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.
Fine, maybe Luke IS a marty stu, but I’m pretty sure one of the reasons why marty stus/mary sues are hated is that they have literally NO flaws whatsoever, meaning they can’t even be defeated at all, not even temporary, meaning, even IF Luke is a marty stu, Rey is even more of one (she manages to easily get out of prison, thus essentially making Han and Finn’s rescue attempt completely unnecessary despite it pretty much being the ONLY reason Finn signed up/planned the mission [as Finn lied about how much he actually knew about Starkiller Base earlier]). As far as anyone flying a ship, don’t recall Padme’s decoy in The Phantom Menace flying a ship, or Captain Panaka, and I certainly don’t recall Admiral Ozzel actually piloting a ship. And for the record, I wasn’t even trying to imply the ground cracking was because of her, I was just giving the details of how the duel went.
As far as Lucas and the whole VC business, Kojima also aimed for much of the same, and he also wrote in references to Che Guevara in Peace Walker in such a manner that made it seem as though he was like one of the founding fathers of America instead of the psychopath he truly was, and that didn’t impact Metal Gear’s popularity at all despite the obvious left-wing undertones for the games. I can also cite Rise of the Planet of the Apes, where they made it far too clear that Caesar was meant to be a Che Guevara expy, and even had several demonizations of businesses. Effective propaganda tries to be subtle, at least as subtle as possible. How do you THINK Goebbels managed to succeed in doing propaganda? He certainly didn’t do it by comparing Jews to rats. In fact, when they tried exactly that due to Hitler’s attempts at promoting anti-Semitism in Nazi propaganda films, it backfired horribly.
Grey Jedi might be fine, but I’m still not sure about The Last Jedi, especially after the problems posed by The Force Awakens. Rian Johston did indicate that the film’s plot will be weird, but I’m not sure whether that’s an actual good thing.