Female action movies from a Males's perspective only

[Vakanai]

Most folks don't have an issue calling a movie a flop if it really did that in terms of box office.

The point Gaelforce was making is when male lead films flop they are not generally used as weapons to negate others.

And we can list script, executives and all that-which get accepted when it's male lead or even something like Justice League. Yet NONE of that matters when it's Ghostbusters or Birds of Prey or Star Wars. It's always the fault of the woman or person of color.

And most movies those trailers and ads are NOT done by the folks who made the film. For those who remember the 2007 movie with Jeffrey Jones-Whose Your Caddy. The trailer would have you think it's a racism comedy with Jones being racist to the new black owners of the golf club. Race had NOTHING to do with it. Even the writer had to go on IMBD to say that multiple times.

I think the issue for many films is WHO is the male that is doing the work. Because it's funny when we look all over the place others are not having issue tossing female lead action films. And most have a decent plot.

I have no clue what any of what you say has to do with my 1) saying those films deserve to be on a flop list and 2) taking an opportunity to make fun of horrible movies. I was pretty sure that joke would've landed.

I mean I would have taken a shot at Green Lantern too if he hadn't listed that.

[titanfan]

I'm not convinced that the problem is in the audience half of the market. I believe it's in the studio/advertising side. You can tell that there isn't a lot of faith in female led action pieces just by looking at how they're marketed.

You can tell there isn't, based on the budget. Movies like Catwoman and Elektra were pretty much doomed once the budget was made for them. There was no way to fulfill fan expectations on the movie.

It's still not perfect, Wonder Woman, despite being a bigger superhero name, actually had less of a budget than Aquaman. Captain Marvel was also the cheapest budgeted Marvel movies in years.

We expect our female lead action movies to be just as good as ones lead by men, but they aren't on equal footing.

[Vakanai]

You can tell there isn't, based on the budget. Movies like Catwoman and Elektra were pretty much doomed once the budget was made for them. There was no way to fulfill fan expectations on the movie.

It's still not perfect, Wonder Woman, despite being a bigger superhero name, actually had less of a budget than Aquaman. Captain Marvel was also the cheapest budgeted Marvel movies in years.

We expect our female lead action movies to be just as good as ones lead by men, but they aren't on equal footing.

To be fair, budgets aren't the be all - Green Lantern, BvS after word of mouth spread, Justice League...
It isn't fair that they don't get equal budgets, and that needs to change, but good directors and teams find a way to make a good movie with the money they have.

[batnbreakfast]

I enjoyed Elektra (there's a huuuge gap between Elektra and Catwoman) and Birds of Prey (despite HQ) a lot more than Captain Marvel (just meh in every way). Just because comic fans weren't pleased with them doesn't mean I can't enjoy them on their own.

[Gotham citizen]

To be fair, budgets aren't the be all - Green Lantern, BvS after word of mouth spread, Justice League...
It isn't fair that they don't get equal budgets, and that needs to change, but good directors and teams find a way to make a good movie with the money they have.

Exactly! It is a very basic rule of every business: «If you want the financier's money, you must prove to be able to make money.»; in fact the budget for "A fistful of Dollars" (the first western movie of Sergio Leone) was 200,000 $ circa and the budget for "Once upon a time in the West" (the last western movie of Sergio Leone) was 5,000,000 $ circa.

[Aahz]

By comparison, Green Lantern flopped at the box office, but DC didn't declare 'no more male led superhero movies.'

Green Lantern was originally supposed to be the start of DCs cinematic universe, the Flop led to them completely changing their plans and delaying the start of their cinematic universe.

[Aahz]

Terminator's salvageble but it needs to heavily modified to not be a zombie franchise. Arnie is both its anchor and a raison why its still going, what they should do is leave him out completely do a full reboot and make the franchise centre around someone else new, like Grace, maybe keep Connor as a leader but not the lead in the movies, more like supporting cast and focus it fully on the future war. Stop relying so much on the time travel, they've regurgitated Terminator 2 every single time except the original movie. Hard reboot, ditch the rest of the movies except imply something with time travel but that's just fan service/easter egg don't make it crucial.

I don't think so, it has been 30 years since Terminator 2. the old fans are not going to come back for another reboot attempt (I think the last movies have proven that), they basically had to bring in a completely new audience.

And I don't think that can really replace Arnie with any other actor (male or female), and he himself is just to old for that role.

[batnbreakfast]

I don't think so, it has been 30 years since Terminator 2. the old fans are not going to come back for another reboot attempt (I think the last movies have proven that), they basically had to bring in a completely new audience.

And I don't think that can really replace Arnie with any other actor (male or female), and he himself is just to old for that role.

The story makes no sense anymore. Mice are troubling you. Your reaction is to send robot mice back in time. Why not poison your Mice? Use a biological weapon? The Terminator movies made sense in the 80/90s. Now, they don't and that's fine. The Arnold movies are not going away and there's always new stuff we can watch while eating popcorn.

[Riv86672]

I enjoyed Elektra (there's a huuuge gap between Elektra and Catwoman) and Birds of Prey (despite HQ) a lot more than Captain Marvel (just meh in every way). Just because comic fans weren't pleased with them doesn't mean I can't enjoy them on their own.

I can agree w. that.
Of the four movies you mentioned, the most well made one in nearly every way was Captain Marvel.
I will never watch that movie again, but I’d sit down and catch either of the other three on a slow day.

I guess there’s no accounting for taste!

[Synestra]

The question of "Why do female driven action movies fail?" comes off as somewhat loaded, and it's been proven false by numerous people in the thread. There are certainly ones that do fail, just like there are male driven action films that fail, but that isn't the case for all of them...

...some men do hold sexist opinions with regards to female-lead action movies, but even then they don't always have an effect on the overall performance or reception. Captain Marvel is the most obvious example. You also have the men who complained about Mad Max: Fury Road due to Furiosa, but the film was a moderate success and received high praise for her character.

Do they fail?

Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, Alien 1&2, Res Evil, Underworld, Lucy, Old Guard, Le Femme Nikita, most likely Mulan and Black Widow.
On TV, Alias, Buffy, Supergirl, Star Girl, Bat Woman.

Adding to the TV side of things, I'll include Xena, which was a spin-off that ended up surpassing the male-lead Hercules in popularity.

[Gaelforce]

Look, I get the problem that you have to admit that the Elektra and Catwoman movies exist in order to call them flops, which goes against our desire to forget they exist, but we have to come together now and say yes, these movies were real, we were inflicted with them, and enough time has passed that we can come forward and heal from such shitty, shitty movies... list them. Just list them.

Not denying that they were flops, they just aren't listed in the Top 100 flops of all time according to Wikipedia. There are other lists I found that were very similar.

I'm sure there are plenty of male and female led flops not on the list and absolutely Elektra and Catwoman are among them. They were terribly written movies.

Steel, Superman IV, Jonah Hex, the Punisher: War Zone and the new Hellboy bombed as well, btw, but I didn't list them either.

Hell, Howard the Duck tanked and he still showed up in an MCU movie

Green Lantern was originally supposed to be the start of DCs cinematic universe, the Flop led to them completely changing their plans and delaying the start of their cinematic universe.

Correct, but they didn't put a moratorium on male led movies. With the WW DVD movie, it led to 'no more female led DVD' movies for a very long time.

[Aahz]

Correct, but they didn't put a moratorium on male led movies. With the WW DVD movie, it led to 'no more female led DVD' movies for a very long time.

They don't really have any other female characters big enough for DVD movies (with exception of Harley Quinn), with the male led movie they also only did one Flash and two Green Lantern Movies (and second was just a bunch of shorts and was probably only made because the live action movie came out the same year) and all the others were Batman, Superman or team movies.

[regnak]

Not denying that they were flops, they just aren't listed in the Top 100 flops of all time according to Wikipedia. There are other lists I found that were very similar.

I'm sure there are plenty of male and female led flops not on the list and absolutely Elektra and Catwoman are among them. They were terribly written movies.

Steel, Superman IV, Jonah Hex, the Punisher: War Zone and the new Hellboy bombed as well, btw, but I didn't list them either.

Hell, Howard the Duck tanked and he still showed up in an MCU movie



Correct, but they didn't put a moratorium on male led movies. With the WW DVD movie, it led to 'no more female led DVD' movies for a very long time.

That is because they had great success in the past with Superman and Batman movies. WW is their first big success with a super heroine.

[Aahz]

The question of the box office draw of women is another issue. I just recently looked up who the ten highest paid male movie stars are and the ten highest paid women. I honestly had never before even heard of numbers 8, 9 and 10 on the male list. I have no idea who they are.

In 2019 number 8, 9 and 10 were Chris Evans, Paul Rudd and Will Smith.

If you found an older list those guys you had never heard of were probably Bollywood actors.

[Gaelforce]

They don't really have any other female characters big enough for DVD movies (with exception of Harley Quinn), with the male led movie they also only did one Flash and two Green Lantern Movies (and second was just a bunch of shorts and was probably only made because the live action movie came out the same year) and all the others were Batman, Superman or team movies.

Except this included any other Wonder Woman movies, and canned the Batgirl that was in the works.

Btw, out of 25 DVD, Wonder Woman ranked 8th in sales. Hardly a flop, yet it was enough to put the kibosh on any female led animated films for 10 years later when we got a second WW movie.

Point is that there is a serious over reaction when a female led film doesn't do awesome right out of the gate, but male heroes get try after try after try.

Never once has anyone ever said 'that didn't do so great the first week it was released, so let's not ever have a male-led superhero film again.'