Leading Women

Yesterday, a couple bits of news came from an interview with Joss Whedon.  You can see the original interview here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2013/06/05/joss-whedon-on-shakespeare-female-superheroes-and-feminism.html. 

One of the main bits of news is that he expects Robert Downey, Jr. to be back for Avengers 2.  Nothing terribly exciting about that.  Although, I thought he made an interesting comparison.  He compared RDJ to Sean Connery in James Bond.  James Bond has been recast several times since Sean Connery.  I hope RDJ will be back; it's going to be hard to picture anybody else as Tony Stark.

The other tidbit taken from the interview is about female superheroes:

“Toymakers will tell you they won’t sell enough, and movie people will point to the two terrible superheroine movies that were made and say, You see? It can’t be done. It’s stupid, and I’m hoping The Hunger Games will lead to a paradigm shift. It’s frustrating to me that I don’t see anybody developing one of these movies. It actually pisses me off. My daughter watched The Avengers and was like, 'My favorite characters were the Black Widow and Maria Hill,' and I thought, Yeah, of course they were. I read a beautiful thing Junot Diaz wrote: 'If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves.”

I agree with him.  I wish that we would see more female leads in movies.  Maybe he's right - Hunger Games may help things.  I don't think that's the problem though.  We brought back Sigourney Weaver back for multiple takes in Alien, Aliens, Alien3, etc.  She was a strong female lead in an action movie.  Is this the exception?  Maybe.  Female leads tend to work in other movies though.  Look at Thelma & Louise.  Look at The Help.  While these aren't action movies, I think there's a couple of things that stand out about those movies.  They had strong scripts and strong female leads.

Let's look at some the failures.  I'll stick to superhero movies since that's what inspired Joss' comment. 

Let's start with one of the early ones: Supergirl.  This was a weak spin-off of Superman.  They couldn't even get Christopher Reeve to cameo.  They did get Jimmy Olsen.  The Girl of Steel wasn't strong though.  They had her swooning over a dude the minute she saw him.  He wasn't even a smart guy.  These are just some of the problems with the script. 

What about Catwoman?  The script sucked.  You couldn't get Michelle Pfeiffer to continue her role.  While Catwoman from Batman Returns was sexualized, I felt that she was ten-times more so in Catwoman.  When you over-sexualize your leading lady, you're excluding about half of your audience.  Do you think I'm going to be able to get my wife to go with me to watch a crappy movie with a half-naked girl in it?  Do you think parents are going to take kids to go see it?

Those are just a couple of examples.  I don't even want to get into the confusing mess of Elektra.

I think one of the keys is to develop a strong character. Let people know why they are doing what they're doing. Don't create a love interest for her that overshadows what she's doing. Let her stand on her own two feet. Make sure she's wearing something decent (some sexuality is good, too much can be off-putting). Develop a strong story.  Every other superhero story these days has a good script; give one to the women. 

I look forward to seeing a Wonder Woman movie, a Supergirl movie, a new Tomb Raider movie, a Black Widow movie, etc. Who cares which one they do? Just put something good out there, and I think the public will show that we're ready.