The perfect example of everything wrong with the modern concept of a "strong woman" is the Mulan remake. They took one of the most beloved and inspiring female characters in movie history and turned her into a textbook Mary Sue whose only "flaw" was not embracing how amazing she was from the start... Great message for the kids, "be born perfect or f**k you"... Cause it's not like every woman in that movie has Qi, only Mulan, she's the only special one, no one else gets to be amazing, only her... It's gross.
@@misanthropicservitorofmars2116 Okay lets be real. The only reason people bring that up is because the movie sucked. If the movie was good nobody would have cared where it was filmed.
Yeah, because if it was good, the production designers and filmmakers wouldn't have shot near a concentration camp in the first place. And thank the people responsible in the credits! @user-gm4kv2my4u
And there was no Shang!!@ He was a great love interest that never took away from how good Mulan became, but he learned to respect and admire her. Like she did him. But we can't have that anymore
The reason is money. If you are at least a bit familiar with the topic you'd notice it's all about driving men and women apart. It's much more profitable to keep us all separated.
@@ceoatcrystalsoft4942welp, superman isn’t romance but he has Lois Lane. And guess what? It sells. Because it’s normal for humans to seek connections regardless of what is our occupation or what we are currently dealing with. I agree that some shouldn’t have it, but I disagree with majority shouldn’t have it. Romance/Love is that one thing humanity can easily relate to because guess what? It is a shared experience regardless of nationality, race, age or gender. It’s timeless.
People who talk about Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley as "Strong Female Character" seem to forget that they spent the longest chunk of their first movies scared out of their minds. It is that experience that lets them be strong in the sequels.
That's a GREAT point. Heck, that's why Luke works well in Empire. He goes from a farm boy in over his head to a capable fighter over the course of 3 years
@@gloriathomas3245 Connor is not a 'Final girl', terminator does not have the structure of a slasher film and she is the objective from the start. On the other hand, Ripley is a Final girl in Alien but it grows to something more in Aliens.
@@DragonGoddess18 How would define a well written character, especially a female one? Juliette (Grimm) was a well written character in the show until season 4 where the writers really messed up.
"Having the female lead kiss the male lead takes away her agency!" But if she kissed another woman, that'd be perfectly fine, right? If a kiss between leads feels earned, why erase it? Especially after they've both been shown to be capable of surviving a stressful life-or-death situation. To imply a heterosexual kiss would be "removing the female lead's agency" when a same-sex kiss wouldn't, that just comes off as a double standard.
I’ve always hated this stupid idea that a woman has agency until a man appears and then she gets -20 to all stats or something. We read some feminist theory pieces in school and I remember one where they argued this notion that women can never have agency in relationships with men. My teacher explicitly didn’t agree with this piece and the whole discussion was just about showing where the conversation was at and some contemporary ideas being discussed in academia rather than saying that every person we read was really insightful or anything. But the point is that there are people who unironically believe that women are incapable of having agency in the presence of men and no matter how dumb and sexist I think this idea is, it doesn’t surprise me to see it present still…
Female characters not being able to exist without a male counterpart or a love interest has always been something people defend what do you think the bechdel test is if people always had that opinion there wouldn't be a need to open a dialogue on it and to the second half of this poor analogy representation for onscreen queer dynamics has always been harshly criticized Hollywood rarely portrays it and if they ever do it gets edited out for overseas audiences anyway
If a woman is surviving in a deep forest, the plot shouldn't be that she's a woman. The plot should be that someone's alone in the forest. That's been my issue. There's so much writing with the focus on womanhood rather than the situation she's in.
Our society is so rotten that now romance is associated with weakness when back then they always said love was the most powerful force and what made you strong.
I don't think they're shying away from romance, they just want romances more where the girl gets with the bad boy and maybe fix him and turn into a good man. It doesn't even matter if the dude's a cheater, he's violent, or any other number of clear red flags, the woman deems him as sexy and worth sticking by him especially if he leads a rich and dangerous lifestyle. You and a lot of other women may deny this, but all this really does is play off the hypergamous nature of women seeking excitement in their lives. It's funny also how life imitates art with the modern dating scene... You ladies only will settle for the us "lesser guys" when you can't get the most attractive and most exciting men out there, and live lives full of misery until hopefully one comes into your field of vision and you want to pursue it like a hunter... Regardless of whether things are actually stable, but to some of you ladies, stability is boring. It's a fantasy that comes from infatuation even if internally the guy's only looking for a casual fling. And this is coming from me as a writer.
As someone who grew up on cartoons and shounen anime, (and some shoujo) the "Power of Friendship" cliche has stuck with me for a very long time now - the villain monologue about how "Your friends make you weak!" before the hero pulls out the "No, my friends make me strong!" card and kicks the villain's ass always gets me, even when it's super cheesy - hell, stories like "The Secret of NIMH" where Mrs Brisby isn't some grand hero but rather a mother in over her head trying to help her sick child really gets me in my feels because I myself would do that for my family. I kinda feel that way when it comes to romance stories, a lead character should be willing to go through hell and back for their love interest, but it feels like we really are in the era of "A woman doesn't need a man anymore" and our media is reflecting that; as much as women really should be made to be strong and not just a paper thin love interest for a male lead, nothing brings chills like seeing a character fighting the odds and being willing to die for their loved ones, yet it's deemed too corny or even "sexist" if a person can't save the person they love more than life itself.
@@SirFailsalot91 I agree with you, I watched Fairy Tail and I hear people completely trash the power of friendship in that series. But I find it so empowering and Fairy Tail actually helped me out and changed my life and taught me valuable lessons. I wasn't to sure how I felt about the power of friendship in fairy Tail, but over time and as I finish the series. I gre to love it and it really made me want to go out and make more friends.
This week I watched the movie Colombiana staring Zoe Saldana and I was shocked by how differently her action scenes were handled when compared to heroines of today. She doesn't get into drawn out, physical fights with half a dozen guys twice her size, but instead uses superior firepower and strategy to outmaneuver everyone. It was a refreshing and enjoyable watch for me. I really hope that the female action hero doesn't disappear, because it can be done right.
I remember that movie! Great one. I love how her biggest weapon was intelligence. How her (i think) uncle told her she must be smart and go to school to find that crime boss and get revenge.
@@alien777 The difference is, they advertise themselves as just fun, mindless action flicks. Not complex Womans Rights Advocate Cinema or whatever tf else. Action movies with male Protagonists tend to be self aware that they are unrealistic, hammy, mindless trash. They aren't there for any deeper theme or to hammer politics into your brainstem, they are just there to have fun.
The bashing is the pendulum swinging in the opposite direction, that's all. I don't like it, but I was expecting it. To be honest, I catch myself being harsher to female characters as well now, even though I'm a girl.
Glad to see I'm not the only one finding myswlf judging female characters, when I never used to before. I am trying to fix this, but it helps to know I'm not the only one having this issue. On the other hand, I appreciate more now than ever, when I do see a well written female character.
What's hilarious is that cartoon Katara WAS the typical girl boss who covered her fear with overconfidence just like Sokka... and for a cartoon for children that was fine. I see no weakness in her after she gains her confidence throughout the live series. Sokka and Aang had their own confidence issues as well and it's spread through the whole season and then we get the payoff at the end. It was actually better thought out writing than the original. IMHO
What sucks way more is that Katara’s actress in the live action would have been able to perfectly match cartoon Katara’s emotions from the interviews she was in
As a father to a daughter. I do want good female heroes..but that said my daughter love male heroes too..way because she is a woman and like men as well as women. She loved Ton Stark because he had flaws he started off arrogant, self absorb, but after his tragic encounter he changes...she loved this ark because Tony struggled to do what is right. He even still had doubts. She loved Scarlett Witch because she had to deal with loss of her brother and man she loved. This is what make good characters period. Man or woman we have flaws and obstacles to overcome. Ellen Ripley was amazing because she had to learn on the fly in Aliens too. She learned weapons from Hicks and didn't belittle him, but was compassionate...she rushed in to the save the marines. Why because she has compassion for the women and MEN fighting the aliens. This is good character because it doesn't matter man or woman heroes aren't just all stoic...but compassionate, caring, and don't want people to experience the pains they went through. The quote I love is what is difference between villain and hero...is how they deal with situations..."the villain has gone through pain and wants others to feel this pain...the hero will go through pain and want to help other not experience that pain." Problem is most of the female heroes today actually act more like the villain which is not good message to young ladies.
I don't know whom you were quoting at the end there, but I just wanted to give you my sincere gratitude as it just helped me solve a major writers block. I also agree with your other points but seriously, thank you for that last bit.
@@jcjc7439 You are welcome. I cannot remember where or who that quote was from..but I think of the original Karate Kid when it comes to this quote to villain vs hero...Kreese the Cobra Kai sensei instructed the kids but you could see in his creed and teaching he wanted others to experience pain. Mr. Miyagi on the other hand was WWII Medal of Honor recipient who lost his child and wife while he served and instead of pushing that pain onto others...he sought a peaceful life and then taught Daniel how to deal with life is a good way...balance, controlling your emotions, he poured his wisdom into him. As a good man and father should and maybe help Daniel avoid mistakes he made. :)
The problem is that we've all been conditioned for the last decade to see these girlboss red flags so now we're all hyper sensitive to it. It will take time to reverse that and we will lose some good movies along the way. That's just how it is unfortunately and the studios have nobody to blame but themselves.
@@sonicsnake44 That's still on hollywood, legacy media, and their bad communication with the fandom. I liked Furiosa. But years of bad media helped seal that movie's fate. Another thing that gets glossed over is that the media tried to manufacture controversy over Fury Road by finding a relatively small thread of guys whining about the movie and blowing it way out of proportion - all for drama clicks. That put a bad taste about the Mad Max Franchise in the mouths of a lot of people.
@@user-gm4kv2my4uFuriosa would have flopped no matter what, even Fury Road barely turned profit despite all the hype. But a female lead for an action flick with a girlbossish trailer (apparently not representative of the actual film) is a BO death sentence in 2024.
@@yarpen26 No disagreement there. I don't believe that mad Max is a big money franchise to begin with. Certainly not one where you invest over 150 mil into production.
Every hero needs flaws, weaknesses. That's what the story is actually about. The story is not that much about overcoming the villain. The villain is a prop upon which the hero tests themselves, fails, and then grows. (Of course, the villain can be developed too, but if the villain is developed and the hero isn't, the audience wonders who they should be cheering for.)
The kneejerk reaction is to be expected after years of horrendously written female girlboss characters. People are jaded and tired of being disappointed over and over. I don't blame people for seeing a movie with a female lead and having a "oh no" first reaction. It's sad that this is what it's come down to now, but it's a learnt behavior.
So people have been trained like dogs to hate female leads. Maybe some people need to learn to think critically about things instead of being a NPC repeating the same catch phrases.
Yep. I won't go out of my way to throw accusations at things I haven't watched, but what I will do is just save my time and money out of not wanting to take the chance. That's on them, not us.
I worry about that with my novels (Don't ask, could be a long time). But if we don't fix this before I publish I can see my stories ignored as potential propaganda. Maybe hated on all sides as I start with an old fashioned couple in the 60's. But two generations take dark turns and it has modern strong female character vibes in some ways. But one, you're not supposed to root for and the other is a child of circumstance who with me having to write massive aid around her, overcame the power tripping behavior and face the trauma that caused it. That's universal, especially if you have certain types of strengths that give you advantages while buried under pain. Oh well. Maybe things will change by then.
It also doesn't help when rage bait grifters like Nerdrotic are screaming screaming like Karens at the sight of any thing that remotely resembles their definition of muh woke
"Strong female character" originally meant strong as in strong WRITING. As in, multi-faceted and complex and a character that fits seamlessly into the world of the book or film. Since they failed to understand that, it's no wonder that the writing has only gotten worse. A strong female character can be physically and morally weak, she can even be a walking set of stereotypes as long as the reasons behind why she is that way are fully developed and she feels like a real person. Suiting a stereotype doesn't make a real life person any less of a complex individual, it shouldn't do that to well-written characters either.
It's killing me that they are just completely removing love interests from all of these movies. A big part of me thinks that today's writers don't have relationship experience to draw on to write the love interest and think characters don't need them. This is wrong, especially for action movies, the love interest helps ground and humanize the character.
I agree with this completely. My take on it is that they view most forms of romance between men and women as a form of the patriarchy. If you think about it, how many healthy relationships have you seen between men and women in media where the man is shown as the matriarch of the family or where both have equal footing in the relationship and treat each other as partners. Ether the woman is completely dominant in it or she’s lusting after another woman or the man learns his ways and discovers he needs to submit to her.
This. I think too, that they just can't relate, therefor they don't write it. "Write what you know" it's often said, and if you don't know... you can't write it. Also it helps their agenda to destroy love, especially love between a man and a woman.
Disney's stance with romance has just become a pain in the backside in particular. "Tangled" gave us a romance where the relationship between Rapunzel and Flynn actually worked well, while "Frozen" had Anna and Kristof actually feel rushed in the first film before becoming an afterthought in the second, and now they just don't exist in any other movies unless they're romances between side characters. Hell, Fix-It Felix and Sergeant Calhoun were both shown to be very capable characters in "Wreck-It Ralph" and got sidelined to babysit the Sugar Rush kids in "Ralph Breaks The Internet," and "Wish" completely being rewritten to remove the star being a person just hurt that film altogether. "Moana" worked without needing a romance since Maoi is a god and Moana is a teenage girl, but that doesn't mean every story no longer needs romance in it - sometimes a good romance is just what the audience needs, like "Beauty & the Beast" having both Belle and the Beast as active and fleshed-out characters instead of merely sidelining one or the other and making the love interest barely a character a-la Prince Charming in "Snow White." Some stories really do last lifetimes, if not generations, so for a company built off of stories with romance in them to now be completely flushing it away is just disappointing.
It’s because at some point a requirement of being an SFC became having no vulnerabilities, and falling in love is a vulnerability. There are two loopholes, though: an SFC is allowed to fall in love with another SFC, and they are allowed to fall in love with a man that they have proven themselves physically equal or superior to. As always, there are exceptions, but they just prove the rule.
People's reaction to female characters today come from YEARS of being proverbially beaten, badgered, and slandered by their creators, who jump down your throat and call you a sexist and a bigot for not giving their shoddily-written characters a chance. And it didn't help that they've released "strong female characters" back-to-back-to-back. After movies like the Last Jedi, Peter Pan, and Captain Marvel, people are just sick of being disappointed in Hollywood and their decisions, and would rather dodge that landmine altogether rather than disarm it. So they immediately lash out against them now. It's sad, but that's Hollywood's fault. And that sucks because writers like myself who want nothing more than to tell stories with female leads now have to tiptoe through our stories just to make sure we don't piss people off. It's the same with LGBT characters; there have been so many blatant LGBT characters forced into stories that meaningful characters who fall under that umbrella are taking the heat, and again, that makes it hard for writers who want to use those characters, too. Hollywood has no idea who much damage it's done to female lead characters and LGBT characters after everything they did. And that's why the pendulum is swinging the other way this hard.
Hollywood doesn’t care because they’re like vampires. They suck the life out of a concept until the victim is a dry corpse and then move onto the next big thing. The process leaves the concept or IP too damaged to use for at least a generation. Westerns for example are just beginning to make a comeback after 40 years of being made to rest after the flood of spaghetti westerns in the 1970’s and I’d make a bet that superheroes and girl-bosses are now in the same boat
It's like how in the cartoon side of RUclips there's this big drama right now because a guy dismissed the Fairly Odd Parents new series entirely and trashed it for having a "race-swap" for a main character. She isn't. She's a brand new character who is actually really distinct and likeable. But we've had so many terrible Hollywood cashgrab soulless products that slapped on a black woman so they can use as a token and a shield that now a lot of people are mistrustful of those sorts of characters. It's hurting authentic good stories.
I completely reject notions such as these. We need to be critical of movies themselves and NOT be affected by the brainrot ultimately caused by things like this. We can blame Hollywood all we like but to fight this stupid pendulum we need to simply stand fast in simple terms. Terms like woke has just muddied the waters for how to judge media nowadays.
@@TheAnimaAnimal stand fast? To what? They haven't earned my money dude. They keep making shit movies. So stand fast to what? To shitty movies? The few good successful ones reflect that people just want good stories. So people are standing fast there. And despite X-Men 97 being weird with rouge and other elements, I think overall the show is good. But it's not on me to fix anything. Look man, there's just no way you're gonna get me to buy and consume product. I like what I like. And the woke thing, to me, doesn't muddy thr waters. But personally I don't like using the term. Not cause I dislike it but cause people just turn their brains off so I purposely use it while describing in long winded statements that the word covers. But either way, it's not on us to do anything but spend money where we deem appropriate. It's their fault. So they can fix it. I ain't gonna do shit but sit back and wait for the few good things to squeak out. That or watch anime so that tends to have everything she said in the video and more. Lol.
@@lastmanstanding7155The word "woke" has lost all meaning. It originally meant issues facing the black community back in the day (Boyz N the Hood would be a "woke" movie in its time), but now it's applied to everything from transgender issues to IVF. It's gone the way of the word "problematic."
The thing is they seem overpowered and flawless. Nobody is scared anymore and finds bravery. I just saw Alien Romulus and that was a great example of young people dealing with that type of adversity. They basically shit their pants at the get-go.
It is just too bad the character in Romulus are idiots. At no point (before they know there are xenomorphs/facehuggers around) do they show any kind of inquisitve behaviour. Some very basic "I wonder what is going on here" would have prevented all of the movie. Now, you could go "but then there would be no movie?" Yeah, well, then they should write a better one. If it only works because of characters and interstellar companies being idiots, it just doesn't work. (And the movie makes Aliens impossible because in Aliens WY didn't know anything about xenomorphs)
Romulus was sort of refreshing in that just about the only way it bashed into my skull that it's the year of our lord 2024 was through the unnecessary deep fake shoehorning of Ian Holm's '70s face because REMEMBA DIIIIIS???
Because a love interest can be used for blackmail in a story. Usually the villain goes for the love interest because that is the protagonist's soft spot. If they want a more ruthless hero, remove the soft spot.
The people who complain about female characters having a loving interest are starting to go to anime/manga (specially the shonen ones). They say the same thing about "oh the female character loses her agency when she Falls in love bla bla". It is like love isn't a good motivation for a character 🙄
The difference is that shonen manga are specifically aimed at middle school and high school boys. Hence why you have shallow relationships with simplified female characters. Because puberty. I do see manga becoming more politically correct (especially the WSJ), especially regarding foreign cultures and diversity (already happening, even though the hero will always be japanese-compatible, since it's the main target) but not regarding sexuality since it's a direct part of their target. On the other way, there's a lot of manga, indie comics or european comics with progressive values but people complaining just care about the mainstream (seriously, elfquest is full of people of colour and atypical sexual orientation but some people just want a black superman)
What drives me nuts is that people who complain about this type of thing are ignoring reality - these characters are called *supporting* characters for a reason. They don't need agency. They don't need to be multi dimensional. They need to *support* the main character's growth and development. Every time they try to push against that, it screws up the main character's arch and makes the supporting character look bad. They did this in the first season of Invincible trying to make Amber a hot shot girl boss who "calls Mark out." They thought it "gave her agency." Instead - it made her look like a self-centered b---- and everyone hated her. It also did nothing to help Mark grow as a character. It was just him getting dogpiled on with bs as if he wasn't getting his ass kicked enough as it was. If you can give a supporting character their own arch that's great. If you can't do it right though - DON'T.
@@user-gm4kv2my4u And they want every female character in shonen to have a motivation or an arc and make the main character an extra in their story. Shoujo exists, no one complains that the male characters don't have as much attention as the females characters.
The idea that the girl kissing the guy at the end of a movie would rEmOvE hEr AgEnCy is actually anti-feminist 🤦♂️ I'm sure he doesn't ID as such, but it's the only way he could say smth so ridiculous in this day and age
The only movie I can actually get behind that is The Sony Spider verse animated movies with Miles and Gwen because they show why they can't be a couple, she is scared she'll lose him if she gives in based on her past and he won't because he doesn't think he's good enough for her And they don't outright say it they show us through their motivations and their actions
The thing with Kate in Twisters is that her accepting Tyler as a love interest would complete her journey that started at the beginning of the movie; she allowed herself to heal from what happened to her BF
Same. Its so silly. There's a way to include hetero romance without "taking away her agency". That being said, I do hate a vast majority of romantic films or sub plots, for many reasons, and wish they got a little philosophical about actual love. If most romance is bad or even strange and fetishist (Twilight -esque), START MAKING HEALTHY ROMANCE. All it takes is establishing *mutual* respect, admirations, compassions, and care for the others wellness, but they delete romance from a woman's story in general instead, if they don't make her rude. This may not make sense if you haven't seen Arcane, but I heard is that Mel (the politician woman) lost her agency after falling in love which couldn't be further from the truth. Sure she appears a bit softer and has a minor change of heart near the finale, BUT she is still controlling everyone, and acts independently *often* . This criticism came from Brandon Sanderson of all people. Hot take: he has lost a little credibility for that comment, in my eyes.
Modern hollywood considers "Strong female character" to be a masculine character with mammals and other female parts. The don't know what female strength is. Hell, they don't even know what a woman is and what a strength is as concepts. Delusional narcissistic bigots...
I feel like all hollywood producers need a tiny Inigo Montoya to tell them when the word they are using does not mean what they think it does. Agency is, having a goal, and taking action to achieve it. No matter how big or small, good or evil. If a woman wants to kiss the love interest, and then she does it, congratulations, you have officially achieved the fabled _agency._ It's not remotely as hard as they claim it to be.
The tragedy is that not only did they lose the audience trust, but they also replaced it with distain and indifference. Unfortunately, it's going to take some good female characters being ignored to get to normal. Its crazy looking back that i was excited to have a female lead for the new star trilogy because i was looking forward to the unique story opportunities that presented, for me to get back to that level of trust for western media will take a long time.
Honestly with the way you explained things Jess, it feels like Hollywood has become extremely cautious and scared to actually portray women accurately in any way that might be seen as "controversial". Hollywood has basically turned everyone into a bunch of cowards. They were afraid to give Addy a kiss scene in twisters, they were afraid to actually portray Sokka's sexism in the Avatar live-action show, they're afraid to actually portray Osha & Mae as genuinely good and/or bad in The Acolyte, Hollywood has ironically lost it's balls.
You are so right! And Disney in particular is changing their princess personalities and story in live actions. I will never forgive them from what the did to my girl Mulan!!😭😭 From a jeneric clumsy Chinese girl with no skills that will eventually become a warrior after hard training, to now a Chinese girl with super strength and little to know flaws??!! Why?? They made her so boring and they also destroy her love interest too, what happen to Shang??!!
That was a travesty, probably the worst remake and it’s a bad bunch to begin with. Mulan was so iconic much more so because of her flaws and struggles, not her power. And the romance was beautiful in that, Shang coming to love and respect her didn’t take away from her agency at all, it was a satisfying result of a well defined set of characters.
This new "hate" is not hate people have for female character. It is a conclusion that the audience has drawn after an consistant pattern of movies, shows, games being plastered with Mary Sue characters. The audience avoids media with a femlae lead because the their experience with it over the last decade or so has not only been negative consuming that media but the producers, actors, developers shamed and insulted that audience for ANY criticism and called them misogynists. And there are a lot of receits for that. If strong female character is a negative term now, it's not because of the audience and not because there is a hate for female characters, but it is entirely the fault of the industry. The industry ran that train right off a cliff. It's gonna take the media (not the audience!) a lot of trust-earning and hard work to re-establish strong female characters that people will like. Good luck.
@@alien777 The audience demonstrably rejects Mary Sue know-it-all characters more and more. It's not just me and I'm not even loud about anything. There is nothing wrong in rejecting that which you don't like (and which insults you non-stop). Creators/Artists need an audience, especially if they want to make money. If you produce garbage that no audience wants, your loss.
i think 2024 sucks because everyone gets offended by everything to the point where you cant even have a traditional romance film that involves a woman kissing her love interest
Thing is, nobody's getting offended and if they do, they're an insignificant fraction that wouldn't ever go to see your movie to begin with. For 95% of society, morals and cinema expectations haven't really changed that much since the '80s. Hence the love for the movies of that era, because people there actually act like people in 2024. You see guys catcalling girls in those old movies and you see it in real life, but in 2024 movies? No.
The same thing is happening to character(s) of color, especially female character(s) of color. Their made to be either insufferable or bland and it tarnishes the future action based POCs.
When I went to the cinema to watch the live action Barbie movie last year, near the end when Ken was gonna kiss Barbie but didn't, one guy stood up and screamed, "OH, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! JUST LET HIM KISS YOU, YOU B@#$%!" Everyone in the cinema laughed at that. He was kicked out and the men in the audience applauded him as he left.
That is disgusting. Women aren't s3x toys for men that they should just "let them" do whatever they want with them. That guy and the men who applauded him are r@pist monsters.
When Jessica Jones came out I thought it was fantastic. If instead saw it for the first time tomorrow I'd probably immediately feel jaded by aspects of 'the message' that are in the story, and that saddens me
@@leonais1 I was thinking something similar about a scene in an old Roger Moore Bond movie - I may get this wrong but I think it is either For Your Eyes Only or The Man With The Golden Gun - the gag is Bond finds himself in charge of two Japanese (or at least East Asian - I remember them as Japanese) school girls, whereupon they encounter some ruffians of some description, that Bond is obviously daunted by but nevertheless he does the chivalrous thing and places himself between the girls and the villains intending to defend them, whereupon the girls step in front, push him back and assume Martial arts poses and proceed to destroy this gang in a Bruce Lee style. This from the late seventies early eighties; if the same scene played today it would be declared that Bond was being emasculated and this is part of the agenda, rather than simply enjoyed as a humourous subversion. I think a hypervigilant wariness of "wokeness" has been developed in response to an awareness of a genuine trend so we now see it where it isn't like similacra of wokeness.
@@leonais1 When she spoke on the "agency" part I instantly thought of Jessica Jones and how the show butchered her and Luke's romance They're literally married in the comics and I heard the " Agency" line as an excuse to why they kept them apart Don't get me wrong i love the show and Luke Cage , but that always rubbed me the wrong way Even bumblebee a great movie of my favorite transformer, did the same with the lead character and her love interest
@@Chuck_EL I liked the layout of those series each with one eponymous hero and shared side characters. For me, that does enough to justify splitting Jessica and Luke but I've never read the comics.
This take is 100% accurate and VERY nuanced. In the Woke/Anti-Woke culture war, NPCs exist on both sides. And you are touching on the mistake many Anti-Woke NPCS who have these "over-correction" takes in response to the damaging work of Woke NPCS. I am a Black 'anti-woke' dude. And I have noticed this attitude from a small number of the extreme Anti-woke rolling their eyes now whenever something starring a black character is announced. It's understandable how people can come to the conclusion that it'll inherently be woke based on Woke fatigue. I get it. But jumping out the gate at EVERY situation where a minority is highlighted ends up quickly becoming a "Boy who cried wolf" situation. The moment we start acting like EVERYTHING is Woke or DEI, we inevitably start losing ground and giving ammunition to Woke NPCs who label us bigots and every "-ist" under the sun. Practice discretion and nuance people! Do some research on the projects you're criticizing and wait for them to at least develop first before judging. STOP ACTING LIKE THE WOKE NPCS!
You're totally right about Ripley that would be badly received nowadays and the stigma female characters have. Too many movies with bad female characters where people cry in the media about sexism if you don't go see the movie, this is pushing the people the other way and make them put every movie with these characters in the same bag. I think it's the same for LGBT/diversity characters unfortunately. They've been doing movies where the only requirements was to check every checkbox to not appear sexist/racist/anti-lgbt without paying attention to the stories or how these characters get integrated and we end up with bad movies. They want movies discussing these problematic, that's totally fine, just split them in different films and write your story around that theme in a subtle manner instead of packing movies with choices made to fill your checklist.
👏👏👏 nuance feels like it’s dead. And people have had bad experiences so now they’re jaded and assume the worst immediately. And I agree about how so many female/diverse/minority characters get written. It’s just, “Yay! We checked 12 boxes off for this movie!!!” I will always cite it as a well-written show and character but I freaking adored Buffy. I’m 37 so the show was on when I was like pre-teen and teens, so it was influential on me. While I will fully admit the last season was flawed, I still 20 years later get goosebumps watching the finale when they “awaken” all of the slayers and the ones down in the hellmouth start beating back the ubervamps. It’s such a badass moment and it EASILY could have fallen into super cheesy territory. But it worked (for the most part) because it felt earned. And because it wasn’t just about “girl power rah rah”, it fed into the bigger story of Buffy always being alone and having to carry the burden of saving the world on her shoulders. Buffy, in my eyes, will always be such a great example of female empowerment not just because she was a badass, but because she was a human who had a personality and made mistakes. She wasn’t a robot and it was stressed throughout the duration of the show that she survived as long as she did because she had friends, but at the same time her powers and responsibilities caused conflict with her friends at times. It worked because it explored the complexities that come with having that type of power and responsibility. Now that I’ve written a 20 page essay on why I love Buffy.😂😂😂
The issue is that people see patterns; we see 'strong female lead' in a movie that sucks and flops once, eh, it's an outlier. After the dozenth time it's not an outlier; it's the trend... and movies that are good with a female lead will be seen with distrust at best.
I loved the new Dune movies, but Zendaya's Chani just wasn't the same Chani from the book. If there's one franchise that needs more strong female characters, Dune isn't it. By the end of Chapterhouse, women control the universe; following an Intergalactic war between two space nations ruled by women, and that was published in the mid-1980's.
Now, I am fine with women, but I kinda support the Tleilaxu. I have a criticism though: women should not be reduced to incubators, we can keep women and create truly artificial wombs. In my ideal society, it would be similar to the Bene Tleilaxu, but minus the anti-woman stuff: individuals would rise on merit. I have a feeling the true future will lean toward my views by the 22nd century, including using genetic engineering and biotech more. I am guessing my faction will win, as men and women will support me, as I support men or women being caretakers for the younglings based on their choice and evaluated suitability.
Rogue, Storm and Gambit were my favorite x men when I was young 🥲 Rogue was so strong, tortured but still brave, one of the most powerful they could count on even if she felt apart from the others always afraid of hurting those close to her
It's ironic that Hollywood pushed the "girl boss" archetype so aggressively, that it hurt audiences' perception of female characters in general. Furiosa was, in my opinion, the biggest victim of this. The movie is awesome, and I liked it a lot more than Fury Road. Yet, none of my friends (who aren't political in the slightest) wanted to go see it in theaters.
I think Netflix nailed the writing of Jinx, Vi and Caitlyn in Arcane. We need more of that. I hope they do Lara Croft justice in the upcoming animated series.
Looking forward to season 2 btw. It took me quite some time to get on board because of the type of animation but when I gave it a shot, daaamn, that was the best show that came out that year
Arcane was cool, especially in terms of aesthetics, but let's not kid ourselves: if there's a popular show just inches away from diving into the crater of "unproblematic" blandness and political wish fulfillment, it's this. The first season had enough going for it to still be enjoyable. But it came veeeeery close to the edge nonetheless. Dragon Prince is a similar story. It started out very well. Politics turned it into an absolute trainwreck by season 3. And it really didn't need to... had it come out just a decade earlier. Then it would be remembered today alongside the likes of Avatar. But nope.
People are so sick of the Hollywood girl boss that the well has been retroactively poisoned for a lot of people, who now have a strongly negative reaction to characters who used to be fine. It's like if you get food poisoning, and then can't stand to eat the thing that made you sick in the future.
Exactly. Hollywood will strip-mine a genre until there’s nothing left to dig up and move onto the next idea mine. This process leaves the audience too exhausted over the idea for anyone to bother trying to use it for at least a generation like the cheesy 2000’s and early 2010’s sci-fi teen dystopia films that were inspired by Hunger Games, the western genre in the 1970’s, or superheroes and girl-bosses now.
@@AmericanAdvancement To be honest, I was thoroughly sick to my stomach with Marvel even before the movies went political. Every single movie had the same tone and undercut any drama with annoying humor. It was real conveyor belt cinema. Pushing political agendas was just the icing on the cake.
I hated everything about the changes to Chani. In the books, she was already a strong female character. She HAD agency. I think a majority of her scenes are when she's directly acting of her own agency, against Paul's wishes (for his benefit.) Her place in Fremen society was respected as a priestess of their religion, officiating over ceremonies of great importance to the people. After Paul begins ruling, she's described as being a key player in their strategy meetings, keeping track, in her mind, of a great many logistic data figures that are important to running the empire. Even before Paul began ruling, Paul had Chani and his mother do the negotiating of the terms of the Emperor's surrender. Now, she's a rebellious teenager who wants nothing to do with Fremen ways. Woo... agency. (Also, Like Rogue, Paul never turned evil... the Fremen turned him into a figurehead for their religious zealotry and Paul did everything in his power to blunt the force of their anger fueled war of revenge, and eventually to work against the public perception of his "godhood". Even someone with all of his power and ability was unable to stand against the government and religion that sprung up around him that acted in his name, against his wishes. The movie got this SOOOO wrong. My stomach turned when they had him say "Take them to heaven." at the end...)
Also, I feel that making Chani so prominent made Irulan a lot less impactful. Irulan who in her own accord is absolutely amazing, very important to the entire Dune saga and whose portrayal in the 2000 mini series was a great way of expanding the screentime of a female character without detracting from the plot.
I think Leyla from MoonKnight was a decently written strong female character. She doesn't undermine the male counterpart to appear strong. She rather relies on him a lot. She realises when to back off. And she gets thrashed around by bigger guys until she becomes an avatar. Only thing that could've made her character more interesting would've been a flashback episode where we get to explore more into her past relations with maybe her dad and Mark.
I said at the outset when they started going down that route that the Backlash for doing a lousy job too often was going to destroy the idea of capable female protagonists for years to come
@@ClassicHarleyQuinn This decade so far I've come across many well written male & female characters. Then again, not everyone is into animes, mangas & K-dramas.
Today, i finally bought and watched the 2015 live action Cinderella movie and it was better than i honestly imagined❤ Great writing, amazing characterization, no toxic identity politics, respected the original film while also adding new modern elements that enhanced it😲👍 Made me feel like a jid again back in Nigeria watching the original. The romance was especially beautiful 😍 It is ironic how that film was made by disney and written by western millennials. If such amazing quality media line that can be made, why not make more of it instead of the endless garbage we see these days involving female characters? These days, i mainly watch anime for my well written female characters.
One of my fav recent-ish female characters is Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt) in Edge of Tomorrow (2014). The character is strong yet vulnerable and feminine as well.
@@A_RUclips_Commenter Yeah, it really is! It was based off a Manga named "All You Need Is Kill", I've been wanting to read ever since. I just hope that if they do a sequel like they've been saying, that the character isn't changed to appease the prevailing ideology of "strong female characters".
@@lizc.214 You just reminded me. I own that manga. I bought it after seeing the movie and put it in my comic book storage closet. I have ADHD and never got around to reading it. Thanks, now I am headed to grab it out of there.
This movie really surprised me (in a great way) when I saw it the first time two years ago. Even more surprised it's 10 years old and flew under the radar. I enjoyed her character very much also.
This. This is exactly how I’ve felt with how Lara Croft and how she’s been written since Crystal Dynamics started making Tomb Raider games. They started off fine, basically adapting the Angelina Jolie movie canon. But slowly with every game, they’ve taken away her actually strength and capabilities and just made her weak and whiny and replaced it with agency. Now, she’s not THE TOMB RAIDER because she wants to be one. She’s just an explorer fulfilling her father’s legacy while being more subservient to her team or friends more than anything. They only fake her “agency” because it’s the “right thing to portray.”
Re: agency in kissing scenes.. They're suggesting that a benign choice the character makes is enough to rob her of her own agency. A woman takes away her own agency by using that agency.. and they think that makes the writing stronger? They think that's what women want, to be told that we cannot make our own choices because we run the risk of making a mistake in someone else's eyes?
You totally nailed it. The most illuminating statement I felt you made was the pendulum shift. Hollywood has pushed this archetype so hard that is has had the opposite effect. Great video. Well done again. And I disliked Chani too.
I think the problem is we've had so much DEI/quotas etc. people are just wary (weary?) of it. Even if a female character as an action lead makes sense from a story narrative some people are just going to be suspicious of the motives for it. Your example with Prey was spot on. I saw some of the chatter about a 'Mary Sue' at the time - even though the story went to pains to show her failing and growing. But latter-day Disneyfication has left a lot of viewers jaded I guess.
Oh yeah, you nailed it in regards to Chani and Dune. We don't need an audience avatar to be skeptical on our behalf. Also, they reduced the time frame and removed the death of their first child. DV can make visually stunning movies, but he definitely struggles with deeper characterization and world building.
DV wants to make Dune Messiah, but he already knee-capped Chani, as his version doesn't have the same drive to have another child in the events of that story.
I think he manage to personify the effect of studio interference. Most weaknesses in bad writing come from studios mettleling with the production to sanitize their characters.
The old executives are the worst. I'm sure that internally Spielberg finds the whole feminist/gay empowerment thing utterly ludicrous, he probably spent half his career making fun of directors he suspected were closeted gay. But he feels like he needs to play the tune and he does it by going after every stereotype his hunch tells him sells on Twitter. That's why so many pieces of media lambasted as woke actually feel like mean-spirited Fox-made parodies. Because the people behind both types actually have lots of deeply rooted disgust for the subject matter, even if completely different motives in trying to portray them.
@@futurestoryteller yes it does the 'good Christian' morale messaging produced many a hollow preachy character in the 50s just as did the pro/anti communist morale messaging of the cold war, just as does the current 'good progressive' morale messaging, and I highly doubt they'd all agree on what is/isn't morale And since comics and animation is often seen as 'for children' they often face tighter restrictions than tv/radio, which in turn as opt out media had sticker control then opt in media like movies and/or books
All you need is good writing (and not worrying about what Twitter thinks), & you can make great characters. Let's just hope we can get back to the days of having good female characters again. Great video Jester!
14:09 That is the exact same problem I had with Mary Jane in the Spider-man 2018 game. She does nothing but condescend and belittle him, and does not respect how dangerous Peter's lifestyle is.
One cause of the problem were industry quotas that raised the supply of female leads far above the demand. It lost novelty. The poor quality of the films, and openly hostile and/or mocking tones from the production and cast, especially in franchises that no one asked to change, were just the icing on the cake.
I don't really watch movies or tv anymore. I get really uninterested when I feel a choice was made out of fear instead of inspiration. It just feels like I'm not watching something made by a person or group of people with a shared goal. Feels like I'm watching slop made for no one.
A lot of TV and movies seem to have fallen into the trap of making things for the widest possible audience. Media is very susceptible to "if you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one" and they don't seem to realise that.
Its one of my issue with those that push "the message" in entertainment, they link their nonsense to minorities and others so much , a project that doesn't have "the message" featuring a black guy is still poopooed because the entertainment landscape is so thoroughly gonked. The same project might have done really well before 2016.
With the decline of quality strong female characters like Katara, Sarah Connor, and Princess Leia; it makes me wonder if we’ll ever see another Beatrix Kiddo (Kill Bill) a woman who gave a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘Slay Queen.’
Mizu from Blue Eye Samurai was great. Strong, flawed, goal-oriented, still has feelings… sure some thing’s are over the top, but it’s not restricted to just her.
Amazing video essay! And yes, the problem today with Female lead characters is half bad writing and half studios attempting to pander to certain audiences. They are more concerned with offending certain members of the audiences than actually writing complete, well-rounded, and fleshed out Female leads.
We still love strong female characters today! Like 11 from Stranger Things or Wednesday from Netflix! It's definitely the writing, by making the male characters weak to make the female character strong! You can have strong or smart female characters and male ones too. Without making every male character weak and stupid! People loved the first Wonder Woman movie. They did it right!
They poked the bear too much. And customers have seen all the red flags over the years. So I don't blame people for calling stuff out and being warry of other things. This applies to movies, tv shows, cartoons, video games, comics, books, etc. I can look at the 2000s (even the early 2010s to some extent) and backwards for all those different types of media and find 100s of great female characters from Princess Zelda, Jill Valentine, Sarah Connor, Storm, and Wonder Woman to Ellen Ripley, Chun-Li, Cheetara, Samus Aran, and Princess Leia. But within the last 8-10 or so years I have a hard time naming at least 30 good female characters. These companies are at fault for that. And they are the ones to push the customers towards it.
I'm just going to put this out there as a woman; strength is something you gain with hardship and it's a relative thing. You can experience victimhood and require help yet still be strong. In fact, accepting that is strength within itself. Having a heart of stone and being a loner is the opposite of being strong.
I'd argue that having the heart of stone character rediscover their humanity also shows strength. It's a good contrast for supporting characters but unfortunately they don't have writers, they have activists.
Strength is found in overcoming your obstacles, both in real life and writing, but specifically writing. After all, character arcs are all about change!
I don't think that "strong female character" = "action hero". For me both Ellen Ripley and Jane Eyre are strong female characters. Unfortunately that "girl boss" template they use now is just either warping existing heroines into something they're not (Ann Elliott) or make the new ones predictable, pretentious and boring. It's like only using salt and pepper to spice your dish, when all the other herbs and spices are available.
Thank you so much Jestor for sharing your thoughts on character in pop culture. Our tastes in media & genre overlap and I envy your insightfulness about the relationships depicted in movies and comics I have loved for a lifetime. One aspect of your discussion of female heroine's I thought you may have overlooked. The aspect is, you, as a female lover of comic book heros & action movies, while not quite a unicorn, are at least the red headed kids in class. By that I mean that comics & action heroes are still overwhelmingly male entertainment, even if it disgusts and is loathed by Disney & Hollywood in general. Ripley & Sarah Conner were and are beloved characters but I believe they, and moreso the movies they were in were still written with , "the male gaze" in mind. Alien begins as an ensemble cast, most of whom are men, and it is only as they are killed off one by one, partly by their own hubris and bad decisions that we root more & more for Ripley as it is only later she becomes the star. I saw the movie when it came out in the 1980's and in my hazy memory the movie was marketed mainly around the Alien itself and not as a "female action hero" movie. Sarah Conner I believe is similar, men would never feel demeaned by Terminator as the lead was the beloved actor Arnold, who was still beloved even as he portrayed the Ultra masculine killing machine, while Sarah again became someone to root for as she fulfilled a classic feminine role as the mother protecting her son. By Terminator II, Arnold portrayed an even more popular male archetype as a father willing to fight for, then when victorious, sacrifice his very existence to save his son and his society. In that mileu Sarah Connor gaining more bad ass mother bear skills in no way threatened masculinity in the movie or was seen as an attack on the male audience. Getting back to The Marvel's & Madam web, it's my understanding that the audience of both movies was still about 65% male. This is a long way to say it, but I think you may have overlooked the idea that Ripley & Sarah Connor were in movies that portrayed masculinity in ways appealing to men as well as more subtly challenging masculinity. Modern Hollywood has portrayed masculinity in a more bigoted way than we have seen an American group portrayed since the 1960's. It simultaneously now wants to have financially successful Comic book & action movies that only appeal to what they believe women should want. That I believe is a reason, along with all your other points, Madam Web & The Marvel's failed. Even without the almost decade of active attacks on masculinity in heroic movies, say if Madam Web or The Marvel's were released in the 1990's following Terminator 2, the movies would struggle because they are in a ticket buying male genre. It's still like marketing a really well done Ken doll to male children, the doll may be well manufactured but Ken is in a genre that is marketed to girls, so it has little to no chance of success Jester, if you've made it this far, I'm typing this in on my phone, so sorry for the terrible editing, and I'm going to your patreon to become patron number 9 after this. I love your insightful content.
Chani didn't need to be updated for modern audiences. In the book she was a bad ass fighter who loved Paul. Not good enough for modern audiences. It is a feudal society across the universe but let's make it modern. Surprised there were no pronouns.
The first "modern audience" non kiss ending I distinctly remember was Pacific Rim. While it wasn't necessary for them to kiss the dumbest part of that decision was they had them alone looking deeply into each other's eyes, get close, only to turn their heads away at the end and roll credits. Made absolutely no sense. It was praised HEAVILY at the time by the media.
I did get the feeling that Furiosa was hypercompetent from the get go and her actress didn't have the phisicallity to back it up either. When she gets her arm crushed she barely reacted, it was extremely weird, and not for a woman, for a human in general.
This is bad, bro! Female characters should be able to be females, come on, now! And it's so stupid right now, man! I love many female characters, but Hollywood's ruined them and it sucks to see that! Bad writing is a problem, not just with female characters, but male ones as well! They can be awfully written, too! But it's mostly been a problem with the female characters, and how they're depicted and stuff! Come on, Hollywood! Do better!
25:00 The Pocahontas scene with the text is amazing. I do hate a vast majority of romantic films or sub plots, for many reasons. That being said, I despise the idea that all romance takes away a girls agency. There is a way to include hetero romance without "taking away her agency", all it takes is establishing *mutual* respect, admirations, compassions, and care for the others wellness, but they delete romance from a woman's story in general instead, if they don't make her rude. I read new MJ as a tsundere, because yeah, no one falls for a girl that always.... well, almost rude. Like she must have a good side that comes out off screen. This may not make sense if you haven't seen Arcane, but I heard is that Mel (the politician woman) lost her agency after falling in love which couldn't be further from the truth. Sure she appears a bit softer and has a minor change of heart near the finale, BUT she is still controlling everyone, and acts independently *often* . This criticism came from Brandon Sanderson of all people. Hot take: he has lost a little credibility for that comment, in my eyes.
My fav female recently is Lisa Swallows from Lisa Frankenstein. She is a gross, morbid, rude, flawed character. She’s not a good role model but at the same time she is so relatable to me as a teenage girl. Sometimes women are gross and morbid and rude. And that’s okay. Sometimes women are kind and meek and respectful. And that’s okay. It’s not one size fits all
Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor were perfect examples of how to do it right. The reason their bravery in the face of horror was believable is because they were mothers. Ripley was brave enough to go back into the Alien hive when none of the soldiers were, because she was a mother. It was believable. Connor went from a timid waitress to a gun-toting militia-type because she knew there were robots from the future coming to kill her son. It was believable. Their strength came FROM their feminine qualities. The modern "strong female character" is strong DESPITE their feminine qualities (if any). The underlying thought process seems to be that masculine power is the only kind of power and that if a woman is to be strong, then she must be masculine. It's like the writers don't understand the concept of feminine power, despite having such clear examples in Ripley and Connor. The feminist attempt to write a strong female character ended with writing a series of men with tits.
OK but as a woman who plans to never have kids, the idea that "feminine strength" is equated with being a mother is... blech. Why is it only believable because "they were mothers"? People can be brave for all sorts of reasons and it's weird to say that a woman's bravery is believable "because she's a mother" when there's no equivalent to that for men. If a man is brave in the face of danger, do they need to be a father? These women are brave because they have connections, others they care about. In this case, it's a child, but it doesn't have to be.
@nicoler5713 men who are brave in the face of danger can be just as unbelievable, which is why I most of the ones who cone to mind are good ones, like neo, John McLane, and even comedic actors like Eddie Murphy. The classic "action hero" is John McLane, who is brave at the face of danger because it's his job to be brave as a cop and because his wife's life is on the line. Furiousa is a great modern example of how it's done. She has the motivation, she has the time to develop these skills, she's great. What people hate is unearned badassery. She hulk (im better because im a woman), captain marvel(unlikable, literally zero faminine traits, may as well be a 14 yo boy at this point), Ray (classic marie-sue) are prime examples.
@@nicoler5713it doesn’t, but the connection between a mother and a child is one of the most primal and powerful. You don’t HAVE to be a mother to be brave, but being a mother tends to make women braver than they might have been otherwise if their child is involved. A good parent fears no pain or death if it will save their child
The thing about both of them was their gender didn't matter. It could equally have just been some guy in the same situation. Normal people, faced with incredible danger, and they could've curled up in a ball, but they didn't, they acted. That's what a hero is. Not someone who isn't afraid, or is a badass, no, it's simply someone who rises to the challenge.
@@alien777 watched every minute of it. Failures (most of which are not her fault) do not excuse being able to control her transformation just because she's a woman and being a woman is hard. Women have anger management issues just like men. Add that to the fact she "does everything better" than Bruce and you get why people don't like the show.
The movie "Prey" was disliked by a lot of people I knew because it pushed a feminist agenda. The main character was a female in a traditional native tribe in the 1800s or some such era. She was terrible at everything, but kept getting framed as being awesome and misunderstood. The men were portrayed as meatheads who couldn't figure out simple tactics. They were brutes while she was clever. And then the same thing happens with the Predator. It's shown to be a great hunter, until it faces her. She outwits it because she's an underestimated brilliant female. That was why people hated that movie.
She was getting her ass kicked the whole movie. Her brother even brought back a Lion head that should’ve killed her. She only lived as long as she did because she was a non threat. I even watched The OG predator and Dutch has plot armor towards the end as well that people either forget or overlook for some reason. I think both movies are fairly close and quality. She was absolutely not portrayed as a perfect woman. She got a little lucky with a little skill. Same as Dutch.
A significant moment in Dune, the book, that could have been expounded upon was what the Beast did to the couple's first child. It should have been devastating in the movie, and a scene that would certainly give more depth to both Chani and Paul and their relationship. They decided to cut that and go with "Chani is jealous of Paul and Irulan", which is traditional writing for women, and makes Chani seem stupid and petulant, when book Chani understood what was happening, even without Jessica emphasizing it for the reader.
Also the Batman series The Caped Crusader has destroyed Harley Quinns character and changed everything about her. This show makes me sick to my stomach and I hope this doesn't get second season
So true, these writers don't know how to make stuff or portray female heroes in general i.m.o.. Look at what they did to the WINX series... :S They removed all the color, glitter, fun & romance (besides a love triangle...:S) , because you can't be strong in glitters and have actual friends I guess....
Self-fulfilling prophecy of the "they only hae them because they're females!" because the cries of "we want good writing and no agenda!" fell on the def ears so the fandom just went "okay fine, if you'll see our criticism only as hating female action heroes, then so be it".
at 8:40 I dont think you understood that right. We havent gone from Sarah Connor being a role model to bad example. The point the tweet made is an entirely different one about the differences in self perception versus reality (or the perception of others). Sarah Connor is still being used as a good example. This tweet is the equivalent of someone saying to a high school footballer "oh you think youre Ronaldo?" That doesnt mean whoever says this hates Ronaldo. In fact, the speaker acknowledges Ronaldo as a good footballer.
Complexity is also necessary also in some cases. Sands if Time (the game, not the movie) is an extremely straightforward story but is just so damn satisfying to see the Prince and Farah build up their romance while going through so many trials and tribulations. I'd trade places with that demon-fighting SOB in a heartbeat. I can't remember the last time any piece of media made me feel this way.
What we need is fully rounded human beings. But apparently people can't do that if said character is apart of any minority, then they have to be "STRONG" and nothing else
Really interesting video! Really enjoyed the in-depth breakdown. The key is definitely the writing to start with - we want complex characters. Strength by overcoming flaws/setbacks are what we need - depth! Some films I really love with really well done female characters are Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (Emily Blunt), The Help (one of the best female ensemble casts ever assembled!), Miss Sloane(Jessica Chastain),Silence of the Lambs(Jodie Foster), Arrival (Amy Adams) Hidden Lives to name a few. We definitely need more female writers and directors, but the higher ups in the industry to be brave and back the female talent out there! Brilliant video - thank you!
Great video, and I agree with most of your points except Chani. You answered the reason why they changed her character in your question. It was stereotypical. Dune inspired a lot of stories, a lot of stories we've already seen, so now they've changed it in a smart way. Chani fell in love with Paul because he proved her wrong. Of course she's going to be condescending to a person related to the guy that pushed her people out of her home. But Paul shows her with his actions and words that he truly wants to learn about their culture, he wants to be one of them. The reason why Chani has been changed to be skeptical of Paul is th same reason why the original author wrote Messiah and the other books, because people were on Paul's side. Most people who see the movie have never read the book, the amount of stuff they've had to condense in a 3 hour movie was a lot and that's just from half the first book. So, of course, someone who has read the book may not need it because it already happened with the Messiah book, but someone who hasn't which is like 90% of the people who watched the movie would. So, I wouldn't say they ruined it, we'll have to see how Messiah turns out to truly tell, but as of now, I think they changed Chani into a more compelling character. She may have started the standard female character, but she doesn't need to be added to the millions that came after her.
Agreed! Chani frustrates me too... It was so disgusting when she spoke badly about his harritage. Who does that to someone who's family was murdered?? Empathy vacuum...
There was an interesting observation by another RUclipsr, I can't remember which one, but he said that the way the Marvel's and Madame Web were cut up and disjointed looked like it could have been a last minute change in response to the unpopularity of girlbosses.
Another example that would fit well is The Witcher. I started reading the books recently and it's almost funny how Sapkowski can't write a story without a genuinely strong woman in it. The guy seems to love women to death. The contrast with the TV series is jarring. And what's worse is that all these "strong females" in modern media are written by women and they are the ones who always go for some kind of stupid messaging instead of "guys, holly shit, aren't women so fucking awesome in their humanity??!" P.S. Yall should go watch The Fall Guy. It's entertaining and the way it just revels in all the silly Hollywood tropes is very heartwarming. Including a love story, which is one of the main story lines and while I myself was never a fan of love stories, this was so great to see in it's classiness.
I believe that the best part of a strong character is there emotions, usually a strong male character rages a lot but we know that they deeply care for those around them, Kratos is THE best example of this. The problem is strong girls dont care, don't have flaws, dont feel relatable at all.
The conclusion I come to as you also make in this great vid is that there are rules and regulations on female characters that simply didn't exist before. History is full of fantastic female characters with so many shades of complexity. A great example of the now late (and great) Gena Rowlands is the 1980 John Cassevetes' Gloria, which I highly recommend. She plays a single down-on-her-luck woman who is thrust into a situation where she has to care for a boy who is in danger of a violent criminal organization. Gloria absolutely wants no part of being nurturing or 'motherly' to this kid. She is self serving, kind hearted enough, but has an interesting edge to her. Her relationship with the boy is hilarious and winds up being completely endearing near the end. She is every flavor of complexity--badass and believable at the same time--something that female characters today simply are not afforded because they're made to be paradigms of strength in a hand waving third wave cardboard feminist type way. I'm a black writer myself and the observations you've made about women extend even more to black female characters too. Black women (and black characters in general) don't ever get to be in the wrong, spicy, colorful, villainous (very often at least), edgy, scared, or weird. The rules and regulations of film and television can't afford to have characters of color be the loose cannon or interesting ones because they're always the authoritative type that have to be no nonsense and keep the white protagonist in line. The strong female character is amplified in the angry black woman, or the strong black woman stereotype, where they have no emotional vulnerabilities whatsoever. The problem is that the characters who are the most expressive and three dimensional are the ones you have fun with, and women and people of color never get to be that. You love Ripley, you love Sarah Connor not just because they are tough and vulnerable, but because they get to be complex. Complexity is the breath of any interesting character, and to be complex, you need to let them be raw. A real shame, and I loved your take!
The perfect example of everything wrong with the modern concept of a "strong woman" is the Mulan remake.
They took one of the most beloved and inspiring female characters in movie history and turned her into a textbook Mary Sue whose only "flaw" was not embracing how amazing she was from the start... Great message for the kids, "be born perfect or f**k you"... Cause it's not like every woman in that movie has Qi, only Mulan, she's the only special one, no one else gets to be amazing, only her... It's gross.
Same...i will never forgive Disney for that.
It DESTROYED why Mulan was originally loved.
We all forgetting they filmed part of that movie near a concentration camp?
@@misanthropicservitorofmars2116 Okay lets be real. The only reason people bring that up is because the movie sucked. If the movie was good nobody would have cared where it was filmed.
Yeah, because if it was good, the production designers and filmmakers wouldn't have shot near a concentration camp in the first place. And thank the people responsible in the credits!
@user-gm4kv2my4u
And there was no Shang!!@ He was a great love interest that never took away from how good Mulan became, but he learned to respect and admire her. Like she did him. But we can't have that anymore
Why did it become ilegal for women to love whoever they want in media? It's human to want to seek love.
Not every movie needs a love story. Most shouldn't have one because that isnt the type of story they are telling. Save it for romance and drama
Because of feminism.
Population control propoganda. Why is else is heterosexual love not allowed and portrayed as a weakness when same sex ones are revered?
The reason is money. If you are at least a bit familiar with the topic you'd notice it's all about driving men and women apart. It's much more profitable to keep us all separated.
@@ceoatcrystalsoft4942welp, superman isn’t romance but he has Lois Lane. And guess what? It sells. Because it’s normal for humans to seek connections regardless of what is our occupation or what we are currently dealing with. I agree that some shouldn’t have it, but I disagree with majority shouldn’t have it. Romance/Love is that one thing humanity can easily relate to because guess what? It is a shared experience regardless of nationality, race, age or gender. It’s timeless.
People who talk about Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley as "Strong Female Character" seem to forget that they spent the longest chunk of their first movies scared out of their minds. It is that experience that lets them be strong in the sequels.
That's a GREAT point. Heck, that's why Luke works well in Empire. He goes from a farm boy in over his head to a capable fighter over the course of 3 years
@@The1Zubatman Conner and Ripley are examples of the Final Girl trope. Look it up.
Adversity builds strength.
They say that as a rebuttal to the idea that we're never had atrong female in old cinema, which is utter b.s.
@@gloriathomas3245 Connor is not a 'Final girl', terminator does not have the structure of a slasher film and she is the objective from the start. On the other hand, Ripley is a Final girl in Alien but it grows to something more in Aliens.
We never hated strong women, Disney just sucks at writing them.
You're right. We just want well-written characters
I'm pretty sure you will hate Buffy as a character when consider Joss Whedon stated reason for the creating the character.
@@DragonGoddess18 How would define a well written character, especially a female one? Juliette (Grimm) was a well written character in the show until season 4 where the writers really messed up.
@@gloriathomas3245 Never heard of Buffy.
@@gloriathomas3245 What was his reason for creating Buffy?
"Having the female lead kiss the male lead takes away her agency!"
But if she kissed another woman, that'd be perfectly fine, right? If a kiss between leads feels earned, why erase it? Especially after they've both been shown to be capable of surviving a stressful life-or-death situation.
To imply a heterosexual kiss would be "removing the female lead's agency" when a same-sex kiss wouldn't, that just comes off as a double standard.
I’ve always hated this stupid idea that a woman has agency until a man appears and then she gets -20 to all stats or something.
We read some feminist theory pieces in school and I remember one where they argued this notion that women can never have agency in relationships with men. My teacher explicitly didn’t agree with this piece and the whole discussion was just about showing where the conversation was at and some contemporary ideas being discussed in academia rather than saying that every person we read was really insightful or anything.
But the point is that there are people who unironically believe that women are incapable of having agency in the presence of men and no matter how dumb and sexist I think this idea is, it doesn’t surprise me to see it present still…
The ghost of Andrea Dworkin looms large. It is time for an exorcism.
I’m proof that Hollywood loves it’s double standards.
Female characters not being able to exist without a male counterpart or a love interest has always been something people defend what do you think the bechdel test is if people always had that opinion there wouldn't be a need to open a dialogue on it and to the second half of this poor analogy representation for onscreen queer dynamics has always been harshly criticized Hollywood rarely portrays it and if they ever do it gets edited out for overseas audiences anyway
yeah, remember that men are the worst evil that has ever crossed the earth
If a woman is surviving in a deep forest, the plot shouldn't be that she's a woman. The plot should be that someone's alone in the forest. That's been my issue. There's so much writing with the focus on womanhood rather than the situation she's in.
Completely agree. People in Hollywood just seem to see everything through the lens of race and sexuality for some weird reason
SOME stories should be about womanhood. But not all of them. Not NEARLY all of them.
@@alien777 You're a jackass.
@@alien777 Stupid request. Just because he maybe can't doesn't proove anything at all.
@@jameslough6329says the dude bitching about woman
Our society is so rotten that now romance is associated with weakness when back then they always said love was the most powerful force and what made you strong.
I don't think they're shying away from romance, they just want romances more where the girl gets with the bad boy and maybe fix him and turn into a good man.
It doesn't even matter if the dude's a cheater, he's violent, or any other number of clear red flags, the woman deems him as sexy and worth sticking by him especially if he leads a rich and dangerous lifestyle.
You and a lot of other women may deny this, but all this really does is play off the hypergamous nature of women seeking excitement in their lives.
It's funny also how life imitates art with the modern dating scene... You ladies only will settle for the us "lesser guys" when you can't get the most attractive and most exciting men out there, and live lives full of misery until hopefully one comes into your field of vision and you want to pursue it like a hunter... Regardless of whether things are actually stable, but to some of you ladies, stability is boring. It's a fantasy that comes from infatuation even if internally the guy's only looking for a casual fling.
And this is coming from me as a writer.
As someone who grew up on cartoons and shounen anime, (and some shoujo) the "Power of Friendship" cliche has stuck with me for a very long time now - the villain monologue about how "Your friends make you weak!" before the hero pulls out the "No, my friends make me strong!" card and kicks the villain's ass always gets me, even when it's super cheesy - hell, stories like "The Secret of NIMH" where Mrs Brisby isn't some grand hero but rather a mother in over her head trying to help her sick child really gets me in my feels because I myself would do that for my family.
I kinda feel that way when it comes to romance stories, a lead character should be willing to go through hell and back for their love interest, but it feels like we really are in the era of "A woman doesn't need a man anymore" and our media is reflecting that; as much as women really should be made to be strong and not just a paper thin love interest for a male lead, nothing brings chills like seeing a character fighting the odds and being willing to die for their loved ones, yet it's deemed too corny or even "sexist" if a person can't save the person they love more than life itself.
truth
@@SirFailsalot91 I agree with you, I watched Fairy Tail and I hear people completely trash the power of friendship in that series. But I find it so empowering and Fairy Tail actually helped me out and changed my life and taught me valuable lessons. I wasn't to sure how I felt about the power of friendship in fairy Tail, but over time and as I finish the series. I gre to love it and it really made me want to go out and make more friends.
If anime is anything to go by, the power of platonic friendship is by far the strongest force in the universe. 😅
This week I watched the movie Colombiana staring Zoe Saldana and I was shocked by how differently her action scenes were handled when compared to heroines of today. She doesn't get into drawn out, physical fights with half a dozen guys twice her size, but instead uses superior firepower and strategy to outmaneuver everyone. It was a refreshing and enjoyable watch for me. I really hope that the female action hero doesn't disappear, because it can be done right.
I remember that movie! Great one. I love how her biggest weapon was intelligence. How her (i think) uncle told her she must be smart and go to school to find that crime boss and get revenge.
@@alien777 The difference is, they advertise themselves as just fun, mindless action flicks. Not complex Womans Rights Advocate Cinema or whatever tf else.
Action movies with male Protagonists tend to be self aware that they are unrealistic, hammy, mindless trash. They aren't there for any deeper theme or to hammer politics into your brainstem, they are just there to have fun.
@@alien777
If Qui-Gon Jinn or Ra's Al Ghul were Gary Stus, they wouldn't have died...nor would they have obvious flaws.
Famously highly regarded cinematic classic Colombiana.
If I remember, Columbiana had to be reworked due to legal issues, but it was originally the sequel to The Professional.
The bashing is the pendulum swinging in the opposite direction, that's all. I don't like it, but I was expecting it. To be honest, I catch myself being harsher to female characters as well now, even though I'm a girl.
Glad to see I'm not the only one finding myswlf judging female characters, when I never used to before. I am trying to fix this, but it helps to know I'm not the only one having this issue.
On the other hand, I appreciate more now than ever, when I do see a well written female character.
@@emvagabond2891 true, same!
I still judge everything on it's own merit. The woke mind virus has not taken over my thoughts.
@@sonicsnake44 lol
@@emvagabond2891 preach queen!
Seeing Katara get ruined was awful. "Cartoon" Katara was amazing, live action Katara is disappointing.
What's hilarious is that cartoon Katara WAS the typical girl boss who covered her fear with overconfidence just like Sokka... and for a cartoon for children that was fine. I see no weakness in her after she gains her confidence throughout the live series. Sokka and Aang had their own confidence issues as well and it's spread through the whole season and then we get the payoff at the end. It was actually better thought out writing than the original. IMHO
What sucks way more is that Katara’s actress in the live action would have been able to perfectly match cartoon Katara’s emotions from the interviews she was in
As a father to a daughter. I do want good female heroes..but that said my daughter love male heroes too..way because she is a woman and like men as well as women. She loved Ton Stark because he had flaws he started off arrogant, self absorb, but after his tragic encounter he changes...she loved this ark because Tony struggled to do what is right. He even still had doubts. She loved Scarlett Witch because she had to deal with loss of her brother and man she loved.
This is what make good characters period. Man or woman we have flaws and obstacles to overcome. Ellen Ripley was amazing because she had to learn on the fly in Aliens too. She learned weapons from Hicks and didn't belittle him, but was compassionate...she rushed in to the save the marines. Why because she has compassion for the women and MEN fighting the aliens. This is good character because it doesn't matter man or woman heroes aren't just all stoic...but compassionate, caring, and don't want people to experience the pains they went through.
The quote I love is what is difference between villain and hero...is how they deal with situations..."the villain has gone through pain and wants others to feel this pain...the hero will go through pain and want to help other not experience that pain." Problem is most of the female heroes today actually act more like the villain which is not good message to young ladies.
I don't know whom you were quoting at the end there, but I just wanted to give you my sincere gratitude as it just helped me solve a major writers block. I also agree with your other points but seriously, thank you for that last bit.
@@jcjc7439 You are welcome. I cannot remember where or who that quote was from..but I think of the original Karate Kid when it comes to this quote to villain vs hero...Kreese the Cobra Kai sensei instructed the kids but you could see in his creed and teaching he wanted others to experience pain. Mr. Miyagi on the other hand was WWII Medal of Honor recipient who lost his child and wife while he served and instead of pushing that pain onto others...he sought a peaceful life and then taught Daniel how to deal with life is a good way...balance, controlling your emotions, he poured his wisdom into him. As a good man and father should and maybe help Daniel avoid mistakes he made. :)
The problem is that we've all been conditioned for the last decade to see these girlboss red flags so now we're all hyper sensitive to it. It will take time to reverse that and we will lose some good movies along the way. That's just how it is unfortunately and the studios have nobody to blame but themselves.
I can still view each movie and show as its own thing. Shame some people can't.
@@sonicsnake44 That's still on hollywood, legacy media, and their bad communication with the fandom. I liked Furiosa. But years of bad media helped seal that movie's fate. Another thing that gets glossed over is that the media tried to manufacture controversy over Fury Road by finding a relatively small thread of guys whining about the movie and blowing it way out of proportion - all for drama clicks. That put a bad taste about the Mad Max Franchise in the mouths of a lot of people.
Very well said. It's not my responsibility to change my perspective, it's on them to win me back as a customer.
@@user-gm4kv2my4uFuriosa would have flopped no matter what, even Fury Road barely turned profit despite all the hype. But a female lead for an action flick with a girlbossish trailer (apparently not representative of the actual film) is a BO death sentence in 2024.
@@yarpen26 No disagreement there. I don't believe that mad Max is a big money franchise to begin with. Certainly not one where you invest over 150 mil into production.
Every hero needs flaws, weaknesses. That's what the story is actually about. The story is not that much about overcoming the villain. The villain is a prop upon which the hero tests themselves, fails, and then grows. (Of course, the villain can be developed too, but if the villain is developed and the hero isn't, the audience wonders who they should be cheering for.)
The kneejerk reaction is to be expected after years of horrendously written female girlboss characters. People are jaded and tired of being disappointed over and over. I don't blame people for seeing a movie with a female lead and having a "oh no" first reaction. It's sad that this is what it's come down to now, but it's a learnt behavior.
💯
So people have been trained like dogs to hate female leads. Maybe some people need to learn to think critically about things instead of being a NPC repeating the same catch phrases.
Yep. I won't go out of my way to throw accusations at things I haven't watched, but what I will do is just save my time and money out of not wanting to take the chance. That's on them, not us.
I worry about that with my novels (Don't ask, could be a long time). But if we don't fix this before I publish I can see my stories ignored as potential propaganda. Maybe hated on all sides as I start with an old fashioned couple in the 60's. But two generations take dark turns and it has modern strong female character vibes in some ways. But one, you're not supposed to root for and the other is a child of circumstance who with me having to write massive aid around her, overcame the power tripping behavior and face the trauma that caused it. That's universal, especially if you have certain types of strengths that give you advantages while buried under pain. Oh well. Maybe things will change by then.
It also doesn't help when rage bait grifters like Nerdrotic are screaming screaming like Karens at the sight of any thing that remotely resembles their definition of muh woke
"Strong female character" originally meant strong as in strong WRITING. As in, multi-faceted and complex and a character that fits seamlessly into the world of the book or film. Since they failed to understand that, it's no wonder that the writing has only gotten worse. A strong female character can be physically and morally weak, she can even be a walking set of stereotypes as long as the reasons behind why she is that way are fully developed and she feels like a real person. Suiting a stereotype doesn't make a real life person any less of a complex individual, it shouldn't do that to well-written characters either.
She is part of the reason people don't think of it that way.
It's killing me that they are just completely removing love interests from all of these movies. A big part of me thinks that today's writers don't have relationship experience to draw on to write the love interest and think characters don't need them. This is wrong, especially for action movies, the love interest helps ground and humanize the character.
I agree with this completely. My take on it is that they view most forms of romance between men and women as a form of the patriarchy. If you think about it, how many healthy relationships have you seen between men and women in media where the man is shown as the matriarch of the family or where both have equal footing in the relationship and treat each other as partners. Ether the woman is completely dominant in it or she’s lusting after another woman or the man learns his ways and discovers he needs to submit to her.
This. I think too, that they just can't relate, therefor they don't write it.
"Write what you know" it's often said, and if you don't know... you can't write it. Also it helps their agenda to destroy love, especially love between a man and a woman.
Disney's stance with romance has just become a pain in the backside in particular.
"Tangled" gave us a romance where the relationship between Rapunzel and Flynn actually worked well, while "Frozen" had Anna and Kristof actually feel rushed in the first film before becoming an afterthought in the second, and now they just don't exist in any other movies unless they're romances between side characters.
Hell, Fix-It Felix and Sergeant Calhoun were both shown to be very capable characters in "Wreck-It Ralph" and got sidelined to babysit the Sugar Rush kids in "Ralph Breaks The Internet," and "Wish" completely being rewritten to remove the star being a person just hurt that film altogether.
"Moana" worked without needing a romance since Maoi is a god and Moana is a teenage girl, but that doesn't mean every story no longer needs romance in it - sometimes a good romance is just what the audience needs, like "Beauty & the Beast" having both Belle and the Beast as active and fleshed-out characters instead of merely sidelining one or the other and making the love interest barely a character a-la Prince Charming in "Snow White."
Some stories really do last lifetimes, if not generations, so for a company built off of stories with romance in them to now be completely flushing it away is just disappointing.
It’s because at some point a requirement of being an SFC became having no vulnerabilities, and falling in love is a vulnerability.
There are two loopholes, though: an SFC is allowed to fall in love with another SFC, and they are allowed to fall in love with a man that they have proven themselves physically equal or superior to. As always, there are exceptions, but they just prove the rule.
@@furrygecko SFC? Sorry, I think I missed the meaning of it. Google didn't help.
People's reaction to female characters today come from YEARS of being proverbially beaten, badgered, and slandered by their creators, who jump down your throat and call you a sexist and a bigot for not giving their shoddily-written characters a chance. And it didn't help that they've released "strong female characters" back-to-back-to-back. After movies like the Last Jedi, Peter Pan, and Captain Marvel, people are just sick of being disappointed in Hollywood and their decisions, and would rather dodge that landmine altogether rather than disarm it. So they immediately lash out against them now. It's sad, but that's Hollywood's fault.
And that sucks because writers like myself who want nothing more than to tell stories with female leads now have to tiptoe through our stories just to make sure we don't piss people off. It's the same with LGBT characters; there have been so many blatant LGBT characters forced into stories that meaningful characters who fall under that umbrella are taking the heat, and again, that makes it hard for writers who want to use those characters, too.
Hollywood has no idea who much damage it's done to female lead characters and LGBT characters after everything they did. And that's why the pendulum is swinging the other way this hard.
Hollywood doesn’t care because they’re like vampires. They suck the life out of a concept until the victim is a dry corpse and then move onto the next big thing. The process leaves the concept or IP too damaged to use for at least a generation. Westerns for example are just beginning to make a comeback after 40 years of being made to rest after the flood of spaghetti westerns in the 1970’s and I’d make a bet that superheroes and girl-bosses are now in the same boat
It's like how in the cartoon side of RUclips there's this big drama right now because a guy dismissed the Fairly Odd Parents new series entirely and trashed it for having a "race-swap" for a main character. She isn't. She's a brand new character who is actually really distinct and likeable. But we've had so many terrible Hollywood cashgrab soulless products that slapped on a black woman so they can use as a token and a shield that now a lot of people are mistrustful of those sorts of characters. It's hurting authentic good stories.
I completely reject notions such as these. We need to be critical of movies themselves and NOT be affected by the brainrot ultimately caused by things like this.
We can blame Hollywood all we like but to fight this stupid pendulum we need to simply stand fast in simple terms. Terms like woke has just muddied the waters for how to judge media nowadays.
@@TheAnimaAnimal stand fast? To what? They haven't earned my money dude. They keep making shit movies. So stand fast to what? To shitty movies? The few good successful ones reflect that people just want good stories. So people are standing fast there. And despite X-Men 97 being weird with rouge and other elements, I think overall the show is good. But it's not on me to fix anything.
Look man, there's just no way you're gonna get me to buy and consume product. I like what I like. And the woke thing, to me, doesn't muddy thr waters. But personally I don't like using the term. Not cause I dislike it but cause people just turn their brains off so I purposely use it while describing in long winded statements that the word covers. But either way, it's not on us to do anything but spend money where we deem appropriate. It's their fault. So they can fix it. I ain't gonna do shit but sit back and wait for the few good things to squeak out.
That or watch anime so that tends to have everything she said in the video and more. Lol.
@@lastmanstanding7155The word "woke" has lost all meaning. It originally meant issues facing the black community back in the day (Boyz N the Hood would be a "woke" movie in its time), but now it's applied to everything from transgender issues to IVF. It's gone the way of the word "problematic."
The thing is they seem overpowered and flawless. Nobody is scared anymore and finds bravery. I just saw Alien Romulus and that was a great example of young people dealing with that type of adversity. They basically shit their pants at the get-go.
Good to hear. Any human character who doesn’t crap their pants upon seeing a xenomorph is just not believable.
It is just too bad the character in Romulus are idiots. At no point (before they know there are xenomorphs/facehuggers around) do they show any kind of inquisitve behaviour. Some very basic "I wonder what is going on here" would have prevented all of the movie.
Now, you could go "but then there would be no movie?" Yeah, well, then they should write a better one. If it only works because of characters and interstellar companies being idiots, it just doesn't work.
(And the movie makes Aliens impossible because in Aliens WY didn't know anything about xenomorphs)
Romulus was sort of refreshing in that just about the only way it bashed into my skull that it's the year of our lord 2024 was through the unnecessary deep fake shoehorning of Ian Holm's '70s face because REMEMBA DIIIIIS???
Why is romance and feelings of infatuation now associated with weakness? Have I missed the memo these past 6 years?
They hate something they can't get, and bastardize it instead.
Apparently you did lose the one on how "men don't theserve love and yadayadayada"
Because a love interest can be used for blackmail in a story. Usually the villain goes for the love interest because that is the protagonist's soft spot. If they want a more ruthless hero, remove the soft spot.
The people who complain about female characters having a loving interest are starting to go to anime/manga (specially the shonen ones). They say the same thing about "oh the female character loses her agency when she Falls in love bla bla".
It is like love isn't a good motivation for a character 🙄
The difference is that shonen manga are specifically aimed at middle school and high school boys. Hence why you have shallow relationships with simplified female characters. Because puberty.
I do see manga becoming more politically correct (especially the WSJ), especially regarding foreign cultures and diversity (already happening, even though the hero will always be japanese-compatible, since it's the main target) but not regarding sexuality since it's a direct part of their target.
On the other way, there's a lot of manga, indie comics or european comics with progressive values but people complaining just care about the mainstream (seriously, elfquest is full of people of colour and atypical sexual orientation but some people just want a black superman)
What drives me nuts is that people who complain about this type of thing are ignoring reality - these characters are called *supporting* characters for a reason. They don't need agency. They don't need to be multi dimensional. They need to *support* the main character's growth and development. Every time they try to push against that, it screws up the main character's arch and makes the supporting character look bad. They did this in the first season of Invincible trying to make Amber a hot shot girl boss who "calls Mark out." They thought it "gave her agency." Instead - it made her look like a self-centered b---- and everyone hated her. It also did nothing to help Mark grow as a character. It was just him getting dogpiled on with bs as if he wasn't getting his ass kicked enough as it was.
If you can give a supporting character their own arch that's great. If you can't do it right though - DON'T.
@@user-gm4kv2my4u And they want every female character in shonen to have a motivation or an arc and make the main character an extra in their story. Shoujo exists, no one complains that the male characters don't have as much attention as the females characters.
I bet you if the female characters were gay they would've made them have that kiss scene. They really do hate heterosexual relationships
This is not a coincidence. They are doing it on purpose. And it make thing even more hideous
Its for the brownie points "gay kiss= +1"
You're deluded if you think that would happen.
List all the shows where it does; I'll wait.
I just can't see why anyone would think she's a right-wing grifter...
@@gustavgustav2670Anyone could google it and find you a list, but you are just a left winger arguing in bad faith.
The idea that the girl kissing the guy at the end of a movie would rEmOvE hEr AgEnCy is actually anti-feminist 🤦♂️ I'm sure he doesn't ID as such, but it's the only way he could say smth so ridiculous in this day and age
The only movie I can actually get behind that is The Sony Spider verse animated movies with Miles and Gwen because they show why they can't be a couple, she is scared she'll lose him if she gives in based on her past and he won't because he doesn't think he's good enough for her
And they don't outright say it they show us through their motivations and their actions
The thing with Kate in Twisters is that her accepting Tyler as a love interest would complete her journey that started at the beginning of the movie; she allowed herself to heal from what happened to her BF
Same. Its so silly.
There's a way to include hetero romance without "taking away her agency". That being said, I do hate a vast majority of romantic films or sub plots, for many reasons, and wish they got a little philosophical about actual love. If most romance is bad or even strange and fetishist (Twilight -esque), START MAKING HEALTHY ROMANCE. All it takes is establishing *mutual* respect, admirations, compassions, and care for the others wellness, but they delete romance from a woman's story in general instead, if they don't make her rude.
This may not make sense if you haven't seen Arcane, but I heard is that Mel (the politician woman) lost her agency after falling in love which couldn't be further from the truth. Sure she appears a bit softer and has a minor change of heart near the finale, BUT she is still controlling everyone, and acts independently *often* . This criticism came from Brandon Sanderson of all people. Hot take: he has lost a little credibility for that comment, in my eyes.
@@ThreadBareHope1234
In general I always hate how Sanderson writes female main characters.
Couldn't get into Mistborn because of this.
"Strong female character" initially meant "Well developed character", but was quickly misinterpreted to mean "Tough, heroic, action hero."
Don't forget to add 'unlikable' to it.
This is yet another case of the lowest common denominator winning out. It happens with language, music, and art.
Modern hollywood considers "Strong female character" to be a masculine character with mammals and other female parts. The don't know what female strength is. Hell, they don't even know what a woman is and what a strength is as concepts. Delusional narcissistic bigots...
Also “rude”, “egotistical” and “obnoxious”. She was perfect. It was just men who got in her way.
I feel like all hollywood producers need a tiny Inigo Montoya to tell them when the word they are using does not mean what they think it does.
Agency is, having a goal, and taking action to achieve it. No matter how big or small, good or evil. If a woman wants to kiss the love interest, and then she does it, congratulations, you have officially achieved the fabled _agency._ It's not remotely as hard as they claim it to be.
Yeah exactly, man these people are so cooked, they are actors but don't understand real people anymore 😒
The tragedy is that not only did they lose the audience trust, but they also replaced it with distain and indifference. Unfortunately, it's going to take some good female characters being ignored to get to normal.
Its crazy looking back that i was excited to have a female lead for the new star trilogy because i was looking forward to the unique story opportunities that presented, for me to get back to that level of trust for western media will take a long time.
I agree...i feel Bad for Rey, her concept was not the problem.
It was ppl like Kathleen Kennedy.
@@andresanguianozuniga6798...what concept though? As far as I can tell they had no vision for her character at all
Honestly with the way you explained things Jess, it feels like Hollywood has become extremely cautious and scared to actually portray women accurately in any way that might be seen as "controversial". Hollywood has basically turned everyone into a bunch of cowards. They were afraid to give Addy a kiss scene in twisters, they were afraid to actually portray Sokka's sexism in the Avatar live-action show, they're afraid to actually portray Osha & Mae as genuinely good and/or bad in The Acolyte, Hollywood has ironically lost it's balls.
Lost it's ability to tell story
@@yurikendal4868 That too.
@@alien777 Yeah… REAL great time to live in. =W=‘
They completely ruined the best female character of all time : Sokka!
Poor Katara... she was so cooler in the cartoon.
Yeah one of the most recognised and iconic female characters of all time, reduced to a middling husk of a character. So sad 😞
My favorite female RUclipsr has drop a banger
You are so right! And Disney in particular is changing their princess personalities and story in live actions. I will never forgive them from what the did to my girl Mulan!!😭😭 From a jeneric clumsy Chinese girl with no skills that will eventually become a warrior after hard training, to now a Chinese girl with super strength and little to know flaws??!! Why?? They made her so boring and they also destroy her love interest too, what happen to Shang??!!
That was a travesty, probably the worst remake and it’s a bad bunch to begin with. Mulan was so iconic much more so because of her flaws and struggles, not her power. And the romance was beautiful in that, Shang coming to love and respect her didn’t take away from her agency at all, it was a satisfying result of a well defined set of characters.
This new "hate" is not hate people have for female character. It is a conclusion that the audience has drawn after an consistant pattern of movies, shows, games being plastered with Mary Sue characters. The audience avoids media with a femlae lead because the their experience with it over the last decade or so has not only been negative consuming that media but the producers, actors, developers shamed and insulted that audience for ANY criticism and called them misogynists. And there are a lot of receits for that.
If strong female character is a negative term now, it's not because of the audience and not because there is a hate for female characters, but it is entirely the fault of the industry. The industry ran that train right off a cliff. It's gonna take the media (not the audience!) a lot of trust-earning and hard work to re-establish strong female characters that people will like. Good luck.
@@alien777 The audience demonstrably rejects Mary Sue know-it-all characters more and more. It's not just me and I'm not even loud about anything. There is nothing wrong in rejecting that which you don't like (and which insults you non-stop). Creators/Artists need an audience, especially if they want to make money. If you produce garbage that no audience wants, your loss.
i think 2024 sucks because everyone gets offended by everything to the point where you cant even have a traditional romance film that involves a woman kissing her love interest
This been a thing since 2016
@@dgkdrago6374 I think it's worse now than it was in 2016
Unless it’s her kissing her female love interest. Then it is pushed and viciously defended. 🙄
Thing is, nobody's getting offended and if they do, they're an insignificant fraction that wouldn't ever go to see your movie to begin with. For 95% of society, morals and cinema expectations haven't really changed that much since the '80s. Hence the love for the movies of that era, because people there actually act like people in 2024. You see guys catcalling girls in those old movies and you see it in real life, but in 2024 movies? No.
@@yarpen26 ok but movies still suck
The same thing is happening to character(s) of color, especially female character(s) of color. Their made to be either insufferable or bland and it tarnishes the future action based POCs.
When I went to the cinema to watch the live action Barbie movie last year, near the end when Ken was gonna kiss Barbie but didn't, one guy stood up and screamed, "OH, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! JUST LET HIM KISS YOU, YOU B@#$%!" Everyone in the cinema laughed at that. He was kicked out and the men in the audience applauded him as he left.
That is disgusting. Women aren't s3x toys for men that they should just "let them" do whatever they want with them. That guy and the men who applauded him are r@pist monsters.
And then everyone on the bus clapped and that little dog's name was George Washington
You've hit the nail on the head. People are now primed to see female characters as DEI/woke even when they aren't.
When Jessica Jones came out I thought it was fantastic. If instead saw it for the first time tomorrow I'd probably immediately feel jaded by aspects of 'the message' that are in the story, and that saddens me
What makes it worse is that those people can never even tell you want Woke and DEI mean 😂
They just repeat whatever right wing grifters tell them
@@leonais1
I was thinking something similar about a scene in an old Roger Moore Bond movie - I may get this wrong but I think it is either For Your Eyes Only or The Man With The Golden Gun - the gag is Bond finds himself in charge of two Japanese (or at least East Asian - I remember them as Japanese) school girls, whereupon they encounter some ruffians of some description, that Bond is obviously daunted by but nevertheless he does the chivalrous thing and places himself between the girls and the villains intending to defend them, whereupon the girls step in front, push him back and assume Martial arts poses and proceed to destroy this gang in a Bruce Lee style. This from the late seventies early eighties; if the same scene played today it would be declared that Bond was being emasculated and this is part of the agenda, rather than simply enjoyed as a humourous subversion. I think a hypervigilant wariness of "wokeness" has been developed in response to an awareness of a genuine trend so we now see it where it isn't like similacra of wokeness.
@@leonais1 When she spoke on the "agency" part I instantly thought of Jessica Jones and how the show butchered her and Luke's romance
They're literally married in the comics and I heard the " Agency" line as an excuse to why they kept them apart
Don't get me wrong i love the show and Luke Cage , but that always rubbed me the wrong way
Even bumblebee a great movie of my favorite transformer, did the same with the lead character and her love interest
@@Chuck_EL I liked the layout of those series each with one eponymous hero and shared side characters. For me, that does enough to justify splitting Jessica and Luke but I've never read the comics.
This take is 100% accurate and VERY nuanced. In the Woke/Anti-Woke culture war, NPCs exist on both sides. And you are touching on the mistake many Anti-Woke NPCS who have these "over-correction" takes in response to the damaging work of Woke NPCS.
I am a Black 'anti-woke' dude. And I have noticed this attitude from a small number of the extreme Anti-woke rolling their eyes now whenever something starring a black character is announced. It's understandable how people can come to the conclusion that it'll inherently be woke based on Woke fatigue. I get it. But jumping out the gate at EVERY situation where a minority is highlighted ends up quickly becoming a "Boy who cried wolf" situation.
The moment we start acting like EVERYTHING is Woke or DEI, we inevitably start losing ground and giving ammunition to Woke NPCs who label us bigots and every "-ist" under the sun.
Practice discretion and nuance people! Do some research on the projects you're criticizing and wait for them to at least develop first before judging. STOP ACTING LIKE THE WOKE NPCS!
You're totally right about Ripley that would be badly received nowadays and the stigma female characters have.
Too many movies with bad female characters where people cry in the media about sexism if you don't go see the movie, this is pushing the people the other way and make them put every movie with these characters in the same bag.
I think it's the same for LGBT/diversity characters unfortunately.
They've been doing movies where the only requirements was to check every checkbox to not appear sexist/racist/anti-lgbt without paying attention to the stories or how these characters get integrated and we end up with bad movies.
They want movies discussing these problematic, that's totally fine, just split them in different films and write your story around that theme in a subtle manner instead of packing movies with choices made to fill your checklist.
👏👏👏 nuance feels like it’s dead. And people have had bad experiences so now they’re jaded and assume the worst immediately. And I agree about how so many female/diverse/minority characters get written. It’s just, “Yay! We checked 12 boxes off for this movie!!!” I will always cite it as a well-written show and character but I freaking adored Buffy. I’m 37 so the show was on when I was like pre-teen and teens, so it was influential on me. While I will fully admit the last season was flawed, I still 20 years later get goosebumps watching the finale when they “awaken” all of the slayers and the ones down in the hellmouth start beating back the ubervamps. It’s such a badass moment and it EASILY could have fallen into super cheesy territory. But it worked (for the most part) because it felt earned. And because it wasn’t just about “girl power rah rah”, it fed into the bigger story of Buffy always being alone and having to carry the burden of saving the world on her shoulders. Buffy, in my eyes, will always be such a great example of female empowerment not just because she was a badass, but because she was a human who had a personality and made mistakes. She wasn’t a robot and it was stressed throughout the duration of the show that she survived as long as she did because she had friends, but at the same time her powers and responsibilities caused conflict with her friends at times.
It worked because it explored the complexities that come with having that type of power and responsibility.
Now that I’ve written a 20 page essay on why I love Buffy.😂😂😂
The issue is that people see patterns; we see 'strong female lead' in a movie that sucks and flops once, eh, it's an outlier.
After the dozenth time it's not an outlier; it's the trend... and movies that are good with a female lead will be seen with distrust at best.
I loved the new Dune movies, but Zendaya's Chani just wasn't the same Chani from the book. If there's one franchise that needs more strong female characters, Dune isn't it.
By the end of Chapterhouse, women control the universe; following an Intergalactic war between two space nations ruled by women, and that was published in the mid-1980's.
Now, I am fine with women, but I kinda support the Tleilaxu. I have a criticism though: women should not be reduced to incubators, we can keep women and create truly artificial wombs. In my ideal society, it would be similar to the Bene Tleilaxu, but minus the anti-woman stuff: individuals would rise on merit. I have a feeling the true future will lean toward my views by the 22nd century, including using genetic engineering and biotech more. I am guessing my faction will win, as men and women will support me, as I support men or women being caretakers for the younglings based on their choice and evaluated suitability.
Rogue, Storm and Gambit were my favorite x men when I was young 🥲 Rogue was so strong, tortured but still brave, one of the most powerful they could count on even if she felt apart from the others always afraid of hurting those close to her
It's ironic that Hollywood pushed the "girl boss" archetype so aggressively, that it hurt audiences' perception of female characters in general. Furiosa was, in my opinion, the biggest victim of this. The movie is awesome, and I liked it a lot more than Fury Road. Yet, none of my friends (who aren't political in the slightest) wanted to go see it in theaters.
I think Netflix nailed the writing of Jinx, Vi and Caitlyn in Arcane. We need more of that. I hope they do Lara Croft justice in the upcoming animated series.
Watch them butcher the same characters in season 2
@@ValyrianPrince Nah I don't think that'll happen unless they changed writers or the director.
Looking forward to season 2 btw. It took me quite some time to get on board because of the type of animation but when I gave it a shot, daaamn, that was the best show that came out that year
Arcane was cool, especially in terms of aesthetics, but let's not kid ourselves: if there's a popular show just inches away from diving into the crater of "unproblematic" blandness and political wish fulfillment, it's this. The first season had enough going for it to still be enjoyable. But it came veeeeery close to the edge nonetheless.
Dragon Prince is a similar story. It started out very well. Politics turned it into an absolute trainwreck by season 3. And it really didn't need to... had it come out just a decade earlier. Then it would be remembered today alongside the likes of Avatar. But nope.
@@ValyrianPrincePretty sure arcane isn’t made by netflix studios. It was made by a different studio but released on netflix
Isn't it misogynistic in of itself to expect women to be perfect?
People are so sick of the Hollywood girl boss that the well has been retroactively poisoned for a lot of people, who now have a strongly negative reaction to characters who used to be fine. It's like if you get food poisoning, and then can't stand to eat the thing that made you sick in the future.
Exactly. Hollywood will strip-mine a genre until there’s nothing left to dig up and move onto the next idea mine. This process leaves the audience too exhausted over the idea for anyone to bother trying to use it for at least a generation like the cheesy 2000’s and early 2010’s sci-fi teen dystopia films that were inspired by Hunger Games, the western genre in the 1970’s, or superheroes and girl-bosses now.
@@AmericanAdvancement To be honest, I was thoroughly sick to my stomach with Marvel even before the movies went political. Every single movie had the same tone and undercut any drama with annoying humor. It was real conveyor belt cinema. Pushing political agendas was just the icing on the cake.
I hated everything about the changes to Chani.
In the books, she was already a strong female character. She HAD agency. I think a majority of her scenes are when she's directly acting of her own agency, against Paul's wishes (for his benefit.) Her place in Fremen society was respected as a priestess of their religion, officiating over ceremonies of great importance to the people. After Paul begins ruling, she's described as being a key player in their strategy meetings, keeping track, in her mind, of a great many logistic data figures that are important to running the empire. Even before Paul began ruling, Paul had Chani and his mother do the negotiating of the terms of the Emperor's surrender.
Now, she's a rebellious teenager who wants nothing to do with Fremen ways. Woo... agency.
(Also, Like Rogue, Paul never turned evil... the Fremen turned him into a figurehead for their religious zealotry and Paul did everything in his power to blunt the force of their anger fueled war of revenge, and eventually to work against the public perception of his "godhood". Even someone with all of his power and ability was unable to stand against the government and religion that sprung up around him that acted in his name, against his wishes.
The movie got this SOOOO wrong. My stomach turned when they had him say "Take them to heaven." at the end...)
Also, I feel that making Chani so prominent made Irulan a lot less impactful. Irulan who in her own accord is absolutely amazing, very important to the entire Dune saga and whose portrayal in the 2000 mini series was a great way of expanding the screentime of a female character without detracting from the plot.
I think Leyla from MoonKnight was a decently written strong female character. She doesn't undermine the male counterpart to appear strong. She rather relies on him a lot. She realises when to back off. And she gets thrashed around by bigger guys until she becomes an avatar.
Only thing that could've made her character more interesting would've been a flashback episode where we get to explore more into her past relations with maybe her dad and Mark.
who?
I said at the outset when they started going down that route that the Backlash for doing a lousy job too often was going to destroy the idea of capable female protagonists for years to come
This a big issue but it's pretty much most characters they fail with both male and female.
That is because most male characters now portrayed as beta, to allow the female lead to look stronger then she actually is.
@@MikePhillips-x6m There's only one Beta that worked and that's Beta from The Walking dead, second in command of The Whisperers.
@@ClassicHarleyQuinn This decade so far I've come across many well written male & female characters. Then again, not everyone is into animes, mangas & K-dramas.
@@peterfrost377 I just can't get into them. It's too much for me but I'm sure there's some great stuff in there.
Today, i finally bought and watched the 2015 live action Cinderella movie and it was better than i honestly imagined❤ Great writing, amazing characterization, no toxic identity politics, respected the original film while also adding new modern elements that enhanced it😲👍 Made me feel like a jid again back in Nigeria watching the original. The romance was especially beautiful 😍 It is ironic how that film was made by disney and written by western millennials. If such amazing quality media line that can be made, why not make more of it instead of the endless garbage we see these days involving female characters? These days, i mainly watch anime for my well written female characters.
One of my fav recent-ish female characters is Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt) in Edge of Tomorrow (2014). The character is strong yet vulnerable and feminine as well.
The movie is incredibly under rated. The story is crazy but works.
@@A_RUclips_Commenter Yeah, it really is! It was based off a Manga named "All You Need Is Kill", I've been wanting to read ever since. I just hope that if they do a sequel like they've been saying, that the character isn't changed to appease the prevailing ideology of "strong female characters".
@@lizc.214 You just reminded me. I own that manga. I bought it after seeing the movie and put it in my comic book storage closet. I have ADHD and never got around to reading it. Thanks, now I am headed to grab it out of there.
@@A_RUclips_Commenter Awesome! 😎 Glad I could help someone today😁
This movie really surprised me (in a great way) when I saw it the first time two years ago. Even more surprised it's 10 years old and flew under the radar. I enjoyed her character very much also.
This. This is exactly how I’ve felt with how Lara Croft and how she’s been written since Crystal Dynamics started making Tomb Raider games. They started off fine, basically adapting the Angelina Jolie movie canon. But slowly with every game, they’ve taken away her actually strength and capabilities and just made her weak and whiny and replaced it with agency. Now, she’s not THE TOMB RAIDER because she wants to be one. She’s just an explorer fulfilling her father’s legacy while being more subservient to her team or friends more than anything. They only fake her “agency” because it’s the “right thing to portray.”
Re: agency in kissing scenes.. They're suggesting that a benign choice the character makes is enough to rob her of her own agency. A woman takes away her own agency by using that agency.. and they think that makes the writing stronger? They think that's what women want, to be told that we cannot make our own choices because we run the risk of making a mistake in someone else's eyes?
You totally nailed it. The most illuminating statement I felt you made was the pendulum shift. Hollywood has pushed this archetype so hard that is has had the opposite effect. Great video. Well done again. And I disliked Chani too.
I think the problem is we've had so much DEI/quotas etc. people are just wary (weary?) of it. Even if a female character as an action lead makes sense from a story narrative some people are just going to be suspicious of the motives for it. Your example with Prey was spot on. I saw some of the chatter about a 'Mary Sue' at the time - even though the story went to pains to show her failing and growing. But latter-day Disneyfication has left a lot of viewers jaded I guess.
Oh yeah, you nailed it in regards to Chani and Dune. We don't need an audience avatar to be skeptical on our behalf. Also, they reduced the time frame and removed the death of their first child. DV can make visually stunning movies, but he definitely struggles with deeper characterization and world building.
DV wants to make Dune Messiah, but he already knee-capped Chani, as his version doesn't have the same drive to have another child in the events of that story.
All spectacle and no substance.
@@wingsclippedwolf To be fair I don't know how he wants to do Alya too, since she wasn't even born when Baroon Harkonnen was killed.
I’m a woman. I admit I’ve actively avoided some media with female main characters because I didn’t want to waste my time. It’s that bad.
I can't believe Spielberg wanted to cut 2 attractive people actually showing attraction to each other
I think he manage to personify the effect of studio interference. Most weaknesses in bad writing come from studios mettleling with the production to sanitize their characters.
The old executives are the worst. I'm sure that internally Spielberg finds the whole feminist/gay empowerment thing utterly ludicrous, he probably spent half his career making fun of directors he suspected were closeted gay. But he feels like he needs to play the tune and he does it by going after every stereotype his hunch tells him sells on Twitter. That's why so many pieces of media lambasted as woke actually feel like mean-spirited Fox-made parodies. Because the people behind both types actually have lots of deeply rooted disgust for the subject matter, even if completely different motives in trying to portray them.
I want a complete female character with a built personality and ideals and not hollow characters based around a message that we don't care about.
Yeah... what message is that?
Got nothing, huh? That's... interesting.
@@futurestorytellervaries from fiction/media/publisher/era
@@James-ep2bx No it doesn't.
@@futurestoryteller yes it does the 'good Christian' morale messaging produced many a hollow preachy character in the 50s just as did the pro/anti communist morale messaging of the cold war, just as does the current 'good progressive' morale messaging, and I highly doubt they'd all agree on what is/isn't morale
And since comics and animation is often seen as 'for children' they often face tighter restrictions than tv/radio, which in turn as opt out media had sticker control then opt in media like movies and/or books
All you need is good writing (and not worrying about what Twitter thinks), & you can make great characters. Let's just hope we can get back to the days of having good female characters again. Great video Jester!
14:09 That is the exact same problem I had with Mary Jane in the Spider-man 2018 game. She does nothing but condescend and belittle him, and does not respect how dangerous Peter's lifestyle is.
One cause of the problem were industry quotas that raised the supply of female leads far above the demand. It lost novelty.
The poor quality of the films, and openly hostile and/or mocking tones from the production and cast, especially in franchises that no one asked to change, were just the icing on the cake.
I don't really watch movies or tv anymore. I get really uninterested when I feel a choice was made out of fear instead of inspiration. It just feels like I'm not watching something made by a person or group of people with a shared goal. Feels like I'm watching slop made for no one.
A lot of TV and movies seem to have fallen into the trap of making things for the widest possible audience. Media is very susceptible to "if you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one" and they don't seem to realise that.
Its one of my issue with those that push "the message" in entertainment, they link their nonsense to minorities and others so much , a project that doesn't have "the message" featuring a black guy is still poopooed because the entertainment landscape is so thoroughly gonked. The same project might have done really well before 2016.
What is "the message"?
@@crosscounter Identity politics.
@@JKMliveAnd this is why I keep saying that those that support identity politics should be seen as a threat for an equal society
With the decline of quality strong female characters like Katara, Sarah Connor, and Princess Leia; it makes me wonder if we’ll ever see another Beatrix Kiddo (Kill Bill) a woman who gave a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘Slay Queen.’
Mizu from Blue Eye Samurai was great. Strong, flawed, goal-oriented, still has feelings… sure some thing’s are over the top, but it’s not restricted to just her.
Blue Eye Samurai was stellar. And beautifully animated. Definitely something I'd like to see people taking notes from
Amazing video essay! And yes, the problem today with Female lead characters is half bad writing and half studios attempting to pander to certain audiences.
They are more concerned with offending certain members of the audiences than actually writing complete, well-rounded, and fleshed out Female leads.
We still love strong female characters today! Like 11 from Stranger Things or Wednesday from Netflix! It's definitely the writing, by making the male characters weak to make the female character strong! You can have strong or smart female characters and male ones too. Without making every male character weak and stupid! People loved the first Wonder Woman movie. They did it right!
They poked the bear too much. And customers have seen all the red flags over the years. So I don't blame people for calling stuff out and being warry of other things.
This applies to movies, tv shows, cartoons, video games, comics, books, etc.
I can look at the 2000s (even the early 2010s to some extent) and backwards for all those different types of media and find 100s of great female characters from Princess Zelda, Jill Valentine, Sarah Connor, Storm, and Wonder Woman to Ellen Ripley, Chun-Li, Cheetara, Samus Aran, and Princess Leia. But within the last 8-10 or so years I have a hard time naming at least 30 good female characters.
These companies are at fault for that. And they are the ones to push the customers towards it.
I'm just going to put this out there as a woman; strength is something you gain with hardship and it's a relative thing. You can experience victimhood and require help yet still be strong. In fact, accepting that is strength within itself. Having a heart of stone and being a loner is the opposite of being strong.
I'd argue that having the heart of stone character rediscover their humanity also shows strength. It's a good contrast for supporting characters but unfortunately they don't have writers, they have activists.
Strength is found in overcoming your obstacles, both in real life and writing, but specifically writing. After all, character arcs are all about change!
It's telling how the variety of female characters has dwindled.
I don't think that "strong female character" = "action hero". For me both Ellen Ripley and Jane Eyre are strong female characters. Unfortunately that "girl boss" template they use now is just either warping existing heroines into something they're not (Ann Elliott) or make the new ones predictable, pretentious and boring. It's like only using salt and pepper to spice your dish, when all the other herbs and spices are available.
Thank you so much Jestor for sharing your thoughts on character in pop culture. Our tastes in media & genre overlap and I envy your insightfulness about the relationships depicted in movies and comics I have loved for a lifetime.
One aspect of your discussion of female heroine's I thought you may have overlooked. The aspect is, you, as a female lover of comic book heros & action movies, while not quite a unicorn, are at least the red headed kids in class. By that I mean that comics & action heroes are still overwhelmingly male entertainment, even if it disgusts and is loathed by Disney & Hollywood in general.
Ripley & Sarah Conner were and are beloved characters but I believe they, and moreso the movies they were in were still written with , "the male gaze" in mind. Alien begins as an ensemble cast, most of whom are men, and it is only as they are killed off one by one, partly by their own hubris and bad decisions that we root more & more for Ripley as it is only later she becomes the star. I saw the movie when it came out in the 1980's and in my hazy memory the movie was marketed mainly around the Alien itself and not as a "female action hero" movie.
Sarah Conner I believe is similar, men would never feel demeaned by Terminator as the lead was the beloved actor Arnold, who was still beloved even as he portrayed the Ultra masculine killing machine, while Sarah again became someone to root for as she fulfilled a classic feminine role as the mother protecting her son. By Terminator II, Arnold portrayed an even more popular male archetype as a father willing to fight for, then when victorious, sacrifice his very existence to save his son and his society. In that mileu Sarah Connor gaining more bad ass mother bear skills in no way threatened masculinity in the movie or was seen as an attack on the male audience.
Getting back to The Marvel's & Madam web, it's my understanding that the audience of both movies was still about 65% male.
This is a long way to say it, but I think you may have overlooked the idea that Ripley & Sarah Connor were in movies that portrayed masculinity in ways appealing to men as well as more subtly challenging masculinity.
Modern Hollywood has portrayed masculinity in a more bigoted way than we have seen an American group portrayed since the 1960's.
It simultaneously now wants to have financially successful Comic book & action movies that only appeal to what they believe women should want.
That I believe is a reason, along with all your other points, Madam Web & The Marvel's failed. Even without the almost decade of active attacks on masculinity in heroic movies, say if Madam Web or The Marvel's were released in the 1990's following Terminator 2, the movies would struggle because they are in a ticket buying male genre. It's still like marketing a really well done Ken doll to male children, the doll may be well manufactured but Ken is in a genre that is marketed to girls, so it has little to no chance of success
Jester, if you've made it this far, I'm typing this in on my phone, so sorry for the terrible editing, and I'm going to your patreon to become patron number 9 after this.
I love your insightful content.
Yes! Chani bothered me too! How the hell are we going to get children in the next movie unless they just backtrack on that immediately?
I’ve said it before. Women like men. Nothing wrong with that. That’s why there’s people.
Chani didn't need to be updated for modern audiences. In the book she was a bad ass fighter who loved Paul. Not good enough for modern audiences. It is a feudal society across the universe but let's make it modern. Surprised there were no pronouns.
The first "modern audience" non kiss ending I distinctly remember was Pacific Rim. While it wasn't necessary for them to kiss the dumbest part of that decision was they had them alone looking deeply into each other's eyes, get close, only to turn their heads away at the end and roll credits. Made absolutely no sense. It was praised HEAVILY at the time by the media.
Modern Hollywood writes a man, casts a woman, then wonders why women don't connect with them.
I did get the feeling that Furiosa was hypercompetent from the get go and her actress didn't have the phisicallity to back it up either. When she gets her arm crushed she barely reacted, it was extremely weird, and not for a woman, for a human in general.
This is bad, bro! Female characters should be able to be females, come on, now! And it's so stupid right now, man! I love many female characters, but Hollywood's ruined them and it sucks to see that! Bad writing is a problem, not just with female characters, but male ones as well! They can be awfully written, too! But it's mostly been a problem with the female characters, and how they're depicted and stuff! Come on, Hollywood! Do better!
25:00 The Pocahontas scene with the text is amazing.
I do hate a vast majority of romantic films or sub plots, for many reasons. That being said, I despise the idea that all romance takes away a girls agency. There is a way to include hetero romance without "taking away her agency", all it takes is establishing *mutual* respect, admirations, compassions, and care for the others wellness, but they delete romance from a woman's story in general instead, if they don't make her rude.
I read new MJ as a tsundere, because yeah, no one falls for a girl that always.... well, almost rude. Like she must have a good side that comes out off screen.
This may not make sense if you haven't seen Arcane, but I heard is that Mel (the politician woman) lost her agency after falling in love which couldn't be further from the truth. Sure she appears a bit softer and has a minor change of heart near the finale, BUT she is still controlling everyone, and acts independently *often* . This criticism came from Brandon Sanderson of all people. Hot take: he has lost a little credibility for that comment, in my eyes.
My fav female recently is Lisa Swallows from Lisa Frankenstein. She is a gross, morbid, rude, flawed character. She’s not a good role model but at the same time she is so relatable to me as a teenage girl. Sometimes women are gross and morbid and rude. And that’s okay. Sometimes women are kind and meek and respectful. And that’s okay. It’s not one size fits all
Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor were perfect examples of how to do it right.
The reason their bravery in the face of horror was believable is because they were mothers. Ripley was brave enough to go back into the Alien hive when none of the soldiers were, because she was a mother. It was believable. Connor went from a timid waitress to a gun-toting militia-type because she knew there were robots from the future coming to kill her son. It was believable.
Their strength came FROM their feminine qualities.
The modern "strong female character" is strong DESPITE their feminine qualities (if any).
The underlying thought process seems to be that masculine power is the only kind of power and that if a woman is to be strong, then she must be masculine.
It's like the writers don't understand the concept of feminine power, despite having such clear examples in Ripley and Connor. The feminist attempt to write a strong female character ended with writing a series of men with tits.
OK but as a woman who plans to never have kids, the idea that "feminine strength" is equated with being a mother is... blech. Why is it only believable because "they were mothers"? People can be brave for all sorts of reasons and it's weird to say that a woman's bravery is believable "because she's a mother" when there's no equivalent to that for men. If a man is brave in the face of danger, do they need to be a father?
These women are brave because they have connections, others they care about. In this case, it's a child, but it doesn't have to be.
@nicoler5713 men who are brave in the face of danger can be just as unbelievable, which is why I most of the ones who cone to mind are good ones, like neo, John McLane, and even comedic actors like Eddie Murphy.
The classic "action hero" is John McLane, who is brave at the face of danger because it's his job to be brave as a cop and because his wife's life is on the line. Furiousa is a great modern example of how it's done. She has the motivation, she has the time to develop these skills, she's great.
What people hate is unearned badassery. She hulk (im better because im a woman), captain marvel(unlikable, literally zero faminine traits, may as well be a 14 yo boy at this point), Ray (classic marie-sue) are prime examples.
@@nicoler5713it doesn’t, but the connection between a mother and a child is one of the most primal and powerful. You don’t HAVE to be a mother to be brave, but being a mother tends to make women braver than they might have been otherwise if their child is involved. A good parent fears no pain or death if it will save their child
The thing about both of them was their gender didn't matter. It could equally have just been some guy in the same situation. Normal people, faced with incredible danger, and they could've curled up in a ball, but they didn't, they acted. That's what a hero is. Not someone who isn't afraid, or is a badass, no, it's simply someone who rises to the challenge.
@@alien777 watched every minute of it. Failures (most of which are not her fault) do not excuse being able to control her transformation just because she's a woman and being a woman is hard. Women have anger management issues just like men. Add that to the fact she "does everything better" than Bruce and you get why people don't like the show.
The movie "Prey" was disliked by a lot of people I knew because it pushed a feminist agenda. The main character was a female in a traditional native tribe in the 1800s or some such era. She was terrible at everything, but kept getting framed as being awesome and misunderstood. The men were portrayed as meatheads who couldn't figure out simple tactics. They were brutes while she was clever. And then the same thing happens with the Predator. It's shown to be a great hunter, until it faces her. She outwits it because she's an underestimated brilliant female. That was why people hated that movie.
I mean…. You’re not wrong haha
She was getting her ass kicked the whole movie. Her brother even brought back a Lion head that should’ve killed her. She only lived as long as she did because she was a non threat.
I even watched The OG predator and Dutch has plot armor towards the end as well that people either forget or overlook for some reason.
I think both movies are fairly close and quality.
She was absolutely not portrayed as a perfect woman. She got a little lucky with a little skill. Same as Dutch.
A significant moment in Dune, the book, that could have been expounded upon was what the Beast did to the couple's first child. It should have been devastating in the movie, and a scene that would certainly give more depth to both Chani and Paul and their relationship. They decided to cut that and go with "Chani is jealous of Paul and Irulan", which is traditional writing for women, and makes Chani seem stupid and petulant, when book Chani understood what was happening, even without Jessica emphasizing it for the reader.
Also the Batman series The Caped Crusader has destroyed Harley Quinns character and changed everything about her. This show makes me sick to my stomach and I hope this doesn't get second season
Yes we like romance. I also like when the boy saves the girl. Not sorry.💅
So true, these writers don't know how to make stuff or portray female heroes in general i.m.o.. Look at what they did to the WINX series... :S They removed all the color, glitter, fun & romance (besides a love triangle...:S) , because you can't be strong in glitters and have actual friends I guess....
Self-fulfilling prophecy of the "they only hae them because they're females!" because the cries of "we want good writing and no agenda!" fell on the def ears so the fandom just went "okay fine, if you'll see our criticism only as hating female action heroes, then so be it".
at 8:40 I dont think you understood that right. We havent gone from Sarah Connor being a role model to bad example. The point the tweet made is an entirely different one about the differences in self perception versus reality (or the perception of others). Sarah Connor is still being used as a good example. This tweet is the equivalent of someone saying to a high school footballer "oh you think youre Ronaldo?" That doesnt mean whoever says this hates Ronaldo. In fact, the speaker acknowledges Ronaldo as a good footballer.
Why don't anybody bring up "Charlie's Angeles Full Throttle." When it comes to Strong Females🤷♂️
I know, right? They should have made a third film with Drew, Lucy, and Cameron
We don't need "strong" female characters. We need complex female characters.
We need well-written characters. Strong or weak, female or male is secondary
Complexity is also necessary also in some cases. Sands if Time (the game, not the movie) is an extremely straightforward story but is just so damn satisfying to see the Prince and Farah build up their romance while going through so many trials and tribulations. I'd trade places with that demon-fighting SOB in a heartbeat. I can't remember the last time any piece of media made me feel this way.
What we need is fully rounded human beings. But apparently people can't do that if said character is apart of any minority, then they have to be "STRONG" and nothing else
I think it's not that they're concerned with 'Agency'; rather ideology.
Really interesting video! Really enjoyed the in-depth breakdown. The key is definitely the writing to start with - we want complex characters. Strength by overcoming flaws/setbacks are what we need - depth! Some films I really love with really well done female characters are Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (Emily Blunt), The Help (one of the best female ensemble casts ever assembled!), Miss Sloane(Jessica Chastain),Silence of the Lambs(Jodie Foster), Arrival (Amy Adams) Hidden Lives to name a few. We definitely need more female writers and directors, but the higher ups in the industry to be brave and back the female talent out there! Brilliant video - thank you!
Great video, and I agree with most of your points except Chani.
You answered the reason why they changed her character in your question. It was stereotypical. Dune inspired a lot of stories, a lot of stories we've already seen, so now they've changed it in a smart way.
Chani fell in love with Paul because he proved her wrong. Of course she's going to be condescending to a person related to the guy that pushed her people out of her home. But Paul shows her with his actions and words that he truly wants to learn about their culture, he wants to be one of them.
The reason why Chani has been changed to be skeptical of Paul is th same reason why the original author wrote Messiah and the other books, because people were on Paul's side. Most people who see the movie have never read the book, the amount of stuff they've had to condense in a 3 hour movie was a lot and that's just from half the first book. So, of course, someone who has read the book may not need it because it already happened with the Messiah book, but someone who hasn't which is like 90% of the people who watched the movie would. So, I wouldn't say they ruined it, we'll have to see how Messiah turns out to truly tell, but as of now, I think they changed Chani into a more compelling character.
She may have started the standard female character, but she doesn't need to be added to the millions that came after her.
I liked Gina Davis in the Long Kiss Goodnight, it was Atomic Blonde and Black Widow before we had those 2 movies.
With Zendaya from Dune, the only thing I didn’t like is that Zendaya was the character. I think she is a bad actress.
Agreed! Chani frustrates me too... It was so disgusting when she spoke badly about his harritage. Who does that to someone who's family was murdered?? Empathy vacuum...
There was an interesting observation by another RUclipsr, I can't remember which one, but he said that the way the Marvel's and Madame Web were cut up and disjointed looked like it could have been a last minute change in response to the unpopularity of girlbosses.
Original Sarah Connor was a good example. The new one….
Another example that would fit well is The Witcher. I started reading the books recently and it's almost funny how Sapkowski can't write a story without a genuinely strong woman in it. The guy seems to love women to death.
The contrast with the TV series is jarring.
And what's worse is that all these "strong females" in modern media are written by women and they are the ones who always go for some kind of stupid messaging instead of "guys, holly shit, aren't women so fucking awesome in their humanity??!"
P.S. Yall should go watch The Fall Guy. It's entertaining and the way it just revels in all the silly Hollywood tropes is very heartwarming. Including a love story, which is one of the main story lines and while I myself was never a fan of love stories, this was so great to see in it's classiness.
I believe that the best part of a strong character is there emotions, usually a strong male character rages a lot but we know that they deeply care for those around them, Kratos is THE best example of this.
The problem is strong girls dont care, don't have flaws, dont feel relatable at all.
The conclusion I come to as you also make in this great vid is that there are rules and regulations on female characters that simply didn't exist before. History is full of fantastic female characters with so many shades of complexity. A great example of the now late (and great) Gena Rowlands is the 1980 John Cassevetes' Gloria, which I highly recommend. She plays a single down-on-her-luck woman who is thrust into a situation where she has to care for a boy who is in danger of a violent criminal organization. Gloria absolutely wants no part of being nurturing or 'motherly' to this kid. She is self serving, kind hearted enough, but has an interesting edge to her. Her relationship with the boy is hilarious and winds up being completely endearing near the end. She is every flavor of complexity--badass and believable at the same time--something that female characters today simply are not afforded because they're made to be paradigms of strength in a hand waving third wave cardboard feminist type way.
I'm a black writer myself and the observations you've made about women extend even more to black female characters too. Black women (and black characters in general) don't ever get to be in the wrong, spicy, colorful, villainous (very often at least), edgy, scared, or weird. The rules and regulations of film and television can't afford to have characters of color be the loose cannon or interesting ones because they're always the authoritative type that have to be no nonsense and keep the white protagonist in line. The strong female character is amplified in the angry black woman, or the strong black woman stereotype, where they have no emotional vulnerabilities whatsoever. The problem is that the characters who are the most expressive and three dimensional are the ones you have fun with, and women and people of color never get to be that. You love Ripley, you love Sarah Connor not just because they are tough and vulnerable, but because they get to be complex. Complexity is the breath of any interesting character, and to be complex, you need to let them be raw. A real shame, and I loved your take!
I miss the big cinematic kiss moment so much. New cinema is so annoying