| chakkra said: And if you want to enjoy a story about a hero who is a protector saving a damsel in distress, that is fine too. |
At the same time, I think some people on this thread are over-estimating how widespread the appeal of this kind of storytelling actually is, and under-estimating the sophistication of audiences.
Let's look at the James Bond series, which is arguably the stereotypical male-focused franchise. Bond girls have a reputation for just being there to look hot in a bikini and get saved by Mr. Bond in the climax. Yet if you look at fan polls ranking the Bond girls, a pretty clear pattern emerges - the top of the list is dominated by the ones who are shown to be capable in their own right and can hold their own with Bond in the action sequences, while the bottom (once you get past Denise Richards in The World Is Not Enough, which was a case of a character just misfiring on every possible level) is filled by the ones who serve the traditional "damsel in distress" role and add nothing to the plot beyond just being there to look pretty and be saved. Heck, Lea Seydoux managed to turn around from being one of the worst-regarded Bond girls in Spectre to one of the best-regarded ones in No Time To Die, precisely because the latter portrayed her as more than just a pretty face who needed to be saved by the hero.
Or, let's take another example, the Michael Bay Transformers movies. They were arguably the last major Hollywood franchise to be completely and unashamedly aimed at men, but guess who complained about the series the most? Men, because they could tell that Bay was treating them like drooling idiots who weren't capable of doing anything more than looking at explosions and hot chicks. And he might have gotten away with that approach for a while, but guys eventually got tired of being taken for granted and turned away from the series.
