A Problem with Strong Female Characters in Hollywood

Why Studios Should Focus on Story, not the Gender of the Characters

If I were to summarize my argument in one sentence it would be this — most people do not care what gender the character is. Write a good story. If you write badly, it does not matter if your protagonist is male or female — it does not work. You can give the role to Robert De Niro or Meryl Streep, it won’t matter.

Just because your protagonist is a woman is not a good enough reason to see or like the movie. These days it seems fashionable to try to hide poor writing behind an ideological message — look I am trying to put forward a strong female character, but these toxic audiences are refusing to accept them — or a version of that. No genius, you should do your job. Yes, audiences hated She-Hulk Jennifer Walters, and Captain Marvel Carol Danvers, but the same audiences love Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor. Hmm. The same people that hated Rey Skywalker loved Princess Leia and Ahsoka. Why is that? Because those other screenwriters did their job. They created rich, interesting characters and made us care about them and their story.

It is, frankly, strange seeing Disney as the main culprit in this. After all, this is the company that has brought to screen Ariel, Mulan, Belle, and more recently Rapunzel, Merida (Brave), Elsa and Anna (Frozen), Raya, Moana, and so many other excellent female characters just to name the animated characters.

Let’s go through some of the most common themes used in strange, almost audience-alienating marketing strategies we see these days.

1. This has never been done before. This is an often-seen message to justify imperfect or outright bad writing: we are doing something that has not been done before — creating strong female characters in film and TV.

Excuse me? Never been done before?

Let’s see. Recent female protagonists for which this message is used include Captain Marvel, Rey Skywalker, Black Widow, Jane Foster — female Thor, and She-Hulk — these are hailed as game changers. Please.

Ellen Ripley in Alien films, Sara Connor in Terminator, Princess Leia or Ahsoka in Star Wars, Lorraine Broughton in Atomic Blonde, The Bride in Kill Bill, Rita Vrataski in The Edge of Tomorrow, Sofia and the Director in John Wick 3, Ilsa Faust in Mission Impossible, X23 in Logan. Think of all the brilliant characters in the Game of Thrones — Arya, Cersei, Sansa, Danaerys (before they ruined the character), Ygritte, and Catelyn. Think of Yennifer in The Witcher. Think of the characters in Miyazaki’s movies, who Hollywood can learn a lot from in terms of creating believable and likable strong female characters (see my article on Miyazaki’s films here).

Notice that I included films from decades ago, as well as modern films. Movies and TV shows. Animated films. So there have ALWAYS been incredible female characters around, well-written and adored by the audiences.

Here are a few more. Clarice Starling in Silence of the Lambs. Erin Brockovich, Tigress from Kung Fu Panda, Gamora from the Guardians of the Galaxy. Or take the female characters in the Mandalorian — Bo Katan Kryze, the Armourer, Fennec Shand, and Cara Dune (disclaimer — these were excellent in seasons 1 and 2, unfortunately, season 3 was a disappointment). Again, note that I’m throwing in a mixed bag of characters from different genres or time periods, even good ones from Disney’s products. Hanna, Trinity from Matrix, and Evelyn from Everything Everywhere all at Once. Vi and Jynx from Arcane.

Enough?

2. When a female protagonist is not well-received by the audience, it is because the viewers (mostly male) are toxic.

This is how the showrunners tried to explain away the failures of Captain Marvel, She-Hulk, Rey Skywalker, or, say, Galadriel from the recent disaster — the Rings of Power. This is, frankly, lazy. You are trying to avoid a conversation about why your product is not liked and why your writing is bad.

Here are some things you need to focus on instead. Each one of these characters arrives at the story incredibly overpowered, which makes it boring and not believable. There is no character development. No arc. No hero’s journey. From the first scenes, they are better than their peers or teachers. Hulk has been trying to master his powers for a lifetime and yet She-Hulk does everything better than him off the bat. In the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the whole group of heroes — Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Gandalf, Boromir, and the hobbits were barely able to defeat a troll, yet in the Rings of Power Galadriel single-handedly defeats a troll without breaking a sweat. Are you joking? In the world of Star Wars, think of the journey Luke Skywalker or Anakin have to go through to hone their skills, yet somehow Rey is just all-around amazing. This is pretentious and boring.

Our favorite characters are not perfect. They are characters with flaws, with weaknesses. They have personalities. They deal with real stakes. We want to root for them, we identify with them.

In the show, She-Hulk says — “saving the world is for narcissists”. Right. Because her being obsessed with her dating and career is a better choice than the sacrifices Captain America, Ironman, or Black Widow make to save the world. Who is the narcissist in this situation? I’ll tell you who — She-Hulk. She forgot that “with great power comes great responsibility”.

3. Male audiences don’t like strong female characters because they like female characters only as eye candy.

I challenge you to ask men around you, even the most toxic ones, about who are the hottest actresses in their opinion. See if Sigourney Weaver, Linda Hamilton, or Carry Ann Moss come up. I highly doubt it. The story beats everything else — if the story is good, we will love the character, even if the female character has the least feminine look. Ellen Ripley in Aliens is not “hot”. But she is likable, smart, resourceful, and truly cares about those around her. A character that goes through serious challenges and failures and grows as a result, is always going to be more interesting than a character who never ever fails.

Here is a different angle. Feminine and sexy or not, it all depends on how the character is written. Some of the most attractive female lead characters in MCU are Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) and Gamora (Zoe Saldana). Natasha was an interesting character in Ironman movies because there was a mystery about who she really was. Once the mystery was gone, there was nothing interesting left about her. I found it difficult to really care, except in the Endgame. She was just… there. To be fair, Marvel missed an opportunity to build an interesting backstory and arc for the Black Widow. Now look at Gamora. There is a character arc. The trauma she had to go through as a child, being adopted by Thanos who then raises her to be an assassin. We follow her transformation from someone who is part of a villain’s army, to someone who wants to disrupt his plans to a fully realized hero. From a character who struggles with connecting with anyone to falling in love with someone and eventually trying to fix the broken relationship with her sister. Now this is a strong female character I will root for.

4. We can replace the current male character with exactly the same character, but a female.

What a lazy shortcut. MCU keeps doing this for some reason, even if it is obvious it does not work. You cannot just “borrow” another character’s backstory and arc and continue as if nothing has changed. Female Thor, female Loki, female Hulk, female Ironman. Female Hawkeye was not horrible, since she had her own backstory and was not presented as this incredibly capable person — she had her flaws and went through a process of growth. Look at the latest Terminator movie — Grace Harper is the new Terminator. Flop. Female Ghostbusters. Flop. Taskmaster in the Black Widow movie. Flop. Build a character. Create new, interesting storylines.

Connected to this is the next point.

5. We can make the female lead look good by making male characters into incompetent losers.

She-Hulk is the worst culprit here. This TV show might be one of the worst I have ever seen. The casting of Tatiana Maslany, who is excellent in Orphan Black, could not fix the bad writing. But look at all the men in the show — you will be hard-pressed to find one decent, competent person among them. Even the Daredevil is turned into a joke.

Over a decade, Marvel built up the characters we have fallen in love with, including Thor and Loki. They are capable, smart, and resourceful. All of a sudden, they have been turned into clowns who can’t get anything done so we need the female Thor and female Loki. Come on. Why not create interesting stories for these new characters? Show how they can work together with the characters that we have known for years. You don’t need to undermine one to embellish the other. If you are trying to make a female character strong at the expense of male characters, that’s just lazy.

6. Male audiences have trouble identifying with female heroes because they cannot relate to their unique experiences.

Oh yeah? So I can identify with dwarves and orcs in the Lord of the Rings, a snowman in Frozen, a tree and a raccoon in Guardians of the Galaxy, alien species such as Xenomorphs in Alien films, Yautja in Predator films, Poleepkwa in District 9, Symbiotes in Venom, Na’vi in Avatar. Hell, I can identify with Wookies in Star Wars. But somehow I cannot relate to human female heroes.

This is, of course, another absurd point. I can far more easily identify with a female who is from my country and social circle, than a male Mongolian or Nigerian. Each person is more than just male or female. There are multiple characteristics to us, biological and social that create a complex package of who we are. Such reductionist statements are yet another lazy way of getting out of the conversation about bad writing.

7. We can re-make the old movie, but this time the female lead will be much more powerful.

Mulan is an example of this. The animated movie Mulan (1998) is excellent. It is a perfectly crafted hero’s journey. However, the 2000 film was not well received at all. Just look at the difference in IMDB ratings (drop from 7.6 to 5.7). I dare say that one of the main reasons for how poorly the new movie was received was that there was no sense that Mulan was ever in danger. In the new movie, she has been something of a young phenom since an early age — a superstar fighter. Mulan did not have to grow at all and this, unfortunately, makes the story shallower and less interesting.

8. Hero team-ups seem to be all the rage. Let’s do a females-only team-up!

I think by now you know what I am going to say. You have to build it up correctly. It has to make sense as part of a coherent story. The picture at the beginning of the article is from Avengers: Endgame. For some reason, actually, for no reason at all, we had all the female heroes team up in that scene. It felt like we were being force-fed in this scene. Marvel did it because Marvel could. Because they wanted an iconic scene. Instead, we just got a poorly made scene.

Now compare that to another Disney product — the female team-up in the last episode of the Mandalorian season 2. I did not see a single negative comment about the scene where Bo-Katan, Fennec, Cara Dune, and Bo-Katan’s lieutenant Koska Reeves had together. Four female characters fighting off a bunch of clone soldiers. Why did this not make anyone upset? Where was the toxic audience? Well, perhaps the answer is that the show built it up. It made sense as part of the story. Not just a poster image of a bunch of women running forward. But characters who each have different strengths and fighting styles, and who worked as a team.

9. Our female protagonists can beat up a bunch of male goons. No problem.

Listen. There are situations when it is done well. Take the Atomic Blonde where the fight scene with Charlize Theron fighting several men is done exceptionally well. She does not easily defeat them, she struggles. She fights smart, using everything around her. It was well done, it was believable. Any scene with Michelle Yeoh is usually amazing. When you see Ronda Rousey or Gina Carano fighting men in movies, it makes sense, they were both MMA fighters and champions in real life, so they make it very believable. Few scenes with Ahsoka in the Mandalorian. Sofia in John Wick 3, Halle Berry’s character, and the fight scenes are perfectly done. Fight scenes in Mr. and Ms. Smith. Kill Bill. Sarah Connor. Matrix. I could go on and on. You can make it well or you can make it look ridiculous, like when Black Widow fights a bunch of men and effortlessly defeats everyone. Please. Even a trained female fighter would struggle with several untrained men- so these scenes have to be constructed well, the female protagonist should be able to use her skills, but also her environment to be able to defeat her opponents. You gotta make it believable.

To summarize, the argument about whether it is good or bad to have strong female characters is, in my opinion, a wrong discussion. There are some good and some bad female protagonists. Same as the male protagonists — there are plenty of badly written ones among those too.

My point is that it is best to focus on producing well-written characters, regardless of gender. For me, for a female protagonist to work, she would need to be a real person. Someone with flaws, with a believable story. Someone with a quest, a reason to pursue a goal, real stakes, a conflict, and a challenging antagonist. Failures the character learns from. Mentor characters to guide her. Give me a good arc, an evolution of the character. Give me reasons to respect and root for this character. Just being female (or male for that matter) is not enough.

You see, at the end of the day, there is a simple metric every movie will be judged by — the audience will vote with its money. And no matter what message you are trying to push unless you do it with good writing, a company’s financial losses will force it to eventually fire activists and hire people who should have been hired to start with — professional writers and movie producers.