As an Electronic Film and Media major and an aspiring filmmaker, I watch a lot of movies. Normally when people find out I am a film major, they assume I have an elevated taste when it comes to movies. AKA, that I prefer small indie movies over big Hollywood franchises.
And yet, a majority of the movies I watched growing up were superhero movies. Who doesn't love a good superhero movie? They got it all: action, drama, romance, and lack of any significant female characters.
I can probably count on my fingers the number of female characters one will typically see on screen in any given superhero movie. And if you do see one, they usually fall into the following tropes: the love interest, damsel in distress, object of sexual desire, or a plot device they kill early on to give the superhero motivation. God forbid the superhero actually be a female. This blatant under-representation of women is rampant in superhero movies and benefits no one. If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry, I got some examples.
We can't talk superhero movies without talking about the leader of it all: Marvel. My biggest gripe with Marvel came with the character Black Widow. Until the second "Avengers" movie, she was the only female superhero within the supergroup, yet they couldn't even give her her own movie. Almost every time I saw Black Widow onscreen, she seemed to be seducing someone. Like, they have her as the love interest in three separate movies about three separate people.
When she was first introduced in "Iron Man 2," she was under the gaze of Tony Stark. In "Captain America: The Winter Soldier," she was a potential love interest for Captain America, and then in "Avengers: Age of Ultron," she is the potential love interest of Bruce Banner (although with the release of "Avengers: Infinity War," it looks as if that plotline has been dropped completely). Her presence in the entire franchise has felt redundant and lackluster. I can tell you almost nothing about her character and who she is based on what they provide in the movie, and frankly, I don't care. No one does. When asked who your favorite Avenger is, no one ever replies "Black Widow."
She is just there so no one can complain about there being no females in the franchise while providing next to nothing regarding the plot.
With the addition of Shuri, Gamora, Scarlet Witch, and The Wasp, Black Widow is no longer the only female superhero in the franchise, but the representation of women in this series still has a long way to go. 2019 will see the first Marvel movie to feature a female superhero, Captain Marvel. Only took them ten years...
Another example comes from the "X-Men" franchise. When searching for images, I stumbled across a good visualization of the under-representation of women in superhero movies. In the picture above, there are only 5 women in a total of 17 characters shown in the picture. Here's a gentle reminder that women make up half of the population. Now I am not particularly good at math, but I am fairly certain 5 is nowhere near half of 17.
The picture above is a promo pic from the movie "X-Men: Days of Future Past." I've seen this movie a fair amount of times and am a big fan of it, yet I barely remember the women of this film having much impact or screentime, besides Mystique. And don't even get me started on Mystique and how she just runs around naked for almost the entirety of these movies. While this franchise arguably does a better job at including women in their movies than the "Avengers," there is still much work to be done. The women X-Men rarely have any importance or plot lines, and when they do, it is normally because they've gone rogue (Mystique, Dark Phoenix, Emma Frost, Storm).
All I ask for is a cool lady lead superhero who doesn't wear skimpy clothes and isn't evil. Is that so much to ask?
"Wonder Woman" is one of the only instances of a woman superhero being at the forefront of a movie. Before the release of this movie, producers shied away from a female superhero movie, claiming that their target audience would not appreciate it. With the success of this movie, many companies are now willing to release movies featuring female superheroes.
The success of this movie proves that women comprise a good chunk of the audience that sees superhero movies, and we like to see women in them. It sucks that I love seeing superhero movies, but have not enjoyed one female character in those movies. Hollywood, you got a lot of work to do.
