Mary Sues and Fictional Portrayals of Women in Combat

[ShieldWife]

I would point out that most cases of women in action women easily beating most men is literally elite hero protagonist characters beating mooks. It's a matter of glamorizing fictional heroes, and it's a blatant double standard to say (or imply) that's okay for male heroes but not female heroes.

It’s not just a matter of the elite hero beating nooks. Well, that is a factor, but male heroes typically have much harder times with fights, even against mooks. Look at Juke vs Rey, as just one of many examples. Luke gets injured in just about every fight and loses through out the trilogy. When does Rey ever get hurt? How many female superheroes take beatings like Batman at Bane’s hands? Can you think of any movie where a man and a woman get into a fight and the man wins? Maybe, but it’s very rare.

 

[Husky_Khan]

The Witcher had a fight where the man defeated the Woman... Several in fact, depending on the Woman context.

 

[ShieldWife]

The Witcher had a fight where the man defeated the Woman... Several in fact, depending on the Woman context.

Huh, really? I’m surprised. I haven’t seen Witcher yet.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

It’s not just a matter of the elite hero beating nooks. Well, that is a factor, but male heroes typically have much harder times with fights, even against mooks. Look at Juke vs Rey, as just one of many examples. Luke gets injured in just about every fight and loses through out the trilogy. When does Rey ever get hurt? How many female superheroes take beatings like Batman at Bane’s hands? Can you think of any movie where a man and a woman get into a fight and the man wins? Maybe, but it’s very rare.

That's a fair point overall, but Bane is hardly a mook, and the fact that Bane with his magic plot steroids is superior to Batman in hand-to-hand combat is literally Bane's entire schtick as a villain and, both in and out of character, his entire reason for existing.

As to Rey vs Luke, I'd say Luke is far more the unrealistically skilled hero running on "I'm the hero so I'm better than everyone at everything" plot points. To be honest, I think we basically just tend to give Luke a free pass because A New Hope was such a classic movie and because, again, plot-driven exceptionalism is normal for a hero archetype. Consider a few points of comparison:

Rey is able to fly the Falcon badly and only narrowly defeats random mook TIEs despite having made multiple trips to the junked ship and hence having a realistic basis for knowing its configuration and controls. Luke, in contrast, can not only fly an X-Wing with absolute proficiency despite being a farm kid who has never even seen a high performance starfighter before, but easily outflies elite veteran Rebel and Imperial pilots throughout the Battle of Yavin.​

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Rey, similarly, had to be shown how to use a blaster pistol by Han, whereas Luke just...magically, instantly knows how to handle a Stormtrooper blaster just as well as the fully trained and experienced Han. This is further highlighted by the fact that despite having demonstrated onscreen that she's an actually-trained crack shot, Leia doesn't get to have a blaster again until ROTJ.​

 

[DarthOne]

That's a fair point overall, but Bane is hardly a mook, and the fact that Bane with his magic plot steroids is superior to Batman in hand-to-hand combat is literally Bane's entire schtick as a villain and, both in and out of character, his entire reason for existing.

As to Rey vs Luke, I'd say Luke is far more the unrealistically skilled hero running on "I'm the hero so I'm better than everyone at everything" plot points. To be honest, I think we basically just tend to give Luke a free pass because A New Hope was such a classic movie and because, again, plot-driven exceptionalism is normal for a hero archetype. Consider a few points of comparison:

Rey is able to fly the Falcon badly and only narrowly defeats random mook TIEs despite having made multiple trips to the junked ship and hence having a realistic basis for knowing its configuration and controls. Luke, in contrast, can not only fly an X-Wing with absolute proficiency despite being a farm kid who has never even seen a high performance starfighter before, but easily outflies elite veteran Rebel and Imperial pilots throughout the Battle of Yavin.​

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Rey, similarly, had to be shown how to use a blaster pistol by Han, whereas Luke just...magically, instantly knows how to handle a Stormtrooper blaster just as well as the fully trained and experienced Han. This is further highlighted by the fact that despite having demonstrated onscreen that she's an actually-trained crack shot, Leia doesn't get to have a blaster again until ROTJ.​

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Plus, it does sort of make sense that Luke knows how to us a blaster and Rey doesn't. On Tattoine, people who live outside the cities have to worry about attacks by Tusken Raiders, who, based on what we've seen in the movies, will generally outnumber the moisture farmer families. Which means getting into hand to hand isn't the best idea- and we do see Luke carrying a blaster in some of the tattoine scenes. So it makes sense that he can use one and there's evidence beforehand that he can do so.

Now, as for Rey, given that she and the rest of the scavengers seem little better then indentured servants, it makes sense that their bosses would want to keep weapons out of their hands- or at least the good ones like blasters. As there's not only a risk that the scavengers will start shooting each other over claims, but there's a risk of them teaming up and shooting their superiors or otherwise getting their hands on a ship offworld.

Plus, as far as the movies go, Jaku doesn't have the same sort of hostile wildlife that Tattoine has- we know they have womp rats that grow up to two meters in length based on Luke's comments in the Death Star briefing and something called Krayt Dragons which the Sand People are terrified of. Plus, it's called a 'dragon' which probably means it's bad news. So without dipping into the expanded lore, we know that Tattoine is much, much nastier then Jaku. So it again makes sense that people on tattoine would be more used to having blasters then someone on Jaku would.

Plus, if a scavenger like Rey dies, I doubt her bosses will care; so there's no real incentive for them to give her a real weapon. Where as Luke's family cares about him very much- so there's much more reason for them ti train him to use a blaster.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

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That's not the part I'm decrying as unrealistic -- yes, it makes sense to loan him an available X-Wing because they're throwing everything they have at the Death Star and they have more starfighters than pilots at that moment. What's unrealistic is Luke being a "hero" pilot who outflies everyone at everything.

Luke has the highest performance of any Rebel pilot at Yavin, in absolutely all tactical roles -- it's not just using the Force in the trench run, he also demonstrates superior skills in dogfighting TIEs and strafing the Death Star.

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No, he's not. He's one of only two Rebel pilots who gets a TIE FIghter kill onscreen, with Wedge being the other one, and also one of only two Rebel pilots who is able to evade a TIE Fighter long enough for a wingman to shoot it off him. He is also more effective at strafing the Death Star than any other Rebel pilot, being the only one who scores penetrating hits that cause substantial secondary explosions.

Keep in mind, the rest of the thirty Rebel starfighters were wiped out in the battle over the Death Star by the remaining four TIEs, with only one Y-Wing, two X-Wings (Luke and Wedge), and the Millennium Falcon surviving the total battle. This demonstrates just how superior Luke's offensive and defensive skills were -- he was performing at highly skilled ace level, on par with Wedge and Biggs, and vastly superior to all of the unnamed Rebels.

As for Luke's supposed flying experience on Tatooine, he's flying a freaking crop duster. At best, he's flying the equivalent of a Grumman Ag Cat and then jumping into the cockpit of a Hellcat without so much as a check flight.

 

[S'task]

That's not the part I'm decrying as unrealistic -- yes, it makes sense to loan him an available X-Wing because they're throwing everything they have at the Death Star and they have more starfighters than pilots at that moment. What's unrealistic is Luke being a "hero" pilot who outflies everyone at everything.

Luke has the highest performance of any Rebel pilot at Yavin, in absolutely all tactical roles -- it's not just using the Force in the trench run, he also demonstrates superior skills in dogfighting TIEs and strafing the Death Star.



No, he's not. He's one of only two Rebel pilots who gets a TIE FIghter kill onscreen, with Wedge being the other one, and also one of only two Rebel pilots who is able to evade a TIE Fighter long enough for a wingman to shoot it off him. He is also more effective at strafing the Death Star than any other Rebel pilot, being the only one who scores penetrating hits that cause substantial secondary explosions.

Keep in mind, the rest of the thirty Rebel starfighters were wiped out in the battle over the Death Star by the remaining four TIEs, with only one Y-Wing, two X-Wings (Luke and Wedge), and the Millennium Falcon surviving the total battle. This demonstrates just how superior Luke's offensive and defensive skills were -- he was performing at highly skilled ace level, on par with Wedge and Biggs, and vastly superior to all of the unnamed Rebels.

As for Luke's supposed flying experience on Tatooine, he's flying a freaking crop duster. At best, he's flying the equivalent of a Grumman Ag Cat and then jumping into the cockpit of a Hellcat without so much as a check flight.

So, what is hapoening here is a disconnect from the original viewing audience to modern audiences and the loss of a cultural understanding due to advancements of .odern technology.

When the original Star Wars was made in the 1970s, it drew heavily on the tropes and ideas of classic World War 2 movies. One ofnthe things that was a hallmark of WW2 pilots was the idea of the brush pilot turned fighter jock. Bear in mind the technology in that period between civilian aircraft used for crop dusting and the like and military aircraft was not so extreme as it was now, as such skills from such activities actively transfered to combat, and this was a known thing. For instances, the most successful American Ace of WW2 was Richard Bong - Wikipedia , a farmboy turned fighter pilot not dissimilar to Luke's story. With how much technology has changed and how we no longer focus on WW2 aces andbthe like in our media, it is understandable why this idea, which was commonly understood in the 1970s, is lost on more modern audiences.

Likewise, the idea that a farmboy knows how to operate a blaster hardly seems sueish when you consider the culture of the time. Firearms and rural America go hand and hand even to this day, in the context of Star Wars it would actually be more strange if Luke didn't know how to use a blaster, as the core tropes Luke was built around, "rural backwater farmboy" ALWAYS includes firearms as a skill. And, once again, we can point to actual historical American figures that play to this idea that Luke, as a character, was drawing on, in this case though we go back to WW1 and Alvin York - Wikipedia . Once again we have the rural backwoods farmboy turned marksman and hero.

In other words the things you're claiming are "sue" traits for Luke are really not, rather they are common traits of the archetypes Luke is based on which, in turn, were founded on actual historical American experiences and media.

 

[Shipmaster Sane]

As for Luke's supposed flying experience on Tatooine, he's flying a freaking crop duster. At best, he's flying the equivalent of a Grumman Ag Cat and then jumping into the cockpit of a Hellcat without so much as a check flight.

>Man experienced with civilian armed biplanes is competitive in biplane combat

 

[Deleted member]

The old EU explicitly had it that Luke’s crop dusting airspeeder back home was built by Incom, the manufacturer of the X-wing, and shared a similar standardized control interface.

 

[Captain X]

This is worth a watch and lays things out very, very well, with many examples.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

The old EU explicitly had it that Luke’s crop dusting airspeeder back home was built by Incom, the manufacturer of the X-wing, and shared a similar standardized control interface.

NOW THIS IS POD RACING

 

[ShadowArxxy]

The old EU explicitly had it that Luke’s crop dusting airspeeder back home was built by Incom, the manufacturer of the X-wing, and shared a similar standardized control interface.

That's why I chose a Grumman Ag Cat as the analogy; it's built by the same company as the Grumman Hellcat, but the handling characteristics of a high-performance warplane are utterly different from a freaking crop duster, even if the broad-strokes layout is similar-ish.

 

[Shipmaster Sane]

That's why I chose a Grumman Ag Cat as the analogy; it's built by the same company as the Grumman Hellcat, but the handling characteristics of a high-performance warplane are utterly different from a freaking crop duster, even if the broad-strokes layout is similar-ish.

If it's that much better, it isn't comparable. A better comparison would be between an armed Ag Cat and a different, but similar, biplane. Or if we want to be generous to Star Wars, a civilian Prop WW2 fighter style craft and a Hellcat.


Lets not forget that no one, Luke included, pulls off anything that could be considered "fancy flying" during that entire engagement. You can talk all you want about how he shot down "trained pilots" flying at low speed in straight lines, but he wasn't pulling any of that fast-and-furious fly through the wreck of a star destroyer loop-de-loop kill three ships with one shot shit that Rey did the first time she'd ever breathed on a running aircraft.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

You're kidding, right? A skyhopper like Luke's doesn't even fly the same way an X-Wing does; it's an atmospheric repulaorcraft, versus a deep-space starfighter that can achieve literally effortless SSTO. It's closer to the difference between a crop duster and a Space Shuttle.

 

[Husky_Khan]

Just as a frame of reference, here's the T-16 Skyhopper entry in StarWars.com

T-16 Skyhopper

A high-performance airspeeder capable of reaching a planet’s troposphere, T-16 skyhoppers were fast and maneuverable – a combination that could be dangerous for young pilots. Luke Skywalker owned a two-man skyhopper, but burned out the instrumentation during a reckless trip through Beggar’s...

www.starwars.com

Make of that what you will.

And on a more random note, the cute A-Wing fighter girl from The Last Jedi a[pparently has a better (or perhaps worse) explanation for why she's such a good pilot. She used her A-Wing as a Crop Duster when she was growing up on the farm.

Tallissan Lintra

Tallissan Lintra, nicknamed "Tallie," was a human female pilot who served as a lieutenant and squadron commander in the Resistance's naval branch during the New Republic Era. Before joining the Resistance, Lintra lived on a farm with her parents on the planet Pippip 3 where she learned how to...

starwars.fandom.com

 

[ShadowArxxy]

I can totally buy learning to fly with a skyhopper as a basic trainer equivalent. Going from a basic trainer to a combat fighter without so much as a check flight, however, is going into the territory of "plot driven skill" territory, much less elite ace. Which is totally fine in a fantasy story, but it's not reasonable to then call one character a Mary Sue for having minor plot driven skills while insisting that another character isn't a Mary Sue for having vastly more overt and extreme plot driven skills.

 

[Deleted member]

@ShadowArxxy I would call the T-16 more of an intermediate trainer really. It’s a pretty hot airspeeder. A Z-95 derivative would be like an advanced trainer. Also there are enough cutscenes and fuzzy time in ANH that a single check flight, possibly in a simulator, was completely possible.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

>Man experienced with civilian armed biplanes is competitive in biplane combat

A Hellcat is very little like a biplane, but at least it has the same physical operating principles. A starfighter and a skyhopper don't even share those.

@ShadowArxxy I would call the T-16 more of an intermediate trainer really. It’s a pretty hot airspeeder. A Z-95 derivative would be like an advanced trainer. Also there are enough cutscenes and fuzzy time in ANH that a single check flight, possibly in a simulator, was completely possible.

A hot airspeeder with a potato cannon strapped to it is still a far cry from a combat starfighter. As Han put it, "Flying through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy."

 

[Bear Ribs]

That's not the part I'm decrying as unrealistic -- yes, it makes sense to loan him an available X-Wing because they're throwing everything they have at the Death Star and they have more starfighters than pilots at that moment. What's unrealistic is Luke being a "hero" pilot who outflies everyone at everything.

Luke has the highest performance of any Rebel pilot at Yavin, in absolutely all tactical roles -- it's not just using the Force in the trench run, he also demonstrates superior skills in dogfighting TIEs and strafing the Death Star.



No, he's not. He's one of only two Rebel pilots who gets a TIE FIghter kill onscreen, with Wedge being the other one, and also one of only two Rebel pilots who is able to evade a TIE Fighter long enough for a wingman to shoot it off him. He is also more effective at strafing the Death Star than any other Rebel pilot, being the only one who scores penetrating hits that cause substantial secondary explosions.

Keep in mind, the rest of the thirty Rebel starfighters were wiped out in the battle over the Death Star by the remaining four TIEs, with only one Y-Wing, two X-Wings (Luke and Wedge), and the Millennium Falcon surviving the total battle. This demonstrates just how superior Luke's offensive and defensive skills were -- he was performing at highly skilled ace level, on par with Wedge and Biggs, and vastly superior to all of the unnamed Rebels.

As for Luke's supposed flying experience on Tatooine, he's flying a freaking crop duster. At best, he's flying the equivalent of a Grumman Ag Cat and then jumping into the cockpit of a Hellcat without so much as a check flight.

It's useful to recognize and be able to deflect this kind of pedantry in debates so I want to point out what's happening.

Someone is arbitrarily limiting the field of discussion to a single narrow section in order to make a point that's easily disproven if you look at the bigger picture. You'll see similar tactics where, for instance, people will emphasize that Rey is the first female main character in Star Wars and then carefully limit it to only main-series movies to eliminate the much-more beloved Jyn Erso and Ahsoka Tano, because "Star Wars fans hate women" falls flat if readers ask why there's a beloved female main character in a movie released just before Rey's debut, or start to wonder why the single most popular character in all the animated series' is a girl.

Specifically this argument is based around limiting discussion to just the Death Star attack to paint Luke as a Stu.

Throughout the movie multiple scenes say Luke is a great pilot. But...
He gets socially dominated by his uncle.
Tricked by R2D2.
Has his ass handed to him by Sandpeople (saved by Obi Wan)
Saved by Obi Wan again in the bar.
Can't do anything but watch (and get put in his place by Han) during the escape from Tatooine.
Has to be saved by Wedge in the Death Star attack.
Nearly gets killed by his own fireball when he flies too close in the Death Star attack.
Leia winds up having to come up with the plan for her own escape when Luke's plan fails (not entirely Luke's fault given Han's acting but still Luke's stupid plan),
Has to get saved from the Trash Compactor by R2-D2.
Saved again by Obi Wan's sacrifice.
Manages to tie Han for kills against the TIE fighters after the Death Star but hardly dominates, and Han gets the first kill.
Has to be saved by Wedge during the Death Star attack.
Nearly dies in his own attack on the Death Star because he didn't know to pull up and avoid the fireball when he shot too close.
Has to be saved from Vader by Han.

Luke is referred to as a great pilot in multiple points through the movie, carefully laying the groundwork for the final stage. In the last action sequence of the movie, the scene where your standard issue hero gets to show off how they've grown, he finally gets to pilot for the first time and show off his stuff which has been foreshadowed and alluded to repeatedly as a Chekov's Gun throughout the film, and even then does he take the big bad down? Nope, Han Solo saves him and Vader escapes.

Luke has a great many failures and scenes where he needs others and has to be rescued, which are generally Anti-Mary Sue markers. You have to skip those scenes to call him a Sue successfully. Arbitrarily limiting it just the last part with the Death Star trench run, which is basically Luke's only scene to shine, is like taking a Rocky movie and saying Rocky's ridiculously overpowered, because if you look at the last 30 seconds of the last fight he just plain beats his opponent down in a flurry of awesomely powerful punches. You need to limit the discussion in order to ignore the other 119.5 minutes of movie that are all about Rocky Balboa's endless struggles both in and out of the ring.

 

[Shipmaster Sane]

You're kidding, right? A skyhopper like Luke's doesn't even fly the same way an X-Wing does; it's an atmospheric repulaorcraft, versus a deep-space starfighter that can achieve literally effortless SSTO. It's closer to the difference between a crop duster and a Space Shuttle.

They fly at a couple hundred MPH in a straight line.