"Star Wars" doesn't have a heroine problem: Arguing over whether Rey's a "Mary Sue" is missing the point

We wouldn't bat an eye at Rey's hyper-competency if she was a man. See: Nearly every iconic action hero ever

Published December 23, 2015 12:00AM (EST)

Daisy Ridley as Rey in "Star Wars: The Force Awakens"    (Lucasfilm)
Daisy Ridley as Rey in "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" (Lucasfilm)

Well, it was only a matter of time: The film hasn’t even been out for a week, and there’s already a controversy over “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”

After seeing J.J. Abrams’ “Star Wars” reboot, screenwriter and director Max Landis (aka the guy behind “American Ultra” and “Victor Frankenstein”) aired his misgivings about the film’s female lead, Rey (Daisy Ridley). In a series of tweets, he dismissively referred to the film “The Mary Sue Awakens.” Landis wrote, “They finally did it. They made a fan fic movie with a Mary Sue as the main character.” Max Landis also included in his tweets a screenshot of a discussion forum post listing Rey’s many “unrealistic” talents: She’s an accomplished fighter, pilot and mechanic. Another male critic compared Rey to John Cena.

The term “Mary Sue” is rooted in a long history of dismissing female characters and holding them to absurd double standards. What does it take to be a woman on-screen? According to Landis, you have to be perfect, but not so perfect that it takes the audience out of the movie. No one should be distracted by the sight of a strong, capable woman who is too good at what she does, like men have allowed to be for decades. But the issue isn’t the Mary Sue. The problem is that she’s just another excuse to leave women on the cutting room floor.

The term originated in “Star Trek” fan fiction. In the 1973 parody “A Trekkie's Tale,” Menagerie fanzine writer Paula Smith satirized what she felt was a ridiculous tendency of female fandom authors to insert themselves into the story in the guise of fresh-faced upstarts who engage in romantic liaison with the series’ male characters. Smith describes the character as a rosy-cheeked Ellie Kemper-type: “the youngest Lieutenant in the fleet—only fifteen and a half years old!” The editors of Menagerie later explained that the type is “usually characterized by unprecedented skill in everything from art to zoology, including karate and arm-wrestling.”

That pejorative phrase would later come to describe a whole host of lazy tendencies in writing for female characters (the Queen Mary Sue is widely considered to be Bella from “Twilight”), but what’s so baffling about singling out chipper, whip-smart female cadets is that Captain Kirk himself—especially as played by William Shatner—is absolutely a “Marty Stu,” the term’s male equivalent (also known as a Gary Stu). Although J.J. Abrams reimagined James T. Kirk as a flawed hero defined by his dangerous hubris, even Abrams can’t help himself: An early scene in “Star Trek Into Darkness” depicts Kirk getting his Henry Miller on with two alien ladies. He might not be likable, but he’s still irresistible.

Who is the Marty Stu? You know that guy—he’s self-assured and effortlessly cool, with a thin layer of rugged stubble to emphasize his innate masculinity. Everything he says is correct, and he always steps in to save the day at exactly the right moment. He’s tall, handsome, and muscular; everyone wants to fuck him, but no one can really have him. Nearly every scene in the movie emphasizes the fact that he has an absolutely enormous penis, so inhumanly massive that it can likely punch through walls.

In his classic essay on Henry Miller’s “Sexus,” Gore Vidal argues that Miller—known for his graphic writing on his fantasy sex life—is the original “that guy.” “At least half of 'Sexus' consists of tributes to the wonder of Henry Miller,” Vidal writes. “At a glance men realize that he knows. Women realize that he is.” One of Miller’s lovers tells him, “I’m falling in love with the strangest man on earth. You frighten me, you’re so gentle. … I feel almost as if I were with a god. … Your sexual virility is only the sign of a greater power, which you haven’t begun to use.” Henry Miller appears to be a deity to every woman who ever laid eyes on him, but what Vidal longed for was any character to say to him: “Henry, you’re full of shit.”

Like Miller’s idealized self, the Marty Stu is a fantasy: both a stand-in for the author and the embodiment of the Alpha Male. He’s also everywhere. Tom Cruise has been playing this guy for going on three decades: His “Mission Impossible” character, Ethan Hunt, is ruthlessly efficient and cartoonishly perfect. In “Ghost Protocol,” Hunt takes on an entire Russian prison and wins, and the opening of “Mission Impossible II” is a tone poem about Ethan Hunt’s impenetrable masculinity. The viewer watches in sensuous rapture as Hunt climbs Utah’s Dead Horse Point without a rope. He might as well be scaling it with one hand.

When it comes to male action heroes, the Marty Stu isn’t the exception to the rule. Until the Daniel Craig movies made 007 into a morally complex antihero, James Bond always saved the day and got the girl; he was less an actual character than a masculine ideal. The Marty Stu pops up in everything from “Jurassic World” to “Superman” (isn’t Clark Kent kind of a Marty Stu?), but it’s rarely a problem. Men are allowed to be so hyper-competent and skilled that it defies belief (see also: Tom Cruise in “Jack Reacher”), and we only raise a fuss when Marty happens to be a woman.

Why are we so willing to criticize female characters for being a “little too perfect” but so unwilling to call bullshit on how common it is for men to be portrayed the exact same way? As Tasha Robinson points out in the Verge, we never suggest that it’s “unbelievable” or “absurd” when that character is played by Mark Hamill or Harrison Ford: “Back in 1977, were we wringing our hands over whether Han Solo was too suave and funny and cool, or whether Luke's access to the ‘powerful ally’ of an all-connecting, all-seeing, all-powerful Force that ‘binds the galaxy together’ made him way too overpowered?”

Being a Marty Stu is never considered a strike against a male character, and they aren’t scrutinized in nearly the same way Rey is. Take this scene from “The Transporter 2,” as described by Roger Ebert: “Seeing the reflection of a bomb in a pool of liquid under his car, and knowing that the bad guys will not explode it while they're standing right next to it, the hero races the car out of a garage and up an incline, spinning the car neatly through the air, so that it makes one complete rotation and the bomb is pulled off by a hook on a crane, exploding harmlessly as the car lands safely.” Did we ask Jason Statham how he was able to defy the laws of gravity? No, but we have to inquire how Rey knows how to wield a lightsaber.

As Tasha Robinson suggests, to ask whether Rey is or is not a Mary Sue type is to miss the point. If she were a bit of an idealized heroine, why would that be such a bad thing? We’re allowed to portray men as anything we like—from sex gods to monsters—and this relentless picking apart of female characters only hurts women themselves. Smith herself pointed out that fear of being slapped with the label made writers less likely to create female protagonists at all. One author told Smith: “Every time I've tried to put a woman in any story I've ever written, everyone immediately says, this is a Mary Sue.”

If Rey is a Mary Sue, that’s fine by me—just as long as we allow her to exist.


By Nico Lang

MORE FROM Nico Lang


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Mary Sue Movies Rey Star Wars Star Wars The Force Awakens