To Train To Harness The Force.
By the way, just because you had this one scene doesn’t mean the training stopped.
Right from A New Hope, the Star Wars universe is shown to be a place where Luke had to train hard in order to have access to Force powers. Everything is adequately explained about where Luke got his skills and his character growth can be seen over the course of the original trilogy. For the sake of brevity, I’ll list everything that allowed him to succeed in destroying the first Death Star.
- How did he learn how to pilot an X-Wing? Although they didn’t explain it fully in the movie, the T-16 Skyhopper has very similar controls. It explains how Luke could talk about killing womp rats, but no one talked him down because he’s just some amateur. He still needs to rely on his squad mates and Han to bail him out during the battle, though.
- Where did he learn how to harness pre-cognitive and telekinetic abilities? He was trained by Obi-Wan since the Falcon, if not earlier.
It is a very basic set of abilities to start off with, but Luke manages to destroy the first Death Star with it (and, you could argue, Obi-Wan’s help). Even then, there is a three-year gap between A New Hope and Empire, where the following events happen:
- He is able to pull his lightsaber to him, but also manages to crash his speeder.
- He trains with Yoda for a long time, but then gets his ass handed to him by Darth Vader.
How about Jedi?
- He figures out how to mind trick people and may have even force choked the guards at Jabba’s Palace.
- He still ends up tapping into his rage and possibly the Dark Side in order to overpower Vader.
Do you see how there is a clear progression where he has basic abilities, expands on them and still gets beaten, but then expands on them again and finally ends his personal conflict? And, despite how stupid the prequels were, Anakin follows the same formula. He has basic pre-cognitive abilities, then expands on them until Dooku beats him badly, then expands upon them again which leads to his downfall.
This is a common motif in the saga, so where the hell is Rey’s progression as a character? I really would like to know. Otherwise, it seems like the production staff felt that having Rey suffer might lead to controversy and that would be wrong.
It’d be so very wrong.
For the sake of enhancing my argument, I would like to guide them and you to one of the greatest female television characters of all time.
The Arc Of Daisy Johnson.
Daisy. Daisy. Your enemies get rekt so true.
In spite of the fact that I hate Agent Carter and was bored by Jessica Jones, I adore Daisy Johnson from Marvel’s Agents Of SHIELD. Let’s have a look at her arc over the several seasons of the show and wonder why J.J. didn’t steal one or two writers from Marvel.
- Season One – Daisy is a computer hacker with the Rising Tide. She manages to get captured by Coulson’s team and runs into problems because of her self-interest to the point where the team doesn’t trust her. She also ends up getting shot. That being said, she is trained by Ward and soon becomes a SHIELD agent.
- Season Two – Daisy is trained by May and becomes a strong field operative, but she is not a perfect fighter and soon learns that she has half alien parentage. After a mishap where a fellow agent is killed, she is endowed with powers that she doesn’t know how to control. Fortunately, she ends up in an arc where she encounters Afterlife, a city filled with Inhumans that help train her until she returns home to SHIELD.
- Season Three – Daisy is now working on her powers, but still has physical symptoms like the nose bleeds that she gets from activating the portal to an alien world. She is also assembling her own team, and has to deal with the struggles associated with that.
Do you see the clear progression yet? DO YOU?!
I thought about adding insult to injury by pointing out how my own female character, Helisah Almari, also had a clear explanation for her heroic journey, but I don’t want to utterly spoil that for you. Instead, why not be a doll and buy a copy via the link in the sidebar?
I’ll be here when you get back for the final three parts.
To Be Continued in Part 6.
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