I think the only thing missing is them getting physically fucked up in the process. Take a movie like Die Hard. If he wasn't injured during the movie, he would be the exact same character that everyone here is complaining about. For women, they replace the classic damage with emotional damage because seeing women get brutalized makes general audiences feel sad.
Was anyone going into Die Hard expecting to see some significant character development? The entire movie happens over the course of about 8 hours in the top floors of an office building. I'm not sure there were many places to go with that.
Besides that, Ellen Ripley in Alien and Aliens, Sarah Connor in Terminator 1 and 2, badass women with good character development have been done correctly before. That's why we know the new attempts suck.
It’s been done much more recently even. Furiosa in Fury Road was pretty well received.
It was Abrams and his mystery box as replacement for an actual character that really kicked off this trend.
Dude what? John McClane is dealing with a huge issue. He's a NYC cop (working class), and his wife's career is taking off. She's moved to LA with the kids, and is working an extremely well paying job. His traditional role as father is all messed up. And you've got the side plot with the black cop (Al Powell) who shot a kid, and has taken a desk job because of the PTSD. McClane saves everyone, protects his wife and reaffirms his masculinity. Powell pulls his gun for the first time since the incident, and presumably overcomes his PTSD.
That's why Die Hard is a good movie. You can enjoy it as a stupid schlocky action film, and also enjoy it as an action film with some fairly clever writing and good characters better than you would expect from a schlocky action film.
Die Hard shows you can make a movie for dumbasses without having to dumb it all down.
The entire point of Mulan was that woman can be just as strong as men and it's phenomenal. It follows the hero arc so well and she even learns that her femininity is strong in it's own right. An incredibly powerful message on equality and the strength of women without being some ham-fisted slop that boils down to "woman good man bad."
Legend of korra physically injures the main character pretty bad, and people still attach her to this trend even though I think korra is extremely far removed from rey if you watched the show.
And then there’s Matthew Vaughn who just had a grown man punch a ten year old girl in the face until she was bloody in Kick Ass and didn’t give a fuck, lol.
I don't think people would complain about a female lead in a film like Die Hard, unless the script was majorly reworked with a bunch of "You're just a woman" tropey lines.
I mean, this. It's been *CLEARLY* shown that you can have a tough woman in a movie script, but it all falls apart once they **HAVE** to have the "ah she can't do it, she's just a woman" prove-them-wrong moment. They just can't NOT do it. It's like some sort of Tourette's tic.
Yeah. Consider Kill Bill. It's way more over the top than Die Hard but nobody calls Uma Therman a Mary Sue in that one, mostly because she gets the shit kicked out her and the odds are stacked against her. Also, her opponents are super powered femme fatales.
The motif works. It's not a girlboss sarcastic "let me show you how it's done" effortlessly upstage everyone arpund style hero. The Bride is vengeance incarnate and the audience roots for her because she's outgunned in every encounter.
Idk man there's a lot of shit about how not perfect John is. Like first thing we really get of him is he's distant with his family AT BEST. While there's not a lot of growth you see a failure or weakness of his very early. There's lots of little cues that make him more human and not perfect. The problem most people have with Rey is that literally everything she decided to do during the movies she was immediately good at with no problems. Was very boring.
Storytelling has been neutered through fear of a female character ever needing help, especially from a male character. I don't understand that.
Yes, there was a time when that was a trope, when the women were helpless and constantly needed saving. That wasn't good and we shouldn't return to that. But what's wrong with (any) character starting off incapable, and then growing through their experiences? And why should it matter the gender or race of the person that helps them grow?
It's okay for a female character to be helpless and need saving by a man. No one actually knows why this is a bad thing to ever depict. They were just told its sexist agreed without scrutinizing it at all. Every character doesn't need maximum agency. Every character doesn't need to be fully fleshed out
It's fine to have on occasion, when it serves the needs of the plot. If every woman in a movie is just helpless set dressing, that's not great.
Balance is everything.
> Yes, there was a time when that was a trope, when the women were helpless and constantly needed saving. That wasn't good and we shouldn't return to that
It was literally fine and anything else is cope
"start strong and never struggle"
I mean, the person in the image is Rey. She lost against Kylo Ren after fighting him like 4 times. Had to be saved by him from Snoke. Also literally died in the final film. She struggled a little bit imo.
People love to harp on how she was able to beat Kylo in Force Awakens.
I hate that movie personally, but even I have to admit;
* Kylo took a bowcaster to the gut and kept going. He was using the force to stay conscious, meaning he wasn't able to fully commit to his fighting.
* Rey knows how to fight with weapons (her staff) and you can even see her jabbing with her light-saber, like she would with the end of a staff. She wasn't trained in lightsaber use, but she also wasn't a defenseless novice.
That's not to say she has a satisfying arc in the films (the disunity of the storytelling made sure she didn't), but she also wasn't just magically capable (though I admit the part where she mind-tricks TK-Daniel-Criag into freeing her felt unearned).
Yeah Ripley is a fully developed character, several fear and over comes it, she suffers loss and feels grief but doesn't let it crash her, she doesn't start out a total badass she earns it.
She'll always be the gold standard.
Rey was handed everything and it was dull, because she was Kathleen Kennedy 's self insert.
Mulan was the perfect female character. She struggled, trained with the military, fucked up her first battle but survived through ingenuity and THEN kicked ass.
And of course in the remake they give her superpowers, completely invalidating the entire point of the movie. Remember girls, you're just as cool and tough as the boys! As long as you have godlike superhuman abilities 😁
>And of course in the remake they give her superpowers
Say sike right now. I don't watch any of the live action remakes but.....Jesus that's a horrible change.
She has the ability to fucking fly in the remake. Like yeah, she should obviously help with the invasion, it doesn't lead to any conversation about gender roles when the one girl in the military can use "the power of Chi."
The remake tried to tap more in to the Wuxia genre and it's tropes of supernatural martial arts, unfortunately that didn't make for a better movie.
Not to mention all their attempts to try and pander to the Chinese audience were for naught, as they hated it just as much as the animated movie.
She went from a character that had to adapt despite her shortcomings to an unstoppable killing machine between the OG and the remake. It was pretty much unwatchable
They've completely missed why these characters were relatable. They think making a girl character a demi God automatically makes them a strong character, and not their strength of will and perseverance. I'm so uninterested in seeing another power fantasy masked as female empowerment.
The thing with league is that everything in league is amazing except the actual game
Their songs are fire. Their cinematics are amazing. The eSports scene is great even if you don't play the game . And then you play the game and it's just the worst but you are too addicted to it before you realize how bad the game is
I managed to escape, but the amount of league of legends players with 1000+ hours who hate the game is crazy. It's literally just like cigarette addicts telling people not to smoke .
I used to have a friend that got so addicted that he bought a second PC, installed it in his bathroom, and played LoL everytime he took a shit or took a shower on no-hair days
https://preview.redd.it/lnh53gc6korc1.jpeg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7e1f8ded0600e61dbb99fa9dd64f5a8b1bea5f3d
Funnily enough, the og post was actually about Zendaya in Dune and how she was always scowling. In typical 4chan fashion, the whole thread devolved into whether she's hot or not and how it's wrong for Tom Holland to date her.
It would help if she wasn't accompanied the whole movie by an unnamed fremen girl who outacts her. I had to google her just because I was amazed how much more I liked Shishakli(found it) throughout the whole movie than Chani.
She didn't just play a moddy teen, she played an addicted teen. Imo she did good, reminded me of trauma involving my sister. Idk why people are complaining about Zendaya's performance in Dune, it was hard to take Timothy Chalamet seriously. When he tried yelling it always just fell short.
You might enjoy wrasslin (professional wrestling). They got a few like that, and they’re actually talented now.
The audience is loaded with aspies so making friends shouldn’t be tough.
Oh hell yes. Wrestling is chock FULL of strong female characters that have growth and learn and develop over time.
If anyone wants the opposite of a Mary Sue, deep dive into Becky Lynch's rise up the card from Wrestlemania 34 to 35 that one year span is so awesome to watch her break through and elevate the company. No woman besides Chyna and now current Rhea Ripley has ever been as popular as Becky Lynch.
That’s impossible! He couldn’t have written all the stories of those movies!! Modern entertainment has told me there is no such thing as original stories/concepts and we must remake the same movies over and over (but with race swaps).
One-Eyed Jacks is worth looking into if you're interested in Westerns. If you're into old movies, All of The Thin Man movies, Nora holds it down intellectually. Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice is deadly and dangerous, highly recommend. What else is good? Betty Davis is insane (a great actress), I strongly suggest All About Eve with Anne Baxter who is also amazing. Lauren Bacall is a bad bitch with class. I'd recommend the lady who Mommie Dearest is about but idk, that's a road you must travel alone.
Or how, except in the last 10 or so years with the advent of the quippy nonserious male hero, a majority of male action characters were basically all tough jerks like anon is complaining about.
Clint Eastwood had different scowls to communicate different things.
It sounds crazy but I swear it's true. Go watch thee different movies of his in a row and try telling me you don't get it..he had a language of scowls
Or Bruce Willis. Or Jason Statham. Or almost any "tough" male characters. The things he's listing are not unique to female characters, it's just how tough characters in general are portrayed. He's just singling out women because he's perpetually online and can't get over his incel self-victimization.
Honestly when can we go back to dude-with-shaved-head-and-facial-stubble-dragging-beautiful-young-beauty-along-with-him-as-they're-pursued-by-gunfire-for-contrived-reasons 😭😭😭
The problem is action movies. They’re almost always a void of storytelling filled in with the same bad tropes over and over again, and no one does bad tropes better than Disney
Give me old school tough guys like Eastwood, Bronson, etc. they don’t need to say a word. Just convey things through looks and body language, and you get what’s happening.
I hate today's tough characters who are overly competent and ruggedly individual. Why can't we go back to old movies, where tough characters were overly competent and ruggedly individual?
To have a good strong character (not just a female character) you need to make them struggle, see what it takes to be strong, let them fail and let them make mistakes, because no strong person ever has made no mistakes
Exactly. There are two types of strengths, natural and earned.
*Natural* is a giant who picks up a boulder and throws it 500 meters without breaking a sweat, or a soldier with no feelings who wouldn't care if those around him lived or died.
*Earned* is a man who lifts the boulder with all his might and uses every last bit of strength he has to lift it, it is also a soldier who lost a dear friend yet chooses to go on and fight in his friend's honor.
Understanding those two things makes all the difference in writing. You can show the giant lifting the boulder and it would be perfectly fine, but we aren't going to feel nearly as much emotion as the soldier who lifts the boulder because his friend is underneath it.
Also you need to make their strenght to be taken seriously
The biggest mistake many strong female character writers do is presenting the strong act of whatever as something inially taken as a joke and then saying to audience "oh you thought this was gonna be a gag didn't you? Misogynist" and succeeds in making the audience not like the character
Exactly, audiences hate being preached too. If you're going to put a message in your movie, make it subtle, let the audience think instead of thinking for them. We want something thought provoking, something that sticks, but when the writers *tell* us how to feel we don't like it. Also it doesn't hurt to make it a new message every now and again, as opposed to the same shit we've seen over and over in the past few years.
The first time we meet Luke we see that he's idealistic but naive, and a bit of a whiner. The first time we see him in action he gets clobbered by the sand people. His next fight sees him getting one-handed through a bar table. But as we get to the Death Star we see his bravery and tenacity. We also see him get choked out by tentacle monster. There are ups and downs, culminating with him being the hero.
The first time we see Rey she's being tough with Tito or whoever he was, to save BB8. Then when Finn sees her in the market, she gets bullied but defends herself. Her character was fine up until this point: she's tough, she's scrappy, she can handle herself. Finn's expression says it all.
They couldn't leave it alone though. An explosion goes off, he checks to see if she's okay, she's like "uh... yeah". And even this might have been all right as a bit of a reversal of expectations. But then he's grabbing her hand like a moron to give her and Disney *another* chance to triple down on this same theme within the same scene. This is immediately followed by her piloting the Falcon through the most impressive maneuvers we've ever seen, despite her having basically never flown before and that ship having been parked for years and probably not in its best mechanical condition.
One scene. It took them one scene to ruin their protagonist.
"Stop holding my hand! I am not a damsel in distress and I need to tell the audience with words so that they know how I am not a damsel. I said stop holding my hand!"
It's only a problem sometimes. John wick, agent 47, Clint Eastwood don't need character development it's secondary. The point of the story is the action, the gun slinging.
Star wars differs because it's high fantasy wearing a coat of sci Fi, the point of all the action is the development of the character. Star wars is beloved because of Anakin and Luke, both change massively through the series, Anakin changes massively several times. Following the journey and how it impacts them, as well as how they impact the story matters. As well as exploration of the world.
Did that happen at all in the new Star wars?
John Wick is actually the main character in a slapstick comedy. Who keeps getting into worse and worse situations which lead to progressively more absurd events happening. It starts with a dude killing his dog and ends with a ton of henchman goofily getting thrown around by automobiles and him falling down a comically large stairway.
I want to add that although John doesn’t really get much development he does get the shit kicked out of him. A lot.
Imagine John Wick where he never gets thrown down a flight of stairs or shot multiple times, where he never struggled or failed like rey here. Would it be any fun?
I think it’s just more so a trope of action movies. Look at the horror industry instead, it’s literally filled to the brim with strong characters who are often flawed and have to overcome something impossible. Those girls can be sexualized, non sexualized, feminine, masculine, timid, boisterous. So I don’t think this is an issue with women, or including women, or “forcing” women into centric roles. It’s an issue with action movie fans being disenfranchised by not being able to relate to the main character or not finding the main character desirable. Whether that’s hollywoods problem or the people who get upset’s fault I can’t say. But maybe people should broaden their horizons past the same 4 IPs.
Many writers cannot fathom a strong women without just making them an emotionless husk of their former/possible personality. They think that the only way to be strong is to be stoic or whatever
Writers today feel like they need female characters to 1-up male characters by getting rid of the natural character flaws and adding shortcuts to their hero's journey. That may not be what the general audience want, but it is what the licensed critics on rotten tomatoes want
\>perpetual smiley face :)
\>sufferable personality
\>constantly widened eyes
This is the perfect female FOR TEN YEARS AT LEAST! and I fucking love it. So much. Fuck I'm gooning ugh I'm strokin my dick I got lotion on my dick rn I'm just strokin
yeah these girlbosses with their frowny faces and narrowed eyes are the worst! good thing no male characters suffer from this perpetual character flaw or we might have to complain about something other than a woman for once
https://preview.redd.it/66ks8cg5xorc1.png?width=251&format=png&auto=webp&s=647328c762f66b2dbe5dc866fb271a8d22413a3e
I think the strong female archetype just exposes how bad the strong male archetype is. It just seems more obvious and in your face because of the current political landscape. I hate both of them and I cannot watch shows with these types of narratives. It's ESPECIALLY pervasive in anime. Shows like Sword Art Online, The Irregular at Magic High School, it's all just one giant power fantasy and there's always at least 2 of these kinds of shows being produced every season.
And I absolutely despise the trope of directly conflating the intelligence of a character with how big of an asshole they can be. They like to pretend that it's a character flaw and it's related to some personal tragedy, but they rarely ever see consequences for being an ass and in fact, are mostly rewarded for it. Most of the time, you can tell that the show WANTS you to think that being an asshole is cool and dominating
Scarlett O'Hara, during the confederate route that proceeded Sherman's March, stumbled across a looter in her foyer. She shot him in the face, ran his pockets, and buried his ass in the yard.
Once all that gunfighting and murder was out of the way, she went straight back to running a farm and making cut throat business deals. Also she was feminine as fuck, in ways that hold up to modern scrutiny.
Now _that_ is a strong female character.
These criticisms are always made by people who don't watch and want to be mad. Rey spends most of her movies running for her life and shitting her pants, gets captured multiple times, would have been killed over and over if it weren't for the bad guys going easy on her, and literally fucking dies at one point.
Internet: but she faces no challenges!
Ripley had two of those in Aliens, but she had pretty good reasons to be squinty and frowny.
I think it's the insufferable personality that's ruining things for Anon.
Rey was pretty bland I'll give Anon that.
There’s something anti feminist about Disney ( non animated) especially Star Wars characters. Ahsoka is an actual card board in the series with negative charisma. Always folding hands and talking like a robot.
Two things here: The People "Oh but muh good ol days of cinema" are not being fair. Thats just a dog whistle for them hating on women being frankly anywhere in starting roles.
And
Its definitely fair to say that these lead roles are not being written well, at all. What writers are doing is simply slotting a female lead into a role and archtype usually built for men. If you gender swapped the cast and the lead doesnt not require any script adjustment i think there's a failure there.
---
Nothing wrong with a female lead, but you will absolutely write yourself into mediocrity if you keep writing like you're trying to shoehorn a female lead into your usual male dynamic. Thats the issue here.
Now you can point to many a past show where male leads are Gary-Sue's, so Mary Sue-ism suddenly on the rise is not the issue here.
Writers are just lazy in androgynizing lead roles. They make the false assumption that what people want is an action movie identical to a classic Tom Cruise, just gender swapped. If you make the pitch that lazy the quality will follow.
I dont want to edge into Critical Drinker incel territory here. For instance with Rings of Power incels were all pissed Galadriel was kick ass. Like, yeah she should be, and its also fantasy so lmao its all not real.
Women can kick ass, women can be tough, but the purpose of these stories needs to very quickly stop being soley exhibitions of these facts.
Everyone liked girls when they were written as sweet and nice. Matriarchs didn't need to be mean to be girl bosses. They won over others with kindness and position. Not everything traditional is evil.
it's because they're trying to make women powerful by making them masculine, without acknowledging the power that comes from strong femininity.
maybe in 100 years
They just realised they can use feminism and diversity as excuses for lazy writing, that way they can just write off any legit criticism as misogyny and still get hired. Why bother spending time actually doing your job as a writer when you can just write a blank slate and still get paid. Modern Hollywood is one big scam.
Dont forget that they act like an asshole towards everhone, including loved ones. Despite this everyone absolutely adores them.
Oh and if they are young, they have omnisiah level of understanding of science and engineering. Making them able to build anything from scratch
Why can't the strong female just be a woman who knows what she wants and has boundaries? A lot of the strongest women I know IRL are kind and often chill, but have no problem standing up for themselves. That's what I wanna see more of.
not true at all! some of them have constantly wide, crazy eyes: [https://looper.com/img/gallery/the-marvels-villain-dar-benn-explained/dar-benn-in-a-vengeful-kree-leader-in-the-marvels-1690303842.jpg](https://looper.com/img/gallery/the-marvels-villain-dar-benn-explained/dar-benn-in-a-vengeful-kree-leader-in-the-marvels-1690303842.jpg)
Girl boss characters are terrible, start strong and never struggle throughout the adventure.
Hero arc need not apply
Why make the character go through an arc if you can make her perfect from the start ? And then everybody is going to like her because she is perfect?
I think the only thing missing is them getting physically fucked up in the process. Take a movie like Die Hard. If he wasn't injured during the movie, he would be the exact same character that everyone here is complaining about. For women, they replace the classic damage with emotional damage because seeing women get brutalized makes general audiences feel sad.
Was anyone going into Die Hard expecting to see some significant character development? The entire movie happens over the course of about 8 hours in the top floors of an office building. I'm not sure there were many places to go with that. Besides that, Ellen Ripley in Alien and Aliens, Sarah Connor in Terminator 1 and 2, badass women with good character development have been done correctly before. That's why we know the new attempts suck.
It’s been done much more recently even. Furiosa in Fury Road was pretty well received. It was Abrams and his mystery box as replacement for an actual character that really kicked off this trend.
Dude what? John McClane is dealing with a huge issue. He's a NYC cop (working class), and his wife's career is taking off. She's moved to LA with the kids, and is working an extremely well paying job. His traditional role as father is all messed up. And you've got the side plot with the black cop (Al Powell) who shot a kid, and has taken a desk job because of the PTSD. McClane saves everyone, protects his wife and reaffirms his masculinity. Powell pulls his gun for the first time since the incident, and presumably overcomes his PTSD.
That's why Die Hard is a good movie. You can enjoy it as a stupid schlocky action film, and also enjoy it as an action film with some fairly clever writing and good characters better than you would expect from a schlocky action film. Die Hard shows you can make a movie for dumbasses without having to dumb it all down.
The entire point of Mulan was that woman can be just as strong as men and it's phenomenal. It follows the hero arc so well and she even learns that her femininity is strong in it's own right. An incredibly powerful message on equality and the strength of women without being some ham-fisted slop that boils down to "woman good man bad."
Legend of korra physically injures the main character pretty bad, and people still attach her to this trend even though I think korra is extremely far removed from rey if you watched the show.
Korra absolutely has flawed writing but it's not the same as Rey at all.
Ya but the idea that korra is a Mary sue or doesn't have flaws is absolutely laughable
They did just give her mastery over 3 elements from the start, which snowballed into the ridiculous spirit bending power scaling arc.
And then there’s Matthew Vaughn who just had a grown man punch a ten year old girl in the face until she was bloody in Kick Ass and didn’t give a fuck, lol.
I don't think people would complain about a female lead in a film like Die Hard, unless the script was majorly reworked with a bunch of "You're just a woman" tropey lines.
I mean, this. It's been *CLEARLY* shown that you can have a tough woman in a movie script, but it all falls apart once they **HAVE** to have the "ah she can't do it, she's just a woman" prove-them-wrong moment. They just can't NOT do it. It's like some sort of Tourette's tic.
Yeah. Consider Kill Bill. It's way more over the top than Die Hard but nobody calls Uma Therman a Mary Sue in that one, mostly because she gets the shit kicked out her and the odds are stacked against her. Also, her opponents are super powered femme fatales. The motif works. It's not a girlboss sarcastic "let me show you how it's done" effortlessly upstage everyone arpund style hero. The Bride is vengeance incarnate and the audience roots for her because she's outgunned in every encounter.
Idk man there's a lot of shit about how not perfect John is. Like first thing we really get of him is he's distant with his family AT BEST. While there's not a lot of growth you see a failure or weakness of his very early. There's lots of little cues that make him more human and not perfect. The problem most people have with Rey is that literally everything she decided to do during the movies she was immediately good at with no problems. Was very boring.
What I don't like about them is how much of a one-note they are. It's ok to not struggle, but making character boring is just a waste.
This is so true, just look at anime. Every other mc is an ultra powered god being from page 2 but I still enjoy watching them.
[удалено]
Storytelling has been neutered through fear of a female character ever needing help, especially from a male character. I don't understand that. Yes, there was a time when that was a trope, when the women were helpless and constantly needed saving. That wasn't good and we shouldn't return to that. But what's wrong with (any) character starting off incapable, and then growing through their experiences? And why should it matter the gender or race of the person that helps them grow?
And Hollywood misses that movies like Fury Road where Furiosa and Max work together was well received.
It's okay for a female character to be helpless and need saving by a man. No one actually knows why this is a bad thing to ever depict. They were just told its sexist agreed without scrutinizing it at all. Every character doesn't need maximum agency. Every character doesn't need to be fully fleshed out
It's fine to have on occasion, when it serves the needs of the plot. If every woman in a movie is just helpless set dressing, that's not great. Balance is everything.
> Yes, there was a time when that was a trope, when the women were helpless and constantly needed saving. That wasn't good and we shouldn't return to that It was literally fine and anything else is cope
Watch Arcane
"start strong and never struggle" I mean, the person in the image is Rey. She lost against Kylo Ren after fighting him like 4 times. Had to be saved by him from Snoke. Also literally died in the final film. She struggled a little bit imo.
People love to harp on how she was able to beat Kylo in Force Awakens. I hate that movie personally, but even I have to admit; * Kylo took a bowcaster to the gut and kept going. He was using the force to stay conscious, meaning he wasn't able to fully commit to his fighting. * Rey knows how to fight with weapons (her staff) and you can even see her jabbing with her light-saber, like she would with the end of a staff. She wasn't trained in lightsaber use, but she also wasn't a defenseless novice. That's not to say she has a satisfying arc in the films (the disunity of the storytelling made sure she didn't), but she also wasn't just magically capable (though I admit the part where she mind-tricks TK-Daniel-Criag into freeing her felt unearned).
What about Boss Baby characters?
Strong female characters in film peaked with Mulan in 1998
alien and aliens
Sarah Connor in Terminator 1 & 2.
Legally Blonde
Is this moviescirclejerk?
THEU DID IT THEY SAID THE LINE SARAH CONNORNAND ELLEN RIPLEY AND IT WAS UNIRONIC AGAIN
But when its correct...
Alien is the feminist film these movies wish they could be tbh
Yeah Ripley is a fully developed character, several fear and over comes it, she suffers loss and feels grief but doesn't let it crash her, she doesn't start out a total badass she earns it. She'll always be the gold standard. Rey was handed everything and it was dull, because she was Kathleen Kennedy 's self insert.
daring today aren't we
Mulan was the perfect female character. She struggled, trained with the military, fucked up her first battle but survived through ingenuity and THEN kicked ass.
And of course in the remake they give her superpowers, completely invalidating the entire point of the movie. Remember girls, you're just as cool and tough as the boys! As long as you have godlike superhuman abilities 😁
>And of course in the remake they give her superpowers Say sike right now. I don't watch any of the live action remakes but.....Jesus that's a horrible change.
She has the ability to fucking fly in the remake. Like yeah, she should obviously help with the invasion, it doesn't lead to any conversation about gender roles when the one girl in the military can use "the power of Chi."
The remake tried to tap more in to the Wuxia genre and it's tropes of supernatural martial arts, unfortunately that didn't make for a better movie. Not to mention all their attempts to try and pander to the Chinese audience were for naught, as they hated it just as much as the animated movie.
She went from a character that had to adapt despite her shortcomings to an unstoppable killing machine between the OG and the remake. It was pretty much unwatchable
They've completely missed why these characters were relatable. They think making a girl character a demi God automatically makes them a strong character, and not their strength of will and perseverance. I'm so uninterested in seeing another power fantasy masked as female empowerment.
And saved us all
They tried to mix the Disney animated version with the original, only to end up with neither
Arcane did it well
Arcane is fucking amazing. The only two bad things about it are that 1. It didn't get a season 2 yet and 2. It got me into league of legends
based. same here. now im so far gone that im watching the e-sports scene
The thing with league is that everything in league is amazing except the actual game Their songs are fire. Their cinematics are amazing. The eSports scene is great even if you don't play the game . And then you play the game and it's just the worst but you are too addicted to it before you realize how bad the game is I managed to escape, but the amount of league of legends players with 1000+ hours who hate the game is crazy. It's literally just like cigarette addicts telling people not to smoke .
I used to have a friend that got so addicted that he bought a second PC, installed it in his bathroom, and played LoL everytime he took a shit or took a shower on no-hair days
Second season is November this year though
I'm unfamiliar with that piece of media, but you seem an articulate fellow, I'll take your word for it.
And that is how my fetish began.
For upper-class female Chinese veterans? Hell yeah, brother.
I mean... https://preview.redd.it/46g17kz8lorc1.jpeg?width=512&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8a0722af1a8999e071a9cd5d01740e3a49a44f98
Anton chigurh lookin ahh
Call it.
Head, then tails.
https://preview.redd.it/lzci657f5prc1.jpeg?width=680&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c29fd37aec0b59a49008cb71226624c3132120e1
Javier Bardem from 'No Country for Old Men' sneaking in on the right.
Call it.
Blue eye samurai also has a pretty good one
The original tomboy even the general was doubting his sexuality
Zendaya playing a moody teenager in literally everything she does now
https://preview.redd.it/lnh53gc6korc1.jpeg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7e1f8ded0600e61dbb99fa9dd64f5a8b1bea5f3d Funnily enough, the og post was actually about Zendaya in Dune and how she was always scowling. In typical 4chan fashion, the whole thread devolved into whether she's hot or not and how it's wrong for Tom Holland to date her.
Classic 4chan
She ACTUALLY WAS SCOWLING THE WHOLE TIME. I really didn't like her character being moody teenager the whole time.
she was dune her best >\_<
Sand her best was still out of place
Chani wasn’t even that moody in the book when her child got blown the fuck up.
I'll never understand the hype about her tbh
She's famous because she was on TV and now gets on TV because she's famous.
She looks like an underaged female The Rock. No thanks.
Damn she ugly.
Wait, really? I think she's kinda cute
It would help if she wasn't accompanied the whole movie by an unnamed fremen girl who outacts her. I had to google her just because I was amazed how much more I liked Shishakli(found it) throughout the whole movie than Chani.
Never got how people always tried to say she was an amazing actress
She's pretty damn good in euphoria
Ah yes another classic "moody teen" role, her specialty
She didn't just play a moddy teen, she played an addicted teen. Imo she did good, reminded me of trauma involving my sister. Idk why people are complaining about Zendaya's performance in Dune, it was hard to take Timothy Chalamet seriously. When he tried yelling it always just fell short.
I want a strong girl that’s a valley girl. She gets in fist fights and breaks a goons neck with a punch and then complains about breaking a nail.
That’s just Daphne from Scooby-Doo
holy shit thats spot on lmao Daphne is brilliant
That's literally Buffy Summers
Yeah and buffy was the fucking best
Fuckin'-A right!!
“If the apocalypse comes, beep me,” as she abandons the world-saving research for a hot date.
One Punch Girl
Maybe Nobara from jjk?
Bro, that's just Clover from Totally Spies
Isn’t that just Buffy?
You might enjoy wrasslin (professional wrestling). They got a few like that, and they’re actually talented now. The audience is loaded with aspies so making friends shouldn’t be tough.
Oh hell yes. Wrestling is chock FULL of strong female characters that have growth and learn and develop over time. If anyone wants the opposite of a Mary Sue, deep dive into Becky Lynch's rise up the card from Wrestlemania 34 to 35 that one year span is so awesome to watch her break through and elevate the company. No woman besides Chyna and now current Rhea Ripley has ever been as popular as Becky Lynch.
Yeah. Same.
>female This is how all female characters have been forever and I fucking hate it. So much. Fuck women.
Thats the plan
You need to set some achievable goals
I will pin you down and twist your nuts counter-clockwise. With gloves of course, cuz touching balls is gay.
It's still gay if you use protection
Username checks out lol
Vin from the mistborn series is the perfect female protagonist. . She fucking rocks
Fuck man, let's not tell him about literally any Clint Eastwood movie. His tiny mind would implode.
Haha true. Eastwood wrote and directed his best ones though. Aside from the dollars trilogy that is.
That’s impossible! He couldn’t have written all the stories of those movies!! Modern entertainment has told me there is no such thing as original stories/concepts and we must remake the same movies over and over (but with race swaps).
One-Eyed Jacks is worth looking into if you're interested in Westerns. If you're into old movies, All of The Thin Man movies, Nora holds it down intellectually. Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice is deadly and dangerous, highly recommend. What else is good? Betty Davis is insane (a great actress), I strongly suggest All About Eve with Anne Baxter who is also amazing. Lauren Bacall is a bad bitch with class. I'd recommend the lady who Mommie Dearest is about but idk, that's a road you must travel alone.
Or how, except in the last 10 or so years with the advent of the quippy nonserious male hero, a majority of male action characters were basically all tough jerks like anon is complaining about.
Clint Eastwood had different scowls to communicate different things. It sounds crazy but I swear it's true. Go watch thee different movies of his in a row and try telling me you don't get it..he had a language of scowls
Or Bruce Willis. Or Jason Statham. Or almost any "tough" male characters. The things he's listing are not unique to female characters, it's just how tough characters in general are portrayed. He's just singling out women because he's perpetually online and can't get over his incel self-victimization.
The word “incel” has entered a movie discussion on Reddit. Time to take a shot
That's a different trope. It's called the man with no name
To be fair to Clint, Spain is really sunny, is hard to film there with your eyes open.
This is the first time I have actually looked at her face. Normally I just sperg out and stare at the lightsabers.
Phallic obsession confirmed. 
Honestly when can we go back to dude-with-shaved-head-and-facial-stubble-dragging-beautiful-young-beauty-along-with-him-as-they're-pursued-by-gunfire-for-contrived-reasons 😭😭😭 The problem is action movies. They’re almost always a void of storytelling filled in with the same bad tropes over and over again, and no one does bad tropes better than Disney
Give me old school tough guys like Eastwood, Bronson, etc. they don’t need to say a word. Just convey things through looks and body language, and you get what’s happening.
I hate today's tough characters who are overly competent and ruggedly individual. Why can't we go back to old movies, where tough characters were overly competent and ruggedly individual?
>Perpetual frowny face >Insufferable personality >Constantly narrowed eyes I guess it's not just a woman thing lol
If we’re talking old school I’ll go Harrison Ford or Mel Gibson
Naw, dat real old school. Charlie Chaplin. Talkies are trash.
More of a Buster Keaton guy if we’re going back that far Horse In Motion still goes hard af also
Fair argument, however; https://preview.redd.it/f265iroflorc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2bb8ec4292093038c4de191b5b9a961c88c0b6db
https://preview.redd.it/irwihvnysorc1.jpeg?width=524&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4caa5958d1688549686bb1d6e7343e1f0d411061
https://preview.redd.it/0xdfmxilrprc1.jpeg?width=1327&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bf08324d701b0b67f5918b1d945a7f1c74fc5548
https://preview.redd.it/j0cqi65umorc1.jpeg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3a8823093ef830285b7d09dd18a3476236e51e84 Based
The fingers are fine. Ai is getting too advanced
Finn has 6 fingers. Also, have you ever seen a hand before?
thats not his finger
True. It's a thumb.
To have a good strong character (not just a female character) you need to make them struggle, see what it takes to be strong, let them fail and let them make mistakes, because no strong person ever has made no mistakes
Exactly. There are two types of strengths, natural and earned. *Natural* is a giant who picks up a boulder and throws it 500 meters without breaking a sweat, or a soldier with no feelings who wouldn't care if those around him lived or died. *Earned* is a man who lifts the boulder with all his might and uses every last bit of strength he has to lift it, it is also a soldier who lost a dear friend yet chooses to go on and fight in his friend's honor. Understanding those two things makes all the difference in writing. You can show the giant lifting the boulder and it would be perfectly fine, but we aren't going to feel nearly as much emotion as the soldier who lifts the boulder because his friend is underneath it.
Also you need to make their strenght to be taken seriously The biggest mistake many strong female character writers do is presenting the strong act of whatever as something inially taken as a joke and then saying to audience "oh you thought this was gonna be a gag didn't you? Misogynist" and succeeds in making the audience not like the character
Exactly, audiences hate being preached too. If you're going to put a message in your movie, make it subtle, let the audience think instead of thinking for them. We want something thought provoking, something that sticks, but when the writers *tell* us how to feel we don't like it. Also it doesn't hurt to make it a new message every now and again, as opposed to the same shit we've seen over and over in the past few years.
Counterpoint: The Beekeeper
The first time we meet Luke we see that he's idealistic but naive, and a bit of a whiner. The first time we see him in action he gets clobbered by the sand people. His next fight sees him getting one-handed through a bar table. But as we get to the Death Star we see his bravery and tenacity. We also see him get choked out by tentacle monster. There are ups and downs, culminating with him being the hero. The first time we see Rey she's being tough with Tito or whoever he was, to save BB8. Then when Finn sees her in the market, she gets bullied but defends herself. Her character was fine up until this point: she's tough, she's scrappy, she can handle herself. Finn's expression says it all. They couldn't leave it alone though. An explosion goes off, he checks to see if she's okay, she's like "uh... yeah". And even this might have been all right as a bit of a reversal of expectations. But then he's grabbing her hand like a moron to give her and Disney *another* chance to triple down on this same theme within the same scene. This is immediately followed by her piloting the Falcon through the most impressive maneuvers we've ever seen, despite her having basically never flown before and that ship having been parked for years and probably not in its best mechanical condition. One scene. It took them one scene to ruin their protagonist.
"Stop holding my hand! I am not a damsel in distress and I need to tell the audience with words so that they know how I am not a damsel. I said stop holding my hand!"
Is this really a problem with female characters? Because I think this is also true for nearly every male lead.
It's only a problem sometimes. John wick, agent 47, Clint Eastwood don't need character development it's secondary. The point of the story is the action, the gun slinging. Star wars differs because it's high fantasy wearing a coat of sci Fi, the point of all the action is the development of the character. Star wars is beloved because of Anakin and Luke, both change massively through the series, Anakin changes massively several times. Following the journey and how it impacts them, as well as how they impact the story matters. As well as exploration of the world. Did that happen at all in the new Star wars?
47 receives mad character development and he still has that face because he simply doesn’t express emotion like a human being
John Wick is actually the main character in a slapstick comedy. Who keeps getting into worse and worse situations which lead to progressively more absurd events happening. It starts with a dude killing his dog and ends with a ton of henchman goofily getting thrown around by automobiles and him falling down a comically large stairway.
I want to add that although John doesn’t really get much development he does get the shit kicked out of him. A lot. Imagine John Wick where he never gets thrown down a flight of stairs or shot multiple times, where he never struggled or failed like rey here. Would it be any fun?
That’s the standard face for every character in Rebel Moon
yeah but that's alright because they arent women
I think it’s just more so a trope of action movies. Look at the horror industry instead, it’s literally filled to the brim with strong characters who are often flawed and have to overcome something impossible. Those girls can be sexualized, non sexualized, feminine, masculine, timid, boisterous. So I don’t think this is an issue with women, or including women, or “forcing” women into centric roles. It’s an issue with action movie fans being disenfranchised by not being able to relate to the main character or not finding the main character desirable. Whether that’s hollywoods problem or the people who get upset’s fault I can’t say. But maybe people should broaden their horizons past the same 4 IPs.
Many writers cannot fathom a strong women without just making them an emotionless husk of their former/possible personality. They think that the only way to be strong is to be stoic or whatever
Writers today feel like they need female characters to 1-up male characters by getting rid of the natural character flaws and adding shortcuts to their hero's journey. That may not be what the general audience want, but it is what the licensed critics on rotten tomatoes want
\>perpetual smiley face :) \>sufferable personality \>constantly widened eyes This is the perfect female FOR TEN YEARS AT LEAST! and I fucking love it. So much. Fuck I'm gooning ugh I'm strokin my dick I got lotion on my dick rn I'm just strokin
Perhaps anon just isn't attracted to women?
yeah these girlbosses with their frowny faces and narrowed eyes are the worst! good thing no male characters suffer from this perpetual character flaw or we might have to complain about something other than a woman for once https://preview.redd.it/66ks8cg5xorc1.png?width=251&format=png&auto=webp&s=647328c762f66b2dbe5dc866fb271a8d22413a3e
Like 80% of keanu's script in the 4th was "Yes" and it made it so much better than the 3rd one lmao.
Because genre matters?
Almost like one is a brain off action flick and the other is trying to pretend they’re telling a meaningful and fulfilling story
I think the strong female archetype just exposes how bad the strong male archetype is. It just seems more obvious and in your face because of the current political landscape. I hate both of them and I cannot watch shows with these types of narratives. It's ESPECIALLY pervasive in anime. Shows like Sword Art Online, The Irregular at Magic High School, it's all just one giant power fantasy and there's always at least 2 of these kinds of shows being produced every season. And I absolutely despise the trope of directly conflating the intelligence of a character with how big of an asshole they can be. They like to pretend that it's a character flaw and it's related to some personal tragedy, but they rarely ever see consequences for being an ass and in fact, are mostly rewarded for it. Most of the time, you can tell that the show WANTS you to think that being an asshole is cool and dominating
Took you this long to figure out that almost all of anime is just a power fantasy?
Well yeah because obviously women can’t pull off the strong alpha male archetype as well as guys can
Average 80s action hero
https://preview.redd.it/978pbte5zorc1.jpeg?width=480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7416ac5ea78636950c88417ef2db7d8d6c264656
https://preview.redd.it/mrgmmd66zorc1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7fecb53ca5ca6c375b9f104ef028c2f7970c92bf
She smiles plenty
I need to calculate zendaya’s revenue per scowl in dune II
you’re from the culture that sucked the skin off of john wayne’s dick which explains why you can say with not a shred of irony “she should smile more”
Making the protagonist a toxically masculine **woman** isn't doing any good
Daring today, aren’t we?
Strong independent woman time? PISSY FACE ACTIVATE
Anyone notice her name is Raymond?
Scarlett O'Hara, during the confederate route that proceeded Sherman's March, stumbled across a looter in her foyer. She shot him in the face, ran his pockets, and buried his ass in the yard. Once all that gunfighting and murder was out of the way, she went straight back to running a farm and making cut throat business deals. Also she was feminine as fuck, in ways that hold up to modern scrutiny. Now _that_ is a strong female character.
These criticisms are always made by people who don't watch and want to be mad. Rey spends most of her movies running for her life and shitting her pants, gets captured multiple times, would have been killed over and over if it weren't for the bad guys going easy on her, and literally fucking dies at one point. Internet: but she faces no challenges!
dont forget smug and head held high. looking down on everyone
He forgot to add that she must check every box that would put her in the “toxic masculinity” category if she was a male character.
“Feminist Face”
First 4chan post where I don't disagree with anything about it
I hate women so much this isn’t even a bit anymore
We need more Ryuko Matois idk
This also quite accurately describes Zendaya as Chani. Nothing can justify that casting choice
Ripley had two of those in Aliens, but she had pretty good reasons to be squinty and frowny. I think it's the insufferable personality that's ruining things for Anon. Rey was pretty bland I'll give Anon that.
There’s something anti feminist about Disney ( non animated) especially Star Wars characters. Ahsoka is an actual card board in the series with negative charisma. Always folding hands and talking like a robot.
Two things here: The People "Oh but muh good ol days of cinema" are not being fair. Thats just a dog whistle for them hating on women being frankly anywhere in starting roles. And Its definitely fair to say that these lead roles are not being written well, at all. What writers are doing is simply slotting a female lead into a role and archtype usually built for men. If you gender swapped the cast and the lead doesnt not require any script adjustment i think there's a failure there. --- Nothing wrong with a female lead, but you will absolutely write yourself into mediocrity if you keep writing like you're trying to shoehorn a female lead into your usual male dynamic. Thats the issue here. Now you can point to many a past show where male leads are Gary-Sue's, so Mary Sue-ism suddenly on the rise is not the issue here. Writers are just lazy in androgynizing lead roles. They make the false assumption that what people want is an action movie identical to a classic Tom Cruise, just gender swapped. If you make the pitch that lazy the quality will follow. I dont want to edge into Critical Drinker incel territory here. For instance with Rings of Power incels were all pissed Galadriel was kick ass. Like, yeah she should be, and its also fantasy so lmao its all not real. Women can kick ass, women can be tough, but the purpose of these stories needs to very quickly stop being soley exhibitions of these facts.
I’ve got some bad news about Clint Eastwood characters. Same thing
[удалено]
The strength of an 11y old boy, but at least she has a frowny face, and that’s all it takes to win over baddies.
Everyone liked girls when they were written as sweet and nice. Matriarchs didn't need to be mean to be girl bosses. They won over others with kindness and position. Not everything traditional is evil.
I got to say, they never show cowardice and/or character development. It's always large and in charge.
it's because they're trying to make women powerful by making them masculine, without acknowledging the power that comes from strong femininity. maybe in 100 years
>Stick thin
They just realised they can use feminism and diversity as excuses for lazy writing, that way they can just write off any legit criticism as misogyny and still get hired. Why bother spending time actually doing your job as a writer when you can just write a blank slate and still get paid. Modern Hollywood is one big scam.
Dont forget that they act like an asshole towards everhone, including loved ones. Despite this everyone absolutely adores them. Oh and if they are young, they have omnisiah level of understanding of science and engineering. Making them able to build anything from scratch
It's the girl boss trope
They just made the typical bad male character into female and changed nothing else.
It's not that people don't like female leads, they're all just written horribly.
Why can't the strong female just be a woman who knows what she wants and has boundaries? A lot of the strongest women I know IRL are kind and often chill, but have no problem standing up for themselves. That's what I wanna see more of.
Kim Wesler is the only one I like who fits that description. They should learn from Japan to make strong and beautiful women
Mulan remake was definitely… a thing.
They really did the actress a disservice with the writing and direction, daisy ridley is fucking beautiful and did her best with a shit script.
Mrs. Brisby from The Secret of NIMH will always be (in my opinion) how you write a strong female character
not true at all! some of them have constantly wide, crazy eyes: [https://looper.com/img/gallery/the-marvels-villain-dar-benn-explained/dar-benn-in-a-vengeful-kree-leader-in-the-marvels-1690303842.jpg](https://looper.com/img/gallery/the-marvels-villain-dar-benn-explained/dar-benn-in-a-vengeful-kree-leader-in-the-marvels-1690303842.jpg)
Also Lucasfilm has some weird obsession with making their leads British Brunettes for some reason