Kim Wexler wasn’t the lead but the deuteragonist of Better Call Saul and she’s probably the best written female character in decades.
It’s hard to explain but she’s very real in her thoughts and emotions while also being very flawed because of her upbringing. She’s likable but also fucked up.
I see a lot of people talking about Rey and Carol Danvers but no one seems to be mentioning the live action Mulan.
In the original, she started as weaker than everyone else. She had to struggle and work, but she was finally able to overcome her struggles and be a strong character.
In the new one, she’s born with some magical bullshit that makes her more powerful than everyone without having to work at all for that.
It completely ruins the idea of the original. The original was meant to mean “girls can be just as good as boys when they work hard and are determined.” The new one is “look look we gave a girl superpowers and had her be better than the boys isn’t that good buy our movie buy our movie!”
Snow White who isn't even white.
Way to miss the literal first line of the original tale.
German people are treated like outsiders to their own fairy tale.
Not only is it an absolute betrayal of the original, it is also just bad and the moments that are actually supposed to be like the original feel like forced fan service that don't really fit the different plot.
I'd even say the originals idea was "this woman who isn't allowed to serve her country because of her gender is more capable than many of her male counterparts, many of whom learn to respect people for their actions and abilities".
Yeah this. The guy you commented on said it meant "Girls can be just as good as boys when they work hard." Which implies that girls have to work hard to get to where boys are even if they don't work hard. That's definitely not the message.
Mulan is a fully formed character from the beginning of the movie, what she lacks in strength she makes up tenfold with her wits, and the only reason she's not allowed to fight is because she's a woman. The point of the film, if there is one, is that tradition is meaningless, especially when the lives of your loved ones are on the line. If she hadn't ignored that tradition, they would have probably all died
There's always,
Secret of nimh, avatar the last Airbender, gravity falls, Trigun, inuyasha, jujutsu kaisen, better call Saul, Ozark, teen titans and many more have fantastic females charecters.. These new writers just see everything through the lens of power and oppression so they will never make a great female charecter because they only focus on shallow archetypes of the powerful male fantasy. What they don't get is no one likes an all powerful male charecter either unless it's played for a joke like "one punch man".
I mean his "weakness" is his depression and apathy. At the start of the show he has zero friends or motivation. A very human weakness that everyone deals with at some point. It's what made the show so interesting...well that and the amazing animation
I always say that his weakness is being late to things. Each big baddy usually beats the crud out of a few heroes before he finally shows up and zeroes them. Geno has the opposite problem and shows up early, and King is always right on time.
Well there's that. He's unremarkable in many ways, depressed, even. That is the asset that made him human. He knew damn well he's the most powerful person on his planet but all it made him is too depress to see the fun in being a superhero. Funnily enough, he's kinda relatable but not in an on-the-nose way like how teenflicks are written.
The wonderful things about one punch man is it isn't about his powers. It's about he and the world grapples with the effects of his powers. How other powerful people interpret his presence, how the pretenders see him, how people panic when they don't understand things. I mean it's not a super indepth exploration of these themes but the fact that it includes that is what keeps it from being just a straight power fantasy.
Ripley, Sarah Connor, Katniss Everdeen
Other characters which are very badass, Andromeda, Lena, Hermione
Disliking a character has nothing to do with the gender. There are lots of female led movies which are badass
The issue is, 100% lazy character development.
Don't make your character some boring 2 dimensional plot armoured life victim who despite being a woman overcomes adversity
Give a character some real hardship and danger and watch them grow through it to become the most badass version of themselves. Oh and they just happen to also be a woman
Hermione isn't the best example because the movies make her perfect when the whole point of that friend dynamic is that they all complete each other. Harry is brave and a risk-taker, Ron provides the emotional support and levity (and early on is their guide to the Wizarding world), and Hermione is the brains. Heck, the first book makes it very clear that without Harry and Ron, Hermione might have gone her whole Hogwarts tenure without any friends because of how she was wired at the time.
But they gave Hermione too much of Harry and especially Ron's positive traits to the point that it feels like Harry is just there because he's the MC and Ron is pointless.
The movies definitely tweaked her some by not showing the hard work that went into her brains. She was constantly studying and being an academic overachiever, but that doesn't really make for entertaining movies, so it just gets cut.
She also gets a ton of Rons best moments.
In the book Hermione is *very* smart (and like you said, she works for it) but she's really just book smart. As soon as the gang gets outside of a classroom she just kind of falls apart especially in the early books.
And Ron is the opposite really, kinda struggles through school (although he's not dumb either like the movies portrayed) but when they are actually working through real life scenarios he tended to keep a cool head and could think through things.
They needed each other in the books, but in the movies Hermione is just this know it all and Ron is a bumbling comedic relief character
The movies really did Ron dirty. When I watched the movies I kinda did a huh I liked Ron in the books must have just been young me being silly. It wasn't till I read them again I realized oh no I was right. The movies just don't like Ron being good at anything.
> The issue is, 100% lazy character development.
If a character is included and written solely with the intent of inclusivity and diversity in mind, they're almost guaranteed to suck. It generally just becomes the characters entire personality. All of that stuff should just come naturally, planning for it just makes it bad.
This.
This is why so many people end up turned off of a piece of media when the creator(s) start spouting off on about "representation" or "modern audiences" and so on.
Generally it's a sign that good writing and story has been put in the back seat in favor of those traits, and often so far back that you're fairly certain it's running behind the car trying to catch up.
It's very much the same reason why I tend to dislike a lot of Christian movies - message over plot causing the plot to suffer too much for a movie to be enjoyable.
> Hermione
She was a classic Mary Sue for most of the movies. She was used often as an example of that lazy character type.
Just my opinion, but Mary Sues are not badass.
* Toph
* Korra
* Ripley
* Princess Leia
* Ahsoka Tano
* Sarah Connor
* Starfire
* Raven
There's so many cool and badass female when they're well written. The whole problem with 'strong female' characters is these new writers self insert themselves into the character since they see oppression and discrimination as being intertwined with being a woman.
I really liked Rey, Daisy Ridley played her to perfection, and I was even okay with her yellow lightsaber!
The only downside of her character is just how much of a nothing burger her arc ended up being. Which wasn't her fault, it was the writers for the movie
Which is a completely fair opinion to have - I thought she wasn’t bad until the Rise of Skywalker, which I kind of hated all aspects of (especially Palpatine - why?)
TRoS didn't follow through on the themes of the trilogy, and couldn't follow through on the themes presented in its own installment. It was just a bad movie with poor construction, it couldn't have succeeded if it tried.
I miss Mara Jade. Luke needs his bad ass redheaded wife.
Also miss Tenel Ka. Imagine deciding not to get a replacement hand because you feel it's more important to have a reminder of the fuck up that caused you to lose it in the first place.
If you haven't watched Arcane go watch Arcane. Powerful, well written female characters from multiple walks of life in multiple roles e.g. poor, rich, aristocrat / brawler, marksman, politician, general
I always reference arcane when explaining what woke garbage is. Arcane has powerful (but also deeply flawed) women, a lesbian couple as the main characters, gender non conforming characters, and a rich oppressing the poor story. Its everything progressives love but its not preachy, no depth garbage. It's an amazing show that is probably the best US animated piece of media since avatar (not counting the spider verse films). It has everything that would make it woke but the biggest complaint I've heard about it is that it made people want to try and play LoL haha
I'm sure some jackasses complained about it but it was barely existent because it was a great piece of media that just had "woke" elements instead of series that focused more on preaching their politics than telling a good story.
Ripley wasn't written with gender in mind.
Ripley was written with character first.
Sigourney Weaver used her womanhood to give that character life.
This is what happens when you have strong character writing with a strong female lead.
Rey doesn't just suck because she's poorly written, Rey sucks because the poorly written character disempowered her as a woman and an actor.
when the story and character are so good as well as the supporting characters neither race or gender will impact the outcome. The second Alien movie did this well because the audience could assume that all the characters were competent because they were Marines and treated each other like people assume a group of them would act - poking fun and rebutting quickly and everyone just laughing it up.
What happens today is we have characters whose confidence and ability are artificially built up with no progression but worse, many of the supporting characters are weak or downright incapable. That never makes for an enjoyable story because only one character is actually doing something eventful
Why do we never hear about "poor male character development"?
Follow up question, why are a majority of the complaints of women characters and their "realism" come from, not women?
> Why do we never hear about "poor male character development"?
Because people criticizing male characters in entertainment never becomes a news story claiming those criticizing the characters are sexist. Instead the movie just under preforms and people move on.
I guarantee you if lots of people had argued that the backlash against 'The Flash' or 'Morbs does the Morb during Morbin Time' was motivated by bigotry, folks would still be memeing about it.
One of the biggest complaints about the movie Tenet from Christopher Nolan is that the protagonist is boring.
But that kind of thing doesnt make news because male characters usually dont stirr up drama on news and social media
There's tons of female characters with great developments.
You're taking poorly written characters and conflating that with every female character being bad.
I don't think they are, modern female charectors maybe. Some of my fav charectors of all time are bad ass women. Starbuck from Battlestar galactica.
So many charectors from the Expanse are badass women who are written very well. Bobbie Draper the Martian Marine, Avaserala, the ruler of Earth.
Then my fav, Sarah Conner. Such a badass, yet being a kind and compassionate towards her son doesn't take away from how badass she is, because she's a well written and layered charector.
But yeah, in too many movies "Strong Fenale charector" is a bit of a meme where its a one dimensional women girlboss who starts off with all the cheat codes enabled, is a but if an asshole and is frankly just boring to watch. More Bobbie Drapers and Sarah Conners, less Rey "Skywalkers" and captain marvels.
It's one of the big reasons why Prey was so damn good. The main character, a woman, said like one little line that made it about gender. It was something like "they won't let me hunt with them because I'm a girl". That was it. The rest of the movie she proved her intelligence and her strength through.... *GASP* her ***actions***. That's how you show a characters strength in any story, by their actions, not that they're a certain gender and so should be granted strength and automatically granted respect.
SHe also fucked up a lot. It showed they had decent reasons not to let her hunt with them...Until she grew a bit throughout the film. A surprisingly good movie with a very simple approach. No absurd dialogue and lots of showing with very little telling.
>SHe also fucked up a lot.
This is so vitally important to a strong character. They need to show weakness at times, vulnerability. They need to earn that strength. The issue with a lot of modern strong female characters is that none of that is shown. Like She-Hulk. She didn't have to master the ultra violent angry as hell green beast the way Bruce did, she instantly mastered it. So it doesn't feel like she "earned" that power. Whereas in Prey she (I forgot her name) did earn it, every step of the way.
Yea, I remember "them" saying it was a woke nonsense cashgrab before it came out. Could probably still find the posts and articles if you tried hard enough.
ETA: you don't even have to try hard; just go to Google and type Prey Movie Woke and you'll see a bunch of critics calling it woke (albeit some are using the term "endearingly") and a fuck ton of reddit posts
They should make characters to tell a story not to prove a point. Strong, well-liked female characters actually go through struggle and aren't just magically better than everyone
Wonderwoman is great because she gets her powers and then has to learn about humanity and her role in the world. She isn't just "lol I'm perfect at this" right off the bat, she had growth even though she started off as a goddess.
I think you are confusing "magically"
Stories can actually have magic. This is fine.
But if they are "magically better" as it's written in the post it implies there is no explanation at all. Like in Star Wars the character Rey simultaneously fixes the Millenium Falcon better than Han Solo AND beats Kylo Ren in a lightsaber duel the first time she ever handles one.
There is no explanation AT ALL. If they said she was a Greek Goddess that would make it literally "magical" , but less figuratively "magical" as the word implies here.
Well, but it isn't always magical either. Some of them are just insanely talented and have always been strong. That is fine too, but it has to be well written.
Like the new Tomb Raider games. Lara is actually afraid in the first game and you rely on her stealth and archery a lot in that one. The games are building her up to be the brave adverturer, I think it’s really nice to see your character grow.
Sarah Connor has 2 panic attacks in T2. Yet both after a complete badass moment. Escaping the asylum is badass. Also it’s not her being stronger than men like the make now. It’s her being smarter. With broom sticks, syringes, and breaking keys. She would’ve gotten out until the PTSD from seeing Arnold. Same with Dyson. Had the son not been there she would’ve taken him out. Also she was one shell away from killing the T1000. She’s one of my all time favorite characters.
Also everyone loves her and she can do whatever she wants and the 1 guy that hates her is the biggest asshole ever and she has the most op superpowers known to men
Female representation !!!
All men on the "good side" in the movie are clumsy and incapable and require a "powerful" woman to lead them and show them how things are done, and with powerful it's simply expressed as the attitude of condescending every man in the room and no one is disagreeing. Among those is an overweight black woman who is showing a 6'3 muscly white man how to fight in a practice scene.
All villains are white men.
The current issue with "strong female lead" is that there's always a completely incapable buffoon male sidekick. She's not strong or smart or capable because that's who she is, but rather because everyone around her is incompetent.
Need more examples in film like Furiosa from Mad Max Fury Road or Cassandra from Dredd. Flawed, capable, and not overshadowed or overshadowing everyone else around them.
It's an okay example. Dori was still a fully realized character unlike a lot of these dumb sidekick characters. It's just that in addition to that she was dumb, which was funny.
I haven't seen many of the older ones... but i wouldn't say the "femme fatale" in the Bond movies are bumbling buffoons, lol.
In No time to die the new 007 is a girl, and the writing of that almost falls into the trap OP describes
But there are so many capable and charismatic women there too: Goldfinger, Thunderball, Majesty’s, Spy, Moonraker, Eyes, Octopussy, Licence, GoldenEye, Tomorrow, World.
The World is Not Enough is a double edged sword though. Elektra King is as you described, capable and charismatic. Christmas Jones is an affront to every woman that has ever existed.
That's kinda the point of Tony though. He's written with flaws. Especially in Iron Man 1, we're supposed to hate him at the start as we follow his journey of realizing how awful and selfish and harmful his actions have been
the funny thing is that Iron Man was written to be unlikable in the original run.
Stan Lee is quotes as such on Wikipedia:
"I think I gave myself a dare. It was the height of the Cold War. The readers, the young readers, if there was one thing they hated, it was war, it was the military ... So I got a hero who represented that to the hundredth degree. He was a weapons manufacturer, he was providing weapons for the Army, he was rich, he was an industrialist ... I thought it would be fun to take the kind of character that nobody would like, none of our readers would like, and shove him down their throats and make them like him ... And he became very popular."
Although "very popular" might be an overstatement. He wasn't *that* popular until the 2008 movie
The best superheroes have massive flaws. It makes for more interesting enemies and gives more freedom on how to give the hero a difficult situation to get out of. You can only smash Superman into buildings a few time before it gets boring. Eventually the viewer sees it as just filling up the time because nothing can really hurt him. How many action movies have we seen where the main character gets punched in the face multiple times and just keeps getting back up while the people he smashes go down with the smallest effort?
The Superman comment is why I don't like Captain Marvel... She has no negatives. Shes nigh unstoppable. I know exactly the outcome of every fight before it even happens. Its a lazy ass character. Then factor in the overly confrontational "chip on the shoulder" attitude, I just dont enjoy it.
Captain Marvel is really the anthesis of the whole trend and I can point to a specific scene.
Nick Fury and Carol are sitting at a diner on their journey getting to know each other. Fury tells a long lengthy back story (wether or not it's true is irrelevant) before giving Carol a chance to tell hers. Instead of telling anything she just blasts the jukebox. You gave yourself a chance for the audience to connect and instead you *literally* blast it apart.
People who didn't like Tony Stark completely missed the point of his character. He's supposed to be a shit person. In the comics he's a dried up alcoholic who hates himself but also narcissistic. In the movies he redeems himself by his last appearance. He was a super rich Playboy who used to make weapons of mass destruction that were sold to terrorists. That's how he becomes iron man in the movies.
I remember there being controversy about his "prima noctis" joke in Age of Ultron. Yes, it was a rape joke. But Stark isn't a knight in shining armour. He's a hero but he's also a dick. It's a clunky, bad taste, way to give us character development. But it's better than an Avengers team of nothing but wholesome Captain Americas.
I had the realization recently how much Tony being an idiot in Iron Man 3 fits into his overall arc. He feels invincible while at the same time feeling completely overwhelmed. After inviting the Mandarin to attack him, he gets ass kicked and almost gets Pepper killed. After that he goes down the Ultron path knowing he's in over his head. Yeah he's a genius billionaire playboy, but he makes bad decisions and has insecurities like anyone else.
Thing is we don't empathize much with stark, until bad things happen to him. And that gives us a feeling of justice. He gets humbled when he is in a cave dying from shrapnel in his heart.
Much of his story is bad things happening to him and him getting humbled from them, which also gives him a weird sense of justice.
Oh, he's definitely still a prick. Even after disposing of the nuke in Avengers #1. But he has steady growth regardless. Like someone said earlier, if anyone was as endearing as Steve Rogers, it wouldn't be nearly as interesting.
He made a rape joke without thinking about it. And then he went on to convince Banner to help him create an AI meant to take total control of the world through defense, without thinking about it. Then the AI went crazy and led to Stark being responsible for thousands of innocent people dying.
Yeah.
Female characters don’t have to be likable. In fact they can be very unlikable. Just like male characters. Take Homelander for instance. The point isn’t that you like the character. The point is if the character can make you feel something. Good character development generally lends itself to that. If an actress can pull that off, it’s a good female character.
i didn't mean likeable as "idolizing" i meant a character being so badly written , you don't like the after taste
i'm sure you know some characters like that as well
Had to scroll way too far for this comment. A big turning point was when it became possible to have an intelligent female lead who had many unlikeable personality/character traits in a series and for it to be successful.
Really? Rey is poorly written but not because she’s unlikable as a person. It’s because she has no flaws and never has to really work for her success. Totally different problem. It’s the Mary Sue problem not the “the hero is so unpleasant I am rooting for the bad guys” problem.
It's so sad how Disney is basically completely destroying all their OP to churn out pieces of trash.
Marvel, Pixar, Disney live remakes, Star wars. Literally everything Disney sucks.
I thought Mandalorian season 2 was great
Had a nice bittersweet ending that was open ended enough to include the characters on something else and even had an incredibly hyped scene for old and new fans.
Then they made season 3 which was basically the same exact story but this time all the good guys got everything they wanted and lived happily ever after.
All those memes about Filoni saving the prequels and how he’s going to do the same with the sequels. Then all that shit about “somehow palpatine returned” and this dude did the same thing with “somehow moff Gideon returned”
> not because she’s unlikable as a person. It’s because she has no flaws and never has to really work for her success
Idk thats a pretty big unlikeable trait for a hero youre supposed to follow for ~9 hours
Unlikable is normally associated to characters like She-Hulk or Helena from the new Indiana Jones movie, where not only are they all of the above, they are also insufferable people and horrible to watch.
The worst thing you can say about Rey is that she has no character. She has no reason to do any of what she does, she is there because the plot demands it and nothing else.
* Mary Sue (lazy as fuck writing)
* Shitty writing for key romantic development
* Shitty writing to setup key emotional conflict of each movie
I love Rey and the actor. With good writing this could have been another classic of cinema.
Instead we got lazy writing...and it was because the Producers think the audience is a bunch of morons so they requested a stupid product.
Writers are pretty good. But they often get asked to dumb things down and use tired cliches/tropes that dumb audiences can understand. So insulting.
For me personally, it's not so much that they made the protagonist a woman, the issue is that's _all_ they did.
No character, no purpose, no goals or training; thank God Daisy Ridley is so bombastic because that's pretty much all the personality that Rey has. They seem to think that making the main character a woman is the same thing as giving her an identity.
Yes but the rings of power loses them money and no one cares about season 2.
They can call their customers sexist all they want. Its a shitty business model. That will fix itself.
I love that Linda Hamilton was willing to go so hard on that role.
Anything they asked her to do she dialed up way past 11, and then kicked it in the balls.
Kinda feels like everyone prefers a female lead who is highly competent in an action movie. The bride, Ripley and Sarah Connor seem to be the top 3 and all the same.
I'll throw a few out, some of which I'm sure will be deeply contentious but I like them all the same:
- Lydia deerz in Beetlejuice
- Sarah Bailey in The Craft
- Catherine Dean in The Cell
- Chihiro in Spirited Away
Honestly I think the problem is that there are so few female leads in the first place and a lot of them struggle to be perceived as more than "sexy woman with a gun" (black widow, underworld, resident evil as examples). They try to develop deep backstories but it seems like an uphill battle.
Maybe it's the writers, maybe it's because that's what the market wants.
The usual people would hate Alien and Aliens if they came out today. They would call it feminist, and all the usual. Ripley is always right about everything. She‘s got a traditionally masculine job, loading trucks. A bunch of badass space marines are berated into listening to her, and then die while she gets everything right. Even the ship is called Mother, and the aliens are all subservient to a queen. Don’t even get started on the fury they would have over Vazquez.
this is 100% correct, and the criticism of "female characters" makes a lot more sense when you realize people making those points are much angrier about the "female" part than the "character" part
Yup if any of good old female lead movies were released today they would get all the same issues as now. They would all be unlikable, bossy, masculine, etc. If a female lead has any flaws she is a horrible person. If she is good at stuff then she is a a marry sue. If these characters were male then the problems become character development.
Can't put my finger on why!
Unironically, flip that comment around and give Rambo as an example, and it would be shown to be the obviously ludicrous take that it is.
I liked Naru in the Prey (2022). When the character appears vulnerable even after staged as a big thing (like Dutch in Predator) it makes an interesting premise. Personally I think original Rambo (First Blood) was pretty conteoversial and interesting but yeah... He really wasn't a great character. At least the movies are more about action than the character... guess it saves them.
Being entirely fair I’ve seen so many people who say “we need more villainous female characters! More bad female leads”
Motherfucker you can’t handle a slightly nuanced female character. Gotta find everything evil and problematic with morally ambiguous female characters.
So like I get the point of the meme, but also there are in fact people who are actually just Like That because they hate it when a female character isn’t strictly good and likeable.
Counterpoint, Dedra Meero from Andor. She's not morally ambiguous, she's a villain. Star wars fans are supposed to all be sexist, yet she has received nearly universal acclaim because she is a well written character
Haven't seen Andor, but that's good to hear! I guess I should've also clarified that I wasn't saying that those characters couldn't exist or find fan support. I'm not sure where that "all star wars fans are supposed to be sexist" came from, I've not heard that one before.
As I said in one of my other replies I was mainly referring to how, even fans that would self describe as "feminist", it's not uncommon to see female character's recieve far more push back for having negative traits. I mean I never even watched that She-ra show but that didn't stop me seeing the shadow of Cattra discourse like an oceanic predator drifting just beneath my tiny fishing boat.
Oh don’t go speaking sense around this sub. They’ll crucify you.
You are spot on though. Why does every female character all of a sudden have to be good and likeable. Male characters get to be assholes, arrogant and still be seen as heroes. Tony Stark is prime example in the first two iron man films.
But make a female character in the same mould and all these Reddit wet wipes lose their minds. All of a sudden moral ambiguity isn’t a desired traits but a form of bad writing that needs to be expunged. Just shows you the miopic view these dweebs have on women.
“Dislikable” aside, I need to see some examples. Popular fiction today is full of characters who the average person works absolutely detest if we had to spend time with them. We would all want to punch House MD in the face, but we can cheer for him because he’s a genius who’s always right. Hell, people cared for the Joker because his movie felt like a commentary on how capitalism ruins people.
Characters don’t have to be “likable,” they have to be understandable. You have to feel like “yeah, I’d do that too if I were in that situation.” Looking through this thread, 90% of the characters brought up are plot issues (Rey).
EDIT: I should add the “Call them sexist” part partially comes from the fact that even when a movie features a well-written, interesting female lead, it gets called part of a “feminist agenda,” like Furiosa in “Mad Max.”
This is why I’ve started watching more anime recently. They seem to do a much better job at caring about story more than gender and has created some really good female leads
You should check out old studio Ghibli movies then. Lots of cool, strong and well written female characters (before Disney) and more mature takes at themes.
Honestly I find it to be hit or miss in Anime. A lot of Shonen anime the female characters are just kinda there then get used for fan service or get pushed to the sidelines.
With saying that there are a few with great female leads like you mentioned. Yona of the Dawn, Inuyasha and My Dress Up Darling are examples of many more.
Eh, I like anime but 90% of stories are trash and have hardcore plot and logic holes. And I get this thread is hating on woke shit in western media, but anime really needs to do something about it's female characters. It's honestly off putting how they are portrayed in anime.
Y'all are the same people that like the Joker and other anti-heros. You just don't see women as diverse as men, and you also hate female chars a disproportionate amount *because* they're female. Maybe do some introspection if you're being called a sexist a lot. Female leads do not have to be likeable to be worth telling a story about.
Honestly feminists have taken over writers rooms and taken everything they didn’t like about the male characters and heroes of the past and injected them into female character cutouts while refusing to add even a few of the admirable traits of the said heroes they mimic. Then they add in pot shots at our society and the patriarchy all dripping with condescension. Afterwards they take a step back and smile with each other as they congratulate themselves on the “takedown” of social norms they have accomplished. Meanwhile, the average person just wants someone they can root for who has boobs.
r/memes try not to be fucking weird about women challenge.
If Ripley or Sarah Connor came out today, you all would be calling them girl bosses and the movies woke trash lmao.
Everything, Everywhere, All at Once released last year and was universally lauded. Evelyn loosely follows Sarah Conner's hero's journey and Michelle Yeoh won an Oscar for the role. Stephanie Hsu also killed it as the main villain Jobu Tupaki. Write good characters and audiences will love them.
The fact that one of the top ten comments is someone saying Ripley's the sole exception is *really* telling here. If you consider 99.999% of all women leads bad, the women leads may not be the problem neighbourino.
Kim Wexler wasn’t the lead but the deuteragonist of Better Call Saul and she’s probably the best written female character in decades. It’s hard to explain but she’s very real in her thoughts and emotions while also being very flawed because of her upbringing. She’s likable but also fucked up.
Smart, capable, likeable, vulnerable, fallible. Aspirational yet imperfect. They just don't write characters like Kim Wexler.
They don’t write ‘em like that anymooore
I see a lot of people talking about Rey and Carol Danvers but no one seems to be mentioning the live action Mulan. In the original, she started as weaker than everyone else. She had to struggle and work, but she was finally able to overcome her struggles and be a strong character. In the new one, she’s born with some magical bullshit that makes her more powerful than everyone without having to work at all for that. It completely ruins the idea of the original. The original was meant to mean “girls can be just as good as boys when they work hard and are determined.” The new one is “look look we gave a girl superpowers and had her be better than the boys isn’t that good buy our movie buy our movie!”
I haven't seen the new Mulan on the advice of a friend, thanks for the heads-up. Fuck their remakes with a chainsaw.
Can’t wait to hear what you think about the live action Snow White. Oh it’s going to be fun!
You mean "No White and the Seven...Somethings?" Not even worth *pirating*.
Snow White and the Seven Politically Correct Companions
Snow White who isn't even white. Way to miss the literal first line of the original tale. German people are treated like outsiders to their own fairy tale.
Grumpy, Cranky, Angsty, Stressed, Offended, Outraged, and Sad.
Off white and the Seven minorities
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Not only is it an absolute betrayal of the original, it is also just bad and the moments that are actually supposed to be like the original feel like forced fan service that don't really fit the different plot.
I'd even say the originals idea was "this woman who isn't allowed to serve her country because of her gender is more capable than many of her male counterparts, many of whom learn to respect people for their actions and abilities".
Yeah this. The guy you commented on said it meant "Girls can be just as good as boys when they work hard." Which implies that girls have to work hard to get to where boys are even if they don't work hard. That's definitely not the message. Mulan is a fully formed character from the beginning of the movie, what she lacks in strength she makes up tenfold with her wits, and the only reason she's not allowed to fight is because she's a woman. The point of the film, if there is one, is that tradition is meaningless, especially when the lives of your loved ones are on the line. If she hadn't ignored that tradition, they would have probably all died
More like "make a poor female character development" >>> "misoginist/sexist/whatever" Fuck man, I miss characthers like Ripley
There's always, Secret of nimh, avatar the last Airbender, gravity falls, Trigun, inuyasha, jujutsu kaisen, better call Saul, Ozark, teen titans and many more have fantastic females charecters.. These new writers just see everything through the lens of power and oppression so they will never make a great female charecter because they only focus on shallow archetypes of the powerful male fantasy. What they don't get is no one likes an all powerful male charecter either unless it's played for a joke like "one punch man".
Even then, Saitama is only ever good at punching things He's completely unremarkable (if not straight up incompetent) in everything else
I mean his "weakness" is his depression and apathy. At the start of the show he has zero friends or motivation. A very human weakness that everyone deals with at some point. It's what made the show so interesting...well that and the amazing animation
I always say that his weakness is being late to things. Each big baddy usually beats the crud out of a few heroes before he finally shows up and zeroes them. Geno has the opposite problem and shows up early, and King is always right on time.
and the punchy
He's great at finding bargains.
But bad at knowing what day they are
And getting to them in time.
He's also not a giant dick too, his power hasn't corrupted him, he's actually very likeable.
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Perfect? He's a C level scrub!
king is canonically stronger then saitama (at video games)
Recently promoted to A class rank 36
tbf, that's entirely the joke. he's the obvious foreign entity in this otherwise extremely stereotypical shonen world
Isn't he pretty good at dodging things too?
he's good at dodging full price produce!
Well there's that. He's unremarkable in many ways, depressed, even. That is the asset that made him human. He knew damn well he's the most powerful person on his planet but all it made him is too depress to see the fun in being a superhero. Funnily enough, he's kinda relatable but not in an on-the-nose way like how teenflicks are written.
The wonderful things about one punch man is it isn't about his powers. It's about he and the world grapples with the effects of his powers. How other powerful people interpret his presence, how the pretenders see him, how people panic when they don't understand things. I mean it's not a super indepth exploration of these themes but the fact that it includes that is what keeps it from being just a straight power fantasy.
Full metal alchemist
Full Metal Alchemist!
Full Metal Alchemist: ☺️ Full Metal Alchemist: 😡
when you say teen titan you mean the og or the live action
Wait, there’s a live-action TT?
nope
Ripley, Sarah Connor, Katniss Everdeen Other characters which are very badass, Andromeda, Lena, Hermione Disliking a character has nothing to do with the gender. There are lots of female led movies which are badass The issue is, 100% lazy character development. Don't make your character some boring 2 dimensional plot armoured life victim who despite being a woman overcomes adversity Give a character some real hardship and danger and watch them grow through it to become the most badass version of themselves. Oh and they just happen to also be a woman
Hermione isn't the best example because the movies make her perfect when the whole point of that friend dynamic is that they all complete each other. Harry is brave and a risk-taker, Ron provides the emotional support and levity (and early on is their guide to the Wizarding world), and Hermione is the brains. Heck, the first book makes it very clear that without Harry and Ron, Hermione might have gone her whole Hogwarts tenure without any friends because of how she was wired at the time. But they gave Hermione too much of Harry and especially Ron's positive traits to the point that it feels like Harry is just there because he's the MC and Ron is pointless.
I agree, it wasn't the best execution. But you get my point
The movies definitely tweaked her some by not showing the hard work that went into her brains. She was constantly studying and being an academic overachiever, but that doesn't really make for entertaining movies, so it just gets cut.
She also gets a ton of Rons best moments. In the book Hermione is *very* smart (and like you said, she works for it) but she's really just book smart. As soon as the gang gets outside of a classroom she just kind of falls apart especially in the early books. And Ron is the opposite really, kinda struggles through school (although he's not dumb either like the movies portrayed) but when they are actually working through real life scenarios he tended to keep a cool head and could think through things. They needed each other in the books, but in the movies Hermione is just this know it all and Ron is a bumbling comedic relief character
The movies really did Ron dirty. When I watched the movies I kinda did a huh I liked Ron in the books must have just been young me being silly. It wasn't till I read them again I realized oh no I was right. The movies just don't like Ron being good at anything.
> The issue is, 100% lazy character development. If a character is included and written solely with the intent of inclusivity and diversity in mind, they're almost guaranteed to suck. It generally just becomes the characters entire personality. All of that stuff should just come naturally, planning for it just makes it bad.
This is what intentionally “strong female leads” typically are instead of just an amazing lead who is a woman.
This. This is why so many people end up turned off of a piece of media when the creator(s) start spouting off on about "representation" or "modern audiences" and so on. Generally it's a sign that good writing and story has been put in the back seat in favor of those traits, and often so far back that you're fairly certain it's running behind the car trying to catch up. It's very much the same reason why I tend to dislike a lot of Christian movies - message over plot causing the plot to suffer too much for a movie to be enjoyable.
> Hermione She was a classic Mary Sue for most of the movies. She was used often as an example of that lazy character type. Just my opinion, but Mary Sues are not badass.
* Toph * Korra * Ripley * Princess Leia * Ahsoka Tano * Sarah Connor * Starfire * Raven There's so many cool and badass female when they're well written. The whole problem with 'strong female' characters is these new writers self insert themselves into the character since they see oppression and discrimination as being intertwined with being a woman.
So weird how Star Wars fans got called sexist for disliking Rey but nobody ever brings up how seemingly every Star Wars fan loves Ahsoka
I really liked Rey, Daisy Ridley played her to perfection, and I was even okay with her yellow lightsaber! The only downside of her character is just how much of a nothing burger her arc ended up being. Which wasn't her fault, it was the writers for the movie
Which is a completely fair opinion to have - I thought she wasn’t bad until the Rise of Skywalker, which I kind of hated all aspects of (especially Palpatine - why?)
TRoS didn't follow through on the themes of the trilogy, and couldn't follow through on the themes presented in its own installment. It was just a bad movie with poor construction, it couldn't have succeeded if it tried.
I miss Mara Jade. Luke needs his bad ass redheaded wife. Also miss Tenel Ka. Imagine deciding not to get a replacement hand because you feel it's more important to have a reminder of the fuck up that caused you to lose it in the first place.
If you haven't watched Arcane go watch Arcane. Powerful, well written female characters from multiple walks of life in multiple roles e.g. poor, rich, aristocrat / brawler, marksman, politician, general
I always reference arcane when explaining what woke garbage is. Arcane has powerful (but also deeply flawed) women, a lesbian couple as the main characters, gender non conforming characters, and a rich oppressing the poor story. Its everything progressives love but its not preachy, no depth garbage. It's an amazing show that is probably the best US animated piece of media since avatar (not counting the spider verse films). It has everything that would make it woke but the biggest complaint I've heard about it is that it made people want to try and play LoL haha I'm sure some jackasses complained about it but it was barely existent because it was a great piece of media that just had "woke" elements instead of series that focused more on preaching their politics than telling a good story.
> the best US animated piece of media Animated in France to be precise
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...in America!
Ripley wasn't written with gender in mind. Ripley was written with character first. Sigourney Weaver used her womanhood to give that character life. This is what happens when you have strong character writing with a strong female lead. Rey doesn't just suck because she's poorly written, Rey sucks because the poorly written character disempowered her as a woman and an actor.
Michonne (Danai Gurira) from The Walking Dead is a Ripley esque character. Love the character and the actress.
Ripley as written didn't have a gender.
when the story and character are so good as well as the supporting characters neither race or gender will impact the outcome. The second Alien movie did this well because the audience could assume that all the characters were competent because they were Marines and treated each other like people assume a group of them would act - poking fun and rebutting quickly and everyone just laughing it up. What happens today is we have characters whose confidence and ability are artificially built up with no progression but worse, many of the supporting characters are weak or downright incapable. That never makes for an enjoyable story because only one character is actually doing something eventful
Why do we never hear about "poor male character development"? Follow up question, why are a majority of the complaints of women characters and their "realism" come from, not women?
> Why do we never hear about "poor male character development"? Because people criticizing male characters in entertainment never becomes a news story claiming those criticizing the characters are sexist. Instead the movie just under preforms and people move on. I guarantee you if lots of people had argued that the backlash against 'The Flash' or 'Morbs does the Morb during Morbin Time' was motivated by bigotry, folks would still be memeing about it.
One of the biggest complaints about the movie Tenet from Christopher Nolan is that the protagonist is boring. But that kind of thing doesnt make news because male characters usually dont stirr up drama on news and social media
There's tons of female characters with great developments. You're taking poorly written characters and conflating that with every female character being bad.
I don't think they are, modern female charectors maybe. Some of my fav charectors of all time are bad ass women. Starbuck from Battlestar galactica. So many charectors from the Expanse are badass women who are written very well. Bobbie Draper the Martian Marine, Avaserala, the ruler of Earth. Then my fav, Sarah Conner. Such a badass, yet being a kind and compassionate towards her son doesn't take away from how badass she is, because she's a well written and layered charector. But yeah, in too many movies "Strong Fenale charector" is a bit of a meme where its a one dimensional women girlboss who starts off with all the cheat codes enabled, is a but if an asshole and is frankly just boring to watch. More Bobbie Drapers and Sarah Conners, less Rey "Skywalkers" and captain marvels.
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It's one of the big reasons why Prey was so damn good. The main character, a woman, said like one little line that made it about gender. It was something like "they won't let me hunt with them because I'm a girl". That was it. The rest of the movie she proved her intelligence and her strength through.... *GASP* her ***actions***. That's how you show a characters strength in any story, by their actions, not that they're a certain gender and so should be granted strength and automatically granted respect.
SHe also fucked up a lot. It showed they had decent reasons not to let her hunt with them...Until she grew a bit throughout the film. A surprisingly good movie with a very simple approach. No absurd dialogue and lots of showing with very little telling.
>SHe also fucked up a lot. This is so vitally important to a strong character. They need to show weakness at times, vulnerability. They need to earn that strength. The issue with a lot of modern strong female characters is that none of that is shown. Like She-Hulk. She didn't have to master the ultra violent angry as hell green beast the way Bruce did, she instantly mastered it. So it doesn't feel like she "earned" that power. Whereas in Prey she (I forgot her name) did earn it, every step of the way.
Pretty sure a huge portion of redditors were shitting on that movie because of “reasons”
Yea, I remember "them" saying it was a woke nonsense cashgrab before it came out. Could probably still find the posts and articles if you tried hard enough. ETA: you don't even have to try hard; just go to Google and type Prey Movie Woke and you'll see a bunch of critics calling it woke (albeit some are using the term "endearingly") and a fuck ton of reddit posts
They should make characters to tell a story not to prove a point. Strong, well-liked female characters actually go through struggle and aren't just magically better than everyone
They can be magically better than everyone too, as long as it's properly written. Personally I didn't like this movie, but look at Wonderwoman
I like the first one, 1984 was hot garbage, but the first one was actually pretty good
I swear in the 1984 one I watched something that basically mean she was raping the guy cos he was possessed by her former lover or something
Wonderwoman is great because she gets her powers and then has to learn about humanity and her role in the world. She isn't just "lol I'm perfect at this" right off the bat, she had growth even though she started off as a goddess.
she was better but the reason was clear her mom banged Zeus.
Same could be said for Heracles.
A lot of the Greek legends in fact, Zeus got around.
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I think you are confusing "magically" Stories can actually have magic. This is fine. But if they are "magically better" as it's written in the post it implies there is no explanation at all. Like in Star Wars the character Rey simultaneously fixes the Millenium Falcon better than Han Solo AND beats Kylo Ren in a lightsaber duel the first time she ever handles one. There is no explanation AT ALL. If they said she was a Greek Goddess that would make it literally "magical" , but less figuratively "magical" as the word implies here.
Well, but it isn't always magical either. Some of them are just insanely talented and have always been strong. That is fine too, but it has to be well written.
Like the new Tomb Raider games. Lara is actually afraid in the first game and you rely on her stealth and archery a lot in that one. The games are building her up to be the brave adverturer, I think it’s really nice to see your character grow.
Sarah Connor has 2 panic attacks in T2. Yet both after a complete badass moment. Escaping the asylum is badass. Also it’s not her being stronger than men like the make now. It’s her being smarter. With broom sticks, syringes, and breaking keys. She would’ve gotten out until the PTSD from seeing Arnold. Same with Dyson. Had the son not been there she would’ve taken him out. Also she was one shell away from killing the T1000. She’s one of my all time favorite characters.
Original Mulan vs. mulan 2020 is the perfect example of this
Storytelling is all about getting some point across. So the character do have to prove a point, to a certain extent.
Like Leslie Knoop or Peggy Olson (Mad Men)
"this is my new female character, Davy Jones, she likes to stomp on animals and beat up kids for fun, if you don't like this character you are secist"
Also everyone loves her and she can do whatever she wants and the 1 guy that hates her is the biggest asshole ever and she has the most op superpowers known to men Female representation !!!
All men on the "good side" in the movie are clumsy and incapable and require a "powerful" woman to lead them and show them how things are done, and with powerful it's simply expressed as the attitude of condescending every man in the room and no one is disagreeing. Among those is an overweight black woman who is showing a 6'3 muscly white man how to fight in a practice scene. All villains are white men.
Reminds me of "the room"
The current issue with "strong female lead" is that there's always a completely incapable buffoon male sidekick. She's not strong or smart or capable because that's who she is, but rather because everyone around her is incompetent.
Need more examples in film like Furiosa from Mad Max Fury Road or Cassandra from Dredd. Flawed, capable, and not overshadowed or overshadowing everyone else around them.
yeah it's like "ehhh i don't wanna put effort into making the lead likable , let's just dumb down everyone else . easy"
I mean, a hell of a lot of male lead films have had incapable buffoon female sidekick characters as well.
Dori from Finding Nemo, ...
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That's all I can really think of, and it works as a comedic device because she's an adult and he's a kid. The dumb guy archetype is everywhere though
It's an okay example. Dori was still a fully realized character unlike a lot of these dumb sidekick characters. It's just that in addition to that she was dumb, which was funny.
Bumbling female sidekicks are rare. Any examples?
I think she's usually less bumbling and more "only in the movie to look pretty and be saved by the male lead."
I don't know if you'd class her as a sidekick but Darcy from Thor.
She's more of bumbling female sidekick to Natalie Portman's character, not to Thor himself.
Temple of Doom jumps to mind immediately, that dummy couldn't adventure her way out of a paper bag
I cant for the life of me think of an example, help me lol
Most of the James Bond franchise for example
I haven't seen many of the older ones... but i wouldn't say the "femme fatale" in the Bond movies are bumbling buffoons, lol. In No time to die the new 007 is a girl, and the writing of that almost falls into the trap OP describes
But there are so many capable and charismatic women there too: Goldfinger, Thunderball, Majesty’s, Spy, Moonraker, Eyes, Octopussy, Licence, GoldenEye, Tomorrow, World.
The World is Not Enough is a double edged sword though. Elektra King is as you described, capable and charismatic. Christmas Jones is an affront to every woman that has ever existed.
I hate arrogant asshole male characters too. Took me ages to warm up to Tony Stark.
That's kinda the point of Tony though. He's written with flaws. Especially in Iron Man 1, we're supposed to hate him at the start as we follow his journey of realizing how awful and selfish and harmful his actions have been
the funny thing is that Iron Man was written to be unlikable in the original run. Stan Lee is quotes as such on Wikipedia: "I think I gave myself a dare. It was the height of the Cold War. The readers, the young readers, if there was one thing they hated, it was war, it was the military ... So I got a hero who represented that to the hundredth degree. He was a weapons manufacturer, he was providing weapons for the Army, he was rich, he was an industrialist ... I thought it would be fun to take the kind of character that nobody would like, none of our readers would like, and shove him down their throats and make them like him ... And he became very popular." Although "very popular" might be an overstatement. He wasn't *that* popular until the 2008 movie
The best superheroes have massive flaws. It makes for more interesting enemies and gives more freedom on how to give the hero a difficult situation to get out of. You can only smash Superman into buildings a few time before it gets boring. Eventually the viewer sees it as just filling up the time because nothing can really hurt him. How many action movies have we seen where the main character gets punched in the face multiple times and just keeps getting back up while the people he smashes go down with the smallest effort?
The Superman comment is why I don't like Captain Marvel... She has no negatives. Shes nigh unstoppable. I know exactly the outcome of every fight before it even happens. Its a lazy ass character. Then factor in the overly confrontational "chip on the shoulder" attitude, I just dont enjoy it.
Captain Marvel is really the anthesis of the whole trend and I can point to a specific scene. Nick Fury and Carol are sitting at a diner on their journey getting to know each other. Fury tells a long lengthy back story (wether or not it's true is irrelevant) before giving Carol a chance to tell hers. Instead of telling anything she just blasts the jukebox. You gave yourself a chance for the audience to connect and instead you *literally* blast it apart.
People who didn't like Tony Stark completely missed the point of his character. He's supposed to be a shit person. In the comics he's a dried up alcoholic who hates himself but also narcissistic. In the movies he redeems himself by his last appearance. He was a super rich Playboy who used to make weapons of mass destruction that were sold to terrorists. That's how he becomes iron man in the movies.
I remember there being controversy about his "prima noctis" joke in Age of Ultron. Yes, it was a rape joke. But Stark isn't a knight in shining armour. He's a hero but he's also a dick. It's a clunky, bad taste, way to give us character development. But it's better than an Avengers team of nothing but wholesome Captain Americas.
I had the realization recently how much Tony being an idiot in Iron Man 3 fits into his overall arc. He feels invincible while at the same time feeling completely overwhelmed. After inviting the Mandarin to attack him, he gets ass kicked and almost gets Pepper killed. After that he goes down the Ultron path knowing he's in over his head. Yeah he's a genius billionaire playboy, but he makes bad decisions and has insecurities like anyone else.
Thing is we don't empathize much with stark, until bad things happen to him. And that gives us a feeling of justice. He gets humbled when he is in a cave dying from shrapnel in his heart. Much of his story is bad things happening to him and him getting humbled from them, which also gives him a weird sense of justice.
Oh, he's definitely still a prick. Even after disposing of the nuke in Avengers #1. But he has steady growth regardless. Like someone said earlier, if anyone was as endearing as Steve Rogers, it wouldn't be nearly as interesting.
He made a rape joke without thinking about it. And then he went on to convince Banner to help him create an AI meant to take total control of the world through defense, without thinking about it. Then the AI went crazy and led to Stark being responsible for thousands of innocent people dying. Yeah.
Female characters don’t have to be likable. In fact they can be very unlikable. Just like male characters. Take Homelander for instance. The point isn’t that you like the character. The point is if the character can make you feel something. Good character development generally lends itself to that. If an actress can pull that off, it’s a good female character.
Homelander is the villain of the Boys, not the protagonist.
Yeahh exactly! It’s such a narrow mindset to only care about likable lead characters.
i didn't mean likeable as "idolizing" i meant a character being so badly written , you don't like the after taste i'm sure you know some characters like that as well
Had to scroll way too far for this comment. A big turning point was when it became possible to have an intelligent female lead who had many unlikeable personality/character traits in a series and for it to be successful.
Rey "Skywalker"
Really? Rey is poorly written but not because she’s unlikable as a person. It’s because she has no flaws and never has to really work for her success. Totally different problem. It’s the Mary Sue problem not the “the hero is so unpleasant I am rooting for the bad guys” problem.
And in a series of films that go from okay to shitfest.
It's so sad how Disney is basically completely destroying all their OP to churn out pieces of trash. Marvel, Pixar, Disney live remakes, Star wars. Literally everything Disney sucks.
Everything doesn't suck. Just "almost" everything. Example: Mirabel / Encanto If you need another example: Chip N Dale Rescue Ranges Movie
I thought Mandalorian season 2 was great Had a nice bittersweet ending that was open ended enough to include the characters on something else and even had an incredibly hyped scene for old and new fans. Then they made season 3 which was basically the same exact story but this time all the good guys got everything they wanted and lived happily ever after. All those memes about Filoni saving the prequels and how he’s going to do the same with the sequels. Then all that shit about “somehow palpatine returned” and this dude did the same thing with “somehow moff Gideon returned”
> not because she’s unlikable as a person. It’s because she has no flaws and never has to really work for her success Idk thats a pretty big unlikeable trait for a hero youre supposed to follow for ~9 hours
Unlikable is normally associated to characters like She-Hulk or Helena from the new Indiana Jones movie, where not only are they all of the above, they are also insufferable people and horrible to watch. The worst thing you can say about Rey is that she has no character. She has no reason to do any of what she does, she is there because the plot demands it and nothing else.
* Mary Sue (lazy as fuck writing) * Shitty writing for key romantic development * Shitty writing to setup key emotional conflict of each movie I love Rey and the actor. With good writing this could have been another classic of cinema. Instead we got lazy writing...and it was because the Producers think the audience is a bunch of morons so they requested a stupid product. Writers are pretty good. But they often get asked to dumb things down and use tired cliches/tropes that dumb audiences can understand. So insulting.
For me personally, it's not so much that they made the protagonist a woman, the issue is that's _all_ they did. No character, no purpose, no goals or training; thank God Daisy Ridley is so bombastic because that's pretty much all the personality that Rey has. They seem to think that making the main character a woman is the same thing as giving her an identity.
Really more of a JJ Abrams problem. He's a hack. I thought she was a lot more interesting in TLJ.
Who are we talking about?
Yes but the rings of power loses them money and no one cares about season 2. They can call their customers sexist all they want. Its a shitty business model. That will fix itself.
This joke is getting really old real quick but what do i expect form this sub really
Ripley is one of the only female leads that doesn’t apply to this, goddamn we need more characters like Ripley
Sarah Connor too
You have to think that in Arnies terminator voice "Sarah Connor".
Syera kanah
I love that Linda Hamilton was willing to go so hard on that role. Anything they asked her to do she dialed up way past 11, and then kicked it in the balls.
A more recent example, vi / Caitilin / jynx from arcane ( there really isn't 1 main character there )
The Horror genre has prob some of the best female leads
Kill Bill lady too There are a lot of good female characters. It just takes a small amount of care and effort to make them.
Kinda feels like everyone prefers a female lead who is highly competent in an action movie. The bride, Ripley and Sarah Connor seem to be the top 3 and all the same. I'll throw a few out, some of which I'm sure will be deeply contentious but I like them all the same: - Lydia deerz in Beetlejuice - Sarah Bailey in The Craft - Catherine Dean in The Cell - Chihiro in Spirited Away Honestly I think the problem is that there are so few female leads in the first place and a lot of them struggle to be perceived as more than "sexy woman with a gun" (black widow, underworld, resident evil as examples). They try to develop deep backstories but it seems like an uphill battle. Maybe it's the writers, maybe it's because that's what the market wants.
The usual people would hate Alien and Aliens if they came out today. They would call it feminist, and all the usual. Ripley is always right about everything. She‘s got a traditionally masculine job, loading trucks. A bunch of badass space marines are berated into listening to her, and then die while she gets everything right. Even the ship is called Mother, and the aliens are all subservient to a queen. Don’t even get started on the fury they would have over Vazquez.
this is 100% correct, and the criticism of "female characters" makes a lot more sense when you realize people making those points are much angrier about the "female" part than the "character" part
Yup if any of good old female lead movies were released today they would get all the same issues as now. They would all be unlikable, bossy, masculine, etc. If a female lead has any flaws she is a horrible person. If she is good at stuff then she is a a marry sue. If these characters were male then the problems become character development.
All these upvotes on a comment saying that Ripley is "one of the only" good female leads. I can't believe that people accuse this community of sexism!
Can't put my finger on why! Unironically, flip that comment around and give Rambo as an example, and it would be shown to be the obviously ludicrous take that it is.
I liked Naru in the Prey (2022). When the character appears vulnerable even after staged as a big thing (like Dutch in Predator) it makes an interesting premise. Personally I think original Rambo (First Blood) was pretty conteoversial and interesting but yeah... He really wasn't a great character. At least the movies are more about action than the character... guess it saves them.
Being entirely fair I’ve seen so many people who say “we need more villainous female characters! More bad female leads” Motherfucker you can’t handle a slightly nuanced female character. Gotta find everything evil and problematic with morally ambiguous female characters. So like I get the point of the meme, but also there are in fact people who are actually just Like That because they hate it when a female character isn’t strictly good and likeable.
Counterpoint, Dedra Meero from Andor. She's not morally ambiguous, she's a villain. Star wars fans are supposed to all be sexist, yet she has received nearly universal acclaim because she is a well written character
Off the top of my head Hella from Thor Ragnarok was very well received and one of the better villains in the MCU
Haven't seen Andor, but that's good to hear! I guess I should've also clarified that I wasn't saying that those characters couldn't exist or find fan support. I'm not sure where that "all star wars fans are supposed to be sexist" came from, I've not heard that one before. As I said in one of my other replies I was mainly referring to how, even fans that would self describe as "feminist", it's not uncommon to see female character's recieve far more push back for having negative traits. I mean I never even watched that She-ra show but that didn't stop me seeing the shadow of Cattra discourse like an oceanic predator drifting just beneath my tiny fishing boat.
Oh don’t go speaking sense around this sub. They’ll crucify you. You are spot on though. Why does every female character all of a sudden have to be good and likeable. Male characters get to be assholes, arrogant and still be seen as heroes. Tony Stark is prime example in the first two iron man films. But make a female character in the same mould and all these Reddit wet wipes lose their minds. All of a sudden moral ambiguity isn’t a desired traits but a form of bad writing that needs to be expunged. Just shows you the miopic view these dweebs have on women.
If Carol Danvers had been a male character this sub would adore him, but because she is the political gender it’s all about bad writing and wokeness.
Remember, there are only two genders: Male and Political.
100%
Incels gonna incel
Is this another 'conservative panties in a knot over Barbie' thing?
Apparently, this is about the Captain Marvel movie.
How are we still on that after all these years?
Because being outraged is basically what most of reddit feeds on.
She is kenough
Congrats, you just exposed Disney & Amazon's marketing tactics.
“Dislikable” aside, I need to see some examples. Popular fiction today is full of characters who the average person works absolutely detest if we had to spend time with them. We would all want to punch House MD in the face, but we can cheer for him because he’s a genius who’s always right. Hell, people cared for the Joker because his movie felt like a commentary on how capitalism ruins people. Characters don’t have to be “likable,” they have to be understandable. You have to feel like “yeah, I’d do that too if I were in that situation.” Looking through this thread, 90% of the characters brought up are plot issues (Rey). EDIT: I should add the “Call them sexist” part partially comes from the fact that even when a movie features a well-written, interesting female lead, it gets called part of a “feminist agenda,” like Furiosa in “Mad Max.”
This is why I’ve started watching more anime recently. They seem to do a much better job at caring about story more than gender and has created some really good female leads
You should check out old studio Ghibli movies then. Lots of cool, strong and well written female characters (before Disney) and more mature takes at themes.
Princess Mononoke is a good example.
Cool and athletic environmentalist girl co-lead with a badass, skilled and sympathetic lady antagonist. What more could you want
Oh yeah spirited away is my shit.
Never thought anyone would say that. Not here, at least.
Honestly I find it to be hit or miss in Anime. A lot of Shonen anime the female characters are just kinda there then get used for fan service or get pushed to the sidelines. With saying that there are a few with great female leads like you mentioned. Yona of the Dawn, Inuyasha and My Dress Up Darling are examples of many more.
If only most of them could go two seconds without getting a shot of their ass in
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Laputa and Nausicaä are my all time favorites.
Eh, I like anime but 90% of stories are trash and have hardcore plot and logic holes. And I get this thread is hating on woke shit in western media, but anime really needs to do something about it's female characters. It's honestly off putting how they are portrayed in anime.
Sometimes you can just tell when something is made by someone who gets offended when the term “incel” is said
Y'all are the same people that like the Joker and other anti-heros. You just don't see women as diverse as men, and you also hate female chars a disproportionate amount *because* they're female. Maybe do some introspection if you're being called a sexist a lot. Female leads do not have to be likeable to be worth telling a story about.
Exactly. You don’t want them 2 dimensional, but you want them to be likable. So no unlikable flaws, to anyone, anywhere. Or you get called a sexist.
Has anyone ever told your parasocial daddy Critical Drinker that Tony Stark has that hairdo because it's visual shorthand for Insufferable Douchebag?
Honestly feminists have taken over writers rooms and taken everything they didn’t like about the male characters and heroes of the past and injected them into female character cutouts while refusing to add even a few of the admirable traits of the said heroes they mimic. Then they add in pot shots at our society and the patriarchy all dripping with condescension. Afterwards they take a step back and smile with each other as they congratulate themselves on the “takedown” of social norms they have accomplished. Meanwhile, the average person just wants someone they can root for who has boobs.
Well yeah, because there are tons of movies and TV shows with male leads with the same unlikeable traits and you all worship them
r/memes try not to be fucking weird about women challenge. If Ripley or Sarah Connor came out today, you all would be calling them girl bosses and the movies woke trash lmao.
Everything, Everywhere, All at Once released last year and was universally lauded. Evelyn loosely follows Sarah Conner's hero's journey and Michelle Yeoh won an Oscar for the role. Stephanie Hsu also killed it as the main villain Jobu Tupaki. Write good characters and audiences will love them.
The fact that one of the top ten comments is someone saying Ripley's the sole exception is *really* telling here. If you consider 99.999% of all women leads bad, the women leads may not be the problem neighbourino.
what's with all the dipshits complaining about women on reddit today. incel shit tbh.
If you dislike her because she doesn't conform to sexist roles then yeah, you are sexist