Rory McKenna

Rory McKenna is a character in the American science-fiction movie The Predator (2018).

Character creation
Actor Jacob Tremblay visited an autism centre to learn more about autism in preparation for the role. Writer Shane Black says "there’s a case to be made that people who have what is viewed as a disability are actually the most valuable members of our society."

Biography
Rory is the son of U.S. army sniper Quinn McKenna and his wife, Emily. Rory lives mostly with his mother, since his father is often away on army missions. One one of such missions, Quinn has an encounter with the titular predator and manages to mail home some alien technology to keep it out of the hands of the army. Rory plays around with some of tech and uses the alien mask as part of his Halloween costume. As he is pursued by The Predator, who hopes to recover his equipment, Rory is rescued by his dad and his ragtag team of former soldiers. A larger predator appears and kills the smaller predator, and a whole bunch of action hijinks later, it is concluded that the predators uses DNA from other species to enhance themselves. The large predator wants to kidnap Rory because of his autism - which is implied to be the next step in human evolution. Another bunch of action scenes later, the predator gets defeated by his dad - although it does manage to take out his soldier friends in the process. Some time later, Rory is seen to be working in a lab that tries to decode predator technology that was left behind.

Appearance
Rory is a young boy, appearing to be in his pre-adolescent years.

Autism
Rory is bullied at school; his pursuers use terms such as "ass-burgers" to taunt him. In his opening scene, Rory is seen to be extremely distressed at the sound of the fire alarm. He stims by rocking and tapping his ears. He is also upset by the sound of dogs barking, and covers his ears ind defense. However, later in the film he does not show a whole lot of outward signs of distress, even in situations involving gunshots, explosions and other such sources of loud sounds.

He has savant-like abilities of various kinds: he can set up multiple chess boards back ot the way they were after the pieces had been knocked over by bullies, and he works through a whole pile of practice books on various languages (among which Chinese and Spanish) in one afternoon.

Reception
The movie as a whole has received average to bad reviews, mostly for a weak and sometimes nonsensical plot. The character of Rory has been described as regressive and ill-conceived. The plot point which says that autism is the next stage of human evolution, and the stereotypical and one-dimensional nature of the character are heavily criticised. Part of this may be explained by the fact that the film went through a bunch of reshoots and changes.