Feminism in movies: refreshing or overplayed and extreme?

In movies like these i will definitely agree that the relationship in the end makes sense cause obviously the guy did win over the woman by being nice to her etc.I love these movies, they are fun and romantic.But in movies like Pixel, where the nedry guy ends up with the super hot video game heroine that he has never met before just doesn't make sense.

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You are a 100% right here, by the way, which I’ve admitted from the start. But I just feel it does absolutely no harm to discuss why/where people find female empowerment irrelevant/poorly executed or overdone in a film. It’s just a conversation.

In the specific case of The Invisible Man, I actually like that we don't see Adrian's behavior. And that even extends to Cecelia's closed-lip descriptions of what happened to her. It would have been easy for her to trot out details of his abuse, and I liked that she clearly doesn't really want to talk about it. Her behavior--wanting to leave, being ashamed of the abuse, being paranoid after leaving--is one of the better portrayals of someone coming out of an abusive relationship (again, based on personal experience from friends). Unless you want to argue that Cecelia is actually crazy, her paranoia about even going to check the mailbox speaks volumes. Her character has a passivity to her that I appreciated and felt was realistic. The birth control is a great example--she clearly either can't refuse sex or can't trust Adrian to agree to birth control.

Just calling Cecelia a victim is kind of dismissive of the emotional journey that she goes through during the film, though. The whole movie builds on what seems to be an impossible lever between what Cecelia is told (Adrian is dead) and what she believes (he is still around and watching her). And this contrast is intensified when yet another seeming contradiction emerges--not only does she feel that he's watching her (ie the photos on the cell phone), but somehow he is doing impossible things (ie being invisible). No rational person would say "Oh, my ex must just be invisible!". Things are constantly being thrown at Cecelia that make her doubt herself and force her to content with a new version of reality. This is why I love that the film frequently gives us sequences where she might just be paranoid, such as the scene in the mental hospital when she stares at the corner. Cecelia doesn't know when she can trust that she's alone and as viewers neither do we. It's a horror movie, and the horror isn't just "a man is invisible!", it's the idea that maybe you can't trust your own senses and your own construct of reality.

There are plenty of films/TV shows that equally follow the abuser/killer. They can be interesting, but the focus of The Invisible Man hinges on Cecelia's very subjective experience.

It's not so much about arguing against it. But more to say that I think that a story can still be compelling without "showing the other side", because sometimes the "good stuff" in the story is about the main character's internal journey.

My concern is only when this criticism is directed at a certain demographic, in this case movies starring women. Again, I have been posting in film forums for almost 20 years. I almost never see complaints (much less entire threads!) dedicated to shallow tropes involving men. This thread is one of many I've seen complaining about the "girl power" cliche.

It's not about rationalizing. I don't make excuses for films I don't like just because they feature women. It's about deciding if a film's methods fit its purpose. I think that the *purpose* of The Invisible Man is to put the viewer firmly in Cecelia's point of view (which is not to say that you always have to be on her SIDE, just that you are submerged in her experience). Giving Adrian screentime (much less giving a background of their relationship) is counter to this purpose and wouldn't be efficient storytelling.

But this ignores a lot of context. Women, historically, have been more likely to be given minimal or no dialogue in films or to be put in non-essential roles. Male characters have rarely encountered this problem. When a female character (played by a strong actress) is in a 3.5 hour film and is given almost not dialogue, people are going to have questions. If Anna's lack of dialogue is meant to be allegory for the "silent witnessing" of people who live with violent men, okay.

The past is useful if it provides context (and in the specific case of The Gift it actually *re-contextualizes* what we've seen). But we don't need that context in The Invisible Man (because the filmmaker gives us plenty of shortcuts to infer the context). Showing Adrian being nice doesn't add anything to the narrative--we already know that he must have been nice at some point or Cecelia wouldn't have been with him. And we don't need to see him being mean because we already know he's abusive. Filling in Adrian's past adds nothing to the film.

I feel like, from my point of view, a lot of what you're asking for is implicitly in the film. Adrian uses the invisibility suit because it is one more way that he can monitor and mess with Cecelia. He tells her that wherever she goes, he can walk right up to her and she won't know it. It's also not a bizarre choice for a scientist--there are plenty of real-life examples of people using their professional resources (police officers, scientists, IT professionals) to stalk or harass domestic partners. Yes, it's taken to an extreme, but that's why it's a horror movie and not a domestic drama.

You've made this point a few times, but I feel like it's been answered already (here, for example). The stuff about how nobody complains about other facile representations because nobody pretends those facile representations are culturally significant or meaningful.

You can disagree with this, to be sure, but when I mentioned it earlier you seemed to agree. But the argument quoted above, which has basically become a refrain, seems mutually exclusive with it (or at least seems to talk about the issue as if this distinction were not present or relevant). Let me know if I've misunderstood something.

I agree with the point that movies sometimes sell themselves as being "morally good" because they feature women. (I think that there are several other categories of films that also do this, but we can restrict ourselves to the "girl power" subgenre). And I understand that it fosters resentment when there's an implication that you are a bad person for not liking/supporting something because of its supposed moral goodness.

What I am objecting to when I cite that "feminist" films are called out much more often is the absolutist language that's used about them. "Every movie with women these days . . . " or "Every female protagonist these days is . . .".

Again--look at the title of the thread: feminism in films is presented as a binary, either good or bad. It's an inflammatory way of phrasing the question.

If the title of the thread had been something like "The Superficial Feminism of Birds of Prey: Helpful or Harmful?", I'd have no problem. It's an interesting question: does a simplified version of a "social agenda" do more harm than good? And it refers to a specific film (or maybe to a specific handful of films). It took pages into the thread for the OP to say that there are many "great" feminist films. Shouldn't those great feminist films emerge early in the discussion as a counter-point to the ones that are doing it wrong?

Women-centered films are often painted with a broad brush (notice how posters will literally talk about "women's films" and yet never in my life have I heard someone refer to "men's film" as its own genre) and I think it's unhelpful and reductive. Female empowerment in film (like the empowerment of all demographics) is important. So if we're going to critique it (which we should!) that critique should be specific. Saying that "All women characters these days are perfect Mary Sues who never make a mistake" is both factually incorrect and posits this as an end-goal of feminism, which it certainly is not.

I mean, to be fair, even though there isn't an official term for it, there's still a category of films that are blatantly catered to guys. Even though they aren't called "bro flicks" (as opposed to "chick flicks"), they're films you would watch with a bunch of frat boys while high and drunk.

But in my opinion, this is unhelpful and reductive in its own way as well, because that would mean women would be too feminine to watch something like Bad Boys 2 and Point Break, or any college frat boys flick like Superbad, or something gratuitously sexual like American Pie, or something gratuitously masculine like Arnold's Commando. That is an inherently sexist perspective in its own form, presuming that women don't desire sex and drugs as much as guys. They need their eye candies as well.

Therefore, I think the best compromise these films can come to are films that are gender-neutral, films that can cater to either gender. It's nice to have a girl's night out with a female-centered film every now and then, but watching Ghostbusters 2016 just for the sake of seeing Ghostbusters but with women, would probably be boring for guys, especially guys who've seen the original version. There's a segregation created here that is neither helpful or progressive.

Equality is the key here, not segregation. Gender equality. Create romance movies that touch on relationship subjects men have to deal with as well, not just women. Create action movies that have both male and female main characters, or just female-centered action flicks with an actually original and good story (instead of a regendered version of an old movie). I'm a guy and I loved Aliens. That's a good example of a gender-neutral action film; both men and women can enjoy it.

I see. That's a fair point, though I think it's been absent from many of the replies. Many of them (like the one I quoted above) simply ask "why don't people complain about shallow male films?" even though we discussed that earlier and seemed to reach a consensus on the answer. Or at least an agreement that a reasonable answer exists.

Anyway, I agree about absolutist language. I think sometimes it's just hyperbole, and obviously meant as such, but I'm pretty bothered by the very Internet habit of stating positions in the starkest way possible (either to get attention or to make them seem stronger), so I approve of people calling that out when it happens. In small doses hyperbole is no big deal, but when it happens regularly it can poison discussion and, eventually, lead to less disciplined thinking on the part of the speaker, too. We end up thinking the way we talk.

You've already explained why we talk about "women's films" and not "men's films": because films with male leads are far more common, so they become the default, and deviations from the default are the things that require sub-classification. On that level, it's neutral and pragmatic.

But then you fairly ask: why are those the default? We could say it's simply sexism, though to your credit I don't think you've taken the easy way out and simply ascribed it to that. And I don't think we can: women have, for many generations now, had enough power as citizens and consumers to let the market know what kind of films they want, so I'm tempted to conclude that this particular thing is not very important to many of them.

If you'll permit me a positive generalization: the women I know are, in aggregate, much more empathetic than the men I know. I think a man is much more likely to fail to empathize with a woman protagonist than vice-versa. And as long as that's true, it means the incentive structure for big-budget films will always be skewed towards male protagonists.

So maybe, in order to talk about some of this, we need to first examine our presuppositions: is it inherently a problem if there are more leading men than leading women, particularly in the sub-genre of "tentpole action films"? Is it possible for an equitable society to produce broad entertainment that features one group more than another, or is that ipso facto evidence of a problem? It seems to me the conversation would have to proceed very differently depending on how we answer that.

Agreed. Like many problems with big budget films, I think that it mostly comes down to laziness and a lack of imagination.

I think this is a very good, probably wildly underappreciated point: I think some people are having a reflexive aversion to this stuff because they assume they're being accused of something, but to my mind a lot of these things are just down to inertia and/or which things have been "proven" more in the marketplace, which is naturally a big point of concern for people sinking millions of dollars into films.

I think it'd be easier to talk about this stuff if people understood, upfront, that "we might have a problem" does not necessarily mean "you're bad."

I would say that this is not necessarily a positive generalization. I think it lets men off the hook too easy to just say "Well, we just don't have the empathy or imagination to connect with a female protagonist."

There is a tremendous historical bias when it comes to storytelling (I'm folding literature in here as well as film) in terms of what types of stories are told about women. We are "trained" by the stories we encounter to learn who to empathize with and which stories feel comfortable and familiar. I think that the answer is to demand more high-quality stories featuring a variety of characters, not to give up and revert to the default.

I'm wary of laying the blame at the feet of female consumers who have not used their "power" to force the market in a certain direction. It's taken YEARS for there to be middle-grade graphic novels with female protagonists, and yet now that there are more of those novels, my female students make up a much bigger proportion of graphic novel readers.

It's also taken years for there to be good advice about what heart attacks look like in women. I don't think we can chalk that up to women not caring about staying alive. In fact, the medical field (yes, we are straying from films here) is another great example of women being active consumers of an industry and yet the industry maintaining harmful practices toward them. Many industries (and I include the film industry here) often do not change their practices if they don't have to.

Is it a problem if there are more leading men than women in action films? No, I don't think so. There are many reasons why it makes sense. Men are more likely to belong to fields that are "actiony" (military, law enforcement, etc); men probably make up a larger market share of action film consumers, etc.

There needs to be a balance in creating films. It should not merely be a numbers game (ie. 50.8% of the population is female ergo 50.8% of film leads should be female). But at the same time I do think that when populations are significantly underrepresented in a certain genre, it's worth asking why. Sometimes there might be an answer that makes sense (ie War stories will more often feature men because many more men are soldiers/enlisted in the armed forces).

But I think it's also important to remember that films are not merely representational of "reality", they can also be aspirational. As dumb as it sounds, American Gladiators was a really important show for me growing up because it was one of the only ways that I got to see women being athletic on screen. I wanted to be powerful and strong, and seeing that represented was very important.

Feminism and equality ultimately are not about slotting people into categories, they are about offering choice and opportunity. Not every woman is physically capable of being a marine. But neither is every man. Representations in film are one way of communicating those choices.

That I agree with, and I don’t think she’s crazy in the slightest. I also think it’s quite a good film overall.

Reading this made me nostalgic for The Invasion of Body Snatchers (1978), so I watched it last night.

I think that’s because people don’t mind the tropes with men so much. Because tropes with men are all varied, whether to do with average Joes who get hot women, or beating up a whole gang of baddies, etc, but the tropes with women all seem to focus on girl power. You are spot-on where you say above that male-led action is the institutionalised norm but also a conscious choice, but I also agree with @Yoda ;, who says action is a predominantly ‘male genre’ where most consumers will, for whatever reason, be male. That can explain the reaction and the frequent discussions on the topic.

Possibly not. But again, I feel when a man has a dead wife/lover etc, in that trope we do get flashbacks of them together. See: John Wick, Quantum of Solace, Memento, Inception. In all these cases, flashbacks with women are deemed worthy, but we get no flashbacks with Adrian at all. I agree that it might not be relevant/fit for the film’s purpose. But that also results in what I referred to above: I think it opens the viewer up to the possibility that Cecelia’s perception is not objective.

I always interpreted it like that, especially as in many Italian-American families the patriarchy is still prevalent - especially in the sort of families The Irishman is concerned with.

You’re probably right. I’m looking forward to rewatching it after this discussion.

Maybe. In the past there have been assumptions about certain genres being of interest to only one gender and those assumptions have been wrong. I don't know much demographic information about action films, but horror movies do have several articles about this. Most people assume that the horror genre is "for men", but recent studies have shown that women are almost an equal share of the horror genre and may even be more of an audience for certain movies.

It's almost like what I was describing with the graphic novels in my classroom. For many years, mostly boys read them. When I made a concerted effort to get female-centered graphic novels on my shelf, they easily became the most popular book type in my room. (And, interestingly, the boys really enjoyed reading the girl-centered novels because they were on the same shelf with the Amulet-type books). And it went both ways. The girls also started reading more of the boy-centered graphic novels. They just needed a foothold, a sense that they could "belong" on that bookshelf. We can say "Women generally don't like action as much as men". But it would be more accurate to say "Women don't like these action movies as much as men."

So there's a difference between the "idealized dead wife" flashbacks in something like John Wick, and the flashbacks in something like Inception. In Inception, those flashbacks are necessary because they tell us something important about the main character. More broadly, it gives us a really necessary context in terms of what he's doing in the film. Like what we discussed earlier about The Gift, it's information that re-contextualizes both what we've seen and our emotional understanding of what will go forward.

We are shown enough "objective" facts about Cecelia's experience that seeing Adrian's side of things wouldn't do anything to recontextualize the current reality. Does it matter why he's basically locked her up? Does it matter why he sabotaged her birth control? I think that it WOULD matter if the film involved them living together and her plotting against him. But the movie begins with her leaving. She wants out of the relationship. And there are multiple opportunities (the conversations with the brother, the final scene between Cecelia and Adrian) for us to learn if there was something that Cecelia did to "contribute" to the unhealthy relationship. Instead, both men use those opportunities to basically mock Cecelia for thinking she could be free or have control.

There are a lot of movies with women getting out of abusive relationships that use flashbacks to establish the villainy of the male partner (Incident on a Mountain Road being one that pops into my head). You and I have both seen Short Term 12--do we need the dad's "side" of the story? Why do we trust just Jayden's side of things? What about the possibility that Jayden's perception is not objective? Or can we trust the hints that the film gives us AND concede that it doesn't matter if he's otherwise a loving father?

This is something that's tricky about these discussions sometimes. I haven't seen The Irishman, so I had to read a bunch of articles giving both sides of the conversation to try to understand the different points of view.

I'm also looking forward to rewatching it, but money is tight right now and so I'm waiting for it to hit a streaming site *fingers crossed*.

It doesn't, though. Taken by itself, nothing in the statement absolves anyone of anything, or even contains any kind of value statement beyond "empathy is good." You could just as well argue that not saying this lets men off the hook by not calling out the disparity.

Now, a thoughtless person might use the same observation to justify a lack of empathy, but this statement does not lead them to that. As a general rule, I don't think it's reasonable to criticize observations by speculating about second-order effects like whether it's possible for a thoughtless person to misconstrue or abuse them. Especially since history strongly suggests that people with a prejudice can and will use just about anything to rationalize it.

To be clear, I'm not laying "blame" anywhere. If a woman tells me she doesn't care whether the lead characters in movie she watches are disproportionately male, I think that's a perfectly defensible decision that requires no justification.

That said, I'll preemptively acknowledge you might have just meant "blame" in terms of "responsibility for." Just wanted to make that clear.

Obviously, there's no way to know for sure, but a lack of interest from female consumers seems a lot likelier and simpler than some kind of internalized misogyny, or some systemic bias they themselves aren't aware of. That would be putting the "blame" on women as much as any other explanation, since it's basically positing a mild form of brainwashing.

There are always market opportunities people aren't hip to yet, but they're harder to find over time, and as time goes on the idea that there's a massive market opportunity for a demographic that makes up half of all people in a major industry that's already got billions of dollars sloshing around it...that's a pretty stark claim. Certainly a lot tougher to believe (and a lot more complicated) than the idea that they maybe just don't care about it much.

I've gotta object pretty strenuously to this comparison, because most women are not experts in health. They are, however, presumably experts in what they like. Women consumers are in a position to demand art and entertainment they prefer in a way in a way that has no correspondence to health care. And that's without even getting into the regulatory side.

Cool, good to establish some areas of agreement.

I agree with this, and I appreciate the thoughtful caveats. I definitely agree we should be asking about this. It's just equally important that we have an idea of what an answer might look like, too.

Nah, that's not dumb at all.

I agree with films being aspirational, though that can be bad, too, when depictions are unrealistic in certain ways, or because the defense of art as "reflecting truth" is inevitably weakened when the truth its reflecting is a value judgment or desire about what things ought to look like (and that "reflecting truth" bit gets tricky when someone is both generally true and a known stereotype). It all has a place in cinema in some form, though.

Strong agree re: choice and opportunity. One of the reasons I asked that hypothetical earlier is that I believe, pretty confidently, that more equal societies will still see huge disparities in choice of profession, entertainment, and other things like that. I actually think it's borderline nonsensical to expect otherwise, since once we've posited that other viewpoints are valuable because they're different from predominant ones, we can't simultaneously pretend those groups' different viewpoints won't also lead to different interests and concerns.

I can dig up the links if anyone cares, but I remember some interesting social research to this effect, where some Scandinavian nations known for their ostensible equality actually saw stronger gender preferences than less equal ones, seemingly because in equitable societies people feel more comfortable embracing those differences, rather than counteracting them to achieve some proportionality in areas they don't care about as much.

But your whole chain of logic starts with the fundamental premise that women are more empathetic than men. Empathy is not a "you have it or you don't" trait. People can learn empathy. It might be true that in our society women (generally) are more empathetic than men, but it's not a static state of things. Ebert once referred to movies as "a machine that generates empathy". If men find it challenging to empathize with a woman, I'd rather film/art/media tackle that head-on rather than accepting it as "just the way things are". Maybe women are more empathetic than men because they are more constantly being asked to sympathize with an "other"--ie a protagonist who is not like them. Maybe the problem is that boys need more practice with this.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "lack of interest", though. Women turn up for films that cater to their interests. The crowd at the showing of Wonder Woman that I attended had a much higher proportion of women than any other superhero film I've ever seen in the theater.

And even if we suppose that many or even most women don't care for action films or don't particularly care about a female lead in one, there are millions and millions of women in the US alone. If even 10% of women are interested in seeing a female lead, then it's a marketable strategy to make some films this way.

It's dangerous to assume that the lack of a product means that consumers aren't being vocal enough. Many parents will tell you that books with characters who are demographically (race, age, ethnicity, gender, etc) like their children are important. But despite some very recent strides, most children's books are not very diverse. It's not a lack of interest, it's not a lack of willingness to invest in such a product. It's that the industry itself is set up in such a way that impact the output in a skewed way. Movies are no different. After Michael B Jordan was cast in the Fantastic Four movie, Josh Trank wanted to cast a Black actress as his sister. He uses the phrase "heavy pushback" to describe the studio's reaction. The studio wasn't pushing back on a specific actress, they were pushing back on the *idea* of casting someone in that demographic.

So I wasn't entirely sure which superhero films would be considered comparable, thus I'm comparing Wonder Woman and Captain America (both a first entry, they have roughly comparable numbers of IMDb ratings). For Captain America women make up almost exactly 1/5 of the ratings. For Wonder Woman, they make up about 1/4. Did Wonder Woman drive away men who weren't interested in a female protagonist? Maybe. But did it attract female consumers who might not have otherwise watched a superhero film? Yes.

I'm not saying "women led action movies" is a subgenre that is an untapped billion dollar profit just waiting to be exploited. But I do think that there is a market for them.

Honestly, it's taken the film industry a while to tap into the "girls get horny too?!" market (with films like Magic Mike and 50 Shades).

And how do you imagine women demanding such art? Take one of my students: she's 11 years old, Black, girl, athletic. She would love to see someone who looks like her in a superhero movie. How does she make this happen? By NOT watching other superhero films? Nah, she loves superhero films! So what is her recourse?

But most action films are, by any metric, unrealistic. Again: if a male action star can fire a machine gun while ziplining out of an exploding building, get knocked flat by an explosion but not suffer any injuries beyond superficial bruising, and then take on 8 bad guys in hand-to-hand combat, we don't worry that little boys will think they can zipline out of burning buildings, do we? Most action films reflect an unrealistic aspiration for male characters.

"But girls will grow up thinking they can be stronger than boys!!". Meh. I have a lot of male students who watch sports and read books about sports. When the guidance counselor asks boys in my class what they want to be when they grow up, a solid HALF of them answer "NFL player." Even if you only look at athletes in the NCAA, only 2% of them even go pro (and specifically in football the numbers are lower, 1.6%). It's not about girls thinking they can grow up to be stronger than boys. It's about thinking they can grow up to be strong and stand up for what is right, which is the same message I would hope boys take away from action movies. This is where what is literally on screen (Scott Adkins backflips and kicks two bad guys in the face simultaneously; Gina Carano punches out a man) co-exists with the bigger theme (standing up to corruption; protecting someone who is helpless). We all just pretend to believe the former; we're supposed to walk away with the latter.

"Huge" disparities? Hmm. I mean, it seems to me that as fewer barriers stand in the way of different professions we tend to see smaller disparities. More women in the military, more men in primary education, more women directing movies, more men working as nurses.

I'm sure that some disparities will still linger, but I can't think of a profession that has gotten more skewed in the last 40 years. But maybe you are thinking of certain specific counter-examples. None of the women I've known in the military signed up to prove some sort of "girl power" point.

I believe it. I think that there's sort of a slingshot effect that happens. For example, take women staying at home to care for children. It's not cool when that becomes the default--"You are a woman, therefore you will give up your job to stay home". Then you see pushback. But that kind of strands women who do want to stay home and care for their children--because they might feel like a "traitor" for having that feeling. In a more open society, women would feel comfortable saying "I want to stay home with my kids and it's more important to me than continuing my former career". But I would also argue that in that same society you'd also see more men staying home with the kids. I have a few male friends who are the stay-at-home parent (usually because their partner's job has a higher salary), and they get comments and push back quite frequently because that's not a "man's job" and their wives get a ton of comments about whether or not it's "safe" to leave the kids with the dad.

I think a lot of posters in this thread are confusing feminism in movies with movies with female leads. Movies with female leads are just that, movies with female leads.

Feminism in movies would be moments like the women team up in Avengers: Endgame, Mystique saying "We should be called X-Women" in X-Men, any movie where a woman punches a guy just for being annoying, etc., which I found to be pandering and low brow. It takes me out of the movie because I can practically see the producers and writers coming up with this moments solely to get some good pr for being feminist.

Here's what I find overplayed and annoying: movies/tv shows where the female hero is perfect her whole characterization is about how badass she is. It's like the writers don't understand that a woman can be flawed and still a hero.

The worst example of this is Dany in Game of Thrones. With the exception of the first and last season, her entire character was just 'look at how badass and heroic I am, look at me get rid of these BAD MEN in a badass way!!!!' It got tiring really quick, I was like give it a rest already, can we got some character development already?

Especially because they had an opportunity to create a nuanced and complex character arc with her, but they throw it away so they can hit the same exact 'badass queen!' moment over and over again, before remembering she should get some character development in the 11th hour.

*Sorry, I know the thread is about movies, but it's the best example I could think of

I guess maybe a good starting point would be what you consider feminism.

To me, feminism is equitable treatment. If your story is going to be about someone sabotaging their life with alcohol and bad choices, you can make that movie with a male lead (The Lost Weekend) or a female lead (Young Adult). If someone is going to try and protect a child from the mob, you can make that movie with a male lead (Safe) or a female lead (Gloria). It might look different (ie Gloria isn't going to knock someone out with a single punch), but you make room for how that story could look with a different protagonist.

None of the women in Annihilation punch out a man while slinging a one-liner, but I would argue that the film falls under a feminist umbrella because it features well-developed female characters who are central to the action/plot of the film.

The "rah rah go girl!" stuff that you're describing is an incredibly superficial version of feminism.

Thinly written female characters have long been a problem in Hollywood films. It's just that studios have now realized they can get away with thinly-written female characters as long as that character is "empowered". And frankly the same problem happens with non-white characters, gay characters, and characters with disabilities.

Well for me, Annihilation is just that, a movie that features well-developed female characters who are central to the plot. I don't see how that's feminist. I mean what are well-developed male characters who are central to the plot then? Is that meninism

Bolded- you nailed it and that is why I always get annoyed when moves and shows get praise for those characters. They should be getting criticism.

To me, yes, it is feminism. Because the idea of an elite team being all female is just not a thing that you get to see on the big screen. And I'd say the same thing for a movie like Arrival. It's not that you don't have the occasional brilliant female scientist pop up in sci-fi films. But often she isn't the center of the story. That shift--making the female character the central one and the male character the secondary one who is the love interest--is important. It's not just about women being IN movies. It's about them being central to the film in a way that has historically (almost) only been a male thing. VI Warshawski isn't the best film, but it was the first movie I ever watched with a woman private investigator. It didn't stop me from loving Sherlock Holmes, but once I aged out of Nancy Drew novels, there just weren't books with female PIs. Seeing one on screen, putting together the clues, it was neat.

Men have always been centered in the majority of movies, especially in genres like sci-fi. And when you say that, the immediate retort is always Alien . . . a film that came out in 1979, and very much the exception to the rule.

To give a non-cheeky answer to your joke about meninism, I actually think that the character of Will Graham as portrayed in the TV series Hannibal is kind of a cool example of breaking from the usual male lead mold. His main strength is empathy. (When they need a throw-down fistfight Lawrence Fishburne always gets tagged in, LOL). Will does his good work through emotion. He is, in many ways, a delicate character. It's rare to see a male lead get this kind of framing, and I think it's pretty neat.

Something that's become clear in this thread to me is that I must not be reading the same reviews as everyone else. I feel like I mostly read criticism about superficial feminism, not unmitigated praise. Skimming reviews, the main praise I see is for Robie's performance specifically. Interestingly, the critics' score exactly matches the audience score (78%).

Also, generally ya'll, I appreciate the civil tone in this thread. Diverse representation in media (movies, books, TV, etc) across all demographics is something I care a lot about because I see how it impacts the mental well-being and self-image of the children with whom I work.

Anyway here is a little story for you: one of my students was an advanced reader, and she wanted to read a book with a female lead that also had vampires. Thus she ended up reading Twilight. We had the following book conference:

Me: Tell me about your book!
Her: [describes plot summary]
Me: Okay, so tell me more about Bella.
Her: Um . . . she likes Edward.
Me: Right. How else could you describe her character?
Her: She . . . doesn't really have a character.
Me: If you had to pick a character trait to describe her, what word would you pick?
Her: Boring. She's boring.

This is, to date, maybe my favorite ever conference. Even more so because I told someone about it later who had actually read the book and they were like "Yeah, she is very correct."

Not to devalue anything you said (I actually loved the above story), but what can you expect from a book like Twilight? One positive of reading classics at any age is that plenty of classics have incredibly complex and well-rounded characters, including women. I don’t know for sure how old the student is (though somewhere in this thread you said 11?), but might it not be beneficial for them to read something well-written and complex, both in message and language? I know you say she wanted to read about vampires, but why not give her, I don’t know, Dracula? And there was The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova: with vampires, a female lead, and though certainly not my genre, far more readable than Twilight.

I remember reading What Maisie Knew aged 12, much of the satire was lost of me, but I loved it and all female characters there are actually extremely well-written, including Maisie herself, with a heavy dose of snobbery, perhaps, but the one thing female characters aren’t in that book is boring or one-dimensional. I honestly think expecting any depth of characterisation in Twilight is like expecting an Oscar-worthy performance in Vampire Diaries. The better books tend to handle all their characters with care, including women.

Just to be clear: I’m not being snobbish or anything like that, I just think Twilight is not the kind of reading you can expect anything from. Part of the problem nowadays (which this thread touches on) is that people expect nuanced and complex portrayal of women (or anything else, for that matter) from genres and types of entertainment that were never designed to be nuanced. Though I do think @Yoda nailed the crux of the issue, as the lack of nuance is more noticeable when female-led films are sold as a virtue in themselves. I’m repeating myself here, but Twilight wouldn’t be better reading material if Bella was a strong and complex lead, it’s still a pathetic excuse for a book.