[busterarm]

> Complaining that a gasp woman could beat up an octogenarian is more of a commentary about you than the inevitable march of time.

I think it's more about how anyone _would_ beat up an octogenarian, rather than their ability to do so and it being a woman.

[jonathankoren]

No. It's specifically the "Mary Sue" part that he's annoyed by. That term is never used online to refer to male character.

Of course, a dude that can not only be athletic, can read every inscription in every ancient language, is an expert in every ancient civilization, and use a bull whip as a grappling hook at will gets a pass.

[busterarm]

No, then they're called a Gary Stu, Marty Stu, Marty Sam or Tom Sue and they exist too. They too are annoying and numerous, but less common.

Harry Potter, Scott Pilgrim, James Bond, any character Vin Diesel plays, etc.

Mary Sues are called out rightly because they're a shitty trope used by lazy writers. Nobody (with any intelligence or credibility) ever said that George Lucas was a particularly great writer. It's popcorn entertainment for a mass market.

Indiana Jones movies came out in a time where movie studios thought audiences were fucking morons and we have much higher standards today after being fed decades of high-concept movies and television. Hence the flat reception and pushback. Even Crystal Skull had its asshole ripped open by audiences without needing misogyny to be a diversion/excuse to explain the turd released by the studio.

Movies can't cash in by gender/age/race-swapping classic franchises because if you released those movies as they were today they would ALSO bomb. But Hollywood is certainly trying and trying and scratching its head wondering why it isn't working.

[mcpackieh]

I can't agree with the second half of your post. Indiana Jones started reasonably strong with Raiders and has been on a steep descent ever since. The secondary characters in Temple of Doom were truly annoying and the franchise only got worse from there. I could be coaxed into watching the first again, but none of the sequels.

And the state of modern blockbusters shows that mass audiences haven't developed more sophisticated taste, they still gobble up slop like Marvel for a dozen+ sequels/spinoffs with thunderous enthusiasm until they eventually, finally, get bored of the premise and start looking for some new slop. MCU isn't failing because audiences got more sophisticated between five years ago and now; it's failing because they've been putting out the same movie with reskined costumes for 15 years now and that was never going to keep people interested forever. It still had one hell of a run though, proving that audiences today don't have more taste than audiences in the 80s.

[jonathankoren]

Come back when any of those characters you listed are called Mary Sue.

Let’s use Star Wars for an example. A teenager with little education, grows up on a backwater desert planet immediately uses the Force and flies an advanced space craft into battle, becoming the focus of attention of a galaxy spanning fascist military, and a hero in an under resourced underground partisan movement.

You’re hard pressed to find anyone complaining about Luke Skywalker, but Rey? OMG, the knives were out after the trailer dropped.

To deny this dynamic after almost 10 years of it playing out very visibly online and off, at this point is willful ignorance at best.

[robertlagrant]

> You’re hard pressed to find anyone complaining about Luke Skywalker, but Rey? OMG

That's because Luke took a long time to get good, including impulsively running off to fight and losing his arm, and was a whiny so and so, and was only good at certain things.

Rey is a classic MS because she's good at everything from the start; she wins every fight, including against the scariest Sith baddie around; flies spaceships perfectly despite having not done it before; fixes the Millennium Falcon in a way that Han Solo, its owner, didn't understand; was an expert boat navigator across a stormy sea that the locals wouldn't sail across, despite having grown up on a desert planet; everyone likes her (e.g. after Han dies Leia, who's met Rey once before, emotionally hugs Rey and not Chewie); she has random helpful encounters out of nowhere; etc etc.

I get some characters are unfairly characterised as [MG]ary S(ue|tu), or unfairly not as, but this doesn't seem one of those cases. You might say it's because Disney exec leadership and directing of episodes 7-9 were terrible and fragmented, and you'd be right, but the above still stands.

[mcpackieh]

> You’re hard pressed to find anyone complaining about Luke Skywalker

That's just not true. The whole "chosen one" premise is extremely common in fantasy and scifi and widely criticized by people with sufficient taste and media literacy to become aware of the pattern and grow weary of it. Media that fits this pattern is considered adolescent; adults who are obsessed with Star Wars or Harry Potter are called manchildren. "Mary Sue" is gendered language that isn't used to describe male characters, but that doesn't mean this same exact sort of bad writing for male characters doesn't exist, or isn't recognized as such.

Off the top of my head: Harry Potter, Star Wars, the Matrix, virtually all shonen anime, The Wheel of Time, anything Branden Sanderson has written... all of these are considered adolescent (have I pissed off everybody yet?) It's extremely hard to think of any example of "chosen one" media that isn't considered adolescent... Dune maybe? This trope is so common, it taints the reputation of all fantasy and sci-fi by association.

[djur]

"Mary Sue" doesn't mean "Chosen One", though, right?

[mecha_ghidorah]

So one of the main features of a Mary/Marty Sue is that everyone seems to really like them and be invested in them immediately. Rey has that (Finn latches on to her quickly, Han starts treating her as a surrogate child very quickly, Leia hugs her instead of Chewie, even the antagonist Kylo seems to have an interest in her, etc.) but Luke doesn't have that.

Leia seems to think he's a bit useless at times during the escape, Han thinks he's a backwater rube, but these characters grow close over the course of the story.

I admit that a lot of people do leave off the "is treated as super important and great by everyone immediately" bit when they define a Sue a lot, but I think it is a significant part of the definition and I also think it is a big part of what people don't like even if they often fail to articulate it. There's a "look at how cool and perfect our character is!" feeling you get when sequels introduce new characters into an existing setting and all the old characters fawn over them immediately that just isn't fun to watch.

Lastly characterizing Luke as "immediately using the Force" is bullshit I am sick of seeing. Firstly, we do see him practicing and failing at it on the trip to the Death Star, secondly he only uses it in incredibly vague terms to blow up the Death Star in a way that is way closer to "having faith" than "using a super power" in the context of the story. Luke sees Obi-Wan do a mind trick in the first half of New Hope and we don't see Luke even attempt it until Return of the Jedi. The first time we see Luke use a force ability outside of the Death Star run, which again in terms of how it is presented isn't really the same as other times the force is used, is to move his light sabre on Hoth. This is months after New Hope and he still really struggles to do it. But even if I cede the blowing up of the Death Star as Luke using the force instead of trusting in the force, we still see him actually practice trying to still his mind and use it before it happens, which isn't something we get for Rey.

[robertlagrant]

Don't forget Wesley Crusher. I don't know why people pretend that the male version isn't also disliked, but I don't think it's a rational stance. People don't like either.

[djur]

Other characters on the show find Wesley obnoxious, and he nearly washes out of Starfleet Academy after covering up a stunt that killed one of his friends. I don't see him as a wish-fulfillment character at all.

[robertlagrant]

He is for a long time. Everyone likes him; he's an extremely high achiever; he easily impresses a beautiful girl, and in the same episode outwits all of the Enterprise's security staff to save the Enterprise; he even has special powers that somehow make him a more advanced iteration of the human species.

[andrepd]

>No, then they're called a Gary Stu, Marty Stu, Marty Sam or Tom Sue

Well I never heard any of those names ever.

[djur]

How could Harry Potter be a "Gary Stu" when he is the main character of the series?

[busterarm]

What are you talking about? Mary Sues are almost exclusively main characters.

[djur]

In fanfiction. The Harry Potter books are not fanfiction.

[bombcar]

Perhaps only because Gary Stue is used. Male Mary Sues certainly exist.