Marvel
has recently found huge financial success in their most recent film Guardians of the Galaxy, which grossed
over $94 million in it's opening weekend making it the largest August opener of
all time. But one of the main reasons
the film has hit headlines, is due to the fact that 44% of the audience was
female. This is the highest female viewer rating which Marvel has ever
encountered and is taken to be a positive sign for future superhero movies.
Many wondered why Guardians of the Galaxy had collected such a large female
audience and many notions were suggested. Miss Representation, who are a
campaign working towards ending gender inequality and increasing diversity of women we see in our media, claimed that people were
excited and impressed that the film included Marvel's first-ever female screen
writer- Nicole Perlman. They also pointed out the fact that the film stars the
complex female characters played by Zoe Saldana, Karen Gillan and Glenn Close.
Many other people however, just pointed at Chris Pratt's abs to justify all the
female attention the film was receiving.
Then
again, the Guardian writer Bim Adewunmi came up with another theory when
writing an article entitled "Why do women love Guardians of the
Galaxy?" that maybe women just like the film because they are human. She
states in the article that "women like Guardians
of the Galaxy because it is a good movie. It is witty, quirky and fun, and
has plenty of charm". I support Adewunmi's opinion and am thrilled to
learn that women are enjoying themselves and seeing fantastic films despite
those movies being notoriously targeted towards men.
Which
means that us female viewers are looking forward to the next step: a female-led
superhero film. There are a few Marvel ladies including Black Widow from Avengers
Assemble, Iron Man 2 and Captain America: The Winter Soldier and
Pepper Potts from the Iron Man
trilogy who we adore but in recent years, we have failed to see a woman actually
star in their own super hero Hollywood Blockbuster. Despite the latest demand for a woman to be
seen saving the Earth, we are making rather disappointingly
slow progress.
Kevin Feige, President of Marvel Studios,
recently said that " the studio has no intention of releasing a female-led action film in
the foreseeable future" and that sequels to their already established
franchises are set to be top priorities through to 2017. It was rumoured that a
Black Widow film was on the horizon but Feige's statement has destroyed any hope
for that for at least 4 years. DC Comics has made a slightly better advancement
however, with Gal Gadot being cast as
Wonder Woman and allegedly thought to appear in Batman Vs Superman: Dawn of
Justice in 2016, the future Justice
League movie in 2017 and eventually her own Wonder Woman movie in 2018- but these have not been fully confirmed
and may have their release dates delayed.
Actresses are
also keen to have their chance at the starring role. Kristen Stewart actually
turned down a role in a super hero movie, justifying the decision by saying,
"I don't want to be the superhero's girlfriend. I want to be the
superhero." Which I think is more than fair enough. Scarlett Johansson also has
previously said that she would love to star in a Black Widow origin movie
"if the audience wants something like that" as " these spin
-offs are really like fan-driven".
So in order to
actually have the female-led superhero movies we need to show, as the viewers
and consumers, that we want them. This is the link to tweet Marvel Studios that
we want a strong and complex super heroine confirmed before 2017: https://t.e2ma.net/click/62p5d/mjpkjg/qirocb
and here is the link to sign a petition for a Black Widow movie: https://www.change.org/p/yo-marvel-whereismyblackwidowmovie
. It's about time the women wore the cape for once.
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