Opinion: Luke Skywalker Vs Rey: An Examination Of Relatable Characters
One of the biggest criticisms of Rey in The Force Awakens is that she’s a Mary Sue; an over-powered heroine who can do no wrong. It’s hard to counter given Rey’s CV: she beats up two bandits who try to take BB8, she flies the Millennium Falcon expertly, she then suffers her one defeat; when Kylo subdues her but this then leads to her rebuking him with the Force when he tries to interrogate her. Rey then pulls the Jedi mind trick on a stormtrooper so she can escape and, finally, defeats Kylo in a lightsaber duel.
Now there’s nothing wrong with over-powered characters. We’ve got plenty of over-powered characters in movies; from Superman, to James Bond, to John Rambo, to Indiana Jones. But the problem with Rey is in the justification of who and what she is.
The rules behind Superman are simple: he’s an alien and the Earth’s yellow sun gives him powers. That’s it. As fantastic as all his powers are; flight, strength, speed, invulnerability, etc., we don’t question it because the story tells us the rules, it establishes his abilities. James Bond is the same. He’s a double-oh agent, trained and licensed to kill. When supervillains threaten the world, the head of MI6, M, doesn’t dispatch his gardener, he sends one of the double-ohs. That they’re handed that responsibility comes with the implication that they’re the only ones capable.
Of course, these two are characters who come with such history that they prejudice the audience before they've even walked into the cinema. How does the audience fare with newer characters?
Few people knew who John Rambo was when he first appeared in First Blood. Moreover, Sylvester Stallone (at that time known primarily for the first three Rocky movies) wasn’t recognized as an action star. This was actually the movie that started it all. So we didn’t have Stallone’s action credentials telling us who John Rambo would be. The movie itself has to establish that.
It starts with Rambo’s appearance, especially the green jacket with the American flag patch. Then it’s his flashbacks and the scars on his body. We start understanding he’s formidable and that he’d served in the Vietnam war. When the police come after him, he hunts them down one by one. His exploits demonstrate his skills. When the police set-up a basecamp to coordinate, Colonel Trautman (Richard Crenna) shows up. He delivers pivotal dialogue to Sheriff Teasle:
“You're dealing with an expert in guerilla warfare. He's the best with a gun, a knife and his bare hands. He was trained to ignore pain and the weather, and to eat things a goat would puke up. ln Vietnam his job was to get rid of enemy personnel, to kill them. Winning by attrition. And Rambo was the best!”
Great! That not only offers context, but vital backstory. We understand why Rambo is the badass he is. All his skills are now understandable. As it is, we probably had enough to infer our own conclusion, but Trautman’s impassioned exposition breaks it all down. Even the second movie, Rambo, reestablishes just who John Rambo is. When Trautman comes to see Rambo in prison and solicit his aid, Trautman says; “The computer dug out your name as one of the top three able to accomplish the mission.” If Rambo is making top threes, he must be good.
Indiana Jones is a simpler character, he doesn’t come with Stallone’s imposing physique or Rambo’s deadly arsenal of skills and command of weapons, or some fancy backstory that’ll qualify who he is. We don’t quite know who he is when we first meet him in Raiders of the Lost Ark. But, again, the story does the work for us. When the guide plans to shoot him, Indiana strikes with his whip. Later, in the caves, Indiana shows his expertise with the booby traps. What we learn with these scenes is that he’s knowledgeable and quick, but measured. This isn’t somebody who’s going to charge in blindly.
After he grabs the idol and escapes, Belloq and the natives capture him. Belloq says, “Dr. Jones, again we see there is nothing you can possess which I cannot take away. And you thought I'd given up.” It seems little more than interesting byplay - banter. But it establishes that not only do these two have history, but this is a common pursuit for Indiana. This is his world. As the story goes on, we learn that he’s an accomplished archaeologist and adventurer as the CIA seek him out for his expertise because he's one of the top people in his field. He’s good with a gun, with his fists, and a bullwhip. This is what experience has forged. He may be physically over-powered, but the franchise is about over-the-top action sequences. Indy fits into the world that's created around him.
The difference with Rey is that we get none of this context. The Force Awakens tells us that Rey’s a scavenger. That’s it. J.J. Abrams might’ve planned some surprises; the lightsaber calling to Rey from Maz Kanata’s treasure chest suggests that Rey was going to have some secret heritage. Certainly after The Force Awakens came out in 2015, plenty of people speculated about who she was. But even some secret past is a fallacy. J.J. Abrams set up The Force Awakens the way he set up his TV series, Lost; introducing characters, telling us little about them, and planting flashbacks to tease us with context. That’s not the way movies, as a whole, work. Yet this would’ve seemed to be J.J. Abrams’s overarching strategy. It’s a cheat, instead of world and character building, just use lazy flashbacks to perform the groundwork.
Movies have to exist within their own framework and give us the information required so that we can understand the story well enough to remain invested in it. Television series are serials that intentionally hand out information piecemeal to keep you coming back. That’s not to say that movies can’t have mystery, but not at the expense of harming our understanding or engagement. We have to take Rey on face value: she’s a scavenger who is super-powered and can do things with alarming proficiency and ease. Two-and-a-half movies and eight hours later isn’t when you explain why. The Palpatine lineage might explain why she's Force-sensitive, but not why she's so Force-capable.
The big problem is if you don’t set up the rules, then you don’t understand how the story or the universe in which it’s located functions. Limits define characters. That’s why we feel tension watching a story unfold, because we know circumstance may exceed a character’s skills.
Go back to Richard Donner’s Superman: for all Superman’s power he still cannot be in two places at one time to save Lois. In Superman II, Superman realizes that while he’s invulnerable, his battle with the Kryptonians is endangering the lives of Metropolis’ inhabitants, so he flies off to lure the Kryptonians away. In both cases, we understand there are limitations.
Rey has none of this. She’s boundless, so any time she faces a dangerous situation, we don’t know what the rules are. Then she draws on some unexplained talent to move forward. But she's not super-powered like Superman, she's not trained like James Bond or Rambo, or experienced like Indiana Jones. We actually don't know anything. This boundlessness not only makes her uninteresting, but infuses her with an abject lack of relatability.
The Force Awakens tries to make her relatable with cheap characterization, a veneer that's so thin and stretched that you immediately see the cracks in it. She's a scavenger. That's it. And why is she a scavenger? Because the story wants to tell us she's just somebody struggling to get by, just as it seems Luke is struggling to get by when we first meet him in A New Hope. But Luke aspires for something more. He wants to leave the farm and become a pilot. We can all connect to this; that pursuit of something greater, and the feeling that we’re held back. Rey wants to find her parents but we can’t all relate to that. It’s a specific and personal goal. Also, it’s not something that relates to personal development, like Luke’s dreams do.
A New Hope has the famous shot of Luke looking at the twin setting suns, staring at the horizon, which symbolizes Luke's desire for something greater. Again, we all understand this. We’ve all gone through these reflective moments in life. In this scene, so many of us can empathize with Luke. As we empathize with Luke, we also begin to root for him because we’re now starting to live vicariously through him.
Luke’s experiences through the bulk of A New Hope show us that he’s horribly ill-equipped for the world beyond everything he’s known. Obi-Wan has to rescue him from the Sand People, Obi-Wan has to rescue him from the ruffians in the Mos Eisley cantina, Han Solo puts him in his place when he boasts about his piloting skills, Leia has to save Luke, Han and Chewbacca during their ill-conceived rescue attempt on the Death Star, and C3PO and R2D2 have to save him from the trash compactor.
Up to this point, the best Luke can do is swing over a chasm, but only because he was idiot enough to blast the console that extended the bridge. As trivial as this scene is, it shows us Luke is impulsive, act first, think later, but he has a ready resourcefulness. Throughout, we have pivotal moments relating to his development. On the Millennium Falcon, Luke practices the use of the lightsaber with a small seeker droid, with the seeker shooting him repeatedly. After Han Solo laughs, Obi-Wan puts a helmet on Luke that obscures his vision and instructs him on how to use the Force. The seeker shoots him again, but then Luke defends the next couple of shots. Great! We learn that Luke has potential, but he’s barely touched upon his skills. That’s how life works. Nobody is masterful at everything the moment they try it. Even prodigies and geniuses have to learn to harness, develop, and exploit their potential. This takes time, practice, and dedication. Even Superman, James Bond, John Rambo, and Indiana Jones didn't start at the top.
The assault on the Death Star also shows just how vulnerable Luke remains. When Luke fails to shake a TIE Fighter that’s tailing him, Wedge Antilles saves him. During the trench run, the disembodied voice of Obi-Wan encourages him to tap into the Force, it’s a wonderful moment of Luke realizing he has to rely on something greater than himself. Still, it guarantees him nothing, for as wily as he is, he still has two escorts. Wedge takes a hit and bails out and R2 is hit. While the Force is strong with Luke and he makes it deep into the trench run, Darth Vader targets him and prepares to destroy him. It’s the returning Millennium Falcon that saves him. Had it not been for Han Solo, Luke would've been killed.
It’s also beautiful storytelling because we can relate to it. Not one of us is aspiring to be a Jedi Knight so we can topple an evil Empire, but we empathize with Luke being this nobody, with him having dreams of something better, with him repeatedly failing, learning, and stumbling onwards, with him wanting to make something more of his life despite the frustrating setbacks. This is why the original trilogy retains its timelessness, we see Luke grow through the three movies. He faces other lessons. Rey does also, but you don’t get a sense that they do anything to her. Luke charges to face Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back, only to learn he’s hopelessly outmatched. We go from rooting for him to just hoping he’ll escape. The encounter changes him. Rey’s encounters with Kylo and Snoke do nothing.
If you took random scenes from each movie in the sequel trilogy, it’d be impossible to distinguish any difference in Rey, she’s always bright and upbeat. The few times she experiences doubt are short. They don’t force any growth, as much as The Rise of Skywalker tries to belatedly impose this. Whenever she faces any new situation, she suddenly has the skills to deal with it, as if she was Neo in The Matrix and somebody had just uploaded whatever skills she needed.
You can’t say that about Luke. You see how he evolves movie-by-movie, you see how each of his lessons stay with him and when he strikes down Vader in Return of the Jedi, he’s reminded of the portent in the cave in The Empire Strikes Back: Luke could easily become what he seeks to destroy, exactly what both Obi-Wan and Yoda feared.
It all starts with how each character is set up in the first installments to their respective franchise. Luke is the template for us in life; always striving, often failing, tempted by excess, but still trying to get somewhere, still trying to make a difference. And Rey? She’s a shallow, half-dimensional character whose impossible idealism makes her an unrelatable fantasy.
Note: the opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Culture Slate or our staff
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