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Wonder Woman: The Boy's Club has Gotten Old.

20 Aug 2014 16:00 #37807 by fats
hi all,

Now there is no denying the super hero movie franchise is making billions across the globe and has made many in Hollywood lots of money. All that being said I am now completely bored of the boy's club we have going on. In the 7 years since the Marvel Cinematic Universe began we have seen a total number of 3 actual female heroes (Black Widow, Lady Sif and Gamora) and then a few non-powered females (Maria Hill, Pepper Potts and Peggy Carter). Then we have those popping up in films by other studios such as X-Men. But they never seem to get the girls right. My question is why? Why are they so scared to give a female character amazing powers like the boys? Why no female hero movies?

more here

moviepilot.com/posts/2014/08/12/wonder-w...ternal,manual#bGMmDa

fats

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20 Aug 2014 16:29 - 20 Aug 2014 16:30 #37808 by happiest_in_shadows
Replied by happiest_in_shadows on topic Wonder Woman: The Boy's Club has Gotten Old.
I'd guess it's do in part to the success of the male heroes. You vote with your dollars and when you go watch or buy a movie with a male hero you're casting a vote for one. It's one reason I won't play any video game with a male only protagonist. That and when I find something with a good female lead I try to buy it.
Last edit: 20 Aug 2014 16:30 by happiest_in_shadows.

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20 Aug 2014 16:39 #37809 by Markiehoe
Replied by Markiehoe on topic Wonder Woman: The Boy's Club has Gotten Old.
Lucy did pretty good here in the U.S.

How many Resident Evil movies have there been?

Underworld is also pretty popular.

The wheel is turning.
The so called liberal artists in Hollywood, who are really bottom line conservatives at heart, are SLOWLY coming around to something we've known for a long time.

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20 Aug 2014 17:03 - 20 Aug 2014 17:24 #37811 by castor
stories that i have heard

in the first run of GI Joe Toys from the early eighties they made some female figures. they did focus tests of them with little boys who said "i don't want to play with girls". They sold of all the toys the worst.

This is the fact that research at the time suggested that a fair amount of the kids who played with GI joes with girls-and from studies of how they actually played they played with the female figurines comparably to males.

But well

for the second series and subsequent reprints they did comparitivly little female toys-which becuse there was little of them sold the worst-but a curious thing happen and that the toys that did create became collectors item-they where rare. Hasbro knew this and since the toy collectors market is part of the toy market, devoloped a tendency to limit supply.and boys didn't like playing with female toys anyway.

So it continued. you started finding female toys part of only much larger toy packages. Cover Girl is a tank commander for a reason-you would have to buy it as part of the packs sometimes with random odds for a reason. But boys don't play with girl toys.

Meanwhile Hasbro made a fortune on toys like my little pony toys and Jem. These where female centril toys and the conventional wisdom was to make girls toys. You had a girl line and you had boy line and toys which take a long time to devolop and market can be conservative(if you buy a toy on christmas likely it was designed around two christmases a go-it takes a long time )

Hasbro was working on its 18 month model-they belived that toys from promotion to launch sold in around 18 months cycles. He Man was the prime example of this-they produced two seasons of cartoon and canceled it though it was one of the most popular childrens program-the toy line was done. To see if they could extend that they created She Ra. Made a TV show and everything to go with a toyline That Sold: Okay. Not great not terrible. it sold to kids of both genders and did okay-but only okay. And okay wasn't good enough.

This was the great age of liscened toys- Star Wars, Action heros-and they tended to follow this model- very few woman figurines lots of men(never mind that classical star wars has 1 female character)

Hollywood took note. it should be said: Hollywood has spent decades working on complex formulas for figuring on the proffits of movies, like apraisals on a house. None of them are very good. People go to movies or not in methods that are kind of hard to predict. It tends to produce a culture of not political conservatism conservativism-a lot of studios often say "We get 100 scripts and only produce one of them". I have said well by that measure there shouldn't be any bad movies at all. but in hollywood one bad thing-there are stories of hollywood blaiming movies based on the kind of hat the hero wore- and keeping with it.

In the mid eighties they had supergirl-which after the sucess of the first three supeman movies was the first box office disapointment. I have said before: i kind of like the movie. Peter OToole god rest his soul was great in it. It should also be noted that it was made in part becuse Christopher Reeve was getting tired of playing superman, and they thought they could cash in on the character.It was also made at a time that special effects budgets where dwindling compared to previous movies in the franchise..and well it didn't do good.

In the early 90s Holywood wasn't really in the superhero game-Batman made them a fortune but things can move slowly. They did make Tank Girl. Wasn't a failure at the box office but it wasn't a hit. Now you can make excuses for it-its An R rated action comedy with a very werid premise and an out there concepts-but well there it is. Its not really even a superheroine movie as you might define it- its more a parody of mad max and Cyborg movies-but well its gotten lumped into the genre.

You also had Barb wire latter in the decade-which was concieved as a star viechle for Pamela Anderson. Its an R rated very booby movie thats agian not really a superhero movie-In the comics a little bit more but as in the movie its more or less a straight futuristic bounty hunter movie.


In the meantime you had cuthroat Island A gene Davis Vehicle-that just bombed. I will say this-i like the movie more then a lot of people- its funner then you might imagine-but it had a huge studio sinking budget as one of the last big pre cgi hit. It floped. It really scared hollywood off from female centric action movies-and also pirate movies. It was also if not R rated very Pg-13 and not really marketed to children. It should be added numerious male centric action movies flop all the time-but well...

then the superhero craze really hit around 2000 with films like X men, batman begins and Spiderman-this was a certifable hit genre with most of the top movies of the year

There response was Catwoman. Catwoman actually was a movie that has been in devolopment since the early ninties and a lot of its "well it floped reputation" comes from the fact that as studos are want to do it included nearly 15 years of failed devolopment efforts in its budgets including paying Michelle Pheyfer large amounts not to be in it.

It was also not really marketed to children. This a through line- this and the subesquent Electra film(which actually wasn't a flop at all-it made money for its budget)-there hasn't really be a female superhero movie where you can say-hey i can take my kids to this movie since well 1984s supergirl-which is now 30 years ago. There have been tons of Movies that are marketed to kids (sometimes probabbly less then they should) but no superheroine movies.

But well boys don't play with female toys, and Studos want to sell toys -actually in the last 30 years particuarly in the last 15 one of the trends is to go for more gender neutral toys-even toys that are marketed at girls such as Dora the explorer tend to be more action adventury then previous toy lines- and yeah in the more recent lines boys play with my little ponies, and girls play with GI Joes.

And the time of liscened toys in general is dying- There are Gaurdians of Galaxy toys for example but the amount of money that studios make from them, isn't much. They don't sell as well as they used And one of the last big sucess there was the Hunger Games.

So its a lot of logic that doesn't make super amount of sence but well....
Last edit: 20 Aug 2014 17:24 by castor.
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