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

Wright said:
Lawlight said:


How would you know if they are transgender though?

 

Adam's apple.


Gotcha. I think there's quite a few in regards to the population ratio. Of the top of my head, Dallas Buyer's Club, The Danish Girl, Sens8, Orange is the new black.



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In porn?



Lawlight said:

Looking at the movies that came out in 2015, I would say yes, if we don't include superhero movies, for obvious reasons.

Do you have some statistics so that we can have a discussion based on facts, or are you just going by your general impression from movies you know about?

And why should we exclude a significant and increasingly financially important genre? What is the obvious reason for excluding super hero movies? I don't see an obvious reason for excluding them.



“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” - Bertrand Russell

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."

Jimi Hendrix

 

binary solo said:
Lawlight said:

Looking at the movies that came out in 2015, I would say yes, if we don't include superhero movies, for obvious reasons.

Do you have some statistics so that we can have a discussion based on facts, or are you just going by your general impression from movies you know about?

And why should we exclude a significant and increasingly financially important genre? What is the obvious reason for excluding super hero movies? I don't see an obvious reason for excluding them.

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.



Well the best writers and directors are overwhelmingly male, so whats the problem if most of the protagonists are male? You can't force people to write about women, to be honest women in general are quite boring.

User moderated for this and other posts -RavenXtra



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I'll talk more on this when I get out of work, but for now I just want to say how much I hate the term "politically correct".

Mostly because I see a lot of people mix it up with not being an asshole.



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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.

Give it 2 years and then let's talk.



Prediction for console Lifetime sales:

Wii:100-120 million, PS3:80-110 million, 360:70-100 million

[Prediction Made 11/5/2009]

3DS: 65m, PSV: 22m, Wii U: 18-22m, PS4: 80-120m, X1: 35-55m

I gauruntee the PS5 comes out after only 5-6 years after the launch of the PS4.

[Prediction Made 6/18/2014]

Lawlight said:
binary solo said:

Do you have some statistics so that we can have a discussion based on facts, or are you just going by your general impression from movies you know about?

And why should we exclude a significant and increasingly financially important genre? What is the obvious reason for excluding super hero movies? I don't see an obvious reason for excluding them.

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.



“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” - Bertrand Russell

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."

Jimi Hendrix

 

Lawlight said:
Cyran said:

The goal is equal oppuntunity for everyone and let the best actor/actress get the role.  The issue is how do we reach that point.  For example if a certain role type have histroically always been played by a white male there may be a councious or even a unconcious bias toward a white male actor even if there anouther actor that could play the role better.

For that reason there sometime a need to put pressure on more diverse casting in order to give people a chance that they would not have otherwise.  Over time the bias will be eliminated as people get use to all sorts of people in those roles and then you can just let who ever had the best audition get the job.

It not always about raciest or sexism or some other type of prejudices.  It just people tend to resist change so when they use to something always being a certain way there sometime a requirement to push that change.

What type of role is historically played by a white male though? Other than that of a redneck or white supremacist or racist, I cannot think of one.


James Bond...



 

 

Cobretti2 said:
Lawlight said:

What type of role is historically played by a white male though? Other than that of a redneck or white supremacist or racist, I cannot think of one.


James Bond...


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