By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Movies & TV - Do you feel that we have reached a balanced ratio of male protagonists vs. female protagonists?

mornelithe on 21 October 2015

I don't care about the protagonists gender, I care about good writing, strong characters etc...



Around the Network
Lawlight on 21 October 2015
binary solo said:
Lawlight said:

Just counted the top 20-25 grossing movies of the year. Nothing scientific.

Simply because superhero movies are based on existing comics. Obviously the most popular superheroes will be made first and those are mostly male characters. I think that makes sense, not sure why you're making me explain it.

So out of those 25 movies what's the split?

I'm not sure you are correct in that, there are certainly female superheroes that are much more well known among the mainstream population than Ant man, for example, albeit most or all of those female superheroes are DC properties not Marvel properties. Arguably Marvel could have made Wasp and have Ant man be the side character who came on stream at the end of the movie. Wasp is as well known among the comic book fandom as Ant man, and deciding to set the movie after Hank Pym retired from super hero duties meant there was no essential reason for Hank's invention to get its first outing on a male character. If the first Ant man had been set back when Hank Pym was a wife beating inventor and quantum physics genius, then making him the first shrinking superhero would be the only option, but that's not what they did. I would even go so far as to say Wasp, starring Evangeline Lilly, would have been more successful than Ant man, starring Paul Rudd; as long as they still had Michael Pena of course.

So you might think your explanation is obvious, but even with you articulating it I don't agree it's a legitimate reason to exclude them from a consideration of whether there's reasonable gender balance in leading roles in 2015 movies.

I think you also need to consider target audiences. If most of the female leads are in movies that are directed at a female audience, whereas the male leads are a mix of general audience and male audiences then you could still say there's an imbalance. If Hollywod churns out three female lead $20 million budget, chick flick, cookie cutter, rom-coms and one $150 million budget male lead block buster, if you just go by number of movies then you could say Hollywood is suffering an oestrogen overdose. But if you go by investment input and expected audience demographic mix and size then things swing back in favour of the one big budget movie.


11 out of 25 but that's including the superhero movies and movies like Bob SquarePants, Ted and Paddington.

You're giving an example of the wasp being more popular than Ant-Man. Not sure how correct that is since I only ever heard of Ant-Man in passing (though I did hear that he created Utron) but never heard of The Wasp. Since The Wasp was Ant-Man's sidekick, why would they switch the story around? You are free to speculate that The Wasp would gross more than Ant-Man but that would be just speculation. Also, let's not forget that Ant-Man is a weird situation since it was supposed to be the first movie and work started on that before the MCU was a thing.

I gave a good reason why most of the superhero movies are led by males but you only came up with a thought about The Wasp's popularity vs. Ant-Man's.

And since we're talking about the highest grossing movies here, it's safe to assume that most of these aren't your average $20M budget movie.



Frogger on 21 October 2015

I don't really think it matters as long as the story is good.



Shackkobe on 21 October 2015

There doesn't need to be a balance.

People create what they want. If one gender dominates as a result, the game needs to be judged for it's merits as a game period.



hershel_layton on 21 October 2015
spemanig said:
I don't really think it matters as long as the story is good.


Sometimes race does matter. It'd suck if a movie used white people to mock Native Americans.

 

I do agree overall though. I just want good actors.

 

However, if the character is meant to be LGBT, black, Native, etc etc., I want the correct people to be casted.

 



 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

12/22/2016- Made a bet with Ganoncrotch that the first 6 months of 2017 will be worse than 2016. A poll will be made to determine the winner. Loser has to take a picture of them imitating their profile picture.

Around the Network
Cobretti2 on 21 October 2015
Lawlight said:
Cobretti2 said:


James Bond...


James Bond is based on a book where the character is white.


Yes but people talking the next bond should be black for example. to "balance" things.

I'm all for best actor for the role but personally I feel that characters written for a certain gender, race etc should not be messed with.

Plenty of  new movies can be made where they write around a certain actor in mind. 

I'll go another extreme

Harrison Ford = Indy. The fact that lucas clung onto ford for so many decades basically makes it hard to replace him. Bond did the right thing  changed actors all the time (even though daniel craig is ungratful for playing bond) and kept the franchise going.

I think Indiana Jones Franchise should have gone down the same path. Imagine how awesome it be having about 10-15 movies in the franchise already. 



 

 

Frogger on 22 October 2015
hershel_layton said:


Sometimes race does matter. It'd suck if a movie used white people to mock Native Americans.

 

I do agree overall though. I just want good actors.

 

However, if the character is meant to be LGBT, black, Native, etc etc., I want the correct people to be casted.

 


That's poor type casting, though. That has nothing to do with writing. I don't see why a LGBT character can't be acted by a straight person, though.



Normchacho on 22 October 2015
Cobretti2 said:
Lawlight said:


James Bond is based on a book where the character is white.


Yes but people talking the next bond should be black for example. to "balance" things.

I'm all for best actor for the role but personally I feel that characters written for a certain gender, race etc should not be messed with.

Plenty of  new movies can be made where they write around a certain actor in mind. 

I'll go another extreme

Harrison Ford = Indy. The fact that lucas clung onto ford for so many decades basically makes it hard to replace him. Bond did the right thing  changed actors all the time (even though daniel craig is ungratful for playing bond) and kept the franchise going.

I think Indiana Jones Franchise should have gone down the same path. Imagine how awesome it be having about 10-15 movies in the franchise already. 


Regardless of the reasoning, I would love to see Idris Elba as Bond.



Bet with Adamblaziken:

I bet that on launch the Nintendo Switch will have no built in in-game voice chat. He bets that it will. The winner gets six months of avatar control over the other user.

Aeolus451 on 22 October 2015

Are you serious? I didn't know that some people were keeping a tally. They should just pick people suited for their roles and the story itself. They shouldn't change anything in a movie or story just to "diversify" or pander. It defeats the whole point of progression. If the source material or script of a movie calls for 6 males and 2 females or 10 females and 3 males then just leave it as is. With that said, there shouldn't be a "balance".



Abun on 22 October 2015
Wright said:

Definitively. Now I hope they start including transgender characters from now on.


I don't see why they need to as it adds nothing to the movie at all.Unless the writer and director can relate to it then what's the point? I don't expect white writers and directors to relate to my people so i don't expect them to cast someone like me in their movies as they will just be stereotypical or token.I prefer we make our own and Transgender/Gay should do the same.