Why do males complain about female-led stories or too many female characters when the majority are still dominated by males?
-
The bit I didn't say was I meant such a character in a hero's journey style story
-
I'll preface with I'll agree that for the most part, it's men being whiny about "woke" and other nonsense. They're assholes. I really don't have anything to add to that front.
So I'll add a perspective of the small other crowd in situations friends of mine and I have found ourselves in, that having criticisms of women led stories gets us lumped in with the above group when the same criticism of a male led roles/stories are fine and dandy. And we're not exactly a group that hates women led stories despite our love of scifi action. Sarah Conner, Ripley, Jesse Faden if anyone has played the game Control.
Some of it I get as a female led cast movie/show will get hate before the first previews even launch so legitimate discussions can happen. However, I can go on absolute rants about how terrible movies can be: Tom Cruise remaking The Mummy was, attempting to do Hellboy without Ron Perlman and Guillermo Del Toro, whatever the Conan the Barbarian attempt Jason Mamoa had, and no one bats an eye. (Lets be honest, those were all terrible movies)
However I've been called a misogynist when I talk about in the list with those above ones how absolutely terrible the all women cast remake of Ghostbusters was. Again, I knew there was a lot of undue hate, but if I ever discuss it, I've had to outright asterisk it every time that none of my complaints were to the actresses themselves but the movie from worldbuilding to some of the concept of it being made itself (As in: It's Ghostbusters, an IP that's been around for decades, did we need to dedicate screentime to remaking it from scratch? A complaint I'll have at every reboot of a popular IP.)And there's legitimacy to the why. As you point out, there's very few women led movies/stories which (I assume) means that with some representation there's the want to nicer to it, especially as there are people who are outright assholes about it. Vs Another White Guy Does Things is easy to deride a movie because... speaking as a white guy, I'm going to be there mocking that movie too. But that's why I put the "(I assume)" earlier, because it's not like I'm lacking in some form of representation, so it's easy to mock it.
I will wrap up this though with again, it's a small extra outside perspective for a different viewpoint. If people just complain "There are too many women in x", no, they've stopped having legitimate complaints and are just being jackasses.
-
John works where Rey doesn't because he's had the career and experience to back up what he does. Other characters are terrified of him, he's been in the setting long enough to become a legend.
Rey a scavenger in the arse end of nowhere goes from knowing literally nothing about the outside world and starting at about the same power as Luke's ability in new hope to by the end of that first movie Luke's ability in return of the jedi with no training involved.
John is an example of a legend in action, an unstoppable force, it's satisfying to watch because the film does such a good job of building him up. That one with the mob boss talking about the pencil comes to mind.
Rey gets none of that, she's just great at everything without trying. She can fly a ship like the falcon on her first go ever flying a space ship well enough to out fly trained fighter pilots. Luke at least has flown similar ships in similar situations before the death star run.One that is better is when she beats Kylo with the first time using a saber because it shows she is letting the force guide her so it makes much more sense why she can do it.
-
I actually have a person in my life complain about this shit with the last Bond movie (I havent watched it, i just heard complaining). Oh and Into the Spiderverse, he disliked spiderman being non-white - even though Peter Parker is in that fucking film. He also uses the phrase woke all the time.
I really don't value his opinions on these sorts of issues and neither should anyone. He's got so little in his life and these stories are a powerful escape from the shit he isn't dealing with. I won't go into it, not my circus etc.
Basically, he likes to imagine himself as Luke Skywalker and he can't imagine himself as Rey so she's woke and bad. It's a boring way of consuming media and he's an idiot. He says there's an agenda but can self identify the agenda is maybe letting the women and coloured people be on screen sometimes. However, they do not look like him so they are bad and the agenda is bad.
They're not worth listening to.
-
Why can't a girl be a good role model for a boy?
(I'm not completely disagreeing with you btw - if all the boy leads are "stereotypical boy" then it's just perpetrating the problem)
-
Just pure fragility. You’d think at least a film from a different perspective might be interesting, but no - can’t even deal.
-
I have seen this kind of behavior only on the internet. Maybe I just know people who aren't stupid misogynist or then people are hiding their opinions in real life because they know that what they are thinking is wrong.
There should absolutely be more females on major roles in movies, series and videogames. -
I don't think there's a significant amount of people that complain about women led movies. Certainly not enough to just say "men" as a group.
-
One of the ways i select a movie or series is by watching the poster.
That tells me enough about whether it will be about male heroes and (maybe) female sidekicks or mothers in the kitchen.
Particularly american ones have a lot of those movies.
So, these i will not even try to watch anymore. -
And I fully agree, the way the op posted it with “counter point” already send the discussion in the wrong way.
I think the 'discussion' failed the moment someone said "how come men are angry at women doing 'x'" and the entire fucking thread is full of men talking about men.
Like I'm not surprised, I'm just mildly amused I'm yet again changing accounts for awhile while my inbox fills with angry men shouting messages at me I never read. Every. Single. Time. A thread about an experience a woman has with men being shit in it is always filled with comments from men "nuh uh, whatabout...!" in response.
Every. Time. It's so fucking embarrassing I wish I could literally just not be my gender for awhile. We've been in power for almost the entirety of humanity but oh my God a woman made a comment about how shitty men are to them, so let's constantly make absolute ironic assholes of ourselves.
Peace out, men, you continue the trend of making us all look like whiny babies who can't handle not being talked about, and not being The Normal.
-
Yes let's pretend men do this and then hurl insults at them all.
-
I don't really talk to anybody
-
I don't accept the premise of the question. People don't complain about female led movies, as long as those movies are well written. What people complain about (and this should include people looking for increased female representation) is projects that prioritise having female leads over having good writing.
Take the trend of gender swapped existing male characters into female ones. If, as a writer, you're prepared to follow through on that concept and explore how it changes the story, then it can be interesting. A chance to experiment with the differences in motivation between genders and how obstacles can be navigated in different ways.
If you're just going to swap "he" for "she" in the script and call it a day... Well that's boring and doesn't deserve anyone's time. It's not interesting or clever. In fact it's often bad take. You can end up with a woman on screen showing that to be a hero they have to display hyper-masculine traits. How is that a good female role model?
-
For the same reason we want diverse casts in media.
Kids learn by putting themselves into the story. I don't want to see only girls kicking arse and boys being relegated into two dimensional villains or stupid sidekicks.
-
I suppose the counter point is actually.
Why are there so many female leads in kid focused movies and so few female leads in adult focused movies.
What changes? Why do we lose out on these stories?
-
If there's any universe in which it makes complete sense for someone to be born ultra powerful completely at random, it's Star Wars and superhero movies.
-
and in Bluey almost all characters are girls.
Also in paw patrol, the good mayor is a black woman and the bumbling villain is a white man....
-
The core complaint is for femwashed stories, where the male lead has been replaced by a woman.
It's very similar to Hollywood movies taking movies from Japan or China and then turning the Asian lead to a Euro-American.
The level of hatred for this type of content is very strong as it feels like a farce or fraudelent, like someone is trying to sell you a fake designer brand item.
Everything that made the item great is absent in the fake one.On top of that, there's a clear fascist takeover in the US from the rainbow liberal, evangelical and social capitalists. Fascists have weird superiority and inferiority complexes including towards women.
But don't worry, Chinese movies will become popular soon, so both sides of the US political aisle will have to adjust. -
There is also the fact that John gets punched in the face, kicked and beaten....and then gets back up to wipe the floor with the enemy.
Showing female characters getting their arses handed to them is not as commercially popular.
-
I don't know what a Mary Sue is. Can you explain?
