A big problem is how the term "social justice warrior" originally referred to people who got needlessly militant even by the standards of other people who were concerned about social justice
As time goes on, things change, including speech. The "SJW" term is not being used as a way to describe a person pushing for social justice. It's to describe a person who places social justice or whatever they think social justice is in places it doesn't belong...such as the film industry. As I said before, there is no problem concerning female roles. You can name countless films with likable, memorable, and strong female characters in all roles. Leads, second leads, supporting casts, villains. We're talking about the people who look at this fact and say, "Well, there's (x) or (y) film that has one lady in it and she doesn't have that many lines so that means, ALL film is flawed and ALL of it needs to be modified to be 'all inclusive.'" That is what we call the SJW.
It is also being used ironically, for the person in question is usually in a place where there is nothing to be solved such as a white man saying the word, "black," and the person in question calling them racist so in the same way someone would call a person who has done something dumb a "genius" ironically, we're calling this type of person a "warrior" ironically.
(especially if something as basic as casting a female protagonist without having some big justification for differing from the male default is automatically assumed to be "catering to the SJW crowd").
And in some cases, in good movies especially, there really is no agenda. The lead is just a female.
...Or a work like Coraline, You can tell that Coraline is a girl because that's what the writer wanted. She was written to be a character and is so unique that you can barely imagine her as a boy.
I put an emphasis on the
Ghostbusters cast not putting an impact on the story because as MoreOrLess said, it's the marketing. The selling point was that the cast was female and in the long run, nothing else was written for them. I admittedly didn't see
Widows, but what I was saying was that if the selling point is going to be that the cast is all female, then it should've been essential to the story or at the very least, it could've given us something new, even if the new material had nothing to do with the gender. As a matter of fact, in that section of the comment, I was trying to say that not all female roles automatically constitute as SJW pandering but I guess that's just the result of 9pm speech writing. It becomes pandering when the gender swap or inclusion is the selling point or is randomly in the focus of the movie but has no impact on the story. Again, the impact doesn't have to have anything to do with the gender, but they should at least be a likable character. Sure, people like who and what they like and that's completely fine, but I'm personally seeing that the characters that were promoted as double X chromosomes and muscles have no personality past those two traits. This, "strong female lead" thing has affected many characters in the past but audiences are noticing it more because of the subject's popularity.
Also, for all the talk of "forced agendas", maybe consider the possibility that a prevalence of white male characters over the entire course of cinematic history is in itself a forced agenda and that people who aren't being catered to by that long-standing default are not being whiners for having a problem with that.
This is an interesting argument. I'm guessing you're talking about the agenda of men having to be big, strong, misogynistic, emotionless, sexy, white heroes. And while this clearly isn't correct, this is also a stereotype that's been corrected. We've been getting movies with male protagonists of color, with flaws, weaknesses, emotions, charisma, development and partners they love and respect. The same progression has happened with the females characters yesterday. Instead of them being cooking, cleaning sex objects, they've been the loving, supporting, witty and charming partners or leads that keeps everyone and everything in place. And I believe that the problem with the new female agenda is that instead of pushing a positive message about the capabilities of women, it is repeating the mistakes of the past. The agenda that is being pushed is for females to be big, strong, misogynistic, emotionless, sexy, white heroes. It's moving backwards.
I think horseshoe theory definitely applies here, especially if it's a question of how one's attitude towards social justice impacts their ability to interpret and criticize films
I guess it depends on the review. As I said, the "SJW" complaints, or least what I've seen just have a place in a film that had many problems, that's just one of them.