Why has there never been a good comic book movie with a female protagonists?

T

The Overlord

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There are have been a few comic book movies that featured female protagonists (Supergirl, Elektra, Catwoman and Tank Girl for example) and they have all been terrible. Why has there never been a good comic book movie with a female protagonists?
 
Mostly, because they're written/directed by men with no talent in telling stories with strong women, or written/directed by women with no talent in telling stories with strong women.

Hell, look at the aborted Wonder Woman TV show, they stripped out Diana's power, and independence, and turned it into another "Single Female Lawyer" show. I mean, they had her whining about her body and being jealous of Katy Perry for ****'s sake. To be honest tho, even in the non-Comic Book movie genre, rarely do you see strong female protagonists. Unless it's Ellen Ripley in the Alien franchise, or one of Angelina Jolie's action movies, women in American cinema don't have a lot of traction in the "Hero" role, and when they try, people mock the film for having "a woman acting like a tough guy".
 
Had a thought after my rant, there have been successful TV shows with strong protagonists that happened to be women; Xena, Buffy, Alias. The leads in these could have easily been; Wonder Woman, Spider-girl, or Ms Marvel, but unfortunately it seems the be that some creators think that the superhero genre is so difficult to write/adapt. Look at the running fiasco of some male heroes too, you have producers scrambling to make everything "gritty", then there are creators *coughMarkStevenJohnsoncough* who made R-rates properties into very generic PG-rated movies, hell, one's even on your list of examples.

Look at the successful Comic Movies; they're either extremely faithful (Iron Man, Cap, Blade, Spidey, etc), falls into the creator's realm of expertise/experimentation (Nolan's Bat, First Class, etc), or just caters to the lowest common denominator (X3 the Last Stand, Origins Wolverine, and yes, they were both strangely successful), but there's still a lot of unsuccessful comic book movies, I think they're over thinking it. Alien wasn't amazing because Ridley Scott wrote his Hero as a woman, truth is, he wrote it as a man, then later changed it to a woman. It's the same problem some people have when writing LGBT characters, they're so intent on writing a "Gay Character" when they should be writing a Character who just happens to be gay.

Sorry, rambling. It's just something that's close to my heart, so I tend to get attached to the subject.
 
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Jaggyd said:
Had a thought after my rant, there have been successful TV shows with strong protagonists that happened to be women; Xena, Buffy, Alias. The leads in these could have easily been; Wonder Woman, Spider-girl, or Ms Marvel, but unfortunately it seems the be that some creators think that the superhero genre is so difficult to write/adapt. Look at the running fiasco of some male heroes too, you have producers scrambling to make everything "gritty", then there are creators *coughMarkStevenJohnsoncough* who made R-rates properties into very generic PG-rated movies, hell, one's even on your list of examples.

Look at the successful Comic Movies; they're either extremely faithful (Iron Man, Cap, Blade, Spidey, etc), falls into the creator's realm of expertise/experimentation (Nolan's Bat, First Class, etc), or just caters to the lowest common denominator (X3 the Last Stand, Origins Wolverine, and yes, they were both strangely successful), but there's still a lot of unsuccessful comic book movies, I think they're over thinking it. Alien wasn't amazing because Ridley Scott wrote his Hero as a woman, truth is, he wrote it as a man, then later changed it to a woman. It's the same problem some people have when writing LGBT characters, they're so intent on writing a "Gay Character" when they should be writing a Character who just happens to be gay.

Sorry, rambling. It's just something that's close to my heart, so I tend to get attached to the subject.
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Agreed completely. Also a lot of it has to do with marketibility. Most producers look at female lead films and don't see much profit to be made so they'll either pass on any good idea that's not straitforward something that's been done before or they'll put their female lead in the background behind a male character in promotion. Look at Alice in Wonderland and the new Snow White movie coming up. Alice emphasized Johnny Depp on everything and Snow White is pretty much all Chris Hemsworth being Thor with an axe in a commercial, it's even called Snow White and the Huntsman (though it does look kind of good).
 
i agree with pretty much everything that's been said. I also think that the costumes female super heroes have tend to be and obstacle too. They tend to be very revealing and sexual and don't translate well to live action. That could simply be overcome by changing the costumes, and if the costumes were the only problem, they would have made some good girl-fronted super hero movies by now, but i'm just saying the costumes are a contributing factor.
 
I think the fundamental problem is people think you need to write women differently than men and vice-versa.

Ripley was a man in every draft, including the shooting draft. At the eleventh hour they cast an unknown actress, Sigourney Weaver, to play the role because it played into the sexual image system better.

A good character is a good character is a good character. Gender is largely irrelevant.

When I write, I find I never write white men as the protagonist. It's either men of a different ethnicity or women.
 
Captain Canuck said:
i agree with pretty much everything that's been said. I also think that the costumes female super heroes have tend to be and obstacle too. They tend to be very revealing and sexual and don't translate well to live action. That could simply be overcome by changing the costumes, and if the costumes were the only problem, they would have made some good girl-fronted super hero movies by now, but i'm just saying the costumes are a contributing factor.
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I disagree, to a point. How many times have we seen people like Sean Connery, Christian Bale, Chris Hemsworth, Daniel Craig, et al. running around shirtless, yet that doesn't demean the heroes they play. While yes, it irritates me that Wonder Woman runs around in a star-spangled swimsuit, I don't think that is what cripples female "Hero" roles in films. It may hurt the "credibility" of a female Hero, but let's be honest, a guy running around in a black rubber body suit and a cape should be on a whole level of ridiculous, yet there have been great Batman movies.


bluebeast said:
Agreed completely. Also a lot of it has to do with marketibility. Most producers look at female lead films and don't see much profit to be made so they'll either pass on any good idea that's not straitforward something that's been done before or they'll put their female lead in the background behind a male character in promotion. Look at Alice in Wonderland and the new Snow White movie coming up. Alice emphasized Johnny Depp on everything and Snow White is pretty much all Chris Hemsworth being Thor with an axe in a commercial, it's even called Snow White and the Huntsman (though it does look kind of good).
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Aaand you hit the nail on the head. Case in point, this picture had me more excited for Snow White and the Huntsman than any bit of Chris Hemsworth, and should be used more, as I know a LOT of guys who're not giving it a chance because "Bella Swan" is in it.

kristen-stewart-snow-white-and-huntsman.jpg
 
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Jaggyd said:
I disagree, to a point. How many times have we seen people like Sean Connery, Christian Bale, Chris Hemsworth, Daniel Craig, et al. running around shirtless, yet that doesn't demean the heroes they play. While yes, it irritates me that Wonder Woman runs around in a star-spangled swimsuit, I don't think that is what cripples female "Hero" roles in films. It may hurt the "credibility" of a female Hero, but let's be honest, a guy running around in a black rubber body suit and a cape should be on a whole level of ridiculous, yet there have been great Batman movies.
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fair enough. Super hero costumes are pretty silly in general. I think there's a certain level of cornyness that people are willing to put up with though. Superman's red briefs have always been a point of ridicule in movies, Batman used to/still does wear the briefs over the tights, but hasn't had them in movies since "Batman" in the 80s. The black rubber suit and cape is ridiculous, but if you can sell it as body armour and a glider, it makes it more acceptable. In the same way, i think some of the female costumes are more reasonable than others. For example, Spider-Woman's costume works better than Ms Marvel's b/c Spider-Woman's costume is full body and Ms Marvel is wearing a bathing suit, a sash, and thigh high boots. That will never be taken seriously in live action.

Again, I'm not saying this is the biggest problem for female heroes, but its a contributing factor to why they aren't taken seriously for live action TV shows and movies.
 
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Because audiences don't want a strong female lead. Duh guys.

Or maybe because studios will make an extrodinarily ****ty movie and then make huge sweeping generalizations about the viewing audiences based off thier faliures and anttempt to pass off any blame on a faceless mass that can't defend itself and continues to ingest the same cookiecutter bull**** over anf ****ing over and ****ing over GOD DAMN I HATE YOU ALL GO SEE SOMETHING ****ING DIFFERENT OR DON'T GO TO A GOD DAMNED MOVIE!

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11



....

Sorry.
 
'bout time someone did! I commend your honesty-balls, Zombipanda. Girls are stupid. :rockon:
 
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Simply because in my opinion of two overlooking facts. 1 a lot of comic movies suck. 2 Theres more big named male heroes than female.

I mean I personally think Supergirl is a better character than Superman. But Superman is more popular so superman will more directors wanting to do it than Supergirl. Even then look at the superman movies. III,IV and Returns all sucked so much so what chance would a new supergirl movie have?

I mean name the good comic movies then name the bad. You'll see there has also been more horrible comic movies with male protagonists (Batman & Robin , Superman Returns , Judge Dredd , howard the duck and more)

Plus The X-men movies have both Female & Male leads , also the Wonder Woman animated film was bad ass in my opinion.

So to conclude there's no great comic movie because there's only a few great comic movies and the most popular characters in comics = male.
 
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