In terms of challenges faced by women in society? Honestly, I'd have to rewatch the first two (which I haven't seen in well over a decade) and think about it through that lens. As for Fury Road, it's not really a film I think of as commenting on challenges faced by women so much as film that does a really good job of creating a compelling action film where the most satisfying character arcs come from embracing things that would traditionally be considered more "feminine" values. I mean, the women in the film are literally used as breeding stock, but Max's body is also commodified as a glorified blood bag. It's a dehumanizing social situation for anyone who isn't at the very top.
WARNING: spoilers below
a tramautized, animalistic, anti-social loner literally running from his emotions/past traumas at the beginning of the film, only for him to do something kind/altruistic towards the end, finally giving his name (and his blood) to Furiosa, and literally crying a bit in the process:
As for the other two movies I mentioned, I'd say that the social commentary on women in Silence Of The Lambs can be found in the way that...
WARNING: spoilers below
...Johnathan Demme had the characters looking directly into the camera so often, usually from Clarice's specific perspective. That way, he sort of turns the "male gaze" back on the men, so instead of having the camera adopting a male/heterosexual perspective in order to leer at the women in the film (and provide some eye candy to the men in the audience), he instead uses it to adopt the perspecive of the woman being leered AT, so that when the creepy cross-eyed bug expert at the Smithsonian stares at Clarice/the camera like this...
...he's also looking at us, making us empathize with Clarice's relatively low position in society as a woman, because we have no choice but to feel the same discomfort she does in this situation, even if we're male, which was an absolutely brilliant choice on Demme's part...
...he's also looking at us, making us empathize with Clarice's relatively low position in society as a woman, because we have no choice but to feel the same discomfort she does in this situation, even if we're male, which was an absolutely brilliant choice on Demme's part...
...while Batman Returns fits into this conversation with the way that Selina is shown...
WARNING: spoilers below
...as an insecure, underappreciated secretary who's dismissed due to her gender, and who eventually transforms herself into the far more empowered Catwoman, but who still shows the emotional scars of her past treatment when she saves a woman from being mugged, only for her to victim-blame the woman for being such easy prey, projecting her self-loathing at her own past helplessness, and showing a deep, contradictory depth that female characters aren't always afforded in movies: