Weeeeell let me first just say I have nothing against anyone who really likes Rey, and I'm not one of these crazy internet people who thinks anyone is a bad person for liking or not liking a fictional character. XD These new Star Wars movies are such land mines to talk about because it seems like if you didn't like them (or Rey) you're gonna get called a sexist, or if you did like them, you're gonna get called tasteless shill. That needs to stop.
As for myself, I neither hate nor like Rey, rather, I just don't think she's a good character. I view her in a very technical manner.
I think for the opening of The Force Awakens, I actually liked her quite a bit. We see this cool, mysterious character who has nothing fending for herself on a desert planet and fighting for scraps to eat. That's pretty relatable and it automatically makes the viewer have compassion for the character as we see she's having trouble just keeping herself fed. But then, as the movie goes on, she becomes less and less relatable.
When she bumps into Fin, for example, she demonstrates that she doesn't need him to rescue her when the First Order's men are trying to take the droid. I was still on board with her character at this point; it made sense that she would be able to defend herself on such a harsh planet.
But then she suddenly knows how to drive the Millenium Falcon without ever driving a ship before. And then later she somehow know how to fix the Falcon when Han Solo himself doesn't know how to fix it (like, he's been the owner of the ship forever and he didn't know how to fix it?). And then she somehow knows how to use a jedi mind trick in order to escape Kylo Ren/First Order and rescues herself again. And lastly, the thing that ruins a lot of growing potential she had in The Force Awakens is when she defeats Kylo Ren at the end without any training. Yes I know people have pointed out that he was wounded, but it would have given her character some needed growth and relatability if she had lost that battle at the end. Similarly, it would have shown what a force Kylo Ren was to be reckoned with if he had won that battle despite being wounded. So the result in my opinion is lack of character growth for both characters.
In the end, the big problem with Rey in The Force Awakens is that we only see her struggle a little bit at the beginning of the movie which is when she is the most relatable. We don't see any other interesting character flaws in her as the movie continues or see her fail or get hurt which are things that are needed to keep characters interesting and relatable.
I think in The Last Jedi we were all hoping that we would get some kind of awesome answer as to why Rey was so darned powerful, but we still didn't get one, and so she looked even more like a Mary Sue.
Lastly, I think the biggest reason of all why people don't like Rey has a lot to do with the movie's treatment of Luke Skywalker. I have to say that I've been a gigantic Luke fan since I was like a five-year-old girl playing with his action figure and recreating scenes from the movies over and over again. Luke Skywalker is one of those characters that is so iconic that people kind of take it personally when they perceive a huge wrong has been done to him, and many people feel like The Last Jedi elevated Rey by stomping all over Luke. That was a no-no for many fans.
Personally, I think the idea of Luke just waiting to die on an island somewhere is a fascinating one, but the movie didn't do the work to get us to that point. It needed to show us Luke suffering unfairly multiple times throughout his lifetime (not just his jedi temple burning down) to get him to the point of hopelessness that he was at, but it didn't happen.
If we compare Luke's journey from the original trilogy to Rey's, most of the iconic and best-loved moments of Star Wars come from the fact that Luke had so much growing to do throughout his story. In empire, he's brash, impatient, and can barely lift rocks using the force whereas Rey can lift a billion rocks without any training. If Luke were already competent at everything he did like Rey is, we wouldn't have gotten what I consider to be one of the most hair-raising scenes/lines in cinematic history where Luke tries to raise his X-wing using the force and fails.
"I don't believe it."
"That, is why you fail."
It's such a great, simple scene, and the sequel trilogy and prequel trilogy just don't have amazing scenes like this.
I'm not blaming Daisy Ridley, by the way, she's a charismatic actress and I think of she had a great script to work with, she would have been great.
Ugh god, don't get me talking about Star Wars. I accidentally wrote a novel.