I watched The Force Awakens, and I generally have a pretty good knack for observing small details even in stuff I absolutely loathe, and I don’t recall Rey EVER discussing having flown before. In fact, if I remember correctly, she actually was at a loss as to how she could pilot the Millennium Falcon at all when Finn asked her. And I really wouldn’t call her skills with the Millennium Falcon bad, especially considering she managed to pull off a pretty good loop among other ace flying skills. As far as Rey beating Ren, last I recall, he told her to draw out the Force, she did, and literally beat him to a pulp before the ground cracked and forced them to separate.
I’m not saying that Luke isn’t a stand-in for George Lucas or a self-insert character (as you yourself pointed out, his first name had obvious similarities with “Lucas.”). However, generally, Mary Sues, or their male equivalent Marty Stus, generally aren’t allowed to have ANY flaws or get beaten, often having it all and being written as perfect, everyone being ants by comparison, and often being the hero characters. For a good example, try Alice from the Resident Evil movies where she made everyone look utterly incompetent, even those who were actually from the games (and it’s also one of the reasons why she was utterly HATED by most of the viewers). Luke had none of that. If he needed help getting out of a lam, and actually GOT that help, he by definition is NOT a marty stu, period.
As far as Luke’s piloting, it was mentioned in incidental dialogue that he piloted a Skyhopper and often raced Biggs at Beggar’s Canyon, and that the Skyhopper had similar controls. THAT’S the justification. What WASN’T justified was her completely handing Kylo Ren his butt despite having literally NO training in lightsaber techniques at all (Luke, for the record, ended up losing his hand when he tried to confront Darth Vader. And bear in mind, like Ren, Vader ALSO was trying to subdue Luke with big long slow attacks that were specifically designed to be blockable, not to mention actually DID get injured at one point during the fight when Luke managed to leave a cut on Vader’s upper arm.).
Lucas repeatedly made it clear that the Rebels were the Vietcong, and the Empire was supposed to be America and left absolutely NO room for ambiguity as to his intentions there. He even made such clear in the actual development notes for the actual movie, AND Walter Murch, one of his associates at the time, confirmed as much. It’s one of the few consistent things he’s said about the movie that can actually be backed up. I haven’t gotten the book yet, but I’ll probably get The Making of Star Wars just to get the full notes and post them. I will tell you this much though, the few stuff posted here and there on the internet definitely didn’t indicate Lucas was settling for a blank universe at all when making the film and that, if anything, he was very agenda driven:
“I [George Lucas] started to work on Star Wars rather than continue on Apocalypse Now. I had worked on Apocalypse Now for about four years and I had very strong feelings about it. I wanted to do it, but could not get it off the ground... A lot of my interest in Apocalypse Now was carried over into Star Wars. I figured I couldn’t make that film because it was about the Vietnam War, so I would essentially deal with some of the same interesting concepts that I was going to use and convert them into space fantasy, so you’d have essentially a large technological empire going after a small group of freedom fighters or human beings... a small independent country like North Vietnam threatened by a neighbor or provincial rebellion, instigated by gangsters aided by empire. [...] The empire is like America ten years from now, after Nixonian gangsters assassinated the Emperor and were elevated to power in a rigged election; created civil disorder by instigating race riots aiding rebel groups and allowing the crime rate to rise to the point where a ‘total control’ police state was welcomed by the people. Then the people were exploited with high taxes, utility and transport costs.”
This was on Pages 7-8 to 17 of The Making of Star Wars. On that note, he also wrote the following of Page 26 of the same book:
“Theme: Aquilae is a small independent country like North Vietnam threatened by a neighbor or provincial rebellion, instigated by gangsters aided by empire. Fight to get rightful planet back. Half of system has been lost to gangsters[…]The Empire is like America ten years from now[…]We are at a turning point: fascism or revolution.”
So no, back then, it was most certainly meant to be Vietcong propaganda. And he clearly didn’t give up on that theme considering he tried to push it AGAIN in Return of the Jedi, even going as far as to not only compare Palpatine to Nixon, but also telling Ian McDiarmid, Palpatine’s actor, that he deliberately modeled the throne room after the Oval Office in terms of shape because of it.
And he kept on saying this up to Revenge of the Sith’s release at Cannes film festival. If he was aiming for a blank slate universe, he would have essentially wrote that the story was “a movie about nothing besides what the viewers take of it.” And he most certainly wouldn’t try to keep on hammering from development notes right up to the release of his final Star Wars movie in the saga that the Empire was Nixon’s America and the Rebels were Vietcong expies.
And for the record, I’m not even planning to see The Last Jedi at this point, so don’t think I’m like those other people. At least I’m actually practicing what I preach and most likely sitting this one out, and probably the next three movies including the anthology series. And for the record, I was considering sitting out even BEFORE the messup with Beauty and the Beast happened [while Rogue One was definitely pretty good, I’m still not optimistic about The Last Jedi.].).
And for the record, while I was a bit irritated at how badly written Rey was, she wasn’t even the worst part of The Force Awakens. The worst part was that it was a literal rehash of A New Hope with elements of Return of the Jedi and Empire Strikes Back thrown in, and the rewrites in question weren’t didn’t even compensate by actually TRYING to make things sensible (I hated the whole Starkiller Base concept due to just how poorly designed of a plot device it was overall). My extended family may have loved the movie, but my mom and dad were bored out of their minds, and when I saw the film, which I already suspected would retread it thanks to the plot being leaked that pretty much made clear it was that, I wasn’t at all happy with the film and felt it was just getting annoying.
Everybody in the SW universe can fly. We’ve never encountered a single non-droid character that can’t fly a ship (and if you count the escape pod even 3PO has some stick time). The question isn’t can they fly it’s can they fly well. As for Rey she bounced the Falcon off the ground twice, not exactly great flying. Yeah she pulled a loop, loops aren’t that tough, pull up while hitting the thrust and keep it that way, it’s like the first thing anybody does playing a flight combat computer game (cause it looks cool, and you find out of the game will actually let you go inverted).
Again Ren had been gut shot, and he was trying to recruit her. “Look how cool you can be with the Force” is a favorite Dark Side recruitment, and its well established people in strong emotional states can do large, though basically uncontrolled, Force stuff. And that ground cracking probably had as much to do with everybody else blowing up the planet as her Force.
Mary Sues have flaws and get beat. Alice dies in like every other Resident Evil movie. The trick is Mary Sues, like every other hero character in American movies, only lose in a way that’s temporary and helpful to later success.
See this is the part that shows how the anti-Rey Mary Sue argument is silly. Luke shows DRASTICALLY MORE piloting skill than Rey (and most of the other X-Wing pilots) and everybody says “yeah but he flew a skyhopper so it’s not Marty Stu”, Rey bounces the Falcon off the planet twice and they insist she showed super piloting ability. The Mary Sue whiners are trying to have it both ways. The fact is Luke showed much higher levels of unjustified piloting skill. Heck they even wound up “justifying” his piloting skills in one of the novels where young Luke is declared to have “his father’s natural aptitude”. And if my theory on Rey is correct maybe they’ll say the same thing about her.
Rey did NOT hand Ren his butt. He was injured, he fought a slow style, and he still wailed the crap out of her https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWF0f183tSA she spends almost the entire fight retreating for her life, it’s only when he gets cocky and doesn’t finish her she gets an opening.
Again notice Lucas made it “clear” when DISCUSSING the movie that the Rebels were the VC. You didn’t think that when you first watched it, NOBODY thought that when they first watched it. He wasn’t aiming for a blank slate universe, but that’s what he got. There’s often a gap between what an artist thinks they’re putting into something and what is seen by the audience. The makers of Patton insist it’s an anti-war movie, specifically a screed on Viet Nam, meanwhile a largely conservative audience has declared it the greatest war movie ever (because, well, it is).
I’m looking forward to Last Jedi, it looks fun. At it looks like they might be bringing the Grey Jedi (or something very similar) back into canon. Grey Jedi are cool, and fix one of the major sillinesses of the SW universe by saying some people can use the Force and not be either emotionless Zen Jedi or evil scummy Sith, they can just be people with the Force. It’s a cool concept.