That's the one that bugs me in any scenes with where women fight. You want that hair either short, or braided close to your head, so that it neither gets in the way, nor can it be grabbed. I play football, and I can tell you how horrid it is for girls who play offense and don't tie their hair well or hide it. You get grabbed by the hair, albeit accidentally, and it's not a good feeling.
@Shula B. It's part of the design though. The hair is part of the silhouette and often the color balance. Tie the hair back and you suddenly change core parts of recogniseable designs that weren't created with this limitation in mind. It's situations like this where you just have to say fuck the realism. It's a fantasy anyway. It's the same thing with Batman's cape. He is a normal human, that thing would get in the way during movement, weigh him down and be grabbed constantly. No matter how many explanations they find for it being there, it is a hindrance in reality. (There is a reason it is constantly CGI'd into movies instead of being worn on set). But he'd look shit without it. You don't hear Batmam fans whining about the cape do you? Why would you whine about long hair? I mean come on, Captain America, a soldier during WWII runs around in star-spangled stripes... in a forrest. Recognisability and design come first, realism later.
One of the superhero webcomics I read poked fun at the "long loose hair in a fight" trope during one story arc as well. One of the characters, Anvil, is a huge woman with long hair. She was fighting against an even bigger and stronger guy, who grabbed her by the hair and just started yanking her around by it, while mocking her with, "Long hair is really dumb in a fight, you know."
That annoys me the most with Black Widow's character because letting the adversary underestimate her abilities is a big part of her arsenal, so looking shorter than everyone else would actually help her.
High heels were originally made for butchers to stay out of the blood of their shop. I like to imagine lady fighters apply this same principle to satisfy me slightly
Pretty sure the oldest high heels were for horseback riding, with the idea that the stirrup would wedge into the show. To call the Egyptian butchers' shoes "high heels" also seems misleading, since at least the examples I see are more like platforms, with both the toe and heel elevated. This makes obvious sense, since a high heel would only keep the ankle and upper foot out of the blood, while the toe and lower foot would still be stepping in viscera.
@@El_Rey_247 Well, yes and no. The modern history of high-heels actually goes back to France, and the fad was originally male. At the time just prior to the fad, military cavalry officers wore boots (as all cavalry do till today) with substantial heels to make use of the stirrups properly as you say. What happened was, the aristocracy of the time may or may not have been military officers, but it was a social advantage to be seen as being one. The aristocrats who were not military started wearing boots with heels in hopes of being taken as a cavalry officer. All too soon _every_ male aristocrat was wearing high heels, and the boots quickly became shoes. With high heels. After about a half-decade or so, _women's_ fashion started copying the male fad for high-heeled shoes, and the height of both skyrocketed. It was kind of an insane time. You can actually see some paintings of Benjamin Franklin wearing some of these high-heel shoes. But as it happens, the fad among men to wear these high heels declined and within 10-20 years all the men were wearing flats again, or at least shoes with very low heels. However, the fashion for high heels remained with women's styles. While women's shoe fashion has changed off and on in the 200 years since this happened, high heels have remained a perennial favorite among high society.
There was also a lot of mud and dung on the ground at times and people really didn't want to track that in the house. Some cultures got around that by taking their shoes off before they go inside, but reports of people's shoes missing when they leave the Mosques kind of gives us why people would want to keep their shoes on.
@@bellaknightR597 same If there were a choice to get rid of all heels or flats I'd go with flats. I love wearing slipper heels indoors and outdoors and easily walk around with them around the house almost 24/7
Even 5'7" or 5'8" (Tom Cruise's supposed actual height) makesa dude a shrimp compared to the heroic proportions of the carefully-picked population of "Actors". So the ideal would have been another 5'8" Aussie (to have the right level of crazy) that wasn't Mel Gibson (who is too old and too crazy, and too crazy in the wrong ways).
I don't mind Logan not being 5'3" especially considering he's seldom even drawn as being 5'3" even in the comics (he typically looks like he's about 5'7" in the comics based on other characters' height), but I do think it'd be cool to have Logan be shorter than other characters.
@@mitsusah2612 When we get to huge characters like Thanos and Hulk, those few inches aren't going to make much difference. Plus, you want those characters to look huge anyway and they're CGI, so they can be manipulated however they want anyway.
@@fv2977 Oh, I didn't mean that they have to be the same height. Just that their faces would have to be in the same frame. Idk it just seemed like the only even mildly logical reason to make her taller.
@@mitsusah2612 I know what you meant. When the size difference is that big, a few inches aren't going to affect the framing much, and the filmmakers will want to add in a few shots that emphasise their height anyway.
I'm amused that the ladies that you named as having practical shoes (specifically Supergirl, Captain Marvel and Scarlet Witch) just happen to be the ones who can fly... and so might be able to get away with more impractical shoes.
They actually did that for a scene in Tropic Thunder. Is was the "never go full retard" scene. They dug a ditch for one of them to stand in so they (Ben Stiller and RDJ) look closer to the same height
My favorite example of getting a character to be taller is the White Witch from Narnia. There's a hilarious picture of behind the scenes of her actress putting on these giant goth-style boots under her elegant ice dress 😂
Another reason to hate “action heels” the stunt doubles sometimes have to wear them. And stunt doubles have gotten VERY hurt doing stunts in heels. It’s actually infuriating. Edit: yes they get paid to perform stunts but that doesn’t mean people should be getting badly injured because of stupid decisions behind set. In sports if players are getting injured because of bad protective equipment or unsafe rules the equipment and rules change to keep them safe.
@@jfoster8624 The job of the person who hires them is to make their job as safe as possible while still getting a good shot. Just because their job is dangerous doesn't excuse employers treating their bodies as expendable
For an ex military/spy character like Black Widow, high heels make absolutely no sense. If she goes to combat, she should wear tactical combat boots that would give her speed and agility.
And the costume department could chuck some thick insoles in there to make her 3 or even 4 inches taller without it looking too weird cause the boots are so big. Would have made more sense
No, but see, her advanced training means she can somehow ignore all the drawbacks that high heels give her. And she decides to wear high heels into combat instead of something more comfortable and practical because...it's less impractical than it sounds? I haven't heard this exact argument all together, but I've heard functionally the same logic for various female characters, usually with enough padding to make it less _obviously_ stupid.
Here's my problem with "We have to give the ladies wedges because the actress isn't the same height as the character". Hugh Jackman is 6'3", Wolverine is canonically 5'3".
And I'll bet a lot of actresses over 5'10" are overlooked because they're too tall, for a variety of reasons but probably including the male actors complaining the women are as tall or taller than them
@asdrubale bisanzio The guy that did 90% of Gimli's scenes was this tiny kiwi guy. Only the close ups were the actor. Source: met the guy years ago. He went with the rest of the cast to get fellowship tattoos after the movie
"just let female characters be short" hell let the men be short too, and let tall women make it into the film industry in the first place. Sexual dimorphism really isn't that huge in our species but watching hollywood you'd never know it. To be a leading man it's practically a requirement to be over 6ft regardless of if they're action starts or comedy/drama stars meanwhile gender norms don't encourage women to be big or strong (to put it lightly) even though it'd make sense for them to be in a superhero movie. But these movies only ever use existing big names, so when it comes time to cast for movies where all the characters are tall but the actors with big name recognition all come from the landscape of ridiculously inflated sexual dimorphism that is hollywood, well suddenly the women are all too short for their roles. If hollywood actually captured the diversity of the human form this wouldn't even be an issue
@@i.cs.z It's because at 3" less than the average man in the USA, he is only 1" taller than the average US woman. As the OP kind of dances around, Hollywood likes to put people at the apex of human attractiveness on screen. This means exaggerating our dimorphism with pretty, smooth skinned, average or above-chested women and tall, square-jawed, muscular men. Comedies excluded. Personally, I would very much like to see the Brianne of Tarth actress cast as Samus Aran before she ages out of the character because she is the right height for her and Metroid Other M offended me, in small part, for chopping 7" from her height.
You haven't looked at the heights of Hollywood men have you ? find me some one over six feet in the top 10 earning list ... ;) you will find that most are under
@@agnidas5816 well only 12% of men are 6 ft plus but most girls and arrogant guys think it’s “average height” or “bare minimum” so it would make sense if 9/10 were in the highest paid by it’s usually like 3/10 under 6 feet
@Rebecca Lauren Baxter I disagree, but I see your point. For one, they’re not even wood, it’s just extra strong papier-mâché out of fabric - which could actually be good, it means less force is absorbed by the shoe when kicking however that means less absorption for when she lands from the top of a building. Secondly, given their composition of fabric and paste, they would be more flexible than traditional shoes, tho probably not ballet flats
OMG I'm 160cm (5ft 3) and have wanted heelies for ages to keep up with my long legged friends. I would DIE HAPPY seeing a superheroine kick out a pair of heels than skate past the baddies going *bop bop bop* then tap the rollers back in before walking away like "that's how you do it boys"
She's already an Amazonian, any threats that she might struggle against are either similar height or fucking massive, so a height advantage doesn't matter.
Wonder Woman is already tall! She's an Amazon and the Amazons, by nature, are tall. What surprised me is that Gal Gadot is the same height as Lynda Carter when she was Wonder Woman in the 1970's: 5'9"
@@xCorvus7x The metal piece that looks like a belt, but is made of metal or has a big metal piece in the middle. Sure it looks nice when they stand straight, but imagine bending down and being stabbed by your metal belt right at the crotch. Wonder Woman's classic outfit has it, if you need an example.
@@mitsusah2612 Ah, okay. I can't quite fathom it but I guess that could be an issue, even if you do bend down at the hip/bend forward by flexing your hip.
@@xCorvus7x It does depend a bit on the character, but it's often one of the two: 1. So low on the hips that sitting down or lifting their legs high might be impossible. 2. Higher on the stomach, blocking the ability to bend their lower back as the edge would stab the flesh above or below the belt. Not to meantion that practically all movement changes the exact shape of the stomach area, but a metal belt would not allow any significant changes in form. Kinda like an uncomfortable, badly made corset. :/
As a chick who’s been in a wheelchair her entire life, this discussion of the physics of walking in heels is incredibly fascinating. Who knew you flex your foot when walking!
@@catleatherwood4770 😆 When my sister was a baby, I remember noticing when she curled her toes. My 3-year-old brain thought of them as “parrot feet,” since they reminded me of a parrot gripping a branch with its talons.
@@catleatherwood4770 Wow 😩💀 (Then again, when I was in my 1st ballet class as a kid, I saw older pointe dancers for the 1st time & thought they were magical & majestic. 😅😂)
Ever since this was pointed out to me I wasn't able to unsee it. Which is why, I was very pleased with Sylvie's shoes in the Loki series, she has COMBAT BOOTS.
Sylvie also tied her her up before battle, it was only half up but still was very practical compared to Wanda/Black widow in early movies and others. These little details I'm sure were added in because they had a woman director who cared about what they made. That's why the show was so good. The little details make a difference.
They should've used whatever tricks they pulled for Robert Downey Jr. on the female characters. When the female characters are secretly being made taller but the shoes look normal height from the outside, it's a movie trick. When they are wearing wedged heels or even actual HEELS (Catwoman...) it's no longer a movie trick. It becomes a character trait because it's visible. When you show that the characters are wearing heels, it becomes a choice that the character made. Meaning characters like Black Widow and Wonder woman, otherwise very smart women, somehow found it practical to choose wedge heeled boots/sandals over the more practical shoes. And that just seems out of character for them. Harley Quinn is an entirely different category because I'm sure she actually would wear stilettos into battle.
If we’re going to talk practicality of the costumes, you can throw out pretty much all of them anyway, so adding heels or not doesn’t seem to be a deal breaker to me :| (immersion wise that is, it’s not any stupider than Thor having a cape, no or little armor for his arms legs and hands, Wonder Woman having her head, shoulders, and upper arms, and legs exposed, Batman having a cape and a latex full body suit that looks uncomfortable as hell to wear >
@@nathanjora7627 WW skin is practically unbreakble, thor is royalty a cape is a status symbol, the batman shit is explained as being for intimidation although i agree its dumb afaik, the thor costume with no armor on his arms was what he was wearing at the start of ragnarok, where he was on a stupidly hot lava planet with the fire demon guy, had no chance to really change at any point, he wore armor on his arms for everything else, hands idk? thats probably just an aesthetic thing, i agree he barely ever has leg armour, i think ultron is the only film where he has leg armor.
If I remember correctly Gal Gadot wore trainers for some of the scenes in the original WW which were then digitally edited into heels. Her being really tall makes sense as an Amazon, but if LOTR managed to pull off dwarves and elves and hobbits 20 years ago you'd think this wouldn't be an issue now. But also: let characters be short!!
"Her being really tall makes sense as an Amazon, but if LOTR managed to pull off dwarves and elves and hobbits 20 years ago you'd think this wouldn't be an issue now." This is a really great point. If you're going to make a film about an Amazon, and you decide that means she needs to be tall, commit to it.
@@JosephDavies The difficulty ramps up trying to get close action scenes making someone look taller. In the LOTR, when they couldn't use perspective tricks to show the height difference or some digital editing, they swapped out the Hobbits for kids (such as seen in this photo i.redd.it/5odws603jsq41.jpg). You have more options for making someone look shorter. To make them look taller, you have to either luck out and find a taller body double, or go full CGI.
The fact she couldn't wear them for action scenes is just proof of how dumb it is. Alternatively they could also hire women who are actually tall like Gwendoline Christie (or others who probably don't even get auditions because they're considered "too tall")
It can be done, but you have to factor in how much it costs to do this frame-by-frame at native 6-8K at about $1,000/day per technician at least. LOTR did a lot of old-school trick photography as much as they did digital augmentation. There was more face replacement than there was shrinking. Remember: it was 2000 when they were doing those fer Chrissake.
It would actually work, it's a slightly practical way to store his feet repulsors if he wanted to make them more powerful although he can't make the technology more powerful while remaining the same size
I remember someone saying that the stuntmen were in awe of the stuntwomen who had to do the same stuff but typically with less opportunity to be padded up and often wearing a dress and in silly heels! They managed to make Stallone look tall in Judge Dredd and he's reported to be somewhere between 5' 8" and 5' 10", not short by any means but short compared to most Hollywood A list actors. Allegedly they did this by cutting trenches for the other actors to walk in! It would have been much easier just to put Stallone in heals but I suspect no one wanted to suggest it to him!
Oh right, I saw those videos of stuntpeople (is that a word? Well, who cares XD) reacting to some scenes and oh boi, poor stuntwomen, they really have to work on the higher difficulty all the time :'(
It's been a trope as long as Hollywood's existed, like that old line, 𝐆𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐑𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐝𝐢𝐝 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐅𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐀𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐝𝐢𝐝, 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐝 𝐡𝐢𝐦 𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐩 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐩, _𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐡 𝐡𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐬._
@@xheralt And don't forget, Ginger Rogers also did all that backwards and in high heels, while wearing a skirt with something like 10+lbs of weights sewn into the hem to make that nice, fancy swish happen. Weights banging against her legs at every step, twirl, kick, and sway. I can only imagine the bruises, along with the risk to knees and ankles going on.
@@Mokiefraggle Mentioning the costuming is just gilding the lily, and draws out the point unnecessarily. Ginger is far from the first to suffer for fashion's sake...
They aren’t putting the women in 4-inch wedges to make them taller. They’re putting them in wedges to give them the “I’m in high heels” sexy butt and calves without making them look like they’re running around in impractical heels.
Came in looking for this comment thanks, that's exactly it. We complained about the stupid stilettos, the actresses kept getting injured or having to go barefoot anyway so they said "Ok we'll just put them in different heels! But not too many combat boots lol those are for goths, feminists, and lesbians" and went from there
I’ll be honest, I never noticed Black Widow wearing heels so when you said it, I was like “HUH?????” Heels would make all her movement so impractical, makes sense why they try to hide it now lol
I didn't notice it either so they don't want BW being dwarfed by the other male heroes look at her standing with her females costars out of makeup. Some of them are much taller than her so why not use her real height in the movie?
Honestly short women will kick your booty more than tall women 😂😂 In Uncharted Chloe Frazer is the tallest woman at 5"7 she's smooth flirty cocky, she's meant to be like exotic super model type but actually a badass so it works. And the shortest female character Nadine Ross at 5"5 who is very tough, beats the main character's arse multiple times, takes on two 6"3 buff men in a fight and dominates for most of it (until one got a gun). I love them. Theyre also an adorable couple.
I'm 5foot5 and if I kick a 6foot10 guy in the crotch, he'll go down like he's been shot. So being "short" has nothing to do with someone's ability to incapacitate another.
It's pretty impractical, but remember: it took Warner Brothers 6 Batman movies before someone finally thought "Hey what if we make his mask a separate piece from his armor, so he can actually turn his head like an actual human being would need to do?"
@@z-beeblebrox To be fair, in the 1989 version, Burton made that specific choice to keep the cowl a rigid part of the body armor to create a distinct movement when comparing Batman to the rest of the cast. I'm not saying as judgement one way or the other but that it was intentional for Batman being unable to move the head as an artistic decision. Batman Begins has not such excuse.
@@dawnmcauley6411, the cowl being separate from his Batman armor wasn’t introduced until the events of the Batman Telltales games, and up until those games were released all of the Batman comics, video games, live action films/tv series, and cartoons/animations all had the Batman armor/costume and cowl being completely combined in one armor/costume set whereas it wasn’t until after the Batman Telltales games is whenever the Batman cowl and the armor/custom were separated from each other.
@@RoronoaZoro-ur6hr Batman Telltale come out in 2016, The Dark Knight come out in 2008 and specifically made it a minor plot point that the Cowl be detached from the body armor so Bruce could move his head.
This hurts my head. I'm 5'1 and have been teased all my life about being short. I did the stupid thing of looking at women on tv and believe that that is what womanly looks like, long and tall. I'm three decades old and feel like I look like a preteen. It blows my mind to hear people like Scarlett Johansson and Reese Witherspoon are short, not much taller than myself. I would have never guessed from their movies yet it was them I was holding up as an example of adult female. I feel heaps better hearing Scarlett Johansson is only three inches taller than me. Thanks for this.
Likewise, the fact that most of the men in the MCU are well above average height yet are normalized as well... normal in height. Average height for men is around 5'9" 5'10". Which then makes below average height dudes seem even more unusually short.
As a 6'2" female past 40 years of age, all I can say is be *glad* you're not tall. Clothing is a joke, but at least I prefer men's clothing and shoes so I'm generally okay there (but even their pants can be short on me). Back problems suck, and since we're girls, we have extra weight on our chests throwing everything off. I used to play the shortest races in online games purely to experience life at a height where I had to jump onto countertops to interact with vendors. Yeah, that's a bit extreme, but I loved it.
For the first minute, I was just thinking "you better not hate the head band thing." And then I thought about how little the head band thing appears in live action superhero movies and then I thought about how much I need Scarlet Witch to get her head band thing, and then I reevaluated why I'm so defensive about the head band thing when I'm not even sure what it is
On the old Wonder Woman show from the '70s, Wonder Woman's boots would change from scene to scene. If Wonder Woman was standing and talking, Lynda Carter was wearing high heels. But as soon as the action started: running, jumping, fighting, etc., whether it was Ms. Carter or her stuntwoman (Julie Eppers?), her boots were flats. I didn't notice this in the first run (I'm old, I was 8-10 at the time), but I did notice the changing heels in the reruns in the 80s.
This was less blatant cheese, more of "who's going to be looking at her boots", and blink and you'll miss it. This was the 1970s. You might see an episode two or maybe three times if you watched the reruns in the summer, as well as first run. After that, they were just gone. Yeah, a show might get picked up for syndicated reruns, as 'Wonder Woman' did, but people genuinely weren't concerned about slightly obsessed fans who would watch the syndicated reruns enough times that they start to notice things like that. And packaged shows for home viewing... forget it.
One of the most blatant examples of "adaptive wardrobe" is Barb Wire. Good old Pammy is dressed up as a kind of kinky dominatrix with leather and high heels, but in the action stuff it's flat shoes and her costume looks completely different.
@asdrubale bisanzio IIRC, the Dukes of Hazzard had to reuse their car stunt scenes because they literally wrecked cars doing them, including the classic jump that basically demolished the suspension and undercarriage of the car. They were literally patching them together on-site to keep production running, from what I've heard, and the studio even would put out notice that they'd buy a '69 Charger from anyone willing to sell for it to be in the show. It's part of why the 1969 Dodge Charger is such a hard classic car to find at any price; many were damaged beyond repair, to the point that they even had to start taking '68 Chargers and modding them up to resemble a '69.
Sad to say, I'm fairly certain a lot of the reason for high heels (versus any other solution) is to make their butts stick out. All of the non heel characters were either going out of their way not to sexualize them (Captain Marvel, Shuri, and Okoye) or their butts are covered (Supergirl, Scarlet Witch) :(
Right, it seems painfully naive for the first and only thought to be that it's to make the actresses taller. Obviously there are ways to make a character appear taller without making it obvious on-screen and a literal part of their costume. It's clearly to keep female figures in impractical heels without drawing quite the levels of disdain that were lowered at, for example, the lady in Jurassic World running from a T. Rex in stilettos.
@@molegoddess Jurassic world isn’t a good example. Her characters day was interrupted by that fiasco and she was wearing her work clothes and work shoes, so I can understand that she wouldn’t have had a change of shoes, because her heels were for her professional work wear. I can give that one a pass, because ultimately it made me feel like the disasters in that movie were all the more a big inconvience and everyone was actually struggling a lot. Imagine running in those! I thought.
It's kinda silly anyway- if lord of the rings can make people look believably 3 foot+ different in height with clever camera tricks it seems doubly stupid. Fun fact, the actor who played gimli is actually several inches taller than the actor who played legolas- he's 6'1", and they managed to do a load of action type stuff with him Also return of the king had like half the budget of ww1984, so it's not even that they can't afford it
Yes, exactly, what happened with the editing. Hobbits appear short too but the actors aren't in real life, like why couldn't more advanced technology do this. 🤔
@@terra_the_nightingale135 depends on where your from, different places have different average heights. But despite your height, I'm sure you're still a wonderful person. Height is just height, and don't let it let you down.
@@Ailieorz what’s wrong with breast plates that actually fit women? Would you rather women force themselves into a male shape for no reason other than that’s what men wear? It doesn’t make sense to just deny a woman’s anatomy for the sake of replicating how *men* wear armor.
@@clownfromclowntown I may not be the person you originally put the question to, but I'm a partial convert from the 'boob armor is dumb' camp. In all but the most extreme cases of anatomy, the 'standard' for armor wouldn't change the shape of the breastplate unless it is unsafely molding to the shape below, not leaving enough room for padding and underlayers. Those people with a lower amount of fat, like most warriors, have as a standard smaller breasts than those with more fat. That being said, I agree with arguments that having 'boob plate' isn't a detriment for melee combat, as long as they don't go comically large. That there's not enough force that is going to be applied that would make it through both armor and underpadding that wouldn't just smash through it without the cups. Leaving it down to the culture around the design of the breastplate as to if they wanted to accent the femininity of the warrior wearing it (which makes sense for Wonder Woman and the Amazons). The time I see an issue is regarding firearms, where we run into the problem of 'bullet traps', which the cups on 'boob armor' would cause an issue. The tl;dr of bullet traps is that they focus projectiles to a specific location, and the cups on a piece of boob armor focus them right on the sternum.
@@clownfromclowntown there's never been a reason to have your boobs housed in their own nooks during combat. historically, armor like this was accompanied by multiple layers of fabric and padding (including chainmail) underneath which hid the shape of the wearer's figure anyway-- it certainly would have hid most women's breasts. there is also the fact that breast armor was meant to deflect blade strikes, letting the blade slide off the metal. having breasts built into the armor just provides an area in which blades can catch. lastly, it was made entirely of metal which means that, with the boob armor, there is a strip of flatter metal resting directly on the sternum between each breast indent. this provides even further risk of injury and death from falling face down, melee blows, heavy projectiles, etc. because any force applied to that area could potentially shatter the sternum, which is meant to protect the lungs and heart. now, the mcu and other dceu shows that do this often aren't using metal breast plates and it's purely aesthetic choice to design their armor this way which is fine. but for wonder woman in particular-- a literal warrior-- it's really fucking stupid. aside from all the skin she's showing, the metal breast plate she's using is extremely impractical and does way less to protect her than it does to harm her. this style of metal armor also bothers me in viking-era/style movies (like lady sif in the thor movies) because the vikings did have female warriors that wore appropriate breast plates that actually protected them. tl;dr wearing metal boob armor in battle can actually kill you in a situation you would have lived had you wore regular armor
@@clownfromclowntown also, as i mentioned before, because of all the padding underneath, breast plate armor did fit women. modern desgins of this armor that still use metal (usually military equipment) is tailored to the shape of the individual. women still do not have breast indents with this type of armor because, as i explained, it's dangerous. but it does fit their form.
And for that matter, male characters even more so. They all have to be only inches away from 7 feet tall apparently even when the actor is only 5’9. I mean that’s not even short but it’s treated like it is.
Jeez, yeah, normalize shortness already! Most shorter men and women are just excluded from acting and modelling, or at least from achieving much in those areas, because of current norms and ideals
Oh, man, as someone who has cosplayed Natasha for over a decade, this is So Relevant To My Interests. The funny thing is she really does wear both wedges and flats in IM2, and there was a substantial volume of discussion on the RPF thread back than about whether the high-res images we had obtained of the flats were just stunt boots or would be seen in the finished film. In the end, they **were** seen, and even though it was almost certainly not supposed to be noticed (much like Laurie's Amazing Vanishing Stilettos in Watchmen), I ran with that choice and never looked back. When I eventually had to replace the replica boots I made that summer, I went with a thrifted pair in a similar style with a walking-shoe type sole that appears to have a slight wedge but really... doesn't so much. I fully intend to stick with those if/when the rest of my IM2 costume gives out and I finally make something more up-to-date, because of essentially the opposite issue the filmmakers have, i.e. my 5'9" self would look patently ridiculous wearing the big ol' wedges in group photos with cosplayers approximating the guys' heights. The thing that always makes me scratch my head about the whole thing: I used to have two pair of Steve Madden clogs - one brown and one black - with platform wedge soles that (a) had a difference of less than 2" between ball and foot even though they totaled 4", and (b) were made of some kind of springy EVA foam that made them immensely comfortable for walking, running, or even a fair portion of dancing or fight work. And they were made in 1995, so surely things should have improved by now! (I wore those things to DEATH. Glued them back together multiple times before the actual leather started wearing through after a decade-plus.) I actually give Gamora's boots a partial pass for exactly that reason, given that they do have a bit of platform in front and we can certainly presume the materials out there in the wilds of the galaxy are advanced enough to give her the, well, give that movement requires. The same goes for some of Natasha's later ones (without the advanced materials part, though of course we're talking Stark tech, and as established, hey, mass-market Steve Madden in 1995 was pretty darn good). So I can handwave some of them to a certain extent. But as you say, we shouldn't have to. Cover the platform (which, again, was all OVER fashion just a couple years ago!) and you're set. Ahem. I guess I Had Some Thoughts. :-D
Do you find being a bit taller is an advantage when it comes to cosplay, since your head is nearer the correct level? 😁 I like Mara Jade and Rey cosplay best because canonically they are both within an inch or so of my actual height (Mara’s 5’4, I’m 5’5 and a bit, Rey is 5’6) and they don’t wear giant shoes. Also, lightsabers. I once had a pair of cork wedges the same height as Gal Gadot’s in WW. Being taller was nice but I sounded like a My Little Pony everywhere I went 🤣 PS: I would say 'you're going to really enjoy an upcoming episode' but being a Patron, you have already seen it!
@@JillBearup The MLP thing suggests that maybe the sound guys have some say in what the shoes in movies are like, too. If only in the materials science side. Hrm. Thinks, thinks, thinks.
@@llearch Why would they though? Maybe back in the day, sure, but today that is entirely a non issue. In shots where feet are actually seen, good chances the audio is not recorded "live", but entirely done in post (even dialogue with studio quality dubs). In shots where the feet aren't seen, actors can wear whatever that won't be seen.
@@JillBearup You ladies are both lucky to be so tall! If who you can cosplay is determined by your height, then I'm stuck with hobbits and Tyrion Lannister! XD
@@JillBearup It depends on the character - I often gravitate to the taller ladies for exactly that reason! Funnily enough, I love Rey because Daisy is only 2" shorter than I (at least according to most sources I've found), while I've never seriously considered doing Leia because just the thought of it makes me feel like a great galumphing galoot. (That's alleviated somewhat in my one Padme because the costume itself is so massive, but I still feel a bit oversized in it sometimes.) Mara's height is pretty fungible depending on who's doing the illustrating. (She tends to be smaller in video games, but comics often showed her as taller than Luke, and I live for some of those images of the two of them!) Noise is another reason I miss those Steve Madden clogs so much! They were quieter than most sneakers. I don't understand why more manufacturers haven't picked up on that marvelous springy/firm foam for platforms/wedges.
The stunt doubles for the males have to wear entire suits and helmets while doing stunts. The stunt double for Black Panther has literally experienced seizures and heat strokes due to having to wear an entire costume. If the men have to go through that trauma during shoots then high boots for women shouldn't be an exception
@@dovwallack4688 all costumes ARE designed for safety. they're modded for maneuverability, padding, and overall safety, but some hurdles are just more complicated to jump through to keep the illusion that the actor of the given hero is the one performing on screen. Stunt performers have high intensive training with professional experience in what they're doing and are aware of the risks given when performing with bulkier suits, extra gear, and surprise surprise, high heels. I'm not saying it's an overall ideal way of doing said stunts while maintaining safety, but the woman in this video is speaking on behalf of an irrelevant factor--that being stunt doubles--with no actual sense or experience of how stunt performering is handled.
Bayonetta wears a suit made from her own hair and fires guns with her feet. You can ask so many more questions about her wardrobe before “How does she run” and the answer to all of it is “magic and style”
It would also be cool if they would just hire some taller women actors. It seems like tall women are often passed over because they are "too manly." It really annoys me.
Imagine having tall woman with big muscles cast as their tall strong big muscle comic book characters that they're supposed to be. Idk why everything needs to be about being stereotypically pretty. All those women in the comics are already gorgeous and they arent super skinny and flawless.
@@Fitchant I'm sorry. I didn't mean to come off as condescending. I just think that it's pretty cool that an industry as shallow as Hollywood has incredibly successful short men. Shorter men in general need more love and recognition. :)
Robert Downey Jr is sort of wearing heals in that photo with Gwyneth Paltrow. The shoes are designed to look like sneakers, but internally, the heal is raised quite high, so you look taller. Like wedges, they don't allow for flexion, but they're as wide as a regular sneaker, so at least they provide a stable surface when you walk. I agree that these would be a far less distracting choice for a heroine's costume, if height must be accounted for.
One of the many many many reasons I fell in love with John Wick was seeing them put Super Alluring Femme Fatale Ms Perkins in flat heeled boots when she knew she was going to be fighting. She also had one of the most feral, brutal fighting styles in the whole movie. Man I love John Wick.
3 года назад+16
Well, Adrianne Palicki is 5'11" so it's not a problem of height. Keanu Reeves is 6'1" so not that different.
Damn. Thank you! I've always disliked heels-for-heroines, but you're actually the first person I've heard give a compelling reason FOR them. I know that's kind of the opposite of ur main point (which I'm still all for) but daym, that actually makes me feel better about this XD The world suddenly became a teeny-tiny bit less sexist bcoz practical reasons I can stand behind XD
No it's still sexist. It's really more about the look, esp since they're **trying** to make the men look huge so having a normal sized woman standing next to them would actually help. Like how in the live action Hercules, they hired a short guy to play his sidekick, to make Kevin Sorbo look big and tall when he's actually kinda average Having her be tiny but powerful would make much more sense than a human without superpowers needing to stand head height with a literal god, and a supersoldier
@@darlalathan6143 and the point you two missed is that Wolverine is way way shorter than the average man. Even in the Phillipines men are taller on average.
I wasn't expecting a boot and high heels class today, thanks. Anne Hathaway's catwoman is a curious case for me because, not only she walked, ran, jumped and fought while using heels, but she was also able to sneak away from a roof where Batman was without him noticing it. In a FEW seconds! Imagine her running away, trying to be silent while going down the fire escape stairs of that building, regretting every choice in her life that brought her for that moment. Every time she wasn't in the movie, I imagined her in a rented and hided apartment taking care of her sore and probably hurted feet (Anne Hathaway too, but she was probably in her trailer. Probably.)
Catwoman is the only one on the list who I would expect to learn how to do it all in stilettos (like that one girl somewhere in the depths of 2008 RUclips who learnt how to do parkour in stilletos just to prove her brother wrong). But that’s a rare talent & every other heroine strikes me as... flats or chunky boot gals? Like, she should be the severe outlier to everyone else, not merely “odd one out”
I've been working on that batman vanish for a while and it is more of an illusion. You have to get to cover in that split second, then move farther when you have an opening. The only clear example I've seen in media is right after batman meets up with Gordon at the start of Arkham Knight. He only had to jump over a ledge onto a gargoyle to "vanish" even though he was still close.
Yes! Exactly it was just another way to make her look more cat like without putting her in an actual cat costume (just like how her goggles when raised up resemble cat ears)
@@Trendygal8 those cat ears were inspired! While I wasn't fond of her platform and stilletto heeled thigh-high boots, (must make it difficult to sneak around in) at least they were part of her fighting style.
it’s funny that Wanda is one of the most practical considering she’s the one who probably needs them the least. Sure she’s quick and in age of ultron when she was at her weakest power level she would run around a lot but ever since then if she’s needed to get anywhere quickly she would just fly. And she doesn’t do any hand to hand combat either it’s all with her magic. So while she’s making a sensible choice just wearing combat boots for yknow combat she’s the one that needs then the least.
As a 5' 5" male actor, I do generally agree with your "let characters be short" argument. However, I do think it's interesting how you address the complications that large height disparities between actors cause in shot composition and lighting.
Sadly, I like watching people with a with a height disparity to their enemies take them down. Watching a average height woman take down a big guy seems like it would be empowering to average women. Making women feel that to have to be eye to eye in height to men to be considered equal, or even better, seems to remove the content of their character from the equation. The need for every superhero to be above average height deprives average and shorter men and women of role models, or heroes they can see themselves reflected within. That being said, when creators make a shorter than average character they don't need to exaggerate and point it out at every opportunity. It just makes the character look freakish, which is still disheartening to the fan who sees themselves in that role. Full Disclosure: I am 5'8" as man it is just short enough not to be tall, Just tall enough not to be short, but still considered below average.
The height disparity thing is something I’ll be touching on a bit next month in what I have cheerfully titled FLIRTY FIGHT FEBRUARY, because getting your romantic leads into a fight requires an understanding of power dynamics and size disparity, and how the audience feels about that.
@@NicoEm agreed. Hell, there's even a bit of that in the IM2 fights for Black Widow, when she suits up, towards the end. She's bumped up in height, but the movie does play her as kinda the underestimated badass, with Tony largely treating her like an object and not wising up to that she's totally playing him and essentially watching his back without his knowing it, or considering it. There's even a hint of it in her boxing match with his driver (former, I think, upgraded to security in the second IM film, right?), earlier in the film where he's clearly underestimated her and tells her he's gonna go easy, and then she flattens him in two moves. Why not just lean into that a bit, and allow her to be her actual height, which is lower than the tall tall mc-tall super heroes, and make it an understated addition to not misjudging people like her.
@@JillBearup Check out "Slug Street Scrappers" a parody/homage to side scrolling beat-em-ups. Really, it's mainly an excuse for stunt-men and -women to do some pretty slick fight choreography. Noted for not making any effort in hiding it's male lead (Micah Brock - "Bruiser Bom-Bash") is quite a bit shorter than most of the men and women he fights. With Katelyn Brooke "Peaches Powers" and Jessie Graf "Punchy McBritches". It's as silly as it sounds.
It would... if they do it in a way that is somewhat realistic. If they have some diminutive twig walk up and just punch him out it's just dumb in much the same way I'm sure it would be for guys
I've noticed this myself, and while in most cases it looks pretty dumb (I'm not a fan of heels just in general), I honestly don't mind it with Gamora. With the funky, heavily-stylized aesthetic of the Guardians of the Galaxy films and other MCU stuff set in space, it kinda works for Gamora to be rocking the big, chonky-looking boots. Plus, she's supposed to be this heavily-enhanced warrior, so appearing short would work against that part of her character (Zoe Saldana is above-average height for a woman at 5'7", but that would still look short relative to her 6'+ co-stars). That said, I think platform boots would have been a better way to lean into this aesthetic while also providing the height boost. Black Widow should just have been left at ScarJo's natural height; she's not meant to be a beefy bruiser anyway. Gadot as wonder Woman probably just should have been scaled-up (digitally or with other tricks) as a whole if they wanted to be true to the character.
Black Widow's character until the last few movies was often subversion of expectations. Personal Assistant/secretary is a fighter. Bound and 'helpless' damsel is actually in control of the situation. If they'd let her be 5' 4", they could have taken this so much further without even trying!
@@hansakkerman2611 Weirdly, she had both in IM2. At first we thought the flats we saw in pre-release high-res stills were for stunts and we wouldn't see them, but we clearly did. No logical sense in-universe, but it least it gave us cosplayers options! :-D
@@hansakkerman2611 I love that the ones you registered were the flats, because it means you noticed them when it mattered (during the fight sequences) and not otherwise. Definitely underscores both Jill's point and your original very valid one!
@@TheValerieMeachum thanks! (Ah, civil discourse, how I've missed you) It's also particularly noticeable during the first "Wonder Woman" film, during the attack on the German HQ.
The shots of Robert Downey Jr. in non-diegetic high heels puts the practical concerns in a new light. But they also make it funnier to imagine what shooting those scenes was like.
Someone finally said something about it!! Thank you! I tried to cosplay a more casual Diana and I got flack for it because I wasn't wearing heels. I, of course, told the people if they want to stand in heels that high (I'm 5'2, it would need to be between 4 and 6 for me at least) they are more than welcome to try it and see how long they last. Long story short, a guy friend of mine decided to cosplay the same outfit I was wearing but he did his in heels (he had to prove a point) and he practiced walking and standing around and everything, and he didn't last half an hour.
Personally, I think it's less about how tall they are, and more about heels giving the leg a more feminine shape. It's a cultural thing. If it was just about height they could have spread the height difference across the entire foot, instead of putting it all in the heel. Eg, 2 inches in the front and 4 in the back, for example. Making only a 2 inch difference between the toe and the heel.
I'm a girl and I think that heels, for all their impracticality, look really cool and not only on women (seriously google Starscream from the Transformers Prime series). Bayonetta and her pistol heels are one of the best stunningly goofy and absurdly gorgeous designs out there.
This! Whenever I watch Jill's videos, I ask myself why she doesn't realize that the reason most female characters wear heels is that they "look better." They're still impractical, but it's just sort of expected that women in movies wear heels.
I always thought it was strange that a lot of female characters had heels on cause they looked so uncomfortable, also jeez you criticise one thing and people just start blasting you for it. Yeah fantasy is supposed to be imaginative and crazy and stuff but like that doesn’t mean that it should completely ignore real world physics, especially if it’s supposed to be a more realistic and cinematic story.
Well, physics are always ignored in superhero movies. For example, Superman holding a building a building directly in the middle. Applying that much pressure to only the center of an object would break it clean in half, but...
I think when you see an action movie where the 120lbs, 15-20% body fat person beat a 200lbs, 20%-25% body fat person in a fight, you should probably not worry about very accurate fashion choices in the near future. 😂
I agree. I get using the suspension of disbelief to make things look cooler (especially in fantasy/sci fi genres)... but the same rules are usually not applied to men as well. That double standard is very telling on whose eyes the impractical women/girl costumes are for. (Hint, it's straight guys.) If we want empowered women/girl characters, then they should be designed for actual women/girls. OR just give men/boy characters illogical but sexy outfits too. Equality for eye candy.
Explosive barrel effect. Literally first rule of games and entertainment is that it may ignore some stuff it it makes it more entertaining. so if it's that thing it's ok to comment if it's reality accurate, but boring about it is pain in ass. Just like one guy in my country was boring about stuff in games like explosive barrels. Which are for games' mechanics, plus actually many of them are propan-butan not gas and propan-butan explodes when shot.
I have one from way before I ever did fight analysis (back when Wonder Woman first came out) ruclips.net/video/5FDZI7W2gL0/видео.html ...but I have plans for another crack at it in the future. I’d really like to do some experiments with armour and fencing chest protectors though, so it’s going to be a while in the planning.
Boob-plate isn't a good idea if you're being attacked by swords (deflecting the sword towards your heart!) but it might be OK if you've being shot at by arrows or bullets or magical blobs of slow-moving bright light.
There is an interesting video by 'That Works' about Aesthetic influences on Armour design (ruclips.net/video/1l1jpFjXv4I/видео.html). Now Ilya is a guy (despite the glorious hair), but I find his conclusion on hypothetical female Armour, at around 30 min, very interesting and nuanced. He argues that (male) European style Armour follows a tradition to accentuate aesthetic (erotic) features of the wearers body. Examples are the greek bell cuirass, lorica musculata, codpiece etc., and extrapolating female Armour probably would have accentuated the breasts in some way. The whole video might be worth a watch, even if it is quite long.
I'd argue that it may also be to make their legs and butts look a certain way. You tend to hold yourself very differently if you're wearing high heels which comes across as more 'elegant' and 'feminine'. Plus it lengthens the look of the legs, slims the thighs and clenches the butt a bit more. Which is great if you wanna look super sexy in a tight fitting outfit, but yea, its totally ridiculous if you're fighting. Given that a lot of the characters that these shoes are given to are supposed to be more 'badass' or sexy , it can also project a kind of attitude. However, espicially for height related issues, I think that they could take a leaf out of the goths look book and just wear some big chonking New Rock boots or something similar. They look badass af and even the more flat soled ones have a bit of platform on which easily add a couple of inches. (I say this from a lifetime of wearing them myself). Theres plenty of examples of these styles of boots that allow for a natural position of the foot with the ankle slightly raised but the boot itself is big and the height of the platform is disguised by the shape of the boot. They look far more like something you'd fight in and plenty of them have metal plates affixed which pack a nasty punch if you kick someone in them. The thing is theyre a lot less elegant, and despite these characters being all about fighting, they still insist on a very petite and elegant silhouette for the sake of sexiness. I really enjoyed Gal Gadot in wonder woman but I was a little disappointed that they didnt cast someone a bit more chunky and muscular in body shape. I love the way comic artist Stjepan Šejić draws her as a tall brawny woman who looks like she could lift a truck with one hand. And honestly I rolled my eyes when i say another willowy petite actor who, although could be strong even with that body type, just didnt really scream powerful Amazonian to me. Dont get me wrong, im a very small and petite person myself, im not saying this for my own representation, I just want to see a female super hero who actually looks like she can bench press a house. I feel that theres this idea of what can be attractive and what isnt in hollywood, and unless youre petite and dainty, you dont fit that and you wont be cast in these kinds of films.
SAAAAAAAME! I was so bitterly disappointed in Wonder Woman, all the other Amazons looked incredible and here was picture 'perfect' Diana looking like she was ready to take to the catwalk. Putting women like Ann Wolfe and Brooke Ence in as background extras when they are just complete badass women and deserve to be stars was just so, so disappointing. And I say this as someone who is thick and desperately wants that representation
Funny thing, I just started playing Raid Shadow Legends (this is not an ad, the game has the worst monetization I have ever seen) partly because I saw some character designs I really liked, like Athel, my starting hero. Anyways, as I progress through the game, I realize that EVERY female character, ranging from heavily armored paladins and raging barbarian berserkers to sneaky assassin archers and seductive sorceresses or whatever - ALL of them have these ridiculously high heels. I'm a straight cis dude, so yeah, fair dues, I don't hate the pandering of attractive female models (again, Athel looks great), but f****ing Christ on a dirtbike, why is the female Conan-equivalent lady running around on stilletos? It just looks dumb. Why is the hovering demon lady wearing high heels? SHE DOESN'T EVEN WALK. Anyway, not 100% directly on the huge wedge heels, but you made me think of this. (There are other dumb problems with a lot of the female models in the game, but that's for another time.)
Why would you play a mobile game that has put all it's money in ads. And is constantly trying to get you to pay.. Beside that i honestly think it's kind of sexist that women always wear high heels. And the whole thing doesn't make sense. But the majority watching/playing is male so it obviously tries to get them to watch/play..
Actually I have limits too. I hate japanese game style, when even men often looks like wearing pauldrons and pants with hole in place of boxers, but some people overbore about details. Plus i saw guy running on ice casually in real world, without special equipment so I'm open to believe in anything.
Robert Downey Junior is also flying inside a robot suit for his action sequences and therefore doesn't need "big shoes" to look tall, same as the female characters that fly not using big shoes in their designs either. The ones that will be in action shots with the male characters need to be a similar height to help composition. Unless you expect them to just never show a foot in any superhero action sequence.
Most (successful) male actors tend to be shorter, since it's easier to get them in frame. I think superhero movies just tend to hire large men because it really sells the "larger-than-life" aspect of a superhero.
See, when they were doing the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series, they just put the lifts INSIDE the boots to create the needed heights (in this case, to make Jeremy Brett taller than his two Watsons, so an opposite example.) There's a memorable behind the scenes moments where the actors are running and the lifts kept sliding in Brett's shoes during their first scene filming together, so what's his name just said "This is absurd! Take the lifts out and I'll bend my knees more!" Or something of that. There have got to be more subtle solutions than full heels - a combination of posing, much shorter heels, and lifts
I've never had to wear heels, or wedges but I have worn GETA sandals, and the trick there is you have to change your body movement from the more common "heel-toe" style westerners use to lowering your center of gravity and walking forward with your hips leading as your foot slides forward. Though going into combat with heels still looks like a recipe for a sprained ankle if you ask me.
Depending on where in the world you are, you aren't short I'm in the US you're short, but still taller than me, I'm literally 5 feet (I like being short though kekeke)
We're definitely not short. That's actually (very) slightly above average height for females, both worldwide and in the USA. Here's a list of average heights by country: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_human_height_by_country
About wedges actually being harder to walk or run in, in high school I had to go to a fancy banquet and I bought myself a wedged heel thinking "Oh yeah. This should be more structurally stable than a stiletto." Of course when I ran across the parking lot, I tripped and twisted an ankle. You can't flex your foot in wedges...
@@bellaknightR597 Nuh me too. I never wear a shoe in which I cannot run properly (and a have platform shoes of 12cm). It’s just a matter of being used to it, I guess?
I wore a pair of 7inch platform wedge heeled kneehigh lace up boots for pride last year for 12+ hours straight (from leaving the house at 10am til returning near midnight) and I marched through the streets, danced across the cobblestones, ran through the grass areas of the event (filled with rabbit potholes) and even shortcut through the beach (island pride event). They're more comfortable than my converse tbh, I would have only lasted 4 hours in them. All my favourite clubbing shoes are heeled wedges, preferably with laces so I can really secure them to my foot, and I like a ankle boot height for security, but I have some without, and I can get 8 hours of dancing, running, jumping etc all on cobblestones while drunk without a single problem, even when carrying someone 😅 I do have pretty high arches though, so maybe that helps? 🤔
Yeeeeeeeees. I may have cried a bit when I saw the sandals being worn by WW and the fact she was going on horseback. Wedges and horses are a really good way to break your feet. All of her other fellow sisters have these perfect sandals with a nice 1/2” heel - perfect for horses (many of them actual equestrians) - and I’m wondering why no one stopped them from putting wedges on Gal Gadot.
I learned how to walk, run and dance in heels from drag queens. They're better at it than anyone else. (The fact that I've been doing ballet for over 30 years doesn't hurt either! ;D)
@@neuralmute I still idk how people don't break an ankle in heels lol and I heard that ballet shoes are def harder to master than heels geez. XD What's their secret? I heard that it's just practice
@@greta7957 The first secret is practice, practice, and more practice, and the second secret is the muscle in your calves, ankles, and arches that you'll build up from all that practice. The third secret is key though. Always carry your body weight over the balls of your feet rather than your heels. It takes some getting used to, but it changes your centre of gravity and improves your balance and agility by orders of magnitude. If you're careful, you can run and jump without your heels even touching the ground. As for pointe shoes for ballet, the toe box is pretty much paper mache, but made of layer after layer of fabric and glue until they're hard as rock, with actual wood in the shanks of some models. (there's a tendency to slam a new pair against the floor a good few times, as well as taking a carpenter's rasp to the soles, before even putting them on to walk around in.) They have to be solid when you're counting on the shoe to help you support your entire body weight on just a few toes. Just being able to hold yourself up en pointe requires quite a bit of strength and stamina, and attempting it without training is a good way to break ankles. metatarsals, and toes all over... XP
If Hollywood insists in putting heels, regardless of practicality in filming, shooting, and all-round mugging, they can at least have them gadgetized or something- rocket/hover-heels, or ground-pounders (earthbending maybe), blades/batons for the kicks, springs for the sprints, give me time I'll probably keep going...
One of the things that Jill is forgetting to take into account is feminism. Modern feminism likes heels because they think it makes women look sexy and sexy equals power. At least some people think that way. I remember seeing an interview about it. But it was years ago and I don't even remember who was interviewing who.
@@RoninRoan89 Feminism is weird. "We want equality, we want power, we want to be treated as sex objects … err no .. that's exactly what we don't want … but we do it to ourselves anyway?"
@@AndrewBlack343 Female sexualization remains a topic of significant debate, but the feminist equality stance on sexy clothing is that individual women should be able to choose to wear sexy clothes or shoes if they want to. Feminism does not dictate that heels =. power. Feminism just encourages women to embrace feminine objects like high heels as empowerment should they want to. Agency and choice is key. If you want to wear these things and they make you feel good it's empowering, if you want to wear flats and pants, good on you. If sexy clothes and shoes are the default and expectation to the extent of impracticality (some female superhero costumes), then it becomes a potential issue because the agency element is being taken away. Real human women can make choices about what they wear, but fictional women cannot choose what they wear, this is decided by directors, wardrobe consultants and societal ideals of beauty. Media and real life are treated as separate areas for discussion. *braces self for flamewar*
@@hurricaneofcats Sorry that was supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek comment. I appreciate it's a sensitive topic and didn't intend to step on any toes (in heels or otherwise!).
@@AndrewBlack343 lol, no offense taken! I'm glad it was tongue in cheek actually. I couldn't tell that it was teasing because I have seen a lot of unironic takes very similar to it. I also appreciate your shoe puns!
The first time this phenomenon drew my attention was in The Avengers when I realized that all of the female shield agents had those things. Hated them then, hate them now, hate them forever. Also, the 6 inch action figure of Gamora looks even more ridiculous with her unproportionally small feet than she does in the movie. Hard to pose as well...
honestly, I would argue footwear is the single most impactful attire choice. The only exceptions I can think of is microgravity situations or people with flight powers.
Yes!! It was only a few minutes into the movie when they had that camera angle in the mall showing the back of her heels and I was like “really? She’s wearing THAT?”
The shoes for female super heros has frustrated, angered, and annoyed me to no end SINCE THE BEGINNING!!!! Thank you for this lol just let the ladies be their own damn height!!!
For some of these characters it would actually make sense in-universe for them to be short. Black Widow is essentially a ninja and real-world ninjas were exclusively short, lightweight people (sorry, Batman) to maximize their ability to climb, conceal themselves, and get in and out of tight spaces.
I legitimately have never had an issue with running in wedges because they're what I wore for the longest time, but high chunky heels are a lot easier comparatively, imo. They have never given me an issue, but that very much might just be because that's what I've grown up wearing. It's always been wedges, chunky heels, or (the easiest of the three to run in) stuff like steel-toed boots.
@@anonme_ That is just plain stupid, Superhero costumes aren’t meant to be practical, they are meant to show strength and power. Keatons rubber suit isn’t practical. Batman’s stone neck isn’t practical. Flash costumes are never athletic. Capes aren’t practical. They’re just for show.
agreed w this, but it IS probably easier to make iron man taller in sneaky ways considering in all his action shots he’s in his suit which is completely cgi
My biggest pet peeve is that their hair is never tied back. If it's down there's no way it doesn't get into their face when fighting
There is a practical reason, namely it's easier to hide the stunt doubles if hair is covering the face, but yeah it's annoying to say the least.
It's part of the superhero look. It's the same with capes. They too get in the way but it is part of the look so it stays
That's the one that bugs me in any scenes with where women fight. You want that hair either short, or braided close to your head, so that it neither gets in the way, nor can it be grabbed. I play football, and I can tell you how horrid it is for girls who play offense and don't tie their hair well or hide it. You get grabbed by the hair, albeit accidentally, and it's not a good feeling.
@Shula B.
It's part of the design though. The hair is part of the silhouette and often the color balance.
Tie the hair back and you suddenly change core parts of recogniseable designs that weren't created with this limitation in mind.
It's situations like this where you just have to say fuck the realism. It's a fantasy anyway.
It's the same thing with Batman's cape. He is a normal human, that thing would get in the way during movement, weigh him down and be grabbed constantly.
No matter how many explanations they find for it being there, it is a hindrance in reality. (There is a reason it is constantly CGI'd into movies instead of being worn on set).
But he'd look shit without it.
You don't hear Batmam fans whining about the cape do you? Why would you whine about long hair?
I mean come on, Captain America, a soldier during WWII runs around in star-spangled stripes... in a forrest.
Recognisability and design come first, realism later.
One of the superhero webcomics I read poked fun at the "long loose hair in a fight" trope during one story arc as well. One of the characters, Anvil, is a huge woman with long hair. She was fighting against an even bigger and stronger guy, who grabbed her by the hair and just started yanking her around by it, while mocking her with, "Long hair is really dumb in a fight, you know."
That annoys me the most with Black Widow's character because letting the adversary underestimate her abilities is a big part of her arsenal, so looking shorter than everyone else would actually help her.
@@barbaragibson612 Why go for the face when you can hit lower? 😉
@@morgand.3809 Done that too! 😉 Don't know if Black Widow punching all the dudes in the tenders would fly with her male costars or the audiences? 🤣
@@barbaragibson612 Actually, throat punching sounds like a pretty brutal signature move.
@@barbaragibson612 As athletic and acrobatic as Black Widow is, I don't see why her jumping to reach the bad guy's face is a problem.
@@barbaragibson612 much easier to knockout or kill someone when you hit their throat, compared to their face.
High heels were originally made for butchers to stay out of the blood of their shop. I like to imagine lady fighters apply this same principle to satisfy me slightly
Pretty sure the oldest high heels were for horseback riding, with the idea that the stirrup would wedge into the show. To call the Egyptian butchers' shoes "high heels" also seems misleading, since at least the examples I see are more like platforms, with both the toe and heel elevated. This makes obvious sense, since a high heel would only keep the ankle and upper foot out of the blood, while the toe and lower foot would still be stepping in viscera.
@@El_Rey_247 Well, yes and no. The modern history of high-heels actually goes back to France, and the fad was originally male. At the time just prior to the fad, military cavalry officers wore boots (as all cavalry do till today) with substantial heels to make use of the stirrups properly as you say. What happened was, the aristocracy of the time may or may not have been military officers, but it was a social advantage to be seen as being one. The aristocrats who were not military started wearing boots with heels in hopes of being taken as a cavalry officer. All too soon _every_ male aristocrat was wearing high heels, and the boots quickly became shoes. With high heels. After about a half-decade or so, _women's_ fashion started copying the male fad for high-heeled shoes, and the height of both skyrocketed. It was kind of an insane time. You can actually see some paintings of Benjamin Franklin wearing some of these high-heel shoes.
But as it happens, the fad among men to wear these high heels declined and within 10-20 years all the men were wearing flats again, or at least shoes with very low heels. However, the fashion for high heels remained with women's styles. While women's shoe fashion has changed off and on in the 200 years since this happened, high heels have remained a perennial favorite among high society.
@@El_Rey_247 This is what I was going to comment because I heard about this most.
There was also a lot of mud and dung on the ground at times and people really didn't want to track that in the house. Some cultures got around that by taking their shoes off before they go inside, but reports of people's shoes missing when they leave the Mosques kind of gives us why people would want to keep their shoes on.
@@orlock20 Mud and dung was why pattens were so popular. Kept your shoes above the mud, then leave the crud by the door when you go inside.
The one excuse I can make for harley Quin is that shes crazy and just wears what she likes not what's practical
Harley Quinn is Harley Quinn, we don't know how she can do some of the shit she does, but she does
Or she's like me and finds heels to be comfortable, I wear heels all day everyday, no problem
@@bellaknightR597 same If there were a choice to get rid of all heels or flats I'd go with flats. I love wearing slipper heels indoors and outdoors and easily walk around with them around the house almost 24/7
There's no scientifical reason for Harley Quinn to do all the shit she does but Harley Quinn doesn't care and does it anyway
And we love her for it
Harley is just magic. She can break the laws of physics with her presence.
I unironically want canonically correct 5'3" Wolverine.
It's not like we haven't all watched 5.5'' Iko Uwais dismantle multiple criminal organisations in The Raid and its sequel, at this point.
Even 5'7" or 5'8" (Tom Cruise's supposed actual height) makesa dude a shrimp compared to the heroic proportions of the carefully-picked population of "Actors". So the ideal would have been another 5'8" Aussie (to have the right level of crazy) that wasn't Mel Gibson (who is too old and too crazy, and too crazy in the wrong ways).
OH
I don't mind Logan not being 5'3" especially considering he's seldom even drawn as being 5'3" even in the comics (he typically looks like he's about 5'7" in the comics based on other characters' height), but I do think it'd be cool to have Logan be shorter than other characters.
I laughed the first time I saw the X-men movie, when Wolverine and Professor X were side-by-side and Professor X was so much more hairier.
With Karen Gillan as Nebula, the high heels are even weirder because she's already 5'11".
My thoughts exactly.
Although it does make her more intimidating which is fitting as she's still scary when she's one of the good guys.
Does she have many scenes with Thanos or other tall aliens in the same frame? Maybe they wanted to have her more on the same level for group shots.
@@mitsusah2612 When we get to huge characters like Thanos and Hulk, those few inches aren't going to make much difference. Plus, you want those characters to look huge anyway and they're CGI, so they can be manipulated however they want anyway.
@@fv2977 Oh, I didn't mean that they have to be the same height. Just that their faces would have to be in the same frame. Idk it just seemed like the only even mildly logical reason to make her taller.
@@mitsusah2612 I know what you meant. When the size difference is that big, a few inches aren't going to affect the framing much, and the filmmakers will want to add in a few shots that emphasise their height anyway.
I'm amused that the ladies that you named as having practical shoes (specifically Supergirl, Captain Marvel and Scarlet Witch) just happen to be the ones who can fly... and so might be able to get away with more impractical shoes.
Maybe because they can fly the designers didn’t feel like they had to put them in heels to match the height of the guys 🤯
They can fly, which means they can get away with being shorter.
@@marisalee194 that’s what the comment said
I forgot the part in Black Panther when the ladies were flying around the screen
Maybe the only thing worse than running in heels is a superhero landing in heels
A real star doesn’t stand on a box, but makes everyone else stand in a ditch...
Did you mean lotr
@@ericjackson1337 they were doing that for movies long before LOTR, probably since the silent film era
@@gmcubed yeah lotr is just one of the best examples because dwarves and hobbits
They actually did that for a scene in Tropic Thunder. Is was the "never go full retard" scene. They dug a ditch for one of them to stand in so they (Ben Stiller and RDJ) look closer to the same height
(cough) Far and Away
Tony Stark's heels are now canon in my head.
The guy who built a power armor to fly around and fight would be totally ok using heels.
"You don't like my heels? Then build your own robot suit, smart guy."
Not to mention, a chunky heel would be a convenient place to hide secret Iron Man tech.
At one point, in the comics he also used roller skates. He would ABSOLUTELY wear heels
This explains why me (6'3") and my old college girlfriend (5'2") never really made it as a crime-fighting duo
I hope you understand what a high-caliber comment this really is.
@@admiralofcuteness he does
You sound like the cinema sins guy
@@evaetzel347 ha! that was totally unintentional, but you're right, I accidently stole his joke
😩💀
Meanwhile, Danny DeVito runs perpetually on bottom half of screen with zero problems.
I love Danny DeVito. What a guy.
*quacks violently* *puts on his top hat*
Can i ofcer you and egg in these trying time.
Do not like or comment this is my brothers account i lost my phone
Lol in always sunny he's always rocking crocs, even when he's wearing a suit.
Yeah but Devito isn't an intimidating guy you expect to save the world. He's no Dayman
My favorite example of getting a character to be taller is the White Witch from Narnia. There's a hilarious picture of behind the scenes of her actress putting on these giant goth-style boots under her elegant ice dress 😂
@Astroblaze the Reality Traverser I totally agree; I absolutely love the aesthetic.
Another reason to hate “action heels” the stunt doubles sometimes have to wear them. And stunt doubles have gotten VERY hurt doing stunts in heels. It’s actually infuriating.
Edit: yes they get paid to perform stunts but that doesn’t mean people should be getting badly injured because of stupid decisions behind set. In sports if players are getting injured because of bad protective equipment or unsafe rules the equipment and rules change to keep them safe.
@@jfoster8624 yeah, there job is to do the hard stunts. Not to get broken ankles in stupid ways.
@@jfoster8624 The job of the person who hires them is to make their job as safe as possible while still getting a good shot. Just because their job is dangerous doesn't excuse employers treating their bodies as expendable
High heels should be outlawed. I've seen people get hurt walking down the stairs in heels.
@@davinwilliams3130 We should make it so people don't feel pressure to wear them, but people who genuinely like wearing them should still be allowed
@@ellie8272 I was joking.
For an ex military/spy character like Black Widow, high heels make absolutely no sense. If she goes to combat, she should wear tactical combat boots that would give her speed and agility.
It’s prob cuz she’s trained to seduce people and supposedly dudes like that?
And the costume department could chuck some thick insoles in there to make her 3 or even 4 inches taller without it looking too weird cause the boots are so big. Would have made more sense
@@markskaggs5572 I'm fairly sure dudes would still like Scarlett Johansson even if she was barefoot and wearing a potato sack.
@@dagmarbelesova4284 Yes, please.
No, but see, her advanced training means she can somehow ignore all the drawbacks that high heels give her. And she decides to wear high heels into combat instead of something more comfortable and practical because...it's less impractical than it sounds?
I haven't heard this exact argument all together, but I've heard functionally the same logic for various female characters, usually with enough padding to make it less _obviously_ stupid.
Here's my problem with "We have to give the ladies wedges because the actress isn't the same height as the character". Hugh Jackman is 6'3", Wolverine is canonically 5'3".
And I'll bet a lot of actresses over 5'10" are overlooked because they're too tall, for a variety of reasons but probably including the male actors complaining the women are as tall or taller than them
@asdrubale bisanzio
The guy that did 90% of Gimli's scenes was this tiny kiwi guy. Only the close ups were the actor.
Source: met the guy years ago. He went with the rest of the cast to get fellowship tattoos after the movie
But she is saying is so that they can be in the same shot as the actors
@asdrubale bisanzio huh dint knew that
So, you're say we should slice off 12' of Jackman's shin?
"just let female characters be short" hell let the men be short too, and let tall women make it into the film industry in the first place. Sexual dimorphism really isn't that huge in our species but watching hollywood you'd never know it. To be a leading man it's practically a requirement to be over 6ft regardless of if they're action starts or comedy/drama stars meanwhile gender norms don't encourage women to be big or strong (to put it lightly) even though it'd make sense for them to be in a superhero movie. But these movies only ever use existing big names, so when it comes time to cast for movies where all the characters are tall but the actors with big name recognition all come from the landscape of ridiculously inflated sexual dimorphism that is hollywood, well suddenly the women are all too short for their roles. If hollywood actually captured the diversity of the human form this wouldn't even be an issue
Tom cruise is in trouble then; at 5'7".
@@sarasorensen2650 That's annoying. He is waaay closer to the avarage male height than the 6+ dudes. But everybody see him as short. So weird.
@@i.cs.z It's because at 3" less than the average man in the USA, he is only 1" taller than the average US woman. As the OP kind of dances around, Hollywood likes to put people at the apex of human attractiveness on screen. This means exaggerating our dimorphism with pretty, smooth skinned, average or above-chested women and tall, square-jawed, muscular men. Comedies excluded.
Personally, I would very much like to see the Brianne of Tarth actress cast as Samus Aran before she ages out of the character because she is the right height for her and Metroid Other M offended me, in small part, for chopping 7" from her height.
You haven't looked at the heights of Hollywood men have you ? find me some one over six feet in the top 10 earning list ... ;) you will find that most are under
@@agnidas5816 well only 12% of men are 6 ft plus but most girls and arrogant guys think it’s “average height” or “bare minimum” so it would make sense if 9/10 were in the highest paid by it’s usually like 3/10 under 6 feet
Spider-Gwen in Into the Spiderverse had excellent shoe choice
She has an excellent design in general. 🥰😆
@@Monie71793 frr
@@Monie71793 everyone in spiderverse has excellent character designs. miles' jacket outfit is sooo aesthetically pleasing
@@gatomeong Yeah 😆
@Rebecca Lauren Baxter I disagree, but I see your point. For one, they’re not even wood, it’s just extra strong papier-mâché out of fabric - which could actually be good, it means less force is absorbed by the shoe when kicking however that means less absorption for when she lands from the top of a building. Secondly, given their composition of fabric and paste, they would be more flexible than traditional shoes, tho probably not ballet flats
The only sensible solution to high heels being hard to run in is high heels with built in heelies.
Superheroines can roll around kicking ass
OMG I'm 160cm (5ft 3) and have wanted heelies for ages to keep up with my long legged friends. I would DIE HAPPY seeing a superheroine kick out a pair of heels than skate past the baddies going *bop bop bop* then tap the rollers back in before walking away like "that's how you do it boys"
That sounds very harlequin
it's not really used but penny in into the spiderverse has heelies :)
Pretty sure Dazzler used to have rollerskates back in the day.
Oh, and Iron Man's armor had built-in roller skates as well. Because of course it did.
OMG I need to see a superhero/ine with heelies, that would be the coolest thing ever with some editing!
"IF HULK WANT WEAR WEDGED HEELS, HULK WEAR WEDGED HEELS."
Let's face it, he would rock those heels.
True.
What size would he have?
Rock 'em with those hard shapely calves of his.
Pretty sure that he'd still walk flat footed, just leaving holes wherever he walked.
That's my secret, Captain. I'm always slaying.
I think you mean he would SMASH those heels.
Gosh I remember seeing people justify wonder woman in heels because "it gives her height which is an advantage in battle" I died inside
*Ahem* ruclips.net/video/t9E1sNl0lVY/видео.html
She's is Canonical 6'2 . She doesn't need the boost.
She's already an Amazonian, any threats that she might struggle against are either similar height or fucking massive, so a height advantage doesn't matter.
Wonder Woman is already tall! She's an Amazon and the Amazons, by nature, are tall. What surprised me is that Gal Gadot is the same height as Lynda Carter when she was Wonder Woman in the 1970's: 5'9"
Heels are legit weapons you can use if they're pointy enough.
i thought it was going to be the uncomfortable looking crotch armor
On guys it's sometimes called '"self-castration plate"
What do either/the two of you mean?
@@xCorvus7x The metal piece that looks like a belt, but is made of metal or has a big metal piece in the middle. Sure it looks nice when they stand straight, but imagine bending down and being stabbed by your metal belt right at the crotch. Wonder Woman's classic outfit has it, if you need an example.
@@mitsusah2612 Ah, okay.
I can't quite fathom it but I guess that could be an issue, even if you do bend down at the hip/bend forward by flexing your hip.
@@xCorvus7x It does depend a bit on the character, but it's often one of the two:
1. So low on the hips that sitting down or lifting their legs high might be impossible.
2. Higher on the stomach, blocking the ability to bend their lower back as the edge would stab the flesh above or below the belt.
Not to meantion that practically all movement changes the exact shape of the stomach area, but a metal belt would not allow any significant changes in form. Kinda like an uncomfortable, badly made corset. :/
As a chick who’s been in a wheelchair her entire life, this discussion of the physics of walking in heels is incredibly fascinating. Who knew you flex your foot when walking!
I had a friend in a wheelchair her whole life and when she watched me do pointe ballet she would call me a witch 😂
@@catleatherwood4770 😆 When my sister was a baby, I remember noticing when she curled her toes. My 3-year-old brain thought of them as “parrot feet,” since they reminded me of a parrot gripping a branch with its talons.
@@catleatherwood4770 Wow 😩💀
(Then again, when I was in my 1st ballet class as a kid, I saw older pointe dancers for the 1st time & thought they were magical & majestic. 😅😂)
@@DrFranklynAnderson that is so adorable! “Parrot feet”. You are kind of right though. Good observation, 3 year old you
there's actually a medical condition called flat feet
Heels are such a stupid choice for fighting. Like imagine if frodo was wearing heels while climbing mount doom to destroy the ring lmao.
Exactly! He was barefoot which must be WAY more impractical
@@fellowspacemarine hobbit feet bro
@@mikaelthebard5068 is there something special about em? Sorry I'm not the biggest LOTR fan
@@fellowspacemarine Actually joking aside not really they're just really durable ig.
@@mikaelthebard5068 ight
Ever since this was pointed out to me I wasn't able to unsee it. Which is why, I was very pleased with Sylvie's shoes in the Loki series, she has COMBAT BOOTS.
Sylvie also tied her her up before battle, it was only half up but still was very practical compared to Wanda/Black widow in early movies and others. These little details I'm sure were added in because they had a woman director who cared about what they made. That's why the show was so good. The little details make a difference.
They should've used whatever tricks they pulled for Robert Downey Jr. on the female characters. When the female characters are secretly being made taller but the shoes look normal height from the outside, it's a movie trick. When they are wearing wedged heels or even actual HEELS (Catwoman...) it's no longer a movie trick. It becomes a character trait because it's visible.
When you show that the characters are wearing heels, it becomes a choice that the character made. Meaning characters like Black Widow and Wonder woman, otherwise very smart women, somehow found it practical to choose wedge heeled boots/sandals over the more practical shoes. And that just seems out of character for them.
Harley Quinn is an entirely different category because I'm sure she actually would wear stilettos into battle.
If we’re going to talk practicality of the costumes, you can throw out pretty much all of them anyway, so adding heels or not doesn’t seem to be a deal breaker to me :| (immersion wise that is, it’s not any stupider than Thor having a cape, no or little armor for his arms legs and hands, Wonder Woman having her head, shoulders, and upper arms, and legs exposed, Batman having a cape and a latex full body suit that looks uncomfortable as hell to wear >
@@nathanjora7627 WW skin is practically unbreakble, thor is royalty a cape is a status symbol, the batman shit is explained as being for intimidation although i agree its dumb
afaik, the thor costume with no armor on his arms was what he was wearing at the start of ragnarok, where he was on a stupidly hot lava planet with the fire demon guy, had no chance to really change at any point, he wore armor on his arms for everything else, hands idk? thats probably just an aesthetic thing, i agree he barely ever has leg armour, i think ultron is the only film where he has leg armor.
If I remember correctly Gal Gadot wore trainers for some of the scenes in the original WW which were then digitally edited into heels.
Her being really tall makes sense as an Amazon, but if LOTR managed to pull off dwarves and elves and hobbits 20 years ago you'd think this wouldn't be an issue now.
But also: let characters be short!!
"Her being really tall makes sense as an Amazon, but if LOTR managed to pull off dwarves and elves and hobbits 20 years ago you'd think this wouldn't be an issue now."
This is a really great point. If you're going to make a film about an Amazon, and you decide that means she needs to be tall, commit to it.
@@JosephDavies The difficulty ramps up trying to get close action scenes making someone look taller. In the LOTR, when they couldn't use perspective tricks to show the height difference or some digital editing, they swapped out the Hobbits for kids (such as seen in this photo i.redd.it/5odws603jsq41.jpg). You have more options for making someone look shorter. To make them look taller, you have to either luck out and find a taller body double, or go full CGI.
The fact she couldn't wear them for action scenes is just proof of how dumb it is. Alternatively they could also hire women who are actually tall like Gwendoline Christie (or others who probably don't even get auditions because they're considered "too tall")
In the BTS she doesn't look that significantly shorter than the guys, I bet they crank up a dude's height and tone it down for the ladies ...
It can be done, but you have to factor in how much it costs to do this frame-by-frame at native 6-8K at about $1,000/day per technician at least. LOTR did a lot of old-school trick photography as much as they did digital augmentation. There was more face replacement than there was shrinking. Remember: it was 2000 when they were doing those fer Chrissake.
I think everyone should be Shuri and just put on some Nikes, be comfortable and practical
What are thooose!?!
you mean... *sneakers* ?? xD sorry. couldn't help myself
To be fair, Shuri isn’t normally a combatant, so her footwear is never really something the production team needs to think about
Have the super DRIP
Or very comfortable battle boots... like many women would if they had to run, kick or do the things that these ladies do, unless you're Catwoman.
Lets be real, they should have added those heels to rdj's official costume.
They did in the Iron Man suit. Go back and look sometime. Iron Man has heels.
They did lol, he wears heels on set
It would actually work, it's a slightly practical way to store his feet repulsors if he wanted to make them more powerful although he can't make the technology more powerful while remaining the same size
hes 5-8 ironman is probably 6-6.
The ironman suit is pretty big isn’t it
I remember someone saying that the stuntmen were in awe of the stuntwomen who had to do the same stuff but typically with less opportunity to be padded up and often wearing a dress and in silly heels! They managed to make Stallone look tall in Judge Dredd and he's reported to be somewhere between 5' 8" and 5' 10", not short by any means but short compared to most Hollywood A list actors. Allegedly they did this by cutting trenches for the other actors to walk in! It would have been much easier just to put Stallone in heals but I suspect no one wanted to suggest it to him!
Oh right, I saw those videos of stuntpeople (is that a word? Well, who cares XD) reacting to some scenes and oh boi, poor stuntwomen, they really have to work on the higher difficulty all the time :'(
It's been a trope as long as Hollywood's existed, like that old line, 𝐆𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐑𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐝𝐢𝐝 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐅𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐀𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐝𝐢𝐝, 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐝 𝐡𝐢𝐦 𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐩 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐩, _𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐡 𝐡𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐬._
@@xheralt And don't forget, Ginger Rogers also did all that backwards and in high heels, while wearing a skirt with something like 10+lbs of weights sewn into the hem to make that nice, fancy swish happen. Weights banging against her legs at every step, twirl, kick, and sway. I can only imagine the bruises, along with the risk to knees and ankles going on.
@@Mokiefraggle Mentioning the costuming is just gilding the lily, and draws out the point unnecessarily. Ginger is far from the first to suffer for fashion's sake...
If there's one thing we know for certain, good sense is in critically short supply in hollywood
They aren’t putting the women in 4-inch wedges to make them taller. They’re putting them in wedges to give them the “I’m in high heels” sexy butt and calves without making them look like they’re running around in impractical heels.
even though heels do that, its adding to the muscularity of the figure.
Came in looking for this comment thanks, that's exactly it. We complained about the stupid stilettos, the actresses kept getting injured or having to go barefoot anyway so they said "Ok we'll just put them in different heels! But not too many combat boots lol those are for goths, feminists, and lesbians" and went from there
Yes! Was starting to write a comment then thought someone MUST have pointed that out.
Nah.
If it's for sex appeal then it is for height not just butt and calves.
I’ll be honest, I never noticed Black Widow wearing heels so when you said it, I was like “HUH?????”
Heels would make all her movement so impractical, makes sense why they try to hide it now lol
I didn't notice it either so they don't want BW being dwarfed by the other male heroes look at her standing with her females costars out of makeup. Some of them are much taller than her so why not use her real height in the movie?
Top Gun: Uses every trick in the book to make Tom Cruise as tall as everyone else.
Superhero Movies: Heel Boots go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
I was so shocked to find out how short he was. He always seemed like someone that was around 5'10-6'2 just based on what I've seen from his movies
Based on the thumbnail, I thought you were going to talk about helmets/headpieces with those sections that cover the cheeks like sideburns
ME TOO
Me too!
SAME
Or that have an edge that actually presses into her face.
Same!
As a 5’2 woman, I am tired of the idea that short = childlike or cute. Short woman can be just as daring, witty and impactful.
Lol nop. Same thing for men, short men are not imposing.
Honestly short women will kick your booty more than tall women 😂😂 In Uncharted Chloe Frazer is the tallest woman at 5"7 she's smooth flirty cocky, she's meant to be like exotic super model type but actually a badass so it works. And the shortest female character Nadine Ross at 5"5 who is very tough, beats the main character's arse multiple times, takes on two 6"3 buff men in a fight and dominates for most of it (until one got a gun). I love them. Theyre also an adorable couple.
@@eloisecole3579 which is why Wolverine is such a good character. Taller characters underestimate him and get fucked.
Fellow 5'2" woman... I've come to embrace my height and make fun of it myself, because at least for me it helps to endure the stigma. :')
I'm 5foot5 and if I kick a 6foot10 guy in the crotch, he'll go down like he's been shot.
So being "short" has nothing to do with someone's ability to incapacitate another.
I hate WW’s new costume because there’s that metal piece that goes straight down her torso. She wouldn’t be able to bend forward at all
I keep wondering how she lifts her legs considering how far down the armor goes over her hips/ hip joints
It's pretty impractical, but remember: it took Warner Brothers 6 Batman movies before someone finally thought "Hey what if we make his mask a separate piece from his armor, so he can actually turn his head like an actual human being would need to do?"
@@z-beeblebrox To be fair, in the 1989 version, Burton made that specific choice to keep the cowl a rigid part of the body armor to create a distinct movement when comparing Batman to the rest of the cast. I'm not saying as judgement one way or the other but that it was intentional for Batman being unable to move the head as an artistic decision. Batman Begins has not such excuse.
@@dawnmcauley6411, the cowl being separate from his Batman armor wasn’t introduced until the events of the Batman Telltales games, and up until those games were released all of the Batman comics, video games, live action films/tv series, and cartoons/animations all had the Batman armor/costume and cowl being completely combined in one armor/costume set whereas it wasn’t until after the Batman Telltales games is whenever the Batman cowl and the armor/custom were separated from each other.
@@RoronoaZoro-ur6hr Batman Telltale come out in 2016, The Dark Knight come out in 2008 and specifically made it a minor plot point that the Cowl be detached from the body armor so Bruce could move his head.
This hurts my head. I'm 5'1 and have been teased all my life about being short. I did the stupid thing of looking at women on tv and believe that that is what womanly looks like, long and tall. I'm three decades old and feel like I look like a preteen. It blows my mind to hear people like Scarlett Johansson and Reese Witherspoon are short, not much taller than myself. I would have never guessed from their movies yet it was them I was holding up as an example of adult female. I feel heaps better hearing Scarlett Johansson is only three inches taller than me. Thanks for this.
Likewise, the fact that most of the men in the MCU are well above average height yet are normalized as well... normal in height. Average height for men is around 5'9" 5'10". Which then makes below average height dudes seem even more unusually short.
As a 6'2" female past 40 years of age, all I can say is be *glad* you're not tall. Clothing is a joke, but at least I prefer men's clothing and shoes so I'm generally okay there (but even their pants can be short on me). Back problems suck, and since we're girls, we have extra weight on our chests throwing everything off. I used to play the shortest races in online games purely to experience life at a height where I had to jump onto countertops to interact with vendors. Yeah, that's a bit extreme, but I loved it.
@@tirsden I suppose all things are relative and there are advantages and disadvantages to either side of the equation. :)
There's a poster for a Reese Witherspoon movie (with Vince Vaugn) where she's in stilettos AND standing on a box, and she's just about his height.
A lot of classic women movie stars were on the short side too, not model height.
For the first minute, I was just thinking "you better not hate the head band thing." And then I thought about how little the head band thing appears in live action superhero movies and then I thought about how much I need Scarlet Witch to get her head band thing, and then I reevaluated why I'm so defensive about the head band thing when I'm not even sure what it is
I felt the exact same way
When you mean head bang thing, is that the thing that's like Sailor Moon's tiara?
well scarlet witch did get her tiara thing and I am also way too happy about it
BC THEY LOOK COOL :(
@@appymay8702 hair ties
On the old Wonder Woman show from the '70s, Wonder Woman's boots would change from scene to scene. If Wonder Woman was standing and talking, Lynda Carter was wearing high heels. But as soon as the action started: running, jumping, fighting, etc., whether it was Ms. Carter or her stuntwoman (Julie Eppers?), her boots were flats.
I didn't notice this in the first run (I'm old, I was 8-10 at the time), but I did notice the changing heels in the reruns in the 80s.
Its going to be hard not to notice these things in the future. The curse of knowledge.
Underrated fact. To be honest this make feel this like a regular mistake.
This was less blatant cheese, more of "who's going to be looking at her boots", and blink and you'll miss it. This was the 1970s. You might see an episode two or maybe three times if you watched the reruns in the summer, as well as first run. After that, they were just gone. Yeah, a show might get picked up for syndicated reruns, as 'Wonder Woman' did, but people genuinely weren't concerned about slightly obsessed fans who would watch the syndicated reruns enough times that they start to notice things like that. And packaged shows for home viewing... forget it.
One of the most blatant examples of "adaptive wardrobe" is Barb Wire. Good old Pammy is dressed up as a kind of kinky dominatrix with leather and high heels, but in the action stuff it's flat shoes and her costume looks completely different.
@asdrubale bisanzio IIRC, the Dukes of Hazzard had to reuse their car stunt scenes because they literally wrecked cars doing them, including the classic jump that basically demolished the suspension and undercarriage of the car. They were literally patching them together on-site to keep production running, from what I've heard, and the studio even would put out notice that they'd buy a '69 Charger from anyone willing to sell for it to be in the show. It's part of why the 1969 Dodge Charger is such a hard classic car to find at any price; many were damaged beyond repair, to the point that they even had to start taking '68 Chargers and modding them up to resemble a '69.
Sad to say, I'm fairly certain a lot of the reason for high heels (versus any other solution) is to make their butts stick out. All of the non heel characters were either going out of their way not to sexualize them (Captain Marvel, Shuri, and Okoye) or their butts are covered (Supergirl, Scarlet Witch) :(
True.
I hate it
Right, it seems painfully naive for the first and only thought to be that it's to make the actresses taller. Obviously there are ways to make a character appear taller without making it obvious on-screen and a literal part of their costume. It's clearly to keep female figures in impractical heels without drawing quite the levels of disdain that were lowered at, for example, the lady in Jurassic World running from a T. Rex in stilettos.
@@molegoddess Jurassic world isn’t a good example. Her characters day was interrupted by that fiasco and she was wearing her work clothes and work shoes, so I can understand that she wouldn’t have had a change of shoes, because her heels were for her professional work wear. I can give that one a pass, because ultimately it made me feel like the disasters in that movie were all the more a big inconvience and everyone was actually struggling a lot. Imagine running in those! I thought.
I now want to see Captain America (Chris Evans) in high heels so "America's ass" sticks out/is more pronounced.
It's kinda silly anyway- if lord of the rings can make people look believably 3 foot+ different in height with clever camera tricks it seems doubly stupid.
Fun fact, the actor who played gimli is actually several inches taller than the actor who played legolas- he's 6'1", and they managed to do a load of action type stuff with him
Also return of the king had like half the budget of ww1984, so it's not even that they can't afford it
Yes, exactly, what happened with the editing. Hobbits appear short too but the actors aren't in real life, like why couldn't more advanced technology do this. 🤔
So, instead of Legolas getting the box for Gimli in Helm's Deep, it is actually Legolas who needs a box if he wants to be the same height.
As a 5' 4" woman, I second normalizing "shorter" actresses' heights
I stand with you on this as almost 5'3
As also a 5’4 woman... is that short? 😯
@@terra_the_nightingale135 depends on where your from, different places have different average heights. But despite your height, I'm sure you're still a wonderful person. Height is just height, and don't let it let you down.
Im a 6ft tall man but i stand with your cause........or like a foot above your cause
4'11" woman here, and yes please
Literally went "why does her armour have heels?!?" *In the cinema*
Same but in the trailer. I didn't see it because of it, I'm so tired of it (that and boob plate)
@@Ailieorz what’s wrong with breast plates that actually fit women? Would you rather women force themselves into a male shape for no reason other than that’s what men wear? It doesn’t make sense to just deny a woman’s anatomy for the sake of replicating how *men* wear armor.
@@clownfromclowntown I may not be the person you originally put the question to, but I'm a partial convert from the 'boob armor is dumb' camp.
In all but the most extreme cases of anatomy, the 'standard' for armor wouldn't change the shape of the breastplate unless it is unsafely molding to the shape below, not leaving enough room for padding and underlayers. Those people with a lower amount of fat, like most warriors, have as a standard smaller breasts than those with more fat.
That being said, I agree with arguments that having 'boob plate' isn't a detriment for melee combat, as long as they don't go comically large. That there's not enough force that is going to be applied that would make it through both armor and underpadding that wouldn't just smash through it without the cups. Leaving it down to the culture around the design of the breastplate as to if they wanted to accent the femininity of the warrior wearing it (which makes sense for Wonder Woman and the Amazons).
The time I see an issue is regarding firearms, where we run into the problem of 'bullet traps', which the cups on 'boob armor' would cause an issue. The tl;dr of bullet traps is that they focus projectiles to a specific location, and the cups on a piece of boob armor focus them right on the sternum.
@@clownfromclowntown there's never been a reason to have your boobs housed in their own nooks during combat. historically, armor like this was accompanied by multiple layers of fabric and padding (including chainmail) underneath which hid the shape of the wearer's figure anyway-- it certainly would have hid most women's breasts. there is also the fact that breast armor was meant to deflect blade strikes, letting the blade slide off the metal. having breasts built into the armor just provides an area in which blades can catch. lastly, it was made entirely of metal which means that, with the boob armor, there is a strip of flatter metal resting directly on the sternum between each breast indent. this provides even further risk of injury and death from falling face down, melee blows, heavy projectiles, etc. because any force applied to that area could potentially shatter the sternum, which is meant to protect the lungs and heart.
now, the mcu and other dceu shows that do this often aren't using metal breast plates and it's purely aesthetic choice to design their armor this way which is fine. but for wonder woman in particular-- a literal warrior-- it's really fucking stupid. aside from all the skin she's showing, the metal breast plate she's using is extremely impractical and does way less to protect her than it does to harm her. this style of metal armor also bothers me in viking-era/style movies (like lady sif in the thor movies) because the vikings did have female warriors that wore appropriate breast plates that actually protected them.
tl;dr wearing metal boob armor in battle can actually kill you in a situation you would have lived had you wore regular armor
@@clownfromclowntown also, as i mentioned before, because of all the padding underneath, breast plate armor did fit women. modern desgins of this armor that still use metal (usually military equipment) is tailored to the shape of the individual. women still do not have breast indents with this type of armor because, as i explained, it's dangerous. but it does fit their form.
“Let female characters be short.” Bruh... yes.
And for that matter, male characters even more so.
They all have to be only inches away from 7 feet tall apparently even when the actor is only 5’9. I mean that’s not even short but it’s treated like it is.
@@jfoster8624 What are you talking about? The comment I responded to was talking about letting short people be short.
@Stella Hohenheim Who are you referring to?
I think short women are adorablee
@@Axxidous and have actors of the same age the role is, not having an almost 30 y.o. actor doing a 15 y.o. role.
Jeez, yeah, normalize shortness already! Most shorter men and women are just excluded from acting and modelling, or at least from achieving much in those areas, because of current norms and ideals
Oh, man, as someone who has cosplayed Natasha for over a decade, this is So Relevant To My Interests. The funny thing is she really does wear both wedges and flats in IM2, and there was a substantial volume of discussion on the RPF thread back than about whether the high-res images we had obtained of the flats were just stunt boots or would be seen in the finished film. In the end, they **were** seen, and even though it was almost certainly not supposed to be noticed (much like Laurie's Amazing Vanishing Stilettos in Watchmen), I ran with that choice and never looked back. When I eventually had to replace the replica boots I made that summer, I went with a thrifted pair in a similar style with a walking-shoe type sole that appears to have a slight wedge but really... doesn't so much. I fully intend to stick with those if/when the rest of my IM2 costume gives out and I finally make something more up-to-date, because of essentially the opposite issue the filmmakers have, i.e. my 5'9" self would look patently ridiculous wearing the big ol' wedges in group photos with cosplayers approximating the guys' heights.
The thing that always makes me scratch my head about the whole thing: I used to have two pair of Steve Madden clogs - one brown and one black - with platform wedge soles that (a) had a difference of less than 2" between ball and foot even though they totaled 4", and (b) were made of some kind of springy EVA foam that made them immensely comfortable for walking, running, or even a fair portion of dancing or fight work. And they were made in 1995, so surely things should have improved by now! (I wore those things to DEATH. Glued them back together multiple times before the actual leather started wearing through after a decade-plus.)
I actually give Gamora's boots a partial pass for exactly that reason, given that they do have a bit of platform in front and we can certainly presume the materials out there in the wilds of the galaxy are advanced enough to give her the, well, give that movement requires. The same goes for some of Natasha's later ones (without the advanced materials part, though of course we're talking Stark tech, and as established, hey, mass-market Steve Madden in 1995 was pretty darn good). So I can handwave some of them to a certain extent. But as you say, we shouldn't have to. Cover the platform (which, again, was all OVER fashion just a couple years ago!) and you're set.
Ahem. I guess I Had Some Thoughts. :-D
Do you find being a bit taller is an advantage when it comes to cosplay, since your head is nearer the correct level? 😁
I like Mara Jade and Rey cosplay best because canonically they are both within an inch or so of my actual height (Mara’s 5’4, I’m 5’5 and a bit, Rey is 5’6) and they don’t wear giant shoes. Also, lightsabers.
I once had a pair of cork wedges the same height as Gal Gadot’s in WW. Being taller was nice but I sounded like a My Little Pony everywhere I went 🤣
PS: I would say 'you're going to really enjoy an upcoming episode' but being a Patron, you have already seen it!
@@JillBearup The MLP thing suggests that maybe the sound guys have some say in what the shoes in movies are like, too. If only in the materials science side. Hrm. Thinks, thinks, thinks.
@@llearch Why would they though? Maybe back in the day, sure, but today that is entirely a non issue. In shots where feet are actually seen, good chances the audio is not recorded "live", but entirely done in post (even dialogue with studio quality dubs). In shots where the feet aren't seen, actors can wear whatever that won't be seen.
@@JillBearup You ladies are both lucky to be so tall!
If who you can cosplay is determined by your height, then I'm stuck with hobbits and Tyrion Lannister! XD
@@JillBearup It depends on the character - I often gravitate to the taller ladies for exactly that reason! Funnily enough, I love Rey because Daisy is only 2" shorter than I (at least according to most sources I've found), while I've never seriously considered doing Leia because just the thought of it makes me feel like a great galumphing galoot. (That's alleviated somewhat in my one Padme because the costume itself is so massive, but I still feel a bit oversized in it sometimes.)
Mara's height is pretty fungible depending on who's doing the illustrating. (She tends to be smaller in video games, but comics often showed her as taller than Luke, and I live for some of those images of the two of them!)
Noise is another reason I miss those Steve Madden clogs so much! They were quieter than most sneakers. I don't understand why more manufacturers haven't picked up on that marvelous springy/firm foam for platforms/wedges.
Everyone should replace their feet with wheels, because that would be cool.
Men and women will go zoooooom
I believe a few people took that route in Alita: Battle angel
That’s what Heelies are for lol
Vsauce
Have you met the "Wheelers" from "Return to Oz"?
Man they won't even put female Transformers in the damn live action films for more than eight seconds.
It’s also really dangerous for the stunt performers who have to do the scenes wearing heels for the sake of consistency between shots
THIS
The stunt doubles for the males have to wear entire suits and helmets while doing stunts. The stunt double for Black Panther has literally experienced seizures and heat strokes due to having to wear an entire costume. If the men have to go through that trauma during shoots then high boots for women shouldn't be an exception
@@fellowspacemarine what are you talking about dude
@@elmondo-s1e I'm saying using "high heeled" shoes as an excuse for stunt performance issues is an irrelevant and over exaggeration for fair criticism
@@dovwallack4688 all costumes ARE designed for safety. they're modded for maneuverability, padding, and overall safety, but some hurdles are just more complicated to jump through to keep the illusion that the actor of the given hero is the one performing on screen. Stunt performers have high intensive training with professional experience in what they're doing and are aware of the risks given when performing with bulkier suits, extra gear, and surprise surprise, high heels. I'm not saying it's an overall ideal way of doing said stunts while maintaining safety, but the woman in this video is speaking on behalf of an irrelevant factor--that being stunt doubles--with no actual sense or experience of how stunt performering is handled.
The only exception to the impracticalities of heels is Bayonetta
Bayonetta wears a suit made from her own hair and fires guns with her feet. You can ask so many more questions about her wardrobe before “How does she run” and the answer to all of it is “magic and style”
@@noonedream9333 She also has inhumanly long limbs.
@@noonedream9333 lol yeah its crazy
She's 100% hammy and she knows it.
Bayonetta's feet are the least impractical thing about her
*imagining tom cruise in giant heels just out of shot of the camera*
...running, because, Tom Cruise.
It would also be cool if they would just hire some taller women actors. It seems like tall women are often passed over because they are "too manly." It really annoys me.
If they ever do a Metroid move I want Samus to be played by Gwendoline Christie.
A cast of exclusively scandinavian women, and asian men.
@@Lhorez where do I have to sign for this?
I've never once heard of a woman that didn't get a job as an actress for being too masculine.
Imagine having tall woman with big muscles cast as their tall strong big muscle comic book characters that they're supposed to be. Idk why everything needs to be about being stereotypically pretty. All those women in the comics are already gorgeous and they arent super skinny and flawless.
My main take away from this video: RDJ is adorably short.
Now this comment somehow makes me, at 5’4”, feel even shorter! 😶
@@Fitchant I'm sorry. I didn't mean to come off as condescending.
I just think that it's pretty cool that an industry as shallow as Hollywood has incredibly successful short men.
Shorter men in general need more love and recognition. :)
So can I, but that apparently still leaves me as a short man. 😆
@Elalae La Yes it is! :)
@@Fitchant Another 5‘4 guy reporting in. RDJ is still 12cm taller than I am.
Robert Downey Jr is sort of wearing heals in that photo with Gwyneth Paltrow. The shoes are designed to look like sneakers, but internally, the heal is raised quite high, so you look taller. Like wedges, they don't allow for flexion, but they're as wide as a regular sneaker, so at least they provide a stable surface when you walk. I agree that these would be a far less distracting choice for a heroine's costume, if height must be accounted for.
One of the many many many reasons I fell in love with John Wick was seeing them put Super Alluring Femme Fatale Ms Perkins in flat heeled boots when she knew she was going to be fighting.
She also had one of the most feral, brutal fighting styles in the whole movie.
Man I love John Wick.
Well, Adrianne Palicki is 5'11" so it's not a problem of height. Keanu Reeves is 6'1" so not that different.
Ms Perkins is AMAZING. John Wick did everything right!
Damn. Thank you! I've always disliked heels-for-heroines, but you're actually the first person I've heard give a compelling reason FOR them. I know that's kind of the opposite of ur main point (which I'm still all for) but daym, that actually makes me feel better about this XD The world suddenly became a teeny-tiny bit less sexist bcoz practical reasons I can stand behind XD
Yeah, now all I'm wondering is about the practicality of NOT having them in lifts. 11 inches is a lot.
No it's still sexist. It's really more about the look, esp since they're **trying** to make the men look huge so having a normal sized woman standing next to them would actually help.
Like how in the live action Hercules, they hired a short guy to play his sidekick, to make Kevin Sorbo look big and tall when he's actually kinda average
Having her be tiny but powerful would make much more sense than a human without superpowers needing to stand head height with a literal god, and a supersoldier
Honestly, I think that a shorter "average" height hero would make it more badass
@@darlalathan6143 and the point you two missed is that Wolverine is way way shorter than the average man. Even in the Phillipines men are taller on average.
Well, there's Wolverine who's famously short, and many foes make fun of it. And quickly realise of their mistake.
Wolverine and Vegeta would agree with you
I was able to tell whenever they used a stunt double bc Wonder Woman’s heels would suddenly become practical shoes
I wasn't expecting a boot and high heels class today, thanks.
Anne Hathaway's catwoman is a curious case for me because, not only she walked, ran, jumped and fought while using heels, but she was also able to sneak away from a roof where Batman was without him noticing it. In a FEW seconds! Imagine her running away, trying to be silent while going down the fire escape stairs of that building, regretting every choice in her life that brought her for that moment.
Every time she wasn't in the movie, I imagined her in a rented and hided apartment taking care of her sore and probably hurted feet (Anne Hathaway too, but she was probably in her trailer. Probably.)
Catwoman is the only one on the list who I would expect to learn how to do it all in stilettos (like that one girl somewhere in the depths of 2008 RUclips who learnt how to do parkour in stilletos just to prove her brother wrong). But that’s a rare talent & every other heroine strikes me as... flats or chunky boot gals? Like, she should be the severe outlier to everyone else, not merely “odd one out”
I've been working on that batman vanish for a while and it is more of an illusion. You have to get to cover in that split second, then move farther when you have an opening. The only clear example I've seen in media is right after batman meets up with Gordon at the start of Arkham Knight. He only had to jump over a ledge onto a gargoyle to "vanish" even though he was still close.
@@timothyjacksondrake4454 Yes but the Batman appearing out of nowhere is just as fun. Especially when it's done to Superman.
@@Warvvolf Yeah, I don't think anyone can explain him sneaking away from superman in .5 secs.
Catwoman gets to wear heels because actual cats walk with raised heels as well.
Yes! Exactly it was just another way to make her look more cat like without putting her in an actual cat costume (just like how her goggles when raised up resemble cat ears)
@@Trendygal8 those cat ears were inspired! While I wasn't fond of her platform and stilletto heeled thigh-high boots, (must make it difficult to sneak around in) at least they were part of her fighting style.
ok that’s cool asf
"Shoe-related jiggery-pokery" is an underrated turn of phrase...
it’s funny that Wanda is one of the most practical considering she’s the one who probably needs them the least. Sure she’s quick and in age of ultron when she was at her weakest power level she would run around a lot but ever since then if she’s needed to get anywhere quickly she would just fly. And she doesn’t do any hand to hand combat either it’s all with her magic. So while she’s making a sensible choice just wearing combat boots for yknow combat she’s the one that needs then the least.
As a 5' 5" male actor, I do generally agree with your "let characters be short" argument. However, I do think it's interesting how you address the complications that large height disparities between actors cause in shot composition and lighting.
Sadly, I like watching people with a with a height disparity to their enemies take them down. Watching a average height woman take down a big guy seems like it would be empowering to average women. Making women feel that to have to be eye to eye in height to men to be considered equal, or even better, seems to remove the content of their character from the equation.
The need for every superhero to be above average height deprives average and shorter men and women of role models, or heroes they can see themselves reflected within. That being said, when creators make a shorter than average character they don't need to exaggerate and point it out at every opportunity. It just makes the character look freakish, which is still disheartening to the fan who sees themselves in that role.
Full Disclosure: I am 5'8" as man it is just short enough not to be tall, Just tall enough not to be short, but still considered below average.
The height disparity thing is something I’ll be touching on a bit next month in what I have cheerfully titled FLIRTY FIGHT FEBRUARY, because getting your romantic leads into a fight requires an understanding of power dynamics and size disparity, and how the audience feels about that.
@@NicoEm agreed. Hell, there's even a bit of that in the IM2 fights for Black Widow, when she suits up, towards the end. She's bumped up in height, but the movie does play her as kinda the underestimated badass, with Tony largely treating her like an object and not wising up to that she's totally playing him and essentially watching his back without his knowing it, or considering it. There's even a hint of it in her boxing match with his driver (former, I think, upgraded to security in the second IM film, right?), earlier in the film where he's clearly underestimated her and tells her he's gonna go easy, and then she flattens him in two moves. Why not just lean into that a bit, and allow her to be her actual height, which is lower than the tall tall mc-tall super heroes, and make it an understated addition to not misjudging people like her.
@@JillBearup I've got one word about size disparity fight scenes *AND* romantic lead fight scenes: *BUFFY!*
@@JillBearup Check out "Slug Street Scrappers" a parody/homage to side scrolling beat-em-ups.
Really, it's mainly an excuse for stunt-men and -women to do some pretty slick fight choreography.
Noted for not making any effort in hiding it's male lead (Micah Brock - "Bruiser Bom-Bash") is quite a bit shorter than most of the men and women he fights. With Katelyn Brooke "Peaches Powers" and Jessie Graf "Punchy McBritches".
It's as silly as it sounds.
It would... if they do it in a way that is somewhat realistic. If they have some diminutive twig walk up and just punch him out it's just dumb in much the same way I'm sure it would be for guys
i suggest we simply convince all the tall actors to squat down a bit in every shot for a change. get down to our level!
excellent idea! i second this
I've noticed this myself, and while in most cases it looks pretty dumb (I'm not a fan of heels just in general), I honestly don't mind it with Gamora. With the funky, heavily-stylized aesthetic of the Guardians of the Galaxy films and other MCU stuff set in space, it kinda works for Gamora to be rocking the big, chonky-looking boots. Plus, she's supposed to be this heavily-enhanced warrior, so appearing short would work against that part of her character (Zoe Saldana is above-average height for a woman at 5'7", but that would still look short relative to her 6'+ co-stars).
That said, I think platform boots would have been a better way to lean into this aesthetic while also providing the height boost.
Black Widow should just have been left at ScarJo's natural height; she's not meant to be a beefy bruiser anyway. Gadot as wonder Woman probably just should have been scaled-up (digitally or with other tricks) as a whole if they wanted to be true to the character.
Black Widow's character until the last few movies was often subversion of expectations. Personal Assistant/secretary is a fighter. Bound and 'helpless' damsel is actually in control of the situation. If they'd let her be 5' 4", they could have taken this so much further without even trying!
I found it particularly disappointing in later films, because when she was introduced in "Iron man 2" her boots were flat-soled.
@@hansakkerman2611 Weirdly, she had both in IM2. At first we thought the flats we saw in pre-release high-res stills were for stunts and we wouldn't see them, but we clearly did. No logical sense in-universe, but it least it gave us cosplayers options! :-D
@@TheValerieMeachum those are more important. XD
I stand corrected.
@@hansakkerman2611 I love that the ones you registered were the flats, because it means you noticed them when it mattered (during the fight sequences) and not otherwise. Definitely underscores both Jill's point and your original very valid one!
@@TheValerieMeachum thanks! (Ah, civil discourse, how I've missed you) It's also particularly noticeable during the first "Wonder Woman" film, during the attack on the German HQ.
The shots of Robert Downey Jr. in non-diegetic high heels puts the practical concerns in a new light. But they also make it funnier to imagine what shooting those scenes was like.
They say that Grand Moff Tarkin was in non-diagetic fluffy slippers when he blew up Alderaan :)
now I understand why his posture is always so straight in those movies lol
Someone finally said something about it!! Thank you! I tried to cosplay a more casual Diana and I got flack for it because I wasn't wearing heels. I, of course, told the people if they want to stand in heels that high (I'm 5'2, it would need to be between 4 and 6 for me at least) they are more than welcome to try it and see how long they last. Long story short, a guy friend of mine decided to cosplay the same outfit I was wearing but he did his in heels (he had to prove a point) and he practiced walking and standing around and everything, and he didn't last half an hour.
Personally, I think it's less about how tall they are, and more about heels giving the leg a more feminine shape. It's a cultural thing. If it was just about height they could have spread the height difference across the entire foot, instead of putting it all in the heel. Eg, 2 inches in the front and 4 in the back, for example. Making only a 2 inch difference between the toe and the heel.
I think fighting in heels is stupid and I'm a guy.
I'm a girl and I think that heels, for all their impracticality, look really cool and not only on women (seriously google Starscream from the Transformers Prime series). Bayonetta and her pistol heels are one of the best stunningly goofy and absurdly gorgeous designs out there.
This! Whenever I watch Jill's videos, I ask myself why she doesn't realize that the reason most female characters wear heels is that they "look better." They're still impractical, but it's just sort of expected that women in movies wear heels.
I always thought it was strange that a lot of female characters had heels on cause they looked so uncomfortable, also jeez you criticise one thing and people just start blasting you for it. Yeah fantasy is supposed to be imaginative and crazy and stuff but like that doesn’t mean that it should completely ignore real world physics, especially if it’s supposed to be a more realistic and cinematic story.
Well, physics are always ignored in superhero movies. For example, Superman holding a building a building directly in the middle. Applying that much pressure to only the center of an object would break it clean in half, but...
I think when you see an action movie where the 120lbs, 15-20% body fat person beat a 200lbs, 20%-25% body fat person in a fight, you should probably not worry about very accurate fashion choices in the near future. 😂
@@polaris7346 tactile telekinesis
I agree. I get using the suspension of disbelief to make things look cooler (especially in fantasy/sci fi genres)... but the same rules are usually not applied to men as well. That double standard is very telling on whose eyes the impractical women/girl costumes are for. (Hint, it's straight guys.) If we want empowered women/girl characters, then they should be designed for actual women/girls. OR just give men/boy characters illogical but sexy outfits too. Equality for eye candy.
Explosive barrel effect. Literally first rule of games and entertainment is that it may ignore some stuff it it makes it more entertaining. so if it's that thing it's ok to comment if it's reality accurate, but boring about it is pain in ass. Just like one guy in my country was boring about stuff in games like explosive barrels. Which are for games' mechanics, plus actually many of them are propan-butan not gas and propan-butan explodes when shot.
I'm reminded of the quote about Ginger Rogers doing everything Fred Astaire did backwards and in heels
Have you done a video on breast plates? It would be interesting seeing an informed female opinion on the debate
I have one from way before I ever did fight analysis (back when Wonder Woman first came out)
ruclips.net/video/5FDZI7W2gL0/видео.html
...but I have plans for another crack at it in the future. I’d really like to do some experiments with armour and fencing chest protectors though, so it’s going to be a while in the planning.
I look forward to seeing the updated video
Boob-plate isn't a good idea if you're being attacked by swords (deflecting the sword towards your heart!) but it might be OK if you've being shot at by arrows or bullets or magical blobs of slow-moving bright light.
There is an interesting video by 'That Works' about Aesthetic influences on Armour design (ruclips.net/video/1l1jpFjXv4I/видео.html).
Now Ilya is a guy (despite the glorious hair), but I find his conclusion on hypothetical female Armour, at around 30 min, very interesting and nuanced.
He argues that (male) European style Armour follows a tradition to accentuate aesthetic (erotic) features of the wearers body.
Examples are the greek bell cuirass, lorica musculata, codpiece etc., and extrapolating female Armour probably would have accentuated the breasts in some way.
The whole video might be worth a watch, even if it is quite long.
@@AndrewBlack343 What about the "It will crush chest if you fall on it" argument?
I'd argue that it may also be to make their legs and butts look a certain way. You tend to hold yourself very differently if you're wearing high heels which comes across as more 'elegant' and 'feminine'. Plus it lengthens the look of the legs, slims the thighs and clenches the butt a bit more. Which is great if you wanna look super sexy in a tight fitting outfit, but yea, its totally ridiculous if you're fighting. Given that a lot of the characters that these shoes are given to are supposed to be more 'badass' or sexy , it can also project a kind of attitude.
However, espicially for height related issues, I think that they could take a leaf out of the goths look book and just wear some big chonking New Rock boots or something similar. They look badass af and even the more flat soled ones have a bit of platform on which easily add a couple of inches. (I say this from a lifetime of wearing them myself). Theres plenty of examples of these styles of boots that allow for a natural position of the foot with the ankle slightly raised but the boot itself is big and the height of the platform is disguised by the shape of the boot. They look far more like something you'd fight in and plenty of them have metal plates affixed which pack a nasty punch if you kick someone in them.
The thing is theyre a lot less elegant, and despite these characters being all about fighting, they still insist on a very petite and elegant silhouette for the sake of sexiness. I really enjoyed Gal Gadot in wonder woman but I was a little disappointed that they didnt cast someone a bit more chunky and muscular in body shape. I love the way comic artist Stjepan Šejić draws her as a tall brawny woman who looks like she could lift a truck with one hand. And honestly I rolled my eyes when i say another willowy petite actor who, although could be strong even with that body type, just didnt really scream powerful Amazonian to me. Dont get me wrong, im a very small and petite person myself, im not saying this for my own representation, I just want to see a female super hero who actually looks like she can bench press a house. I feel that theres this idea of what can be attractive and what isnt in hollywood, and unless youre petite and dainty, you dont fit that and you wont be cast in these kinds of films.
SAAAAAAAME! I was so bitterly disappointed in Wonder Woman, all the other Amazons looked incredible and here was picture 'perfect' Diana looking like she was ready to take to the catwalk. Putting women like Ann Wolfe and Brooke Ence in as background extras when they are just complete badass women and deserve to be stars was just so, so disappointing. And I say this as someone who is thick and desperately wants that representation
Funny thing, I just started playing Raid Shadow Legends (this is not an ad, the game has the worst monetization I have ever seen) partly because I saw some character designs I really liked, like Athel, my starting hero. Anyways, as I progress through the game, I realize that EVERY female character, ranging from heavily armored paladins and raging barbarian berserkers to sneaky assassin archers and seductive sorceresses or whatever - ALL of them have these ridiculously high heels. I'm a straight cis dude, so yeah, fair dues, I don't hate the pandering of attractive female models (again, Athel looks great), but f****ing Christ on a dirtbike, why is the female Conan-equivalent lady running around on stilletos? It just looks dumb. Why is the hovering demon lady wearing high heels? SHE DOESN'T EVEN WALK. Anyway, not 100% directly on the huge wedge heels, but you made me think of this. (There are other dumb problems with a lot of the female models in the game, but that's for another time.)
So the youtube sponsorships got you, huh?
wait is this another tactic of promoting raid shadow legends?
Jealous that men arent allowed to look sexy in heels?
Why would you play a mobile game that has put all it's money in ads. And is constantly trying to get you to pay..
Beside that i honestly think it's kind of sexist that women always wear high heels. And the whole thing doesn't make sense. But the majority watching/playing is male so it obviously tries to get them to watch/play..
Actually I have limits too. I hate japanese game style, when even men often looks like wearing pauldrons and pants with hole in place of boxers, but some people overbore about details.
Plus i saw guy running on ice casually in real world, without special equipment so I'm open to believe in anything.
if they really wanted taller ladies they could just give the actresses robert downey junior platforms. it's not just logistics.
Robert Downey Junior is also flying inside a robot suit for his action sequences and therefore doesn't need "big shoes" to look tall, same as the female characters that fly not using big shoes in their designs either.
The ones that will be in action shots with the male characters need to be a similar height to help composition. Unless you expect them to just never show a foot in any superhero action sequence.
@@Nocturne22 That isn’t even a valid answer.
There’s a solution here we’re not thinking of: cast shorter male actors
why?. males are generally taller than females, and it's not like short guys aren't in movies either. tom cruise is extremely short
@@84C4 it's dumb to actually care about how actors and actresses' performances are going to affect each other while casting?
There’s only so many hours in a day for Danny Devito to act.
@@rohithkumar8708 Yeah, but they aren't that many men over 6'2 in real life compare to the ammount you see in super hero movies.
Most (successful) male actors tend to be shorter, since it's easier to get them in frame.
I think superhero movies just tend to hire large men because it really sells the "larger-than-life" aspect of a superhero.
See, when they were doing the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series, they just put the lifts INSIDE the boots to create the needed heights (in this case, to make Jeremy Brett taller than his two Watsons, so an opposite example.) There's a memorable behind the scenes moments where the actors are running and the lifts kept sliding in Brett's shoes during their first scene filming together, so what's his name just said "This is absurd! Take the lifts out and I'll bend my knees more!" Or something of that. There have got to be more subtle solutions than full heels - a combination of posing, much shorter heels, and lifts
I've never had to wear heels, or wedges but I have worn GETA sandals, and the trick there is you have to change your body movement from the more common "heel-toe" style westerners use to lowering your center of gravity and walking forward with your hips leading as your foot slides forward.
Though going into combat with heels still looks like a recipe for a sprained ankle if you ask me.
As someone who is 5’4” thank you for saying we’re not short 😭
I’m 4’11 :,)
Depending on where in the world you are, you aren't short
I'm in the US you're short, but still taller than me, I'm literally 5 feet (I like being short though kekeke)
We're definitely not short. That's actually (very) slightly above average height for females, both worldwide and in the USA. Here's a list of average heights by country: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_human_height_by_country
@@Damienp3902 we're literally average height for women
@@tavrosnitram1529 Ehh if that's shorter than average, it can't be by much. I thought average height was around 5'4" or 5'5"
About wedges actually being harder to walk or run in, in high school I had to go to a fancy banquet and I bought myself a wedged heel thinking "Oh yeah. This should be more structurally stable than a stiletto." Of course when I ran across the parking lot, I tripped and twisted an ankle. You can't flex your foot in wedges...
I know person who twisted ankle in trekking shoes.
I don't find it difficult to run in heels, maybe thats just me
@@bellaknightR597 Nuh me too. I never wear a shoe in which I cannot run properly (and a have platform shoes of 12cm). It’s just a matter of being used to it, I guess?
I wore a pair of 7inch platform wedge heeled kneehigh lace up boots for pride last year for 12+ hours straight (from leaving the house at 10am til returning near midnight) and I marched through the streets, danced across the cobblestones, ran through the grass areas of the event (filled with rabbit potholes) and even shortcut through the beach (island pride event). They're more comfortable than my converse tbh, I would have only lasted 4 hours in them.
All my favourite clubbing shoes are heeled wedges, preferably with laces so I can really secure them to my foot, and I like a ankle boot height for security, but I have some without, and I can get 8 hours of dancing, running, jumping etc all on cobblestones while drunk without a single problem, even when carrying someone 😅 I do have pretty high arches though, so maybe that helps? 🤔
Yeeeeeeeees. I may have cried a bit when I saw the sandals being worn by WW and the fact she was going on horseback. Wedges and horses are a really good way to break your feet. All of her other fellow sisters have these perfect sandals with a nice 1/2” heel - perfect for horses (many of them actual equestrians) - and I’m wondering why no one stopped them from putting wedges on Gal Gadot.
I can't even walk normal in actual shoes lol so idk how they manage to run in heels and platforms XD
I learned how to walk, run and dance in heels from drag queens. They're better at it than anyone else. (The fact that I've been doing ballet for over 30 years doesn't hurt either! ;D)
@@neuralmute I still idk how people don't break an ankle in heels lol and I heard that ballet shoes are def harder to master than heels geez. XD What's their secret? I heard that it's just practice
@@greta7957 The first secret is practice, practice, and more practice, and the second secret is the muscle in your calves, ankles, and arches that you'll build up from all that practice. The third secret is key though. Always carry your body weight over the balls of your feet rather than your heels. It takes some getting used to, but it changes your centre of gravity and improves your balance and agility by orders of magnitude. If you're careful, you can run and jump without your heels even touching the ground.
As for pointe shoes for ballet, the toe box is pretty much paper mache, but made of layer after layer of fabric and glue until they're hard as rock, with actual wood in the shanks of some models. (there's a tendency to slam a new pair against the floor a good few times, as well as taking a carpenter's rasp to the soles, before even putting them on to walk around in.) They have to be solid when you're counting on the shoe to help you support your entire body weight on just a few toes. Just being able to hold yourself up en pointe requires quite a bit of strength and stamina, and attempting it without training is a good way to break ankles. metatarsals, and toes all over... XP
Stripper heels are actually pretty comfortable versus stilettos.
If Hollywood insists in putting heels, regardless of practicality in filming, shooting, and all-round mugging, they can at least have them gadgetized or something- rocket/hover-heels, or ground-pounders (earthbending maybe), blades/batons for the kicks, springs for the sprints, give me time I'll probably keep going...
At least Bayonetta's are guns.
@@Vaasref true, if the heels are guns its acceptable i agree
Wait, Karen Gillan is listed at 5' 11", isn't that tall enough without wedges?
One of the things that Jill is forgetting to take into account is feminism. Modern feminism likes heels because they think it makes women look sexy and sexy equals power. At least some people think that way. I remember seeing an interview about it. But it was years ago and I don't even remember who was interviewing who.
@@RoninRoan89 Feminism is weird. "We want equality, we want power, we want to be treated as sex objects … err no .. that's exactly what we don't want … but we do it to ourselves anyway?"
@@AndrewBlack343 Female sexualization remains a topic of significant debate, but the feminist equality stance on sexy clothing is that individual women should be able to choose to wear sexy clothes or shoes if they want to. Feminism does not dictate that heels =. power. Feminism just encourages women to embrace feminine objects like high heels as empowerment should they want to. Agency and choice is key. If you want to wear these things and they make you feel good it's empowering, if you want to wear flats and pants, good on you. If sexy clothes and shoes are the default and expectation to the extent of impracticality (some female superhero costumes), then it becomes a potential issue because the agency element is being taken away. Real human women can make choices about what they wear, but fictional women cannot choose what they wear, this is decided by directors, wardrobe consultants and societal ideals of beauty. Media and real life are treated as separate areas for discussion. *braces self for flamewar*
@@hurricaneofcats Sorry that was supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek comment. I appreciate it's a sensitive topic and didn't intend to step on any toes (in heels or otherwise!).
@@AndrewBlack343 lol, no offense taken! I'm glad it was tongue in cheek actually. I couldn't tell that it was teasing because I have seen a lot of unironic takes very similar to it. I also appreciate your shoe puns!
6:15 "It's okay to be short"
*Happiness noises* thank you :)
"Egregious awfulness... a topic for another time" - yes please!
The first time this phenomenon drew my attention was in The Avengers when I realized that all of the female shield agents had those things. Hated them then, hate them now, hate them forever. Also, the 6 inch action figure of Gamora looks even more ridiculous with her unproportionally small feet than she does in the movie. Hard to pose as well...
honestly, I would argue footwear is the single most impactful attire choice. The only exceptions I can think of is microgravity situations or people with flight powers.
don’t forget that Robert Downey Jr’s Iron man suit has heels built in like wonder woman’s suit
Suit feet can be built with platforms and inside lifts. They might look a little clunky but given that's where the thrusters are, it would make sense.
@@sparkledragon6216 please look up RDJ heels
"Great galumpfing sandals" is now one of my favorite terms
Harley Quinn: “I wear socks and tissue boxes I find around the city!”
Yes!! It was only a few minutes into the movie when they had that camera angle in the mall showing the back of her heels and I was like “really? She’s wearing THAT?”
The shoes for female super heros has frustrated, angered, and annoyed me to no end SINCE THE BEGINNING!!!! Thank you for this lol just let the ladies be their own damn height!!!
The SECOND you said it's not the breastplate I was like
"ITS THE HIGH HEELS!!!"
Finally someone is talking about that!!!
For some of these characters it would actually make sense in-universe for them to be short. Black Widow is essentially a ninja and real-world ninjas were exclusively short, lightweight people (sorry, Batman) to maximize their ability to climb, conceal themselves, and get in and out of tight spaces.
Batman isn't a ninja lol his son Damian Wayne is though and yes Damian is short at about 4"10 at 13?
I legitimately have never had an issue with running in wedges because they're what I wore for the longest time, but high chunky heels are a lot easier comparatively, imo. They have never given me an issue, but that very much might just be because that's what I've grown up wearing. It's always been wedges, chunky heels, or (the easiest of the three to run in) stuff like steel-toed boots.
Feminist brain: wedged heels are impractical in superhero movies and shouldn’t be used
WLW brain: heehoo pretty woman s t e p
Not a feminist and I still find heels in action sequences dumb as fuck. But coming from you, I guess it makes sense-
Why not give them practical boots and then use heels in some not-suprehero scene... the impact would be so much bigger imo
@@anonme_ That is just plain stupid, Superhero costumes aren’t meant to be practical, they are meant to show strength and power.
Keatons rubber suit isn’t practical.
Batman’s stone neck isn’t practical.
Flash costumes are never athletic.
Capes aren’t practical.
They’re just for show.
@@hailpickens2454 jugding that they are showed fighting people, it should have a little o realism.
@@hailpickens2454 The actors still have to move around in the stuff. You still want to make it comfy for them. Also realism makes everything better.
agreed w this, but it IS probably easier to make iron man taller in sneaky ways considering in all his action shots he’s in his suit which is completely cgi
I hadn’t even noticed honestly. Yeah, those all seem really stupid.
As a 5'1 cosplayer: YES! I do a lot of superhero cosplays and the highest I'll do is a 5-cm-block-heel. Never wedges.
Just saw that u r subscribed to jenna moreci and omgg i love her
And Bernadette banner too!