Mary Sue Characters: Is Rey TOO Strong with the Force? - Troped!

Mary Sue - Troped

May the Force be with you… okay, maybe not that much Force...
Welcome to WatchMojo’s Troped - the series where we deconstruct the cliches, archetypes, and story devices that won’t go away.

In this episode, we’re taking a look at Mary Sues, and whether or not the term can be used describe Rey in The Force Awakens.

Well… kind of? This trope is kind of tough to pin down, and can mean different things depending on who you ask. So to unpack this ambiguous trope, we’ll have to go back to when the term was coined in the ‘70s.

Specifically 1973, the year Paula Smith wrote and published A Trekkie’s Tale: a biting parody of the overly and inexplicably powerful, likeable, all-around awesome Author Avatars that were commonplace in Star Trek fanfiction at the time. The story, which was published in the fanzine Menagerie, follows the spectacular adventures of Lieutenant Mary Sue, a 15-year-old half-Vulcan

“Oh, Lieutenant, I love you madly. Will you come to bed with me?”

“Captain! I am not that kind of girl!”

“You’re right, and I respect you for it. Here, take over the ship for a minute while I go get some coffee for us.”

Ever since Smith’s story was published and circulated in the Star Trek fan-fic community, the term has been used to describe characters outside of fanfiction.
Specifically characters who, much like Lieutenant Mary Sue, are innately good at things for the sake of narrative convenience, and whose flaws are always endearing.
In this context, Mary Sue can apply to countless heroines in romance fiction, from Bella Swan, the plain yet beautiful, bland but adored protagonist of the Twilight Saga.
To Anastasia Steele from Fifty Shades of Grey - a book that was spawned from steamy Twilight fanfiction.

But what about Rey? Is she really a Mary Sue? Well, to fully answer that, let’s start by taking a look at some of things people cite as being proof of her Sue-ness.
By the end of the movie, the audience knows that Rey can speak many languages, pilot and repair a ship, and use the force despite the fact that she has had zero jedi training.
But all these things a relatively common among our heroes in a galaxy far far away, who can also understand different languages, pilot and repair ships, and use the force despite the fact that they’ve had practically no jedi training. It’s really easy to categorize a character as a Mary Sue when they can move things with their mind - but at the end of the day, that’s just a reality of this story world. Having the Force makes characters really good at stuff: that’s just the nature of the force.

But on the other hand, Rey is really good with Force. Like, really really good. That’ll probably be addressed in a later instalment of the Saga, but whether or not you’re willing to give Disney the benefit of the doubt is totally up to you.
Maybe you don’t like Rey. Maybe you think she’s too good with the Force too quickly. But part of the reason this trope’s definition is so hard to pin down nowadays is because people use it to describe characters they simply don’t like.

Can you really call Rey a Mary Sue? Well, that depends on whether or not you consider The Force Awakens a multi-million dollar budget fanfic, which, now that I think of it... is a topic for a whole other video.