Defending Luke Skywalker

                                                             Minor spoilers below....

I’m not going to waste my time (or yours) by jumping into the debate about whether Rey, the heroine in the new Star Wars film, is a Mary Sue or not (she is). In fact, I’m not even going to bother explaining what a Mary Sue is. That’s what links are for.

If people want to get worked-up about whether or not Rey’s use of the force was poorly explained in the script (it was), that’s their business. The problem for me is that some of Rey’s defenders have taken to calling out Luke Skywalker. After all, they say, Rey may have won a light saber duel with no training, but Luke flew a space ship for the first time in his life and blew up the DeathStar with his eyes closed.

Now, there are lots of things you can say about Luke. He was whiny, petulant, naïve and dorky. The actor who portrayed him was, shall we say, not strong with the ways of the force. But one thing you have to say about Luke: his growth from farm boy into galactic hero was embedded into the script in a way that Rey’s was not.

The original Star Wars very carefully built up to its climactic moment. It repeatedly TOLD us that Luke was a good pilot and SHOWED us how he got trained. Although we never got to see Luke fly any spacecraft until the final battle, there were no fewer than four times when we were informed that Luke knew his way around a cockpit. To avoid revealing my frighteningly detailed knowledge of the original movie, I'll give two of the best examples.

At the beginning of the film, Obi-Wan Kenobi, after proclaiming that Luke’s father was the best star pilot in the galaxy, adds that he’s heard that Luke has become quite a good pilot himself. Later, just before the climactic battle, the leader of the Red squadron specifically questions if Luke is up to flying an X-wing and Biggs, his old buddy from Tatooine, insists that Luke was the best pilot in the outer rim. You could debate whether these talky asides were the best way of demonstrating Luke’s skills but you can’t deny that it was firmly established that Luke could fly a space ship.

As for Luke blowing up the Death Star with his eyes closed, well, that scene was explicitly set up earlier in the film. When Luke was being trained on the Millennium Falcon, he was taught to use his light saber while wearing a helmet that blocked his vision. “Your eyes can deceive you, don’t trust them,” Obi-Wan Kenobi explained. “Let go of your conscious self and act on instinct.” It was one of the major themes of the original trilogy: to trust yourself and not the machines around you. I should also add that Luke did not magically decide to fire his torpedoes with his eyes closed. The voice of Obi-Wan Kenobi specifically reminded him of his training during the pivotal moment of the Death Star battle.

So while you could argue that Luke learned his lessons all too well and too quickly, the film clearly prepared you for his big moment. I don’t think you can say that about Rey in The Force Awakens. Instead of making her acquisition of force skills an essential part of the story, the film makes us  squint and speculate.  Again, we can agree or disagree about whether or not this was a failure of the script (it was), but that’s no reason to pick on Luke Skywalker. George Lucas could never could write good dialogue, but he understood how to show us the hero’s journey, step by dorky step from a desert planet to the Death Star.