Feminism in movies: refreshing or overplayed and extreme?

Take the remake of Charlie's Angels and Birds of Prey. For BOP I want to both congratulate the director for a good female empowerment film and to laugh at how fake the whole thing plays out to be: SPOILER:the entire gang is needed to take out one villain-2 if you count Zsasz.

I haven't seen those movies, but the reason why I avoided them is because they looked corny in the trailers, especially Charlie's Angels, which literally looks unwatchable. Not because of female empowerment, just because they just look way too corny.

The problem for me is that recent films with any message inevitably become preachy. ‘Female empowerment’ either comes naturally with well-balanced female characters, or it should be left alone altogether. But that applies to any agenda shoehorned into a work of art. Films like ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ gave us women with agendas we could root for, and who were also realistic and likeable. Quite a few films with Jessica Chastain leave that impression. But the majority of the psycho-feminists on screen in the last five years feel like aliens. I’m also fed up with the argument that if it’s a ‘positive portrayal of women’, that automatically makes for a good film. ‘Birds of Prey’ wasn’t as abysmal as it could have been - Margot Robbie saves it - but I think they spoiled it with the babysitting subplot and the cheesiness that came with that. It’s a somewhat unrealistic view of human behaviour that Harley Quinn would suddenly find her maternal instinct.

There seems to be something wrong these days with strong female characters.
Any and all movies today with a female character in the lead, is a Mary Sue. There's no weakness, no peril, no arc, and no personality.
Every one, is basically the female version of Steven Seagal... the relentless march of victory through a sea of improbable situations.



Writers today seem to think to be a strong female lead, you need to be invincible, great at everything without needing practice, totally impervious to any kind of weakness, and even to the detriment of any male character in the movie.


Ellen Ripley, Sarah Connor (in Terminator and T2 at least), hell even Leeloo in Fifth Element, were strong female leads, but they weren't insulting toward the male characters, and they weren't insulting to women who were watching the movie either.
They had character, and they had weaknesses. They go through an arc, a learning curve, and come out of it maybe slightly damaged, but all the stronger for it.



The Mary Sue is an insult to both female and male audiences.

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You're totally right. HQ, while she is some kind of antihero that does the right thing from time to time, she is not in any way motherly and her dialogue with CC sounded so cheesy.

Completely agree. Excellent points.

Very true. And now I’ve finally read where ‘Mary Sue’ came from! Better late than never.

Yeah, it's a problem, but it has nothing to do with the specific viewpoint espoused. When art exists to serve ideology, rather than to express a feeling (even though there can obviously be some overlap there), the art suffers. It's why textbooks aren't interesting reading: because their first priority is instruction.

This is not in any way a problem with contemporary films, though. Not by a long shot. There are a lot of older films that end with a character basically turning to the camera and delivering a monologue about the message (see, for example, The Bigamist).

The problem, in my opinion, is more that when a film doesn't bank on anything deeper than having a female lead, or having a significant gay character, or addressing (superficially) a serious social issue, the audience can feel how shallow it is.

Growing up I had basically zero female action role models. Like, none. I was absolutely hungry for stories that I liked (action, thriller, sci-fi) that also featured women. It is fun to see someone who reflects some aspect of your own identity in those roles. So an action film starring Gina Carano will interest me a hair more than some other B-grade action flick. I don't think that such films are preachy so much as they are lazy.

This is also true of most male characters, and especially in mainstream/blockbuster films. You're just so used to mediocre male characters that it doesn't register the same way.

But there are plenty of well-written female characters across multiple genres in films that have come out in the last 10 years.

Elizabeth Moss in The Invisible Man
Furiosa in Mad Max, Fury Road
The female characters in Lady Bird
The entire cast of Little Women
The main character in Emma (the complete opposite of a Mary Sue)
The lead character of Moana
Toni Collete in Hereditary
The two leads in Booksmart
The two leads in Portrait of a Lady on Fire
The ENTIRE female cast of Annihilation, even the secondary characters.
The female lead in Arrival

And that's just a sample from the first page of my rated films from IMDb.

You can watch this excellent essay about theme in Annihilation for a sense of how the different female characters are developed both as people and as thematic explorations of trauma and mortality. (There are some BIG SPOILERS about the film in this essay, so tread carefully!)



There's a reason that people always default to Ripley and Sarah Connor in this argument, and that's because they are an exception. As time has gone by we are seeing more and more well-developed, nuanced female characters.

Movies with women in lead, critical roles are just like any other movies: many of them will be underdeveloped, cliched, or slightly pandering to a specific audience. But let's not pretend that male-centric films don't pander in their own ways, like when average joe men end up with super hot women.

Look, empty "girl power!" narratives are annoying. But are they much more annoying than the millionth male lead whose sole motivation and plot arc is that someone killed his wife/girlfriend?

The Ripley-and-Connor rule strikes again. Anyway, I'd argue that Leeloo is a bad example since she's more of a living MacGuffin compared to Ripley or Connor (and it's not like they weren't put up against male characters that not only invited their contempt but the audience's e,g the hospital staff in T2 or the corporate flunkies in Aliens). I'm not even sure if Leeloo had an arc, much less what it was supposed to be (whereas I could readily identify an arc for Captain Marvel, simplistic though it may be). I do wonder how much of the concern over "insulting male characters" comes from the protagonists simply being women - like if you remade Die Hard but changed John McClane to a woman and kept everything else the same (including the constant trash-talking of the terrorists or the police chief), that would apparently be enough to turn it into a man-hating Mary Sue movie. After all, it's not like we saw John McClane train either.

In any case, I'd say it's more a matter of badly-written protagonists being a symptom of many films as it is and, since there are considerably fewer films with female protagonists by default, then we are most likely going to notice the bigger films anyway (with all the flaws that that entails) and grant them greater significance in the discourse (I noticed in the course of writing this post that Takoma11 has rattled off a bunch of noteworthy examples and also made the good point about how it's easier to disregard mediocre male-led action movies on account of them being the "default" - after all, Furiosa alone arguably negates the idea of every female protagonist being a Mary Sue).

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

I didn't think Captain Marvel's character suffered because of the "feminism", she was just a superman type of character and these characters are static and one-dimensional like that.

I think the problem is more related to film criticism: Critics say a movie is bad because the movie has a female lead that "looks too thin" which they see as an objectification of women, for instance.

Yes, this.

Also, I think that it's important to note that "movie starring women" =/= feminism. (I have an entire rant about this in relation to the film American Mary).

Feminism is about equality of opportunity, respect, etc. Often the most interesting characters are the ones who are messy and flawed.

There's a reason that women like Charlize Theron (who is gorgeous and could build a whole career on just playing "sexy female lead") goes all in with characters like the ones she plays in Monster, Fury Road, Young Adult, and Tully. Like, there are four different non-Mary Sue female leads for you from a single actress's filmography.

The characters do exist, and actresses want to play them, and audiences want to see them.

It's a separate issue from the general mediocre state of character development in a lot of films that get made, regardless of the gender of the lead. And unfortunately, many female characters get handed "Generic Girl Power" as their motivation because sexism is something that many women have in common so it's an easy note to hit. Just like how "average man is unappreciated at work and struggles with meaning of life" is a generic trope handed to male characters.

"We see that all the time with male leads" is true, but it's worse when it's being sold as some facile form of progress. Nobody is pretending (I hope) that all those vapid male action heroes were doing anything other than filling time.

And that, I think, is what people are mostly upset about, even if they can't or don't always express it very well: the insulting way these things are sold to us. It's not who the lead is, it's the degrading expectation that people will cheer it on based on something as superficial as a gender swap. I think this is what people are referring to when they say something is being "shoved down our throats."

I don't think it's neutral, either, because it's a missed opportunity. Feminism in film is valuable to the degree it counter-programs what we already have. Captain Marvel isn't progress. Lady Bird is.

Fair enough, but I find political messages about international relations, for lack of a better example, I.e. in Vietnam War films etc, more understandable because it’s a conflict. But a message about ‘Girl Power’ may be problematic in other ways. I find, for example, that it invalidates stories about women who are weak (they do exist!) and whose story stems from their weakness... but that may have more to do with society in general celebrating strength and ignoring the stories of the weak people who do not resist temptation, do not fight, do not win, etc. It’s hard to think of an example, but I really liked ‘Christine’ (2016), because it shows that no matter how hard the protagonist tries, she fails to achieve her goals, and that’s what makes her snap. It’s pretty rare with protagonists of either sex to show failure that doesn’t lead to victory. I’m off on a bit of a tangent, but there we go.


Annie in ‘Hereditary’ in particular is very well-written, and I get annoyed when people hate her, because they seem to be missing the point that she’s more real than what we’re used to seeing in women on screen.

What I'm saying is that I don't find the superficiality of a gender swap any less eye-rolling than some average dude turning into an efficient killing machine in the space of 90 minutes. The cinematic world is so broad that the only way something is being forced on you is if you are watching those films. I just can't make myself feel sorry for people who get angry about the existence of films that clearly aren't their cup of tea.

We are often expected to cheer for characters (especially male characters) just because they are the underdog in a situation. But the superficial pandering regarding male characters doesn't stick out as much because it's a norm at this point. I don't complain about those movies, I just . . . don't watch them.

I think you hit the nail on the head with your last sentence. Most movies do not want to go there. They don't want to show a main character who is weak or defeated or who ultimately fails. And I think that this is true across most films.

When I think of movies that I like that do allow for those types of stories, they are pretty rare. And so when you take into account that women generally don't get to be the lead in as many films, movies where the female character is weak or fails, you're just not going to have a lot of them. However, they definitely exist!! I could easily rattle a dozen films from the last 5 or 10 years that fit that criteria.

But honestly, look at the movies people are talking about in this thread: Birds of Prey, Ghostbusters, Charlie's Angels, these are not the kind of films where male leads would be much more nuanced. Who is a character who fails or is weak in the Marvel universe? Did any of the original (male) Ghostbusters show these traits? Nope. Also, does a movie like Iron Man "invalidate" a movie like There Will Be Blood? If superficial male-centered films don't invalidate other stories about men, why say that superficial female-centered films invalidate other stories about women?

I think that it's unfortunate that "strong female character" has been taken to such a literal place in so many big budget films. Strength (for a man or a woman) is not just about punching someone in the face. I would again refer to Annihilation as a great example of doing it right. Or something like Arrival where the main character's strength is intelligence, flexible thinking, and compassion.

Amen. Annie is a hot mess, but she's a hot mess in a way that is completely understandable given what she has gone through and the forces working against her.

What would some of them be? I’m becoming a bit of a sucker for such films.

I guess you could argue Marvel was beginning to develop the‘failure’ storyline with Loki, but then the extended universe came around and he became a half-good guy, which I always found a bit of a cop-out. But yes, you’re right about the rest.

I agree with most of this, but isn't this just rolling back to an earlier point in the discussion? The thing I'm saying here...

"...it's worse when it's being sold as some facile form of progress. Nobody is pretending (I hope) that all those vapid male action heroes were doing anything other than filling time."

...is based on granting the premise that these male characters are often vapid and pandering, but noting that nobody really denies this or tries to pretend they're more culturally significant than they are, and that this difference in presentation explains the difference in response.

I think this, too, is mostly addressed by the above distinction about presentation. It's not that the films invalidate each other, it's that presenting rote examples of representation are inherently valuable is invalidated by works of actual value.

I kinda wanna argue with the Marvel thing, I can think of a few examples (the entire second Avengers film happens because Tony messes up royally), but it's mostly outside of the important/primary point and I don't wanna get bogged down, since the underlying idea is true often enough that it doesn't matter too much whether it's always true or just often true.

I'm going to spoiler-text this list, because many of them veer more toward downer endings. This is a list of films where you have a flawed (but well-written! In my opinion, of course!) main character whose weakness/vulnerability drives or specifically informs the action. I'm not sure if you were wanting me to specify female-led films or just films in general. If you wanted female-led ones, let me know and I'll go back and sort the list accordingly. (EDIT: This is a partial list, titles from about 1/3 of my IMDb ratings and the most "mainstream". I'll limit it to this for now, but in the future could suggest more if you like them. Hopefully you find a few that you like!)

I know what you mean. There's sometimes an attempted "upsell" of a film because just by having a female lead, as if a female-led superhero film represents significant advancement in the fight for women's rights.

But having a female-led superhero film, for example, is a relatively recent development. Wonder Woman was the first female superhero film I ever saw in the theater. And how many have there been in the last decade? Two? Three? It is still, to a degree, an event just to have a female superhero starring in her own film. I teach 10 year olds, and do you know how excited some of them were to get to see a "girl" superhero? It clearly meant something to them.

I think that there are several stages to representation in film:

1) You are in the movie (Peter Parker's Aunt May)
2) You are in the movie in a significant role (someone like Pepper Potts)
3) You are in the movie in a significant and active role (Black Widow, Wonder Woman)
4) You are in the movie in a significant and active and nuanced role (???)

Female action leads are stuck at #3 for the most part. And arriving at #3 has been kind of a recent thing, especially in the action/blockbuster world. A good film should have more going for it than the gender/race/sexuality of its lead. But at the same time, we're still in a place where people are so lacking in seeing themselves on screen that the mere fact of representation is a selling point.

This is where I think that there is a divide. There are a ton of great female roles/films, but most of them are not tent-pole films and not the kind of movies whose trailers/advertising are everywhere. There are some exceptions like maybe The Long Kiss Goodnight.

Consider that "the action star is a woman!!" wouldn't be a selling point if there were a lot of female-led action. Black Panther's Afro-centric setting and cast was a selling point for the same reason.

That said, trust me, I'm not happy that some studios have seemed to decide that just putting a woman on screen is doing their part and acting like it makes the film some sort of moral good. It does some good (just like seeing Captain America on screen gives a strong male role model), but could do so much more.