I’d argue that the poor performance of female-led comic book movies is absolutely due to sexism.
Not on the part of the fans, though.
It’s like studios, writers, directors, whoever panics when they’re gonna put a woman/girl on-screen and no longer know how to use their actors.
Women in an action scene? Easy peasy
Women as an object of affection? All day with their eyes closed
Women as comic relief? Eh, they’re working on it
But once a woman is supposed to command the scene and be in charge of the action, these movies seem to fall right back into sexist tropes. For some reason, the creators can’t just write a superhero movie and shove a woman or girl in the lead role.
Case in point: Wonder Woman
The first Wonder Woman movie was essentially Thor, but with better pacing. Of course it was a great fucking film. WW87? Holy shit did they hit the sexism hard for that movie. They turned Wonder Woman into a lovesick puppy who couldn’t decide between saving the fucking world and boning some dude who hosted her dead boyfriend’s spirit. I get it and it probably could have worked had they not made the villain a cat-lady stereotype turned chick-flick hot girl turned literal cat-lady.
They keep pandering to the lowest common denominator and audiences won’t settle for that anymore. Not for their favorite characters who can literally do anything
Solid agree.
Especially when the female/LGBT/Black/immigrant story would actually need to deal with or acknowledge difficult topics executives and big studios back off rather than embrace it. It often leaves things feeling weak, or forced.
And then if you add an underbaked romance plot… Bleh
The first Wonder Woman had all those tropes too. People just seem to not remember that. I have never figured out why.
Having the tropes doesn’t make the movie bad per se. A bad use of the tropes makes it bad.
WW1 works as a dumb action flick. WW87 fails even at that. Diane giving that moral speech at the climax of the movie felt like a 80s cartoon “moral lesson” - thinking about it, it sure feels like the movie was a big budget, 80s toy-seller cartoon episode
I’d argue that the first one used those tropes whereas 87 fell back into them to the point that they became themes.
Solid agree.
Especially when the female/LGBT/Black/immigrant story would actually need to deal with or acknowledge difficult topics executives and big studios back off rather than embrace it. It often leaves things feeling weak, or forced.
And then if you add an underbaked romance plot… Bleh
MindTraveller@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
The villain in 87 was absolutely fantastic though.
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The rock or the Trump insert that had more likeable characteristics than the real Trump?
MindTraveller@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
I think calling him Trump is underselling him. He’s a personification of what capitalists think capitalism is. He’s the American dream. He’s infinite growth. He’s a good deal. And even being a mythologised portrayal of capitalism, he’s still bad. If you give capitalists exactly what they want and how they want it, they’ll still destroy the world. That’s the point of the movie.
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I had to be told he was a Trump insert. I honestly thought he was just a Gordon Gekko type. His only redeeming quality was he did love his son, which is why I didn’t make the Trump connection at first.
Broadly speaking, I get it, but too many aspects of the movie were either undercooked or someone needed to be willing to tell Patty Jenkins that her ideas aren’t very good. I agree with RLM said that the movie was a bunch of empty platitudes. That ending monologue was nonsense.