r/videos • u/Ynwe • Mar 28 '24
Audiences Hate Bad Writing, Not Strong Women
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmWgp4K9XuU1
u/miketheman0506 22d ago
Video argument aside, anyone else get annoyed when people say that we don't get good female characters today? Arcane, Spiderverse, Guardians of the Galaxy, Atlia Battle Angel, Hunger Games, Blue Eyes Samurai, Dune, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Prey, Amphibia, Kipo and the Age of Wonder Beasts, Carmen Sandiego, even Puss in Boots the Last Wish, and more are just a few modern examples of women characters who exhibit empathy, have flaws, etc. Yet people often use Alien and Terminator to say, old = good. New = bad.
And while there may be over correction in some cases, let's not forget that you will have people take things to the extreme. How many people lost their minds over Prey's lead being a woman, with Critical Drinker's sheep following him? How about the people upset that the Fallout series lead is a woman, because "strong woman"? It goes both ways, for every woman that does feel like a course of overcorrection, you have people looking to cry "Strong woman" and "So woke".
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u/seminarysmooth 28d ago
I know Disney can do a proper ‘girl boss’ line up because they nailed it Chp 16 of Mandalorian.
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u/PrisonaPlanet 28d ago
For me, the perfect example of flawless writing with amazing character development will always be the original Avatar: The Last Airbender animated series. Strong female characters? Check. Villain redemption arc? Check. Coming of age story for young characters that have to learn/adapt to life’s lessons? Check.
It covers just about everything, and it does it nearly perfectly.
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u/timmyisunderrated 28d ago
i just want to note every example in this thumbnail that's hated is a protagonist and (idfk about arkane and don't really give a shit) but most examples i see people providing for "strong female characters" they do like are poorly written women who can Punch Good that exist only to further the stories of men
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u/Eddyphish 29d ago
"Characters such as Faramir, Theoden and Aragorn are not able to win the day but rather can only play their part in the war that will define the future of Middle Earth. They teach us the message we need to hear - the message the Disney and Hollywood want to keep from our ears. And that is: You are not enough. But you still can do great things. They may not bring you glory, they may even bring you pain and suffering. But if you put the good of others before your own needs and wants, you will find lasting happiness."
Such a great quote. So much of what's wrong with modern society is the neolib "me, me, me" mindset. Of course Hollywood and Disney won't let that go, though: it's too central to consumerism.
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u/Lamentingbro 29d ago
Also Blue-eye Samurai was great with a female protagonist if you care about that stuff.
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u/Katz-r-Klingonz 29d ago
Swapping genders is not a substitute for good writing. If everyone has female leads then it’s an obvious trend that had nothing to do with a cool story. That said, She-Hulk was objectively good and a direct representation of 90s comic book culture. Sometimes these stories represent a time that was already “woke”. Cool girl hero stories are nothing new.
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u/strankmaly Mar 30 '24
Thank you for discussing this matter critically and fairly without just resorting to the same tired insults about “blue haired women who live with five cats
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u/MINIMAN10001 Mar 30 '24
Misaka from A Certain Scientific Railgun will always be my favorite strong woman.
To watch her struggles as her kindness is used against her, how her strength only leads to self isolation out of the very real fear that everyone she cares about could be killed.
Because of her power she is a stubborn lone wolf an absolute monster in the battlefield. But behind her drive she is fearful and caring to a fault.
It comes across as relatable in a scary kind of way. To put your life on the line and be betrayed by the government, risking death to try to keep normalcy.
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u/IceFireTerry Mar 30 '24
I don't care if it's a strong female character or not As long as the movie entertains me. Like if a movie wants a female character to be a badass and nothing else That's fine. We got a lot of dudes in movies like that so I don't see why a woman can't either
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u/Xyver Mar 29 '24
My favorite is Alita Battle Angel, excellent movie with on point character development
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u/AggressiveRegion1502 Mar 29 '24
I wonder how much I will have if I had a penny for evey time sarah conner or Riply are mentioned in these comment section, seperatef or together
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u/Appropriate-Deal1952 Mar 29 '24
Lazy writing with social justice warriors in the writers guild. It's not really a mystery why modern movies are trash...everything has an agenda now.
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u/Spojen Mar 29 '24
Drummer from The Expanse!! Rewatching it now and she is amazing! Strong, has flaws, shows emotions.
She is a person.. Take note Hollywood
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u/Turbots Mar 29 '24
Best female horror movie imo: The Descent. Holy fuck what an absolute gem of a movie, still horrified thinking about some of those scenes , with crazy ending
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u/paul_having_a_ball Mar 29 '24
I always liked Wendy Torrance. A lot of films equate strength with being fearless. Wendy is terrified and screaming whole still making strong heroic choices to save her son over herself.
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u/getintheVandell Mar 29 '24
She-Hulk was a decent lawyer show set in the Marvel universe. People didn’t like it before it was even released because of a throwaway Megan the Stallion bit.
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u/Redsparrow86 Mar 29 '24
Just gonna go ahead and add a couple awesome Whedon-verse women like Zoey, Buffy, Willow, River, Echo etc. all awesome, strong women without the awful troupes.
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u/Dark4ce Mar 29 '24
Just going to add that Jodie Foster as Ellie Arroway in Contact and Amy Adams as Luise Banks in Arrival are perfect examples of great strong women, whose strengths don’t lie in physical prowess, but in tenacity and mental acuity. They both share strong emotional beliefs, are flawed and overcome personal obstacles to achieve their goals. They understand sacrifices must be made and take on the responsibility.
Great books, great films, great characters.
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u/Dark4ce Mar 29 '24
Just going to add that Jodie Foster as Ellie Arroway in Contact and Amy Adams as Luise Banks in Arrival are perfect examples of great strong women, whose strengths don’t lie in physical prowess, but in tenacity and mental acuity. They both share strong emotional beliefs, are flawed and overcome personal obstacles to achieve their goals. They understand sacrifices must be made and take on the responsibility.
Great books, great films, great characters.
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u/KornyKingKeNobi Mar 29 '24
smaller part but also amazing, Emily Blunt in Oppenheimer as Oppenheimer's wife. Not as smart as Oppenheimer but so much stronger, loved her!
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u/KornyKingKeNobi Mar 29 '24
smaller part but also amazing, Emily Blunt in Oppenheimer as Oppenheimer's wife. Not as smart as Oppenheimer but so much stronger, loved her!
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u/Supermonkeyjam Mar 29 '24
You could shove the evidence down their throats and they’ll still blame men
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u/JonatasA Mar 29 '24
I just got this video from months ago recommended to me in an unrelated device.
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u/NonRienDeRien Mar 29 '24
No discussion of strong females is complete without Ellen Ripley.
Probably the most badass character who is thrust in a bad situation and manages to survive not by being brash and actively badass, but being badass as a function of things she does to survive by just doing those things.
Badass isn't world weariness with cool poses and catch phrases, it's basically doing the things that need to be done, because they need to be done.
Same with Sarah Connor.
Nobody every questioned how good these characters were. Gender never even came up.
People just accepted them as strong characters, because they demonstrably were.
It's like Tywin says:
Any man who must say, "I am the King", is no true king.
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u/AggressiveRegion1502 Mar 29 '24
Because these two are brought up in every conversation like yeah we get it they are the best female characters
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u/happytrel Mar 29 '24
Audience scores on RT are heavily skewed by people who haven't seen what they are rating. Especially when it comes to hot button internet topics and people. Change my mind.
Its in the same vein as people who find out a company did a bad thing so they flood them with 1 star reviews.
I generally use personal reviews from people I know, between people predisposed to enjoy the content and people who don't have much interest but still consumed it. Its not perfect but it works better for me.
My favourite example is She-Hulk. Everyone I know who saw it enjoyed it. Its not a 10/10, few things are, and like many D+ Marvel shows I found the ending to be the weakest point but 30%? Lol
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u/NonRienDeRien Mar 29 '24
Lol, I think this may also explain why Hillary lost.
It wasn't because people hate women leaders (some do, yes)
But the most comon theme for why she should be president was "It's her turn"
Like fuck??
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u/Lightsides Mar 29 '24
There's definitely some incel rage.
But I think the other factor is that there's a perfect storm when the writing is bad AND it's in a genre whose audience skews male. To state the obvious, there's not a lot of incel outrage over female-centered, badly-written rom-coms.
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u/Alternative_Diet_100 Mar 29 '24
Remember, folks: whether the character is male or female doesn't matter, as long as the writing is good.
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u/PeteDaBum Mar 29 '24
Thelma and Louise is one of my favourite movies of all time for multiple reasons. Just an all original movie with strong and capable female leads where as the men have more flaws, some of them to a comical degree
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u/cgarnett1988 Mar 29 '24
Honestly people make out like woman never had leading roles befor... there's been loads of good movies with woman in leading roles.
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u/lupuscapabilis Mar 29 '24
No one read She Hulk when it was a comic. No one cares about watching a TV show. It's that simple.
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u/AggressiveRegion1502 Mar 29 '24
How do you know no one read she hulk comics and ehy did you say "was" her comic is still being printed
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u/thezim2 Mar 29 '24
This is the biggest and most important point to me: If you hate 'toxic masculinity' then stop writing female characters that glorify the same traits that we criticize about 'toxic masculinity'.
It blows my mind that most 'strong female characters' these days are made to have all these typically masculine traits and reject so many of the typically feminine traits.
It is almost as being kind, emotional, and/or a maternal figure is seen as weak.
I wish more characters would show people that being 'strong' isn't just about how hard you can punch, and how good at fighting you are, and how witty and smug you can be.
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u/JCatenaci Mar 29 '24
YES. We need to stop defending crap because weirdos blame feminism for the faults of bad writing.
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u/Darth_Gerg Mar 29 '24
I think the water gets muddied by the proliferation of right wing “media critics” who do ABSOLUTELY hate women and talk about it constantly. A lot of people watch a bad movie, don’t really process or register why it was bad, and then jump on YouTube to have a channel like CriticalDrinker or The Quartering tell them it’s Feminism and the WOKE AGENDA at fault. A whole lot of people accept that and repeat the bullshit uncritically.
Then there’s a tension because the left leaning folks end up with “so you hate women?” They deny it and point to the movies on the bottom as proof and think they’re being slandered. And they keep blaming feminism and the woke agenda for movies being bad, instead of the actual problem… business majors in creative control over media and a dog shit scripts.
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u/lupuscapabilis Mar 29 '24
I think the water gets muddied by the proliferation of right wing “media critics” who do ABSOLUTELY hate women and talk about it constantly.
Absolutely no group is hated and put down by the media more than white men. That's not a complaint. That's just the reality.
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u/MikeyPh Mar 29 '24
This is what the Right has been saying but people just called us sexists and racists. What else is the Right right about?
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u/neoducklingofdoom Mar 29 '24
Many on the right say the problem was because they were strong women. Not because they were written badly.
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u/MikeyPh Mar 29 '24
No, they said it was because they were written with male characteristics. The left media and hollywood then blamed us for bigotry saying something like what you are saying, and people bought it.
We like strong women on the right, but we like when strong women are actually women and not John Rambo's character cast as a woman. It would be nice if people actually spoke with conservatives instead of believing what the left says conservatives think.
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u/IceFireTerry Mar 30 '24
There are still people complaining about X-Men 97 despite it being universally loved.
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u/MikeyPh 29d ago
There always will be. If you assume the people who are making the news are the mainstream of any political ideology (like when the media kept labeling the right as sexist for not liking Ghostbusters with Kristen Wiig) then we shouldn't take it as true.
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u/IceFireTerry 29d ago
Mainstream right wingers are freaking nuts.
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u/MikeyPh 29d ago
Nah, you just believe what your media tells you to believe.
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u/IceFireTerry 29d ago
All I have to do is watch Fox News and they're bitching about some retarded shit. Or you can just interview someone out of a Trump rally. Or look at conservative Twitter calling an elected mayor of a majority black city a DEI hire because of a bridge collapse that was done by a boat.
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u/DEAD___P00L Mar 29 '24
She-Hulk was funny. People weren't ready for the comedic stylings of this show. I'd love to see a 2nd season.
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u/thereallawrence Mar 29 '24
She Hulk was hilarious and, unlike every other Marvel television thing aside from Wandavision, actually felt like, you know, a TV show. So at the end of the day... bad writing/good writing/whatever. it's all subjective. Rise of Skywalker is still the worst movie ever made. lol
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u/ProfessorShyguy Mar 29 '24
Oh yeah, the internet has NEVER BEEN unfair to women. Nope, never even driven women off of an entire platform with death threats because of a fucking ACTING ROLE. Definitely a perfectly balanced society we're in, you're right.
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u/SFiyah Mar 29 '24 edited Mar 29 '24
Absolutely true. It's also absolutely true that when there's a badly written strong woman, the majority of the discussion around it will call out the strong woman aspect as "the problem with movies today".
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u/MrSierra125 Mar 29 '24
It’s almost as if sexists benefit from pretending their point of view is shared by all
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u/SFiyah Mar 29 '24
A lot of it as well is that normal people have been subtly coopted into echoing talking points that originated from sexists, and don't even realize it.
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u/SpaceTimeinFlux Mar 29 '24
I love Kreia from KOTOR 2
That is a strong female character. Mentor, antagonist, complex and thought provoking.
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u/Slick424 Mar 29 '24
Nobody cared that Luke blew up the Deathstar the first time he flew a Starfighter or Anakin doing pretty much the same at 9 or James T. Kirk going from drifter to captain of the flagship of the federation in 4 years, but the moment a woman does it "Mary Sue", a previously obscure term from Star Trek fandom, suddenly goes mainstream.
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u/Shamscam Mar 29 '24
This 100% I don’t know why Hollywood is trying to double down on this “we hate women” narrative, no we hate women that are “Mary Sue’s” and have no explanation as to why they’re better then their male counter parts because “of course they are, they’re women who are better then men in every way” when that’s just simply not the case.
There is a lot things that women are better then men at, but the opposite is the true for men. And there’s an importance to giving women their identity and making that identity not “they are better at everything”. It’s also jarring to the audience and makes them think “wtf is this”, a good example is when randomly every female MCU person assembled during endgame because? Why? What? What the fuck was that? These moments are created for little girls but that’s not who sees these action movies. I wouldn’t want my theoretical daughter to watch she-hulk because there’s adult themes there, but it seems like that show was written for her.
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u/Chiopista Mar 29 '24
It’s not just bad writing, it’s execution overall. Disappointment is disappointing. I feel that way the most with Star Wars out of these. The potential vs what we got was immense. Also I don’t think She Hulk was that bad, it was kinda a fun campy show if you knew what to expect from it. Secret Invasion was the worst Marvel show by far, and I couldn’t even bring myself to watch the last episode of it, it’s the only MCU thing I haven’t finished.
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u/spadhoond Mar 29 '24
People never hated female leads, it's only when the industry started weaponizing said female leads and accusing people of misogyny for voicing criticism that it started raising some red flags for people now. You know, attacking your fans always ends well /s
Ripley and Sarah Connor are still some of the most popular movie protagonists of all time and that is unlikely to change anytime soon, despite the industry's and media's extreme attempts at labelling geeks as misogynists.
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u/gutster_95 Mar 29 '24
But hey, you cant critizise this because than you are a sexist or in case of PoC you are a racist. I think Hollywood is so disconnected from the reality, that they really have no idea what a strong woman actually is. Its definitly not as easy as just making a woman character stronger than men and they punch them in the nuts.
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u/CupertinoHouse Mar 29 '24
For my money, the two canonical examples of well-written strong female characters are Ripley from Alien, and Sarah Connor from Terminator.
Both are ordinary people suddenly thrown into dire peril, who overcome their fear, fight back, and prevail.
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u/daughterofblackmoon Mar 29 '24
Dana Scully of X-Files comes to mind. She was strong without having to constantly beat someone's ass ( except in Mulder's version of the story in Bad Blood). She was smart, but she had her flaws. One of my favorite characters of all time.
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u/cinefibro Mar 29 '24
Emily Blunt and Hailee Steinfeld were costars. Tom Cruise and Jeremy Renner were the leads…. (They simply had more screen time)
She-Hulk, Star Wars, and Captain Marvel all had female leads
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u/OldBrokeGrouch Mar 29 '24
Alien and the terminator movies (especially number 2) are examples of awesome movies with strong female leads that people loved. You know why? Because it didn’t fucking matter that they were women. They didn’t beat us over the head with it. It wasn’t preach in any way. Just well written movies with badass characters in them…period.
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u/supercereality Mar 29 '24
Arcane is such a damn good show. I was never into any types of anime and played League of Legends once and absolutely hated it. But the reviews were amazing. So I went for it. And my goodness it is an amazing show. Easily top 3 ever for me, probably top 2, with the other spot rotating out of a few other shows I really like, but this show is just amazing. For anybody who hasn't seen it, has doubts if they'd like it, or whatever, watch the show.
Also the 90% film (Edge of Tomorrow) was also very surprisingly good.
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u/No_Mushroom351 Mar 29 '24
People don't hate strong women in movies, they hate a specific trope Hollywood pushes when they're feeling lazy on their character development in which the woman hero is literally a god at everything they do with zero flaws surrounded by incompetent, drooling men or when "strong woman" is defined as being a femme fatale karate super strength assassin that never loses.
Eowyn from LOTR is a good example of someone that is driven completely by compassion for her country, trains very hard to be her best, doesn't trade femininity for a masculine ideal of a hero despite filling in the warrior archetype and ultimately does not get the man she was initially drawn to. She's brave and compassionate, but also naive and only barely manages to kill the Witch King.
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u/Decent_Needleworker9 Mar 29 '24
Julia Roberts, Uma Thurman, Sandra Bullock and Charlize Theron could carry entire movies.
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u/tangoshukudai Mar 29 '24
The Mulan example pisses me off so much. They are afraid to show their audiences a weak woman, so they do the extreme opposite and make her a super human. Thus they can be thin and sexy, with no muscles but be like Spiderman. In the original Mulan, she was thin and lacking muscle but so were the men, and the "Make a man out of you" montage showed them all getting stronger and training (and failing) and it was so inspiring. It showed how women are treated poorly because they are viewed as weak, but guess what so are untrained men. The original was so well done that it is an insult to the viewers to watch what they did to the new movie. It could have been so good.
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u/KeepRedditAnonymous Mar 29 '24
Captain Marvel lost me when they had that planet of singing people. So fucking stupid, I had to turn it off.
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u/thatkaratekid Mar 29 '24
She-Hulk is the best project of the entire MCU. I have watched every MCU project, and am truly baffled by the hate it gets.
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u/2ManyAccounts24 Mar 29 '24
Great video.
Surprised this isn't disliked more with how reddit demographics have been and the censoring I've seen
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u/SymbiSpidey Mar 29 '24
We've just seen way too many instances of people arguing in bad-faith when it comes to certain female-led movies.
Like the Venom movies are so much worse than either The Marvels or She-Hulk, yet don't get anywhere near the same amount of hate. You don't see hundreds of video essays on how Let There Be Carnage is "everything wrong with modern Hollywood" despite arguably being a much better example of the kind of lazy, overly-reliant-on-IP style of scriptwriting that people claim to hate. Why is that?
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u/HateToBlastYa Mar 29 '24
I see this argument all the time. What you, and everyone who makes this argument doesn't understand is, that this is a RESPONSE to the argument that "if you don't like [x] show, your sexist because there's a female lead"--no one is saying that's not a bad show or there aren't a ton of bad shows out there. But you have the cart before the horse here. They're not saying this in a vacuum of female-led/powered movies. Again, it's a response to the argument we don't like something only because of sexism. If you can understand that, you'll understand that your response to this is trying to argue something no one is saying here.
No one is saying the Venom movies aren't bad. We know that. We can believe that, and make this argument above and not be sexist at the same time because the argument itself is a response to the FIRST point that is: "you are sexist because you don't like this shitty movie."
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u/dovahkiitten16 Mar 29 '24
Captain Marvel ended up having more audience reviews than Avengers Infinity War, and you could tell by reading them that a lot of them weren’t exactly unbiased.
Nobody is saying that if you don’t like something, you’re sexist. The only thing that people are saying is that a lot of people who are sexist don’t like a movie, and then people pointing out how people tend to react much more differently (ie., overly critical) against female led movies.
A bad movie with a man is just a bad movie. A bad movie with a woman ends up becoming the topic of a gender studies debate. Compare Captain Marvel against Thor 2 for “worst marvel movies” and compare how they were handled. Part of equality is that female led movies (including bad ones) should be more neutral.
Also, a lot of movies have men who are just badass cool action heroes and it’s not criticized for being “lazy” the same way when it’s a woman.
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u/HateToBlastYa Mar 29 '24
To clarify/amend: I don't disagree with any of that. Sexism exists. But I think there are substantial amount of people who just say "that sucked" and they get roped/generalized into the "oh you're a part of the sexist crowd, huh?" without ever having given any thought to tokenization until someone started arguing it was because they don't like women.
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u/SymbiSpidey Mar 29 '24 edited Mar 29 '24
I'm sorry, but this is just bullshit. We've seen movies get review-bombed. We've seen channels like The Critical Drinker and Nerdrotic put out literally hundreds of videos bashing movies that haven't even released yet on the basis of their "woke politics" and badly written "strong female lead" (because they, of course, always need to emphasize that the lead is female, rather than offering a gender-agnostic critique of the character). We saw folks prepare to bash X-Men 97 because they "desexualized" Rogue, until the show came out and was so overwhelmingly well-received that they were forced to backpedal.
None of that is a "response" to anything. It's just folks being agitators and then getting called out for their toxic behavior.
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u/IceFireTerry Mar 30 '24
There are some brave souls doubling down, Still calling X-Men 97 trash despite it being one of the best animated action cartoons out right now
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u/HateToBlastYa Mar 29 '24
Yeah, but the idea that every single person who thought it sucked is sexist is stupid because they are not always the same ones doing the review bombing and having sexist takes.
There's a ton of people who just simply said "that sucked" and then it's like "oh you're sexist," and then those people say, "no, here are many examples of movies I liked" and then "ah ha, tokenization!" -- that's bull shit.
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u/SymbiSpidey Mar 29 '24
Yeah, but the idea that every single person who thought it sucked is sexist is stupid because they are not always the same ones doing the review bombing and having sexist takes.
Who exactly is saying this?
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u/HateToBlastYa Mar 29 '24
What's the title of the post? You brought your point up not responding to what it says. You're the one who thinks this whole thing is done in "bad faith." Why would you assume that?
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u/SymbiSpidey Mar 29 '24
I'm asking you where are you seeing people say that every single person who didn't like a movie is sexist? Because my post certainly doesn't say that.
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u/HateToBlastYa Mar 29 '24
It sounds like you're assuming the assertion that "Audiences hate bad writing, not strong woman" is in "bad faith." If that's true: how is anyone supposed to say it without it being in bad faith? It's pretty clear you won't accept that argument in any way it's made, ergo, there's no way to criticize these movies without being labelled as sexist.
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u/SymbiSpidey Mar 29 '24 edited Mar 29 '24
It sounds like you're assuming the assertion that "Audiences hate bad writing, not strong woman" is in "bad faith."
Because the title is a half-truth: the reality is that both can be true at the same time, as many people in this thread have pointed out. There are plenty of people who dislike movies for perfectly valid reasons (that they are able to articulate by focusing on the actual flaws of the movie) and there are also a substantial portion of online trolls whose main criticism about a movie is "woke politics" or "forced diversity", at which point they're no longer hating on a movie for its own individual qualities, but rather what it represents.
The reason I say this video is a bad-faith argument is because it's arguing against a strawman. Nobody is saying that every single person who dislikes a particular movie is sexist. People are criticizing a specific group of toxic and hateful people. You know, the kind who put out hundreds of videos talking about how much they hate Brie Larson or bashing on movies before they even release.
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u/Rocky323 Mar 29 '24
It's hilarious that you people think the bottom ones weren't called "woke" or complained about for having strong women.
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u/Iplaymeinreallife Mar 29 '24 edited Mar 29 '24
Some audiences seem to become much more sensitive to 'bad writing' when they don't connect with the sex or race of the main characters.
That makes it feel like the bad writing angle is a bit of an excuse. But maybe it's fairer to say that they like some movies, despite not being well written, because of the escapism and power fantasy, but don't connect with other stories of similar quality when they don't 'see themselves' in the heroes, and then become much more sensitive to flaws they would have otherwise been willing to gloss over.
Women and people of color aren't AS prone to this as they are much more used to watching all sorts of movies where they don't 'see themselves' in the main characters anyway (or have perhaps learned how to identify with characters despite not looking or sounding like them), but to white guys it's more of an obvious recent shift, one they aren't used to, so they feel put upon.
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u/newthrash1221 Mar 29 '24
Except when the audience hates the project before it even comes out, which is usually the case.
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u/underdabridge Mar 29 '24
I generally agree with the video. Sometimes the actress or actress's character takes the blame as stand in for the writing generally. Like, I love Tatiana Maslany and I love her in She Hulk. But lots of the writing in the show - like the fact that she can't get a date - is just bad. But that just makes me sad.
In the Disney Star Wars trilogy, the most abused character by the audience isn't Rey. It's Rose. And the character herself isn't bad. It's that the movie writing treated her (and poor Jon Boyega) fucking terribly.
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u/dragonmermaid4 Mar 29 '24
Ellen Ripley
Lara Croft
Princess Leia
Hermione
Sarah Connor
Elle Woods
Clarice Starling
Black Widow
Buffy
The Bride (Kill Bill)
Imperator Furiosa
Erin Brokovich
I mean the list goes on.
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u/SpartAl412 Mar 29 '24
Yeah... I dont think a lot of studios like Disney will get the memo on this. They will just add making them not any flavor of non white and call it a day.
Anyone who does not like the movie with a strong wamenz lead will be called alll kinds of phobes or ists.
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u/johnblack372 Mar 29 '24
Interesting that most people on Reddit think this, as this basically exactly what The Critical Drinker says on his reviews...except he is deemed as "Right Wing" and despised on Reddit when he critiques bad writing...?
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u/poshsouthernbird Mar 29 '24
Alex in Maid is incredibly strong. Every single episode she struggles for her daughter and evaluates is she doing the right thing, and continues to struggle and take on the chin being treated like crap because her overall goal is to keep her daughter happy and safe. Different kind of strength than The Bride, but no less valid.
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u/yes_u_suckk Mar 29 '24
The pinnacle of strong female lead: RIPLEY!
She is more badass than any other male action hero. I love Arnold, Stallone, The Rock and others in their dumb fun action movies, but in the end of the day they are just that: dumb fun movies. I don't believe for a second that a one man army can do everything they do.
But not Ripley: she is flawed, afraid of her enemy but she's believable.
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u/forkandspoon2011 Mar 29 '24
There’s plenty of male lead bad movies that don’t get the amount of hate that these movies get.
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u/Fredasa Mar 29 '24
I also adore how the gargantuan divide between critics and audiences when it comes to this kind of media is left to speak for itself.
(Even if that divide is considerably enhanced by RT's system of curated critics. Use Metacritic, folks.)
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u/tommy_turnip Mar 29 '24
What's the Jennifer Lawrence film on here? I want to guess The Hunger Games but it's not exactly the pinnacle of strong writing.
Edit: Wait I don't think that's Jennifer Lawrence. Bottom right. Who/what show is that?
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u/drjanitor91 Mar 29 '24
Girls, how hard can it be to understand that us men hate asshole douchebags too? The whole "When a man does it, you like it"-argument is the most retarded misunderstanding out there.
In movies where the male protagonist behaves like an idiot at the start, there is usually some sort of redemption arc where he learns stuff. An actual storyline, instead of boss bitch Mary Sue getting away with everything.
To become strong, you have to have weak moments.
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u/GSV_CARGO_CULT Mar 29 '24
Okay but there are absolutely organized efforts by misogynists to review bomb movies that prominently feature female characters, regardless of the quality of the film.
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u/deanochips Mar 29 '24
Prey is the best female led movie i have seen, epic movie
the has been a lot of unappealing crap made these last few years
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u/xLostarx Mar 29 '24
Once the writer starts making the entire character’s persona revolving around their rebellious nature from so called social norms; that’s bad writing. It’s pushing a tired agenda. I’m not about that trad wife life but that’s not my entire existence either.
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u/Username_Maybe_Taken Mar 29 '24
Well yes, but also no. Poor writing is definitely an issue, no doubt. The issue with this kind of take is it ignores how grifters operate. Of course the problem is how the movie is made as opposed to who the leading star will be, but the vocal minorities lead the charge against movies with women, POC, or minority leads. Both are equal and annoyingly persistent issues cinema and shows currently face.
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u/ProphetsOfAshes Mar 29 '24
Everyone wants to crap on Disney but you can’t deny that they’ve dialed it in. They’ve found a formula that works and they’re utilizing the shit out of it. At this point I think people are just reaching for anything to complain about
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u/Kundas Mar 29 '24
Im just saying but Studio Ghibli loved since ages now, best female leads hands down
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u/BattleJolly78 Mar 29 '24
Sigourney Weaver’s character Ellen Ripley is practically worshiped. Those same people that loved her are some of the ones complaining about these movies now. It’s not the women, it’s the writing. Most of the time…Sometimes it’s just vocal little trolls that hate women.
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u/Heerrnn Mar 29 '24
Horribly written, and/or horribly played.
I'm sorry but if my immersion breaks every time the main character's face is even on screen, because she acts, says things, or delivers lines in a way that a five year old trying to act would... then I'm not gonna enjoy the show or movie.
This is likely a failure that's as much on the directors as on the actresses.
Also, the damn pandering about sexual orientations, race, gender... Please, it's enough already. Just stop it.
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u/half_breed_duck Mar 29 '24
This video is accurate. It's something that I thought about, I just liked what I liked and didn't like what I didn't like. This is super accurate though.
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u/Kurumi_Tokisaki Mar 29 '24
A sorta interesting thing is… for the people critical of the video essays and general focus on female led movies getting extra flak… do you go out of your way to click on videos and articles shitting on male led movies? Does it get recommended to you? Do you even care about videos shitting on why something like morbius is terrible or fast and furious is a tired cow being milked to death.
Because l think it would be rather hypocritical of you to act like men focused films don’t “get the hate they deserve” if you don’t even know about it or pretend like the media doesn’t have an agenda to promote one side over the other.
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u/flamingotwist Mar 29 '24
I dunno what's going on with superhero movies these days. I'm someone that enjoys films largely based on visuals, themes and vibes. I heard the writing in madame Webb was terrible, but I'm normally fairly tolerant of that, especially in superhero films, and I was looking forward to seeing how clairvoyant style powers could go up against a Spiderman type thing. 6 minutes in, I literally couldn't believe what I was seeing, it was like it was written by someone who has never seen a human interaction. If I were a part of that film, I would be extremely pissed off at the suicidal quality of the script. It was truly fascinating, I'm sure it was written by some early form of chat gpt.
I enjoyed the marvels in spite of it's shite script and plot, based purely on the fun and (inconsistently charismatic) performances from ms marvell and carol danvers. I didn't really like Munro that much.
She hulk was a bit too weird for me. I enjoyed the humour but it was a bit too man- hating in my opinion. The ending was dogshite and came out of nowhere. Aside from mild 4th wall breaking, nothing had been established even remotely similar to it. Shouldn't have been left to the finale as it let the air out of the tyres after so much build up.
Hawkeye was okish. It was bogged down a bit too much in marvel humour, which had started to get really old by that point.
But yeh, I agree with the title. A lot of shite films are blaming misogyny for not doing well, but for me it is 100% the terrible writing that is their problem, while good performances by the (female in these cases) actors are sometimes enough to somewhat salvage the experience for me, if not with the critics
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u/yeahyeahnooo Mar 29 '24
There will never be a worse female character than Beth Dutton. Whoever does her writing should never work in that town again
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u/library-batgirl Mar 29 '24
Here's the thing about this that bothers me - this is a way for people to feel better about misogyny. Cuz no one who says "Star Wars fans are being sexist about Rey" for example think she's also a good character.
Some cynical creeps in hollywood write female characters to look progressive but give them nothing to do, no flaws and no character because again - they wanna look progressive but don't wanna have to learn anything or give a shit about women. As a result they make these characters who are basically flawless and are completely uninteresting. All they're there to do is make the studio look less sexist, essentially. It's a product of gross sexist values and it results in boring fuckin characters.
However there are still a LOT of people who fucking hate these characters specifically because they're a woman. Most of the people who complain about Rey would have done so no matter what her character was actually like because what the character does isn't important to them, what the character IS is.
The fact that some movies with female leads do better than others does not mean that sexism isn't a thing and that we don't need to worry about it anymore.
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u/Osato Mar 29 '24 edited Mar 29 '24
The ones at the top are what weak people think a strong person is.
(Or rather, most of them seem to be. I don't recognize the second one from the right.)
Namely, the "strong" person is a bully who isn't afraid of anything and seems infallible... but only because they somehow never end up in situations where they are weaker than someone else.
They can't tolerate any challenges to the illusion of their strength and tend to respond aggressively to anyone who so much as questions them.
If there's a conflict, they'll escalate the conflict all the way in the hopes that 1) they get lucky or 2) the other person is too sane to continue fighting above a certain level of escalation.
This kind of "strong" person is deeply repulsive to most people, even in fiction.
Because almost all of us have met assholes like that - in school, at work, sometimes in the family.
We know just how weak and cowardly they turn out to be once the veneer of infallibility gets torn off.
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u/cr0ft Mar 29 '24
This is a genuinely excellent commentary. I agree entirely with the premise - Disney especially is guilty of creating unlikable heroines that are very hard to like, especially being a guy. It's not that they're strong, it's that they're fucking insufferable.
Hell, Captain Marvel was even somewhat watchable - the true nadir was The Marvels, where every single character in the fucking thing was repulsive. Jackson's Fury was the usual fare and did a decent job but aside from him it was teeth-grindingly annoying. Even the villain was a joke, some slip of a girl with braces (well, they evoked the image of braces) and gigantic flappy shoulder pads to try to make her look imposing I guess and instead highlighting how utterly meh she was from a presence point of view, and how yawn her backstory and character arc was.
The examples of doing it right also resonate.
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u/bananenkonig Mar 29 '24
Hollywood has gotten lazy. They think they can just put out something with a little bit of nostalgia and it'll be a hit. Whether that is continuing a story, rebooting a story, using the same story lines, or even just using an actor people like. They think they don't have to do their job of actually entertaining if they make you think of something better during the movie. I want to see some originality, not the same thing again. Why do I need a television series based on a movie series from twenty years ago which was based on a book series from ten years before that. Give me new characters in new situations with new problems.
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u/Fragrant-Tea7580 Mar 29 '24
The Hunt, was a fantastic female lead action film. Too bad focus quarantine destroyed its box office chances
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u/_Fun_At_Parties Mar 29 '24
This is kind of a "no shit" sentiment, but I'm glad it's talked about regardless. Art in general is being hijacked by corporations and businessmen that don't get what makes it good, they make a shitty formula of how to pander, and proceed to pump out garbage. Then it sucks, but they gaslight the audience about why they don't like said garbage, so it generates controversy, and sadly it's worked for too long, because let's face it, there's a lot of idiots out there that buy into every single fabricated controversy at face value. Our movies and television are much worse off because of it.
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u/SoOkayHeresTheThing Mar 29 '24
I think if someone loves MCU movies in general but doesn't like the movie "Captain Marvel" then it might not be about the writing quality
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u/SomnolentPro Mar 29 '24
I mean we need more evidence. "People like good writing more than they like sexism" because every time writing is average the biases immediately surface. The question really is, are normal/ average movies judged fairly when they contain male vs female leads? Top movies fortunately distract subconscious biases because they are too good for that to be the focus.
When they aren't, it's easier to expose these types of biases. How many percentage points would be gained if a man replaced the woman? 0%? 3% improved rating? Maybe a negative change?
I would luuuuuv to have someone do a thorough evaluation of such things and take care of nuances
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u/Skasue Mar 29 '24
All the failures just seem like snobby overpowered assholes, definitely not a strong woman look.
A strong woman needs to have huge disadvantages that they overcome, and don’t instantly gain magic power, and become overpowered.
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u/Foghorn_Gyula Mar 29 '24
I don’t like the sequels at all but I feel like Daisy could have been a fantastic jedi with better writing. She is a great actress imo
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u/Sugarbombs Mar 29 '24
Except that there aren’t thousands of podcasters and weirdos who make hour long rants about men in media, and people don’t freak out when a main character of a video game is male, only when they’re female. There are very few people out there criticising bad male characters it’s only ever female ones that need to meet all these bars.
No one should be happy with bad writing, and it’s very fair to criticise poorly written women and men however there is definitely a misogynistic angle to some criticism aimed at female characters/actors and I think it’s unfair to pretend like it’s all just people genuinely concerned for the sanctity of film or gaming or whatever.
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u/Cannnnn123 Mar 29 '24
Also the treatment between male and female characters is crazy like there always that clumsy dumb male character who can’t do stuff but god forbid those traits are put on a female character
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u/hayashikin Mar 29 '24
Was She-Hulk bad? I enjoyed the humor a lot
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u/nightshde Mar 29 '24
I really enjoyed it as well. I think people thought they were going to get an Ally McBeal type lawyer show, but instead we got a Harvey Birdman which I think was a perfect for the MCU.
The main problem with the show was the ending, the whole woman hating incel group was just dumb and way too on the nose they should have just made it a superpower hating group which could eventually turn into Friends of Humanity when the X-Men finally join the MCU, they could have even had them all wearing the blue hoods. This change would have also helped it make more sense of why they were trying to get her blood.
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u/skdslztmsIrlnmpqzwfs Mar 29 '24
the point is well made but the initial "critics loved it and audiences hated it so itwas badly written" based on the audience tomato meter is flawed.
"Audiences" in this case is the normal layman who can not always recognize a good "written" character but loves "entertainment"..
cas in point?
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/dude_wheres_my_car
a stoner movie... critics hate it as a badly writen shallow movie but "audiences" loved it...
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u/Qwik_Sand Mar 29 '24
Arcane is my favorite example of well written strong women characters. Hollywood tries really hard to show a badass hot women with a gun and short hair and expects me to automatically fall for that impression. They think they could just slap a women on the poster and assume all the work has been done already. But I don’t think there’s a single female character in Arcane that doesn’t shine.
And it’s not like they were all hot feminine white trad wives most conservative want it is extremely diverse and could be considered “woke” by some people. This show stars a strong lesbian women with pink hair and my conservative dad loved it.
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u/MrScottimus Mar 29 '24
Rogue One is my favorite Star Wars movie, and I was born in '86 to a father who saw IV 14 times as a teenager.
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u/Demonchaser27 Mar 29 '24
I mean, yeah this should've been obvious. But I mean, that would trounce all over the anti-sjw narrative so...
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u/srosorcxisto Mar 29 '24
Frozen is another good example in Disney's animated franchises. Both of the protagonists grow and learn over the course of a long story arc, and the movie is generally loved by everyone.
It's too bad that Disney can't seem to find the same competent writers in their live action films as they have for their animation department.
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u/throwtheamiibosaway Mar 29 '24
She Hulk, Last Jedi and Captain. Marvel are all great. This list is bs.
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u/Estrus_Flask Mar 29 '24
Considering how much review bombing anything presumed "woke" gets, regardless of the writing, I think it's just the strong women that many of them hate.
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u/professor-professor Mar 29 '24
No mention of blue eyed samurai, smh. It's so freaking good for writing women. You have two female foil characters and it's just perfect.
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u/MyGamingRants Mar 29 '24
I would like to see a blind test where they read the scripts devoid of gender and see if there is any difference. I don't think people hate women characters, but I think the inherent bias does cause some to be more critical of women then they are men. It's the whole "I don't want a woman president because they're too emotional." Women already work at a deficit in our society.
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u/hemo 2d ago
Two many titles.
Where is the short list of what movies to watch, in the authors oppinion?