La Ron S. Readus
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Is Prey's Naru Really a Mary Sue? (VIDEO SCRIPT)
🕑 Added 2022-08-17 20:00:04 +0000 UTCI’m gonna be honest with you, Readers. Despite me being a bigger fan of the Predator franchise than the Alien one when it comes to 20th Century’s alien horror franchises, I didn’t really like the direction the franchise was heading after Predator 2.
My initial take away from Predators when I watched it for the first time was that it was what the kids nowadays deem low to mid tier as far as its story.
/Lots of enjoyable moments, but could’ve been executed better overall with a few cast members and story beats that made me go “Eh, it was alright.”/
Then I saw Shane Black and Fred Dekker’s The Predator...and I immediately gained a better appreciation of Predators.
No, you heard me correctly. I thought The Predator was so bad, that when I walked out of the theater, I legit went:
You know, in retrospect, Predators wasn’t that bad, actually...
So when the prequel Prey was announced, I approached it with what I call Cautious Optimism
/The premise was enough for me to get interested, with it set in North America 200 plus years before the events of the first movie. But also that it would be the first time an installment of the franchise would be mainlined by a woman. Specifically a Native American woman of the Comanche named Naru/
This makes Naru not only the first woman to be the main character of a Predator film, but make the second person of color to be one in the franchise following Danny Glover’s Mike Harrigan in Predator 2.
/Three if you count Sanaa Lathan’s Alexa Woods in the first Alien vs Predator movie/
I don’t because AVP is its own franchise. But yeah, she’s like a hybrid of Mike Harrigan and Ellen Ripley from Alien. She’s a total badass and I love her.
And thankfully, Prey did something I was beginning to lose faith was possible; show that a good Predator follow-up can be made
Because I personally thought the movie was great, the majority of everyone who watched it thought the movie was great...
/And it quickly became the most watched thing on its exclusive streaming home of Hulu upon it’s release/
But because we apparently can’t have nice things, certain individuals began to come out of the woodwork in order to give the film a specific critique:
Naru, the main character of the movie, was a Mary Sue
Now people giving this critique to a lot of female characters in movies and franchises that were initially conceived for the gaze of men has been pretty common throughout history, but it didn’t really become as loud and opinionated as it currently is until Paul Feig’s all-female Ghostbusters reboot of 2016
And don’t even get me started on how these same folks reacted when they found out Rey from the Star Wars sequel trilogy was force-sensitive
My point is that calling a female character that’s either the main character or that even has a sense of agency a Mary Sue has been happening a lot. So much that at this point, it just sounds like birds chirping when you wake up on Saturday morning.
So I wanna actually evaluate if Naru actually IS a Mary Sue, by utilizing something that alot of those who claim that she is, don’t really often utilize: Logic and Reasoning. Let’s begin.
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Hey, Readers. La’Ron here. Offering you analysis and perspective on your favorite bits of geek and pop culture media
If it wasn’t obvious from the intro, this video will in fact contain spoilers for 20th Century Studios’ Prey. It’s currently available to stream exclusively on Hulu in the states and Disney Plus Star abroad, so give it a watch before continuing here if you haven’t seen it yet and don’t want me to spoil pivotal points of it for you in this video.
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That’s the syllabus. Now onto the lesson.
So What IS A Mary Sue?
Ironically enough, the term Mary Sue came from the fandom of one of the most progressive shows on American television: Star Trek (slow zoom in on my face trying not to laugh)
It spawned from those who wrote Star Trek fan-fiction, which is a writing form that is constantly unjustifiably sneered at by others for reasons that don’t make any logical sense other than that the majority of the ones who participate in it are women (pauses and blinks at the camera w/ sound effects)
I say that because fan fiction comes in multiple forms outside of archived online spaces ala Archive of Our Own and is on multiple fandoms.
For example; the pitch I made for a third Patty Jenkins-directed Wonder Woman film is technically fan fiction.
Both Fanboy Rewrites and Nando V Movies have made very prominent YouTube careers creating superhero fanfiction, but the taboo surrounding what they do is nowhere NEAR as high as the women who have participated in the craft for years.
“But La’Ron, what Troy and Matt do isn’t Fan-Fiction” THEN WHAT IS IT, THEN? Explain it to me. QUICKLY. Because it sure the fuck ain’t sanctioned by Marvel and DC. They ain’t getting paid by them for creating it, they getting paid by YOU by “Engaging” with it. How is watching a pitch any different than you reading a fic? Don’t worry, I’ll wait...
Anyway, the term first came up in the 1974 Trek fic “A Trekkie’s Tale” written by Paula Smith as a way of parodying fic pieces with self-insert characters; a version of the author within the story that represents them and is pretty much the main character.
An example of this type of character is the 17 year old Slytherin vampire girl Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way, from the infamous “so bad it’s good” HP fic “My Immortal.”
Also, because I’m pro Equal Opportunity, another example of this reaching mainstream media is show writer Jake Goldman’s self-insert character Jared Shapiro in the Powerpuff Girls reboot -- who he also voiced -- where he is basically has no other personality traits other than relentlessly and hopelessly pursuing the romantic affections of Blossom.
Yeah. That actually happened.
The Trope Namer in A Trekkie’s Tale in this case, Lieutenant Mary Sue, was a 15 year old half Vulcan girl, who single-handedly saved the Enterprise before dying a tragic death.
And over the course of the fic, there are both visual and personality traits associated with the character that would become the benchmarks of what to typically look out for in Mary Sue-type characters in the future; both in original works and pre-existing IPs either approved by or written by the author and or IP owner, which would be considered Canon Sue’s
Now I feel compelled to remind some of you that while this fan fic was responsible for NAMING it, the concept of Mary Sue existed WAY before the “A Trekkie’s Tale” was written; it goes all the way back to the 19th Century.
And part of the reasoning for that is because for the longest time -- yes, even despite the progressiveness of Star Trek and the like -- women characters and people of color were mostly secondary characters in a lot of series and franchises, if even that.
So in order for these members of the fandom to see themselves represented and have agency -- regardless of how good and bad it ended up being -- there was only one of two ways they were capable of doing so; either insert a version of themselves in fan fiction, regardless if the character ends up a Mary Sue or not...
/Or do what Starstruck creator Elaine Lee did and create your own universe. Which -- outside of the work you put into it -- depending on the amount of luck, people you know on the inside, and privilege you have, may or may not be taken as well as the property you initially wanted to see said rep from in the first place/
As I stated earlier, thanks to the trope namer being a well-known parody of self-insert characters, there are lots of visual and personality traits that are usually associated with Mary Sue characters
And, as you can imagine, a lot of the common ones include being exceptionally talented in multiple areas, have rare skills that are nonexistent in the canon setting, and pretty much lack any character flaws
Others include being “exotically beautiful” and having an equally cool or exotic name. Once again, “My Immortal.”
They have an unusual and/or dramatic backstory. Which, nowadays, is at least 75% of everyone’s first D&D character.
Tell me I’m wrong. You can’t. Because I’m right.
They also either have a specific type of bond or relationship with the author’s favorite character from the IP the fic is written about, get along extremely well with the main cast of characters from said IP to the point where they’re pretty much part of the group, or both.
And, once again, one cannot ignore this level of wish fulfillment being directly linked to the lack of representation of prominent female characters and POC in media over the course of generations
So just like bigoted white folk took the phrase “woke” and gentrified it to both criticize the likes of diversity, inclusion and minority representation and to safeguard themselves from facing accountability for their racist, sexist and queerphobic actions...
The Mary Sue trope and the traits associated with it have been “hijacked” in a way to represent a sense of lazy writing since the trope became prominent 40+ years ago. Specifically toward female characters in both new and pre-existing mainstream intellectual properties.
Rey from the Star Wars sequel trilogy was easily deemed this the moment she was revealed to be force sensitive in The Force Awakens, for example
And with the release of the Predator prequel Prey, a significant amount of individuals -- mostly men -- are saying the same thing about the main character Naru
But Is Naru REALLY A Mary Sue?
As I stated earlier, the things that survived the Mary Sue’s transition from fan fiction trope to mainstream media criticism are the various visual and personality traits associated associated with them
So the best way to see if Naru fits the mold of a Mary Sue is to naturally see if anything about her personality, relationships, or her very actions matches up with that of the traits usually associated with a Mary Sue. Right? Right.
Well, let’s start with the still valid, yet less commonly used traits to pinpoint a Mary Sue, shall we?
/Naru has a specific bond or relationship with the author’s favorite character from the franchise, and easily befriends the main cast of characters usually associated with said franchise/
These adjacent characteristics don’t really count because Prey is a prequel that happens 260 years before the first recorded 20th century records of the Yautja’s presence on Earth, so none of the characters usually associated with the franchise existed.
The closest thing we got to this type of relationship was in the form of Naru interacting with and later helping the film’s human Easter Egg, French colonizer Raphael Adolini.
/Who after helping him not die from blood loss from the primal Yautja, shows her how to use his flintlock pistol before claiming it as her own after he dies; the same one that a tribe of elder Yautja gifted Lt. Mike Harrigan in Predator 2 for defeating the renegade City Hunter Yautja in hand-to-hand combat almost 280 years later/ (Take it)
Easter Eggs and continuity references like this happen all the time with film and television franchises that go back to the past in order to flesh out lore entries via stories and whatnot.
And that’s pretty much all Adolini’s presence in Prey serves as; a fun easter egg that helps establish this film in the continuity of all the Predator films that came before it.
/Kinda like Sean Keyes, the son of Gary Busey’s Special Agent Peter Keyes from Predator 2 heading the capture of the first Yautja that appears in 2018’s “The Predator,” played by Busey’s actual son Jake Busey/
And even if he was a prominent character that people were expecting to see from jump -- because I’ll be honest; I didn’t even know who that dude was supposed to be until I saw a full image of the flintlock at the end of the movie...
To say that Naru and Raphael had a bond, considering I watched the same movie everyone else did, is laughable, considering she justifiably didn’t trust him enough to form any rapport with him thanks to how he and his fellow white men treated her brother and her.
/Not to mention she got tired of hearing him speak SO quickly/
/Naru has an unusual and/or dramatic backstory/
No...no, she doesn’t.
We’ve actually seen main character backstories that are similar to Naru’s own in so much mainstream media nowadays that it’s predictable.
From the perspective of a woman, of a man, of a child, a handicapped individual, you name it.
There is nothing unique about an individual wanting to do something out of the range of the expectancy of their societies social and/or gender norms. It’s been done to death, and Naru’s situation isn’t an exception to the rule.
/It also helps that the most we know about Naru’s childhood is that her and Taabe’s father died, and that he gifted Naru her tomahawk before his passing/ (He left you that to harvest. Well, I almost killed a deer with it)
/Naru is exotically beautiful and has a name that’s just as cool and exotic/
...So we can agree that this trait is problematic, right?
/Anyway Naru, like the other prominent characters in this movie outside of the Yautja, is Native American, and all have unique yet common names associated with their Comanche heritage./
The elders look like elders, and the youth are naturally attractive according to the standards of the tribe, Naru included.
/Hell, Taabe regularly has just as much body paint on his face as Naru does throughout the movie, and you can easily tell his final score is an 8.5 according To TikTok./
/The same can be said of the young male hunters that constantly do a Sexism to Naru, and this cutie who’s CLEARLY my type banging the drum./
...What? He is!
So now that we’ve addressed the not as relevant traits to the Mary Sue trope, we can finally address the ones that are regularly associated with the trope that people are prominently associating Naru with.
/Naru is exceptionally talented in multiple areas/
(looks around confused) ...No. No, she’s not
Multiple implies several. And the only skill that Naru is naturally good at in order for it to qualify as exceptional according to the movie is tracking.
In regards to hunting, despite her wanting to become a hunter as good as the other War Chiefs of her tribe, she constantly eats so much shit over the course of her trying to prove to her tribe that she has what it takes.
/Hunting the deer, fighting the cougar, and fighting the bear. Every opportunity she had to to prove that she can hunt with the best of them until she formulated a plan to take down the primal Yautja all resulted in nothing but whiffs/
And part of the reason why -- also displayed in the movie...
/Is a combination of being easily distracted and overconfidence/ (you were sleeping)
So with that we can easily cross off that /Naru lacks any character flaws that aren’t endearing/
And while she does know how to make medicine...
/It’s established early on in the movie that she only knows how to do so because her mother taught her what it takes to make it/ (you were little so mother took you to gather medicine)
Not only does this not really fit the criteria that crafting medicine is something she’s naturally good at...
/But the very fact that the flowers, herbs and mushrooms used to lower the body temperature of an individual in order to not be seen by the Yautja’s infrared mask is shown to be regularly harvested by the Comanche tribe shows her ability to make medicine isn’t a rare skill that’s nonexistent in the time period of the universe that the story takes place in; another trait usually associated with Mary Sues/ (go get more orange tutsia)
So from what I’ve been able to gather, Naru doesn’t really fit the criteria of a Mary Sue.
While naturally good at SOME things, others took almost a lifetime to accomplish.
Despite wanting to be a hunter, she’s constantly struggling to successfully hunt something noticeable to prove herself to the tribe when she isn’t allowing herself to be innovative and resourceful
/And it’s only when she’s able to stop trying to be a hunter for her tribe and do it for herself -- which, tragically, comes at the expense of her losing her brother Taabe -- is she able to successfully bring the Yautja down./
On paper and executed, Naru is not only actually a very well-rounded character...
/But in my opinion one of the best protagonists in the Predator franchise and its AVP spinoff since Danny Glover’s Lt Mike Harrigan and Sanaa Lathan’s Alexa Woods from Alien vs Predator/ (Okay. Who’s next)
So if Naru isn’t a Mary Sue according to the traits both usually associated with the trope in fanfiction and the ones that stuck around in order to be applied to certain characters in mainstream genre fiction, it really makes me wonder...
Why Are These Men ACTUALLY Mad?
Listen, there’s no doubt here that Naru is a pretty solid protagonist, and wasn’t written in a way that reflects what modern day individuals would qualify as a Mary Sue
But when you ask the opinion of a certain demographic of men what they think of Naru, they have every reason to declare her as one, despite the math clearly not mathin’ the way they want it to.
It’s always the same type of men and women that seek their patriarchal validation for whatever reason that have been doing this since 2016’s Ghostbusters remake; individuals who are loosely part of fandoms that love to gatekeep said fandoms whenever too much diversity and inclusion is implemented into the franchises.
Because when it comes to certain fandoms that have since allowed more inclusivity outside of the token minority...
/Star Wars being a great example/ (Footage of Mace Windu and Lando Carlissian)
They call female and non-white characters that are meant to have the spotlight on them and immediately critique things like how easy things are handed to them or how quickly they pick up on things. Yet they stay completely silent or argue in favor of the white male character that had the same amount of privilege over the course of their development in the film trilogy or string of films that came before it.
/They NEVER critique the Predator franchises ACTUAL Gary Stu’s -- the male equivalent of the Mary Sue trope -- but will IMMEDIATELY label Naru a Mary Sue just because she -- like Dutch and Harrigan before her -- was able to single-handedly take down a Yautja due to trial, error, and learning to adapt to hunting according to her own ingenuity instead of trying to do so to prove something to others, and these man-babies just can’t accept that/
Either that, or they DO accept it. But they’ve built a brand around themselves that caters to the ones that find themselves emasculated every time a woman in an action franchise is able to display herself with just as much capability as a man, so they have to pander.
Whichever reasoning for the decision, that individual is weak. And I hope the individuals who initially called Naru a Mary Sue and decided to spread that misinformation get a chance to see this. Because I TRULY want them to know -- and be able to hear it come out of my black queer mouth -- that they’re fucking weak.
(Tell Cerci. I want her to know it was me)
Conclusion
Naru is NOT a Mary Sue.
She doesn’t meet any of the qualifications, and her various expertise and skills she displays over the course of the film are both explained and justified
Nothing she does is perfect, and the majority of the things she does are messy, even the things we see that she’s good at.
/Because Naru’s development is about her getting out of her own head and learning to trust her own ingenuity in order to be a great hunter in order to bring down the Yautja, instead of trying to mimic the success of her brother and the other War Chiefs of her tribe and constantly eating shit as a result./
That’s not a Mary Sue, that’s a well-rounded female character that deserves to be along the ranks of the other two great protagonists of the Predator Franchise, Dutch and Harrigan.
And considering that there’s a small handful of men who believe that not only Naru, but ANY female protagonist in an installment of a franchise that’s usually carried by a male one is a Mary Sue when they put in the actual work to be considered just as well-rounded as they are is incredibly sus.
And while I’m not going to OUTWARDLY say that this is because they’re sexist because that’s technically slander, I mean...(shrugs shoulders)
Thankfully, despite how loud they are, this truly IS a minority. Because the movie is a smash hit; easily the best Predator film since the release of Predator 2
/And while we all revel in the success of Naru’s journey, everyone else can die mad/
But, I digress, Readers. Your homework assignment for the day:
Write in the comment section below what YOU thought of Prey if you’ve seen it.
Or, if you feel like sharing with the rest of the class, a character from a film or television show you’ve seen that a certain demographic of viewers were quickly willing to label a Mary Sue, despite actually being a well-rounded character in reality.
Whichever question you decide to answer, I’d love to know your thoughts.
/A HUGE shoutout to my Patrons both big and small for helping make this channel possible.
Make sure you check out the card at the end of the video to join, or click the link to it or any of my affiliates in the description box below.
But until then, this is Readus 101. Class dismissed./
