Mary Sues

I think you'll find that it's a very vocal minority - you know, the sort that go and see a film with the sole intention of declaring it the 'worst film, ever!' The interweb has given the basement dwellers a voice; I think females scare them.

Personally, I can't get worked up about this sort of stuff.

Rambo is not a Mary Sue. He is like the perfect Black Ops, but he's mostly useless in other fields, and he has zero social skills. In the first movie, he can't even get a fucking job. His only skill is to kill people.

You could argue about James Bond, for example. Unlike Rambo, he has extremely good social skills, and his domain of knowledge is much wider than Rambo's. But he's neither a Mary Sue. He has a big flaw: he's a sociopath.

Indiana Jones or John McClane? They're far from perfect or indestructible. They spend whole movies struggling and running.

Actually, very few of the traditional male heroes are Mary Sues. I'm no saying that doesn't happen, but it's not frequent.

To be fair, we must go back from the origin of the term Mary Sue first. It was from a fan fiction, where the author made a self-insert and make her character extremely capable of everything, other characters constantly gushing over her, and has no flaw whatsoever.

That was how the term was concieved. It was just a coincidence that the fanfic was written by a woman. The point was the in the extreme ridiculousness of the character design, not on the fact that it was a female character.

I'd argue that the term Mary Sue is for BOTH female and male characters. Just like John Q. Public is for a random generic character, not necessarily male. Some people make Gary Stu, or Marty Hugh, etc. but nothing is actually catching on. If you say "Superman is a Mary Sue!", I'm willing to bet more people would understand what you meant than if you say "Superman is a Marty Hugh!"

Thus, the original use of the term is only for the most extreme cases frequently found in fanfiction realms that would virtually never happen in professionally written script for major Hollywood releases. The use of Mary Sue for describing non-extreme characters is just a case of hyperbole.

That said, language changes constantly and Mary Sue is now commonly used to describe (or label) a "Mary Sue-like" characters. Characters that depicts Mary Sue qualities, just in lower amounts. However, some people don't accept this and keep insisting that it only means the original meaning.

I think the male term for a "Mary Sue" is called a "Gary Stu". My biggest complaint about unrealistic female heroines boiles down to oppressing women's biology and barely 5ft women beating up dudes over 6ft tall and 100 pounds heavier. it's ridiculous.

The term, Mary Sue, has always referred specifically to a character that was clearly an alter ego of the writer AND an expression of wish fulfillment. And yes, as others have said, it's a gender-neutral term, and people even tried coming up with a male version called the "Gary Stu."

An example of a Mary Sue character is in an episode of I Love Lucy. in it, Lucy writes this crappy novel in which the heroine is clearly based on her. As you would expect, the heroine was perfect in any way (talented, exceptionally beautiful, etc.) but all her other characters were stupid, clumsy or mean compared to her.

Sometimes Mary Sues can be a character who for whatever reason the writer has fallen in love with, either because that character is based on a muse or maybe represents the author's ideal man/woman. So, another example, a guy writer who bases a female heroine on some woman he has a crush on and because he adores her so much, turns her into the most ravishing, beloved woman the world has ever seen, who can do no wrong.

James Bond was definitely a Mary Sue which is why, from what I understand, Daniel Craig was cast. The producers wanted a James Bond that was more down to earth and looked like he could take a punch, as opposed to the pretty boys who barely had a hair out of place.

Max Landis, ugly nepotistic troll doll, was the one who twisted to mean that a Mary Sue is any strong female protagonist, and he used that to put down Rey in Star Wars: The Force Awakens: https://filmsdeconstructed.wordpress.com/2018/02/13/reclaiming-the-term-mary-sue-from-mra-troll-max-landis/

Keep in mind that Landis is a disgusting MRA troll/possible closeted. The reason why I think he's closeted is that based on all the crap so many of his "girlfriends" claims he's done to them, he comes across as the classic type of passive-aggressive angry young gay men I used to work with in retail, who hated women and always played head games with them. I know I'm kind of going off on a tangent here, but twisting the term, Mary Sue, into this ugly cynical thing seems exactly like what that type would do.

I think it is a real concept, but there should be a term for male characters like that. There certainly are plenty of them. I think of James Bond. He is good looking and gets all the ladies. He can fight better than everyone, knows how to use every weapon, he can fly a plane, drive a submarine, do everything. The term has validity, because it is annoying to have characters who excel at everything. It is certainly not confined to women.

Mary Sue
noun
(originally in fan fiction) a type of female character who is depicted as unrealistically lacking in flaws or weaknesses.

And that is the point. Rambo has plenty of flaws. He gets captured a lot for a start. For a special service guy he has the tact of a herd of elephants.

BUT!!! He did spend time being trained for his role. He does look the part even though it is way over the top.

A show I watched for a while "Vikings" featured small women defeating huge men in hand to hand combat, really? Another show I watched called "Heartland" had a teenage girl who had never ridden a horse before become a rodeo champion overnight. And yes, I would be just as skeptical if I saw an action film with someone like Steve Carrell in the hero role.

And lets not forget Rey from the SW films, she just seemed to pick up the skills very quickly. Luke had to work quite hard at them.

And drop the "It isn't a manly response" bullshit attempt at a guilt trip. It's that kind of PC nonsense that people get bored with the most. How dare we have an opinion you didn't authorize!

To me it is all about plausibility. I am fine with Bond being as he is since he is the top UK secret agent. Of course he would be on his game at all times. Sometimes he takes a hit too. Characters like Rey don't have any reason to be so awesome other than the writer magically makes them so. They could have fixed Rey by showing her actually flying junkers that she cobbled together on her planet, not letting her win that saber fight, and showing some actual training for the things she did instead of that stupid leaf scene.

Most of the big male action heroes have some established background that provides the plausibility for their acumen but some are guilty without being complained about. Dmwtbd cited a great example of the flaw with Hardy Boys. Another would be Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (as he adapted to all technology instantly and expertly). So even though the phenomenon exists mostly with female characters lately, it is true that it has been mostly forgiven in the past with some male characters. I don't think it is as historically universal as OP does. A bit rare even. But even with the uneven occurrence gender-wise, the outrage enjoys its own uneven state.