Why Rey is Not a Mary Sue

Oh, hey guys. Since I’m tired of all the brainless morons on the internet saying this movie is terrible, I’ve decided to do a little post and explain to you all how stupid you are.

If you can’t tell, I loved this movie. No, it’s not perfect, but nothing is. It was still a very enjoyable and fun movie to watch, filled with all the things I loved about the original movies.

But, as with anything that gets super popular, all the basement-dwellers have to come out of the woodwork and claim that it actually sucks and everyone else is stupid for liking it. So this review is mostly for you.

Chief among the complaints are the main character, Rey, being a “Mary Sue.” I happen to think this is utter nonsense, and very easily disproved.

There are many reasons for this, but chief among them is the fact that literally nobody knows what a Mary Sue actually is. The definition of the trope is so subjective that it becomes almost useless.

Add to this, there are a million different variations of the term. Here are some copied from the TV Tropes page:

• Anti-Sue — I’m genuinely useless, but everybody still loves me!

• Black Hole Sue — Everything is about me!

• Copy Cat Sue — I’m just like my favorite character, but even kewler!

• Fixer Sue — No, that’s not how it’s supposed to go!

• God-Mode Sue — Power overwhelming!

• Jerk Sue — I’m a complete and utter bitch and I have constant PMS…love me!

• Mary Tzu —I knew you would do that. In fact, I knew you would do that before I even met you, cuz I’m JUST THAT GOOD!

• Parody Sue — Why don’t they fall for my buxom charms

• Possession Sue — My favourite character is an even better version of me!

• Purity Sue — Love me!

• Relationship Sue — You’re my boyfriend now!

• Sympathetic Sue — Feel sorry for me!

• Thirty Sue Pileup — We are Legion.

• Villain Sue — I have you now, my beautiful slaves! Ahahahahahahaha!

For every one of these, I could give you a character well known, and liked, in fiction that applies to them. The term has lost all meaning because it has no concrete definition. Even a flaw doesn’t even seem to negate Sue-ness in some people’s minds.

But whatever, there is a pretty common list of traits that most people bring up when talking about a Mary Sue. Usually, in order for a character to be a Mary Sue, they must fulfill these requirements:

#1. Be a self-insert for the author (not the audience)

This is pretty damn easy to debunk. Rey is clearly not a self-insert for either Lawrence Kasdan or J.J. Abrams, because neither of them are British teenage girls or desire to be — I’m assuming.

There’s a big difference between a character being an insert for the author, and one that is an insert for the audience. Rey falls in the latter and not the former category. She is the one we experience the story through. But that’s not a Mary Sue; that’s just a protagonist.

Here are some other characters that fulfill the exact same roll:

• Indiana Jones

• Katniss Evergreen

• Max Rockatansky

• Harry Potter

• James Bond

• Neo

• Marty McFly

• Alice

• Dorothy Gale

• Frodo Baggins

• John MacLane

• Daniel LaRusso

• James T. Kirk

• Ferris Bueller

I could keep going, but I think you get it.

I cannot stress this enough, the appeal of something like Star Wars is vicarious entertainment. We watch it because we want to live out our fantasies of fighting the bad guys and saving the day. It’s not meant to be enjoyed on the same level as something like The Godfather or Citizen Kane.

Yes, the films do touch on heavy themes and character drama, but at the end of the day Star Wars is made to be wish-fulfillment for its audience. Rey might be wish-fulfillment for Abrams and Kasdan as audience members as well, but that just shows that they understand what makes these movies enjoyable. Being an insert for the audience does not make a character bad. Rey was clearly made for the young and young at heart in the audience to project themselves into, and she fulfills that role perfectly.

#2. Have no arc or change throughout the course of the story

This one is also easy to debunk. In order for a character to have an arc, they must do something at the end of the story that they would have never done at the beginning.

In Raiders of the Lost Ark, at the beginning Indy says, “I don’t believe in any superstitious hocus pocus.” But at the end, by finally realizing and respecting that the ark is, indeed, supernatural, Indy completes his arc (no pun intended), going from non-believer to believer.

In Pirates of the Caribbean, Will Turner frees Jack Sparrow from being hanged — something he would have never done at the beginning.

In Fight Club, the main character shoots himself in the face, thus destroying Tyler Durden.

Now, there are plenty of good characters who don’t really change over the course of the story, like Ferris Bueller and Marty McFly. But generally speaking, it’s usually considered more interesting when a character does have an arc.

So what is Rey’s arc?

At the beginning of the movie, we see that she’s a scavenger who makes her living by salvaging parts from old space ships. She’s just a nobody with absolutely nothing special about her. She doesn’t even believe that there is a thing called the force or that Luke Skywalker existed.

By showing her down on her luck and not in a good place, it elicits sympathy and makes us want to see her succeed. You can argue whether this is effective in the movie. For me it was, for some people it wasn’t. That’s fine. Not everyone is required to respond emotionally to the same things, but the makings of a good story are there.

Rey’s arc is about embracing her destiny and accepting that she is more than what she thought she was. It’s very similar to Neo’s arc in The Matrix. Through the whole movie, he’s convinced he’s not The One, and it’s not until the end that he full accepts and embraces it. After she touches the lightsaber and experiences her flashback, Maz says she has a destiny. But she outright rejects this and runs away instead. The obstacle she must overcome is giving up on her old life and accepting a new one.

Her arc becomes complete at the moment when Kylo has her over a cliff in the final sword battle. She then does something she would have never done at the start of the movie: She closes her eyes and simply lets the force take control of her actions. Because of this, she can defeat him.

This moment represents her final acceptance of her new life. It’s her realization that it is because of her strength in the force that has allowed her to come this far, not because she’s simply an unshakable badass. It’s not that she learns everything too quickly, it’s that she already had it inside her the whole time. She just had to realize it in order to take full advantage of it. Whether it’s due to prior training, or just talent, I can’t say. But you can’t say there was no evolution in her character.

This moment in the story is very similar to the scene when Luke is training with Ben and he tells Luke “Let go your conscious self, and act on instinct.” And later, Luke switches off his targeting computer and destroys the Death Star by using the force. Even Qui-Gon tells young Anakin, “Don’t think, feel. Use your instincts.”

We see this theme repeated over and over again throughout the Star Wars movies. The Jedi are heavily reliant on their feelings in order to attain peace and harmony with the force; the Sith use anger and hatred.

This leads us to my final point:

#3. Have no visible flaws

Rey’s overwhelming flaw is her excessive self-reliance and over-confidence. While this can be a good thing in certain circumstances, it’s been established very soundly in the Star Wars universe that the Jedi are to be at peace and in perfect balance — of which she is neither. She is rash, easily frustrated, and reckless. She does things impulsively and — even if it’s for a good cause — she doesn’t stop and think about what the consequences of her actions are.

Remember what Yoda said to Luke:

“You will know when you are calm, at peace. Passive. A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack.”

And…

“…a Jedi’s strength flows from the Force. But beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression; the dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight.”

In short, Rey may be a bad ass in a lot of ways, but she’s still a terrible Jedi. She lacks control, discipline, and temperance — most of the same things that Luke struggled with as well. We haven’t seen the full ramifications of it yet, but those flaws are certainly there.

In fact, taking A New Hope and Force Awakens as stand-alone films, Rey is much more developed and is more of a complete person. Luke’s defining characteristic was that he was whiny. Aside from that, he really didn’t have much of a character. He was just your typical, bland every-man. Which is fine, and served its purpose in the story very well. And I’ll say the same about Rey. No, we didn’t get the full spectrum that we got with Luke, but we haven’t had the whole trilogy yet. This is just part one. What we got was fine for that one story and then it’ll be embellished later on. I didn’t think serialized storytelling was that hard to comprehend.

Conclusion

Is Rey simply over-powered? I don’t believe so, personally. But the idea of being “over-powered” is a tad subjective, isn’t it? How can we definitively say a character is over-powered?

If you step back and look at most characters in these kinds of movies, all of them would be dead under real life circumstances. How does Aragorn fight a hundred orcs single-handedly and come out without a scratch? How does Indiana Jones not have a horribly deformed face from being punched all the time? How does any character in Harry Potter not manage to kill themselves by misusing magic?

I guess my point is: Where is it fair to draw the line at what is plausible and what isn’t?

I think it’s important to remember that Star Wars is essentially a fairy tale. Just like The Wizard of Oz or Snow White, it really isn’t something that’s motivated by logic, so much as it is emotion.

Does it really make sense that Dorothy could kill the witch just by dumping some water on her? How does she never get any water on her before that? Why would there be a bucket just lying around if that’s what can kill her?

The reason it works is because we want the story to go there. We’ve invested in Dorothy and we want to see her win. The ending is emotionally satisfying enough, so we don’t really question it — or at least, we don’t say it sucks just because it makes no sense.

I don’t see what makes Rey any different. I cheer at her triumphs because I wanted to see her win, because the movie made me care about her and want to see her succeed. If you didn’t find yourself capable of doing the same, that’s okay, but it doesn’t make her a Mary Sue.

PART 2!