I recently saw the new superhero film Guardians of the Galaxy, the tenth from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The first nine were all either based around The Avengers as a whole, or separate movies - and sequels, and threequels - for the individual Avengers characters.
Guardians of the Galaxy is the first to be released not featuring the Avengers – although it does take place in the same universe, as will Ant Man (released 2015) and Doctor Strange (released TBA).
As I was enjoying Guardians of the Galaxy (even though a man next to me slurped his drink for the entire duration, skillfully timing it to be loudest during the quietest parts), I was struck by what I was watching, and importantly, what I wasn’t watching.
I was seeing a charming and fun movie featuring a main cast of five characters (all unknown to me as the GOTG is an unfamiliar franchise to many people, especially non-comic book readers), including one (male) talking raccoon, one (male) sentient tree extraterrestrial creature, and one woman.
What I wasn’t seeing (and haven’t seen for a long, long time) is a superhero movie based solely on a female character.
“... there I was, sitting in the theatre watching a superhero movie featuring a talking raccoon and a sentient tree before I had the opportunity to see a decent superhero movie starring a female as the main character.”
Of the nine previous Marvel Universe movies, eight are about a male Avenger (including three about Iron Man).
The wonderful (Scarlett Johansson’s) Black Widow appears in the ensemble movie, in the Captain America and Iron Man sequels, but she has not been gifted her own movie, even though Marvel has teased us incessantly with vague references.
Neither has Wonder Woman, a DC character, who will instead be in the upcoming Warner Bros. movie Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. Though if there were actually any justice, Wonder Woman (a popular and long lasting character since the 70s) would have her own movie.
Instead, there I was, sitting in the theatre watching a superhero movie featuring a talking raccoon and a sentient tree before I had the opportunity to see a decent superhero movie starring a female as the main character.
I was watching a movie that had the scope and source material to do just about anything they wanted, with five lead characters, and yet they settled for an underutilised female character with a shallow backstory and no tangible story arc.
The film rights to Marvel’s sizable collection of characters are shared between different studios, and the only studio to announce the actual development a female-led movie is Sony, who did so this month. Unfortunately, Sony only owns the rights to the Spiderman characters, and as such does not have access to any real A-List female characters.
While this is exciting news, as we will conceivably see some kind of female superhero movie by 2017, it also is slightly concerning to imagine what Sony might come up with based on their stable of characters. Part of the reason we haven’t seen a lady superhero movie in this time of seemingly-only-superhero-movies-being-released is due to the respective failures of the last big female-led vehicles, Catwoman (2004) and Elektra (2005). Another failure might lead to an even longer wait before a studio to attempts it again.
However, the disappointment of those two movies should not be blamed on the fact that the movies starred a female superhero, but rather that both movies were abysmal.
With the passing of ten years and the recent spate of huge box office successes for female-led action and adventure movies like The Hunger Games, Divergent, Maleficent and (Scarlett Johannson’s) Lucy proving that people will pay to see a movie starring a woman (shock horror), and the fact that 44% of Guardians of the Galaxy audience were women, it is beyond time that all the studios look to give us the female superhero movies we’ve been waiting for, and the ones we deserve.
I want to be able to spend too much money buying my nieces and nephews female superhero action figures instead of that of a sentient extraterrestrial tree.
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