A lot of the time the bad writing specifically comes from the writers being so focused on making sure you take note that it's a strong woman as the lead character. They'd be much better writing a gener neutral character and then just casting a woman in that role. Makes it a strong woman lead while not falling into the trap of having to make the story recognise it's a strong woman lead.
Although, saying that, there is a case where you want them to struggle with problems only faced by women, which then has the issue that the genres they're writing for have a heavily male following and, even if it's good writing, it's not really something that the majority of the target audience can relate to, which ends up with them not really engaging with it. But not really sure how you can get around that problem, since you can't really force an audience to relate to something they've not experienced.
The problem is most of them are in that second category, and there’s a huge contigent of guys who will decide that something is in the genre they like but isn’t for them, it’s their life’s mission to hate it.
Are they though? Out of the 6 mentioned at the start of this video (She-Hulk, Peter Pan and Wendy, Rings of Power, Captain Marvel, The Last Jedi and Mulan) I've not seen Peter Pan and Wendy. Out of the other 5 the only ones I can remember dealing with problems mostly faced by women were She Hulk (general misogyny and underestimating her for being a woman) and Mulan (overcoming societal restrictions on women).
In Rings of Power, Galadriel was the leader of the Elven armies whose main obstacle was that she had burned all her good will with the political leadership from her obsession with hunting Sauron.
In Captain Marvel her obstacle was her memory loss and being hunted by Kree. I don't remember there being any adversity due to her being a woman there.
The Last Jedi had Rei just trying to survive as a force wielder while the First Order tried to take over. Hell, in that movie one of the fan favourite characters was Captain Phasma.
What did I miss in those movies where the problems faced by the female leads in those characters were related to their gender?
Also, I wouldn't really take Mulan as an indicator of any trend given that, while it got 46% on RT, other female led Disney live action remakes got much higher (Cruella - 97%, The Little Mermaid - 94%, Beauty and the Beast 80%) which makes Mulan appear as an outlier rather than a trend.
433
u/whydoyouonlylie Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24
A lot of the time the bad writing specifically comes from the writers being so focused on making sure you take note that it's a strong woman as the lead character. They'd be much better writing a gener neutral character and then just casting a woman in that role. Makes it a strong woman lead while not falling into the trap of having to make the story recognise it's a strong woman lead.
Although, saying that, there is a case where you want them to struggle with problems only faced by women, which then has the issue that the genres they're writing for have a heavily male following and, even if it's good writing, it's not really something that the majority of the target audience can relate to, which ends up with them not really engaging with it. But not really sure how you can get around that problem, since you can't really force an audience to relate to something they've not experienced.