Super Girls
June 6th, 2013




Santino has gone back to the vineyards to explain why the “lack of female superheroes in movies” isn’t corporate/cultural sexism. This time, Santino is spurred on by stupid remarks from Joss Whedon, who really ought to know better. Here’s Sonny:

But, since we seem to have to relitigate this stuff every single solitary year (sometimes several times a year!), allow me to briefly point out that Angie Han and Joss Whedon are remarkably, spectacularly wrong. There is actually a metric ton of evidence that a superheroine movies don’t work. For instance: all the superheroinemovies that haven’t worked.

There’s Elektra, a spinoff of a modestly successful superhero film that starred a popular actress and grossed just $24M on a $43M production budget (plus another $20M to $30M on advertising). There’s Catwoman, a film about a longstanding female comic book character that starred an absolute boffo, Oscar-winning and Oscar-nominated cast (Halle Berry! Sharon Stone!) that tanked, grossing just $40M on a $100M production budget (plus, again, advertising costs). There’s the action-comedy My Super Ex-Girlfriend, which grossed just $22.5M on a $30-$40M budget. Don’t even get me started on Supergirl.

Noticing a pattern yet?

Just as a factual matter, Sonny is right. But I’d add something else:

Ever since Buffy, we’ve had an endless cavalcade of ass-kicking female action leads: River Tam in Firefly/Serenity; Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider/Wanted/Salt; Kate Beckinsale in Underworld series, Uma Thermon in Kill Bill; the various Sarah Connors; Milla Jovovitch in every role since The Fifth Element; the girls of Sucker Punch; Mark Zuckerberg’s girlfriend in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; Cloe Moretz as Hit Girl.

In fact, you might argue that the ass-kicking female hero is a totally over-used movie cliche that’s in desperate need of being reinvented—the same way the male action hero was up until Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne series which, I think you could argue, very much shifted our expectations away from the old Schwarzenegger/Stallone action hero mold into what Galley Friend Mike Russell refers to as “man-as-shark” roles.
One of the reasons fans were so excited about Gina Carano’s star-turn in Haywire was that it looked as though she might finally re-define female action heroes into something fresher and less-cliched.
As I said several months ago, if you want to make an awesome chick superhero movie, cast Carano as Elektra. Marvel has reacquired the rights to Daredevil, but it’s not clear if Elektra came along as part of the package. If she did, then why not have Whedon get to work on a story–it’s not like there aren’t tons of movie-ready Elektra plots–put Carano into the role, and reinvent the female super-hero genre?

  1. Kevin Binversie June 6, 2013 at 9:51 pm

    The overall understanding is that Elektra came along with the Daredevil rights. There would be news at any number of sites if it were otherwise .

    http://splashpage.mtv.com/2013/05/09/elektra-rights-returned-to-marvel/

    2. REPLY

  2. Joe Sixpack June 7, 2013 at 9:07 am

    Matt Damon is an awful actor and the Bourne series was equally bad because of his performance. Have you read the books?

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