LUKE NEEDS TO TAKE CENTER STAGE

^This. Luke (and, for that matter, Han and Leia) are only in these movies to dupe stupid people like me into plopping down hard-earned cash to see my childhood heroes in a peripheral role designed mainly to position Rey, Kylo, Finn, and Poe to be in a zillion more movies of their own.

I really expect VIII to open with Rey straight-facedly teaching Luke new things about the magic of Disney. I mean, the Force.

Quite the contrary, friend. Quite the contrary.

I think we'd both love to see a Luke-centric Star Wars movie but are too jaded and disappointed with Disney's chosen direction after TFA to actively hope for one. You dig?

I imagine Luke will be treated in TLJ the way Han was in TFA. Beyond that, this isn't his story anymore. I just hope TLJ and IX won't continue to be The Rey Show.

LOL, I take no offense in your comment, but I do appreciate you making the effort to show respect. My only bit of hope for Rey is that Jyn didn't turn out to be a Mary Sue. I wouldn't be surprised if that part of her portrayal was trimmed during editing because of all the criticism. Either way, I'm curious to see what fans' responses will be.

First off, I suspect you're right about Jyn. Many scenes of Jyn in the trailers didn't make it into the movie. I suspect some of those scenes might've portrayed her as being a one woman army type. And Disney edited them out after the MarySue outcry. I guess we will never know if they truly gave her a MarySue persona within the context of the story and the SW universe. But Disney, Kennedy and Abrams have no one to blame but themselves for how they handled Rey in TFA.

Which brings me to the next issue: how Rey is portrayed in TLJ. She may very well be dialed back because of the MarySue stigma created in TFA. The problem is that they already laid her MarySue foundation! So how do you make her not seem like a SW MarySue going forward (or at least take some of the edge off)? And how do you do it in such a way that it doesn't come across contrived, contradictory, or pointless and stifling to what is already established with Rey's Force abilities? That's the real question and the real problem!

There's already a rumor going around about a scene (or scenes) in the upcoming and first trailer of TLJ that shows Rey..... SPOILER ALERT!!.....

...well, undergoing some training that is.... shall we say... nostalgic but pointless (especially given her abilities she already demonstrated in the Force in TFA). IF the rumor is true, at least half the viewers will "Ooh and Ahhh" over it. And drool over the nostalgic high. And not care about the absurdity of it from the standpoint of lore logic. But if this rumor is true then anyone giving it some thought will see it as contradictory fan service.

Then again maybe Rian Johnson has some way of cleverly fixing all this that makes sense "in universe/lore" and makes the MarySue issue go away. We will have to wait and see...

Yeah. They the scene where Jyn took out a few stormtroopers, but I was fine with it, provided it wasn't part of a series of badass moments. I noticed they changed her TIE Fighter scene during the climax. That might've been one such example. I'm glad they removed the dreadful "I rebel" line. Although I still have my problems with Jyn (such as not getting to see her spend time on her own and being recruited, not because of her skills, but because she knew Saw and Galen), I'm grateful Mary Sue ain't one of them. A tiny victory.

Yup. They have no one to blame but themselves. I wonder how Rey and TFA will be perceived 20 years from now, particularly if we see a bunch of SW female leads who are more limited in skills and balanced out in competency.

Well, a major part of what allowed Rey to become a Mary Sue was her interacting with a number of characters. She kept saving others, looking superior to Finn, defeating Kylo Ren, showing off her skills and being the center of attention (hugging Leia in place of Chewie and meeting Luke while Leia's left behind). It was Kathleen and crew showing the world that "Rey is a strong and independent woman who doesn't need a man!"  They've already made their point. While Rey's abilities won't go away, the opportunities to show off probably will diminish greatly. My guess is she'll spend the bulk of TLJ alone with Luke. She'll undergo struggles, perhaps mostly emotional, in order to be challenged. Kylo Ren will likely undergo enough training to become a threat to her. Maybe she'll get injured, lose a lightsaber fight and/or fail to save someone.

If it somehow ends up being contrived, I'll be okay with it, within reason, if that means no more Mary Sue. ;B

Well. At least Yoda never trained Luke with the lightsaber on screen, and we never saw Anakin get trained extensively in the Prequels, so Rey's training will at least be somewhat new. No matter what, I look forward to either enjoying TLJ or tearing it apart. I guess that... still makes... me a Star Wars fan...? ^_-

no he can't retroactively, as Mary Sue writing is HOW a character is written not WHY he is written that way (ie in-universe explanation).

Take prototype Sue from A Trekkers Tale: If Paula Smith published a sequel explaining that Proto-Sue was really a Vulcan attention goddess who magically fascinated everybody, and who was thus so logically awesome with everything, this would not unmake Proto-Sue a Mary Sue in A Trekkers Tale - it just explains why Proto-Sue was written that way. 

Same with Rey: maybe she is really a Force goddess and thus made Leia hug her (ignoring Chewie and her pilots) and sent her on the mission, made Chewie her copilot, made everybody lover her, even made sabers and dead Jedi call to her Sueness, gave her every (untrained ) god mode ability in the book when she needed it, and make her best every other character.

But that would just be a (lazy and trashy) in-universe explanation as to why she is written as a Sue, and would just further the embarrassment of blatantly amateurish fanfic writing in a USD 200m production.

Johnsen just can avoid Sue writing in TLJ, but not in TFA (unless he reshoots it).