Wonder Woman has the distinction of being the first superhero movie with a female lead that wasn’t F-ing TERRIBLE. I mean, I can’t actually vouch for Supergirl(1984) but A) It barely counts, since it was basically part of the last generation of superhero films and B) It’s got a 4.3 rating on IMDB. I’m not going to hold up IMDB as some pillar of reviewing integrity, but a 4.3 is pretty bad. And Catwoman has a 3.3. And I saw Elektra (rated 4.8 on IMDB) and it was TERRIBLE. If the other two were worse, then it should come as no surprise that this film was a success, Chris Pine or no.
I finally got the chance to see the movie on dvd over Thanksgiving and I have to say it’s an excellent movie. Mine only real complaint is the Wonder Woman character feels like a Mary Sue. But I don’t care! Sometimes I want to watch an invincible hero, and this movie hit all the notes.
I’m curious: would you think Captain America, or the Hulk, or Superman were “Mary Sues” (or Marty Stus) because they’re badass, get things done, and don’t have a lot of weaknesses?
That’s a serious question. It frustrates me sometimes when a female character who happens to be competent, confident, and just plain cool gets labeled a “Mary Sue,” while male characters with similar characteristics are just ‘good characters.’
Not accusing you of that, specifically–just curious.
For me, the Mary Sue threshold is crossed when a character lacks vulnerabilities and is too competent. Superman is definitely a Mary Sue. And Batman. I’m not so familiar with the others, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
And I enjoyed watching Wonder Woman because she was badass, despite that Mary Sue vibe.
Oh, yeah, Superman is definitely a Mary Sue, especially the Silver Age version.
I don’t like this expansion of the concept of a Mary Sue. A Mary Sue is a character that is a wish-fulfilling stand-in for the author. A Mary Sue does have vulnerabilities, but they’re obviously the author’s own vulnerabilities. There’s nothing about Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman that reflects that. Not every flaw in character creation should be absorbed into the concept of a Mary Sue.
To me, the key elements of a Mary Sue are that, first, she’s terribly insecure because she thinks nobody cares about her, and second, everybody absolutely adores her and everything she does, even if there’s no good reason for it. Mary Sue herself being perfect at everything she does is significant only as a means to the end of everyone adoring her.
Mary Sue won’t be perfect at everything but the things she’s imperfect at won’t actually be liabilities and will be played off as charming. “Oh, I’m so adorably clumsy except when it matters and then I’ll momentarily overcome it so you can root for how well I did despite the odds”.
I agree though that none of the major superheroes count as a Mary Sue simply because they don’t fill the role of a wish fulfillment self-insertion by the author.
The term Mary Sue started with Star Trek Fan Fiction where a new character would be introduced to the crew of the Enterprise that was an obvious author surrogate who was better at everything than the existing crew. Now I don’t know what it means because people use it for every female character sooner or later.
Bella Swan is a Mary Sue.
I don’t have insight into an author’s psyche, so whether or not it fulfills their wishes is inaccessible to me. I do, however, have excellent insight into one member of the audience, so whether or not a character fulfills my wishes is a good criterion for Mary Sueness.
Needed more Lynda Carter 
You can read the original Mary Sue story, “A Trekkie’s Tale,” here. Go ahead and take a look at it. It’s very short.
It was, as should be obvious, a deliberate parody. The interesting thing is that, besides the author-insert character, it also parodies a lot of other characteristics of bad fanfiction. There’s no real plot, just a collection of random events. The dialogue is atrocious. The Enterprise regulars behave wildly out-of-character. There’s no effort at creating a believable fictional world.
Somehow the author-insert character is what stuck in people’s memories, and has been immortalized by the term “Mary Sue,” while it’s been largely forgotten that the author, Paula Smith, was targeting quite a few elements that plagued bad fanfiction (and still do, to this day).
I don’t find “Mary Sue” to be a useful term anymore, if it ever really was. As evidenced in this very thread, people can’t even agree on exactly what it means, and it does tend to get applied overly broadly, to any female character who gets to do cool stuff.
She’s a regular Manic Pixie Dream Girl.
From my point of view, the use of “Mary Sue” isn’t a problem so much as the lack of female characters who do cool stuff is.
I thought it was acceptable, but the ending was just bad. WW got a boatload of powers which she used to full effect while fighting Ares. Her power level also jumped a couple thousand points between that and the Ludendorff fight.
The Dr. Poison thing fell a little flat for me as well. WW racked up a respectable body count by that point in the movie, what’s one more? At the time I assumed that her face disfigurement was the consequence of one of her own experiments so the big reveal really didn’t trigger the sympathy. Maybe she was born like that and became a sadist, either way just drop the tank on her
A Mary Sue, as I understand it, never experiences any real hardship. They also generally just come in and fix everything. Their only flaws either aren’t actually flaws (“She’s too good at this that she makes people feel bad.”) or something that doesn’t matter at all ("I’m too clumsy, or I think I’m unattractive when everyone says I’m not.)
I admit I have yet to see the Wonder Woman movie. But nothing I’ve heard described about it suggests she remotely fits this trope. She has struggles, and she very much does not fix everything. Yes, she never has to learn to do the right thing, but so what? And she gets really powerful at the end. But that was set up long before. It’s not as if someone else was fighting Ares and then Diana comes from out of nowhere and defeats him.
I still point out Mary Sues when I see them. (Spookybot in Questionable Content is between that and deus ex machina.) But I can’t see how the character who struggles the entire movie could possibly be a Mary Sue.
Now, if you want to make a case for Bella from Twilight, that would be different. And even that’s extremely shaky grounds, except in certain parts.
Was that not explained? I was under the impression that this was after she figured out she was a god(killer) herself, and was no longer using the weapon as a crutch.
Again, based on what I’ve read. Unfortunately, action movies tend to give me motion sickness these days. That’s why I’m asking, not stating it outright.
Specifically there’s a scene after she enters badass mode where Ares shoots a bunch of shrapnel at her. WW is able to disintegrate the shrapnel with a force field effect. Earlier in the movie she had to block bullets with her bracers. I’m not familiar with WW myself so maybe this is a canon power she has, but it’s not explained in the movie
Regardless of whether she’s a Mary Sue or not, she’s definitely a Dea ex Machina, and that’s seldom a good idea. Sure, there was justification in her movie for her powers increasing, especially right at that moment when she’s just learned Big Important Things about herself and is facing off against the most powerful opponent conceivable to her. But now that she’s done that, what more can you do with the character? From now on, whenever we see her (and we will see her, and already are seeing her in Justice League), we’ll be asking why she’s not going God Mode to deal with whatever her current problem is.